BRAND STATURE

Now this time let’s take Marketing where it truly belongs – in the recesses and sub conscious of the human mind and well beyond the articulated inane-ness of popularly practiced ‘Market Research’. And so we begin somewhat semiotically from some simple and basic understanding of Evolutionary Psychology delving into the basis of beliefs. This time it is not about all the formulaic check boxes one must tick to give a brand ‘stature’, but about understanding outside-in, what the human mind is willing to grant stature to. So while the subject is called ‘brand stature’ and is the same for both cases, it is the order that is reverse.

So here we go, in the reverse order as always, in our attempt to hone marketing acumen, by simply looking in, through the eyes of the consumer. Remember even while we market and sell, we consume too! It is the eyes of the latter that we have to don now.

Yet again, to simplify, we shall liken brands to people with the simple truism that brands are like people.

Now this simplifies the task of arriving at the starting point as we begin first by asking the question what does ‘stature’ mean (semiotics) in the context of people. And then proceeding into the realm of evolutionary psychology where we then ascribe the basis of belief, no matter how distasteful it may be or how unacceptable, since afterall it is true that the human mind is not a moral firmament of uprightness all the time. It is after all the sub conscious that we will now dig deep into.

Now first on the literal meaning, the proximate meaning of ‘stature’ and then to the deeper meaning or the ‘insight’.

‘Stature’ is therefore ‘an achieved level: status’.

Semiotically speaking, the stress is on the word ‘achieved’ – the opposites of which would be when you achieve by luck, chance or some illgotten method. Infosys, as a Corporate brand would fit this archetype. Even though Reliance should have also been here, but the attributable causes to success and achievement makes them elude this level.

Or indeed it is ‘the natural height of a human or animal in an upright position’.

This translates semiotically into stressing on the word ‘natural’. In other words, this is a level that is naturally ‘earned’ not snatched or taken undeservedly. This also means that this is not a person who fits into the position uncomfortably, but easily, deservingly, calmly. Psychologists would infer that the greatness of Mr Bachchan also has to do with having stressed ‘Lamboo’ in many a film. The fact that his modesty over so many years have gone on to convince both viewers and watchers that he has never ever himself talked about his greatness. Others have done so. This adds to his ‘natural’ height as against a self proclaimed altitude that many of us are fond of claiming, often without reason!

Many brands have those extra inches of rulers in the physicality. There is no need whatsoever for the Jaguar car to be so huge and long. Doesn’t it also explain why the Hummer, an ugly Army personnel carrier is now a domesticated passenger car forever on display by the owner!

Or ‘the degree of development of a person’.

Semiotically? Well this is awe that one experiences when facing this person because he /she is more ‘evolved’ and better developed. This is a reminder to the ‘followers’ about the gap between them and their leader. What better example than Gandhi here when it comes to people or Apple when it comes to brands. Not just innovation that moves on copycat trends, but out of box unconventional daring accentuates the sheer degree of surprising development. Gandhi and Apple – just think about it.

Or ‘intellectual or moral greatness’

Semiotically, this is an imperative for stature. It is about objective loftiness . This is a person who is always objective and sits on a high moral pedestal. The word ‘intellectual’ in turn semiotically also implies equidistance from opposing parochial positions. An intellectual person is oriented to think by balance. This is the knowledgeable judge of the debate, not the debator who has been assigned to speak either for or against the motion. Benetton, as a brand evidences cultural equidistance. Closer home, we come to a wholly Indian example, who have uprightness written large on their DNA and everywhere else that the DNA impacts. Tata is a great organization to work for with upright people policies. It has often paid the price for sticking to principles of fair play (even exited West Bengal when a few green pieces of paper may have done the trick), has absolutely fair and honest pricing and value delivered to customers. And it accordingly has the stature and therefore the market share. Across an amazing number of diverse industries it leads the pack by far, even though the efficacy of the ‘conglomerate’ type of organisation is far from proven. Even while the world celebrates the likes of AirTel in telecom for its achievement, little does it realize that Idea Cellular is the only one to have increased market share by an amazing 12 percentage points in a handful of years. Or that TCS is and was (and well might remain) larger than Infosys. And one could go on. But semiotically, an intellectual with moral greatness cannot be bothered claiming moral greatness and that is the pivotal difference. We will never see Tata 'advertising' its moral values!

Now switching to an acceptable easy dose of evolutionary psychology, lets understand the ‘why’ behind accepting some person or brand to have stature or to not have stature:

Brown and Chia-Yun have analysed it thus (I have simplified the theory for easy understanding).

