BRANDS WITH "GUMPTION"

Who cares about Oxford or Cambridge anymore; I mean the dictionaries, when there is dictionary.com.

But that's not what we are really talking about. The is about the word 'GUMPTION' and the reason to look it up in dictionary.com was to really understand that if someone says that some brands have 'gumption', then what exactly does it mean?

Does it mean they are 'reckless' and are in the hands of irresponsible brand managers, who are in dire need of paternal control?

Or does it mean that they are bizarre because they are owned by a hippie turned entrepreneur?

Or for that matter, they simply sit on a wide cusp of sanity and insanity - some whimsical expression of a moody somethingortheother?

Or is it just that they are bold experiments that have seen chance successes and are therefore emulated at great risk?

Yet the one thing that emerged from faithfully reading the meaning of 'gumption' from dictionary.com was that none of the meanings were deprecating or derogatory.

So this is how dictionary.com puts it.

GUMPTION: noun

- Initiative

- Aggressiveness

- Resourcefulness

usage:with his gumption, he'll make a success of himself.

- Courage

- Spunk

- Guts

usage: 'it takes gumption to quit a high paying job'

(Apparent risk)

- Common Sense

- Shrewdness

When one combines all of it together, the understanding it creates is as follows. A person or brand has gumption when aggressive gutsy initiative is implemented with courage even though it has many naysayers who cannot see the commonsense in it and see only an apparent risk, while appreciating the spunk and courage behind the initiative, thereby being unable to see the shrewdness in the ploy.

Now there are two things I have heard about strategy (real strategy with proven results) that have never left my mind - one that if it can't be uttered in one line, it can't be much of a strategy and two, if the recipient can see through it, then 'strategy' is the one thing it is not.

This is where 'shrewdness' comes in, standing tall as it differentiates itself from what Graham Greene would call 'the cunning of the unintelligent'.

It's like those fellows with a sarcastic smile when they try to fool someone, but with kinesics being so ingrained in the second nature of all humans, they fail to see that they have been seen through!

It's the same with brands my dear. Some brands generate an appeal that foxes the daylights out of the traditional category codes they belong to, thereby stretching the boundaries of the very category itself; brands that almost seem like a whole new category unto themselves. They become so pervasive that no one can see through their grand design, their seemingly innocuous strategy; their effortless persona that at every conceivable rational level, conflicts sharply with accepted category codes. So in hindsight they appear okay, but I suggest one ponders for a moment to imagine the conflicts that were doubtless involved in their creation.

So a computer is a serious personal machine, is it? Ask Apple! From its name to its colour, to its shape, to its understanding of its own usage! There are computers and there is Apple. In hindsight perfectly sane in every respect, but to repeat -imagine the gumption in its creation.

One aggressive man with guts and spunk did something that was apparently crazy then, because he was shrewd enough to see the sense of it, and strategic enough to pose it as harmless.

And there is Harley and there are bikes and it has the gumption of seemingly truncating its own market by associating with reckless imagery and not seeking the safety of warm and smiling associations.

And so you have Virgin, in the serious stuffed shirt formal business of air travel with the gumption of bringing in the spunk of massages in air travel! Someone was known to have remarked in the early days of Virgin, that why did they not choose to be a bar instead!

And so you have an impossible-to-hold overweight and outsized Subway sandwich sitting in your hands with your mouth opening like that of a yawning crocodile, because it has the gumption to discount research that makes consumers tick four silly boxes among the reasons for eating sandwiches:

( 1 ) Easy to hold,

( 2 ) easy to carry,

( 3 ) Quick to eat,

( 5 )easy to comprehend filling!

And so you have a fast selling I Pad (now the fastest selling gadget ever - more on this soon) which offers all that computers did and nothing else because someone had the gumption of commonsense that told him that there is a huge need for a screen size between that of a mobile phone and a computer (slim chances of Dell Streak making it to the big league then - more soon!)and that is one good reason; the other being a technology company with the horticultural name of Apple! Yes...yes...still more, very soon...

And so you have McDonalds that has the gumption to seemingly truncate its own consumer base with its highly restricted menu, though at the rational level, the full real estate could have been used to sell a wide menu and a huge variety, ranging from puree aalo to chola bhatura and so on. How silly is what those with gumption would say!

And so you have the gumption of selling Maggie noodles targeting children with adults assigned only the role of only cooking it for them, in all the advertising! In a mathematical world where it should clear that small stomachs will eat less! Moreover, Maggie noodles in a parantha eating country, in those good old days when eating out was an act of gross indiscipline and so where was culinary adventure going to come from anyway and when more importantly even pronouncing the word noodles was an enthusiastic experiment. Some obscenities have known to have resulted in the process!

And so you have a chaval dal eating nation, with no one giving them nutritional data to swing their preference so that xyz kilos more would help get the business target! And of course those self styled pundits, who attributed it to box No. 3 in market survey questionnaire called 'convenience'! Which makes only two core segment available to marketers to tickle the funny bone - one called convenient and so naturally the other called inconvenient!

But, one thing remains indisputably and irreversibly true in the history of Marketing. That brands with gumption are more concerned about focused targeting and the business targets are incidental. They do not muddle up cause and effect. And that is the reason why in the conception of their business idea and business lines, the results are surprising and pleasantly so.

Now who would thought, that in a country where only the business community traded in shares, would resort to online trading, in other words un-assisted trading and evoke appeal to the much brahminical salaried class, who from every figment of logic, should have been petrified of the very thought.

It took gumption ladies and gentlemen.

Sometimes, examples lie right right under our nose and we must have the brazen gumption of applauding them even though they are ours!

So write back with some examples you know of brands with gumption. A word of caution, don't write about Google even if the whole world says so because all this is generic and standard in world of the Internet. Over there, in that world, a brand would have gumption if it wore a tie and spoke with the British stiff upper lip, bowed gracefully, toasted to the queen and still got away! Because that would mean, re-defining the category codes of the net.

P.S. There once was a Client servicing executive in India's top most advertising agency who had the guts to sport a pony tail way back in 1990. But I wouldn't use the word 'gumption' to complement the phenomena, because he soon joined the creative department and later turned film maker!