Stature is accorded to what is called ‘a big man’. And ‘big man’ is a reflection or recognition in a culture of a pervasive feature of nature. Somehow no matter what the sales of Dabangg and 3 idiots tickets, Amir Khan and Shahrukh will have to be happy with other words to describe them because ‘stature’ is what Amitabh is ‘naturally’ blessed with. Abhishake his son, even if he does match the performance, was afterall born with a silver spoon in the mouth and it doesn’t help that the Bachchan clan continuously reminds us about this through frequent mentions of family traivails. They probably feel that the brand equity of the ‘father brand’ will rub off on the variant! But the psychological reality is always the opposite! Large physical stature contributes quite certainly no matter how surprising it may seem. In small town Hindi speaking India, the word ‘personality’ (pronounced ‘pershnaulty’!) is often a conversational ingredient while describing a man of stature. Sometimes, in those hinterlands, even mafia dons are accorded that privilege. But then hastily the ‘Robin Hood’ element is mentioned in order to make the man qualify as a man of stature. The Robin Hood element is suggestive of moral uprightness! But then it doesn’t work because it rings so utterly untrue. This is exactly what happens to fly by night brands and companies that do ‘Corporate Social Responsibilty’ rather visibly almost demanding stature! Bill Gates and Microsoft do highly visible charity but insofar as the ‘public’ (not 'consumers' this time) is concerned, the question in the sub conscious is, that if Linux is free, why do they charge!

In some cultures, say Brown and Chia-Yun, ‘leader’ is literally a ‘big man’ through the very language and idium. Metaphorically, it is no surprise that some people are ‘walking tall’ while others ‘are crestfallen’ The overweight logos of McDonalds are indeed a good category fit where 'sumptuousness' is an important element of the category code and ‘spread’ and ‘wholesomeness’ are suggestive euphemisms for value for money. Now here is another dimension.

There is ethnographic evidence that royalty seldom entered without announcement or anticipation. A king doesn’t simply show up. People wait for him in advance (kings always come on time; only modern positional satraps come late, in a puny way claiming seniordom!) and then he arrives on a very very long chariot. Notice the design of the Rolls and the sheer length of the bonnet. Who cares about the functional features of the Rolls. When we think of the Rolls, we see a person of staure seated in it and the car gliding slowly, yes very slowly. Infact the person seated at the back wears a hat in our vision! And a hat implies, that it is isn’t working attire and so you don’t have to work! Further, ‘Speed’, a critical association of all cars is not a logical association for the Rolls. Rulers are never in a hurry; only greenhorn enthusiasts are! Still further, somehow we always visualize a black Rolls when we close our eyes. And while we always visualize a person in it (in many cars the image doesn’t include any driver), but he is never the driver. And always, always, we always see it moving slowly, very slowly. Yes it is not commonplace because rulers aren’t. But the larger point is that it is very big physically.

So are we saying all leaders are tall? Certainly not and this is where it gets very interesting. Dannenmaier & Thuman explained as far back in 1964 that even with people we know personally, our mental image of their height is exaggerated, if we know them to be high in ‘social stature’.

That brings us to the example of Volkswagen. In an age where great cars are made by stressed companies, (many on the verge of bankruptcy, while others keep recalling cars) with much bloodletting, VW has a 36000 crore operating profit. But internally they first want to No. 1 in Customer Satisfaction. And then No. 1 in Employee Satisfaction. And only then in Earnings. Now what’s interesting is the faith they have in the order of priority. The other way round would perhaps be symptomatic of shortlived organizations. “Then we will have a volume of more than 10 Mn cars”, Chairman Martin Winterkorne says. Sounds like an intent of stature because the milestones are lofty and big and are about the causes, while the number of cars is the eventual effect. It comes as no surprise that despite being among the last foreign cars to enter India, VW has made a mammoth impact. Today worldwide they own apart from their own enviable marque, Skoda, Audi, Seat, Porsche and Suzuki. And they aren’t even bleeding. And this is despite having the lowest productivity in their Wolfsburg plant. It’s the consistency and long-termism of the company that has given it spectacular results even in short cycles! So even though VW doesn’t exactly make ‘huge’ cars or cars that make arrogant claims, it commands a stature that make one visualize their cars to be larger than they are.

So that is the importance of stature. It increases the perceived value of the brand and can therefore fetch a high price.

Finally I seek your pardon for this very long piece that I have written. But then maybe it has stature! (Oops! I claimed!)

THE ENIGMA OF BEING EDGY

Some brands are just that – edgy. They refuse to fall into the regular set of imagery; they abhor the mundane; they detest normalcy. But interestingly they still do not repel the mundane, the normal, the commonplace customers! That is the paradox of being edgy. It is infact the cheapest way to acquire enigma. But the word ‘acquire’ is a bit of a misnomer for how on earth can you acquire something so inherent as an edgy DNA, which is either deeply internalized in the very construct, or consciously sought passionately, almost obsessively as a matter of self concept. In other words, either it is inherent in you or you have to be seeking it because that is how you are very particular about being seen.

Remember, I will never tire of saying that brands are like people. And this time round let us reverse the order of learning. Instead of starting with brands and likening them to people or personalities, let us do it the other way round, this time.

Just yesterday, two people made headlines and so let me lean on the most proximate history possible i.e. the headlines of yesterday, to illustrate the point.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s aquiline features and piercing blue defiant Kashmiri eyes stared out of TV screens in the reportage of a ‘separatists’ statement made on Kashmir. And then Arundhati Roy was reported to have protested about the Indian ‘colonisation’ of Kashmir. I watched these two events through the eyes of two television channels, with each having got in their own ‘expert’ commentators on the matter. In Times Now, the two personalities were roundly condemned without so much as a morsel of view from the other side. The blinding jingoism of Times Now made me pause longer, giving them TRPs for the wrong reason when compared to the pale moderation of an NDTV where an octogenarian Mr Dua equivocated on the pros and cons of the argument ending with the inference that we as a democracy allow people to speak and so Arundhati and Geelani may feel free to do so. Times Now on the other hands seemed to be of the view that the wordy articulation of Arundhati was nothing short of treason and implied that the Indian state would do well to level charges of sedition.

Well, this know your brand is not about who will root for whom amongst Times Now and NDTV. It is also not about whether we are fond of Geelani and Arundhati or whether we share Arnab Goswami's bilious dislike for them.

As we rise above the playing field of these dramatic personae, we see things from a lofty enough plane and thus retain an objective birds eye view of the spectacle below from a branding stand point. And this is what it tells us.

That there can be righteous people excessively concerned about human rights without an iota of fear in airing them. That there can extreme jingoism (under many more charitable names) and this too can be aired in full public view without a shadow of doubt or indeed an iota of thought! That windows itself to the same view can indeed colour a view and carve a perception. The supposed neutrality of the television window is a glaring case in point. This in fact evidences the power of indirect communication. News can be reported factually, directly. But coloured analysis thrives on indirect subtleties. That people will take sides not on the basis of their demographics, but by the burden of their beliefs, that will never allow them to embrace a counter thought.

With this small analogy, it is possible to bullet point a few random marketing principles:

l Demographic segmentation is meaningless and superficial and does not a make a brand.

l Indirect communication has far greater power, but requires expertise and practice. Direct communication achieves no positioning and is best used for only tacticals for it has no colour and so it cannot colour.

l Brands have to ride the wave of popular culture and align themselves to existing belief systems, if they have to inhabit the lives of consumers.

l Edgy brands lose on mass markets, but gain through the maniacal brand loyalty of their customers, who transact at a far greater frequency with them. So while they have fewer users, they derive more value from them and this reduces their need to hunt for more customers. This is why edgy brands are careful about seeking too much acquisition for that will only cause a leaking bucket to happen.

l Brands can connote values, but in their construct they must be secular, lofty, and accommodating of diversity and dissent, if they have to retain objectivity.

l Brands are not just about the product and its consumers, but it inhabit a unique eco system called the brand world which is a kaleidoscope of imagery and associations that affect each other in ways more complicated than immediately seen. (The next Know your brand shall be dedicated to just this point)

And with that, let’s simply draw a few analogies:

The Harley Davidson customer is not unique by his demographics and that is not just because Harley Davidson is very distinctive (we shall do one Know your Brand on this very amazing brand soon).

The Harley Davidson world is more than just the V Engine bike and its 200 pound customers. It has many indirect nuances rooted in the belief systems of the people it appeals to. Ever wondered how and when ‘cruising’ on a bike became more virtuous than ‘speeding’ on it? In fact ever wondered that more than the semantic difference, what does it say about the characteristics of people who have preference for one or the other? How edgy is Harley? In fact how bold is it? If you had to identify one colour with the brand, which one would it be? Can you even imagine a woman on it? Especially some lady in your house? I bet you laughed! What would be the reading habits of Mr Harley like? What would his house look like? Which rituals would he be fond of? Who would be his role models? The more one digs deep, the more it becomes possible to write a whole story.

Would Harley care two hoots about human rights, even though the word ‘fearless’ and ‘bold’ is not out of place here. Which means that verbs need to be qualified with adjectives, for brand attributes to be distinctly understood. Would Harley be a ‘patriot’ if it were a person or would it have the cosmopolitan soul of a traveler?

Ever wondered why slim fellows in India would never buy the Bullet from Royal Enfield. Well because it's meant for heavy people, is how many would infer. Which begs the question if the Bullet user has to carry the bike, or does the bike carry him!

So heavy people have a certain type of personality. In the same way there are heavy brands and light brands; masculine brands and feminine brands; colourful brands and dark brands; jingoistic brands and idealistic brands ( more on this soon); friendly brands and business-like brands. And most importantly 'edgy brands' that thrive on values that make them stand apart.

They could self deprecating like the VW Beetle that boldly poked fun at itself when it called itself in its advertising ‘the ugly bug’ catching the imagination of youth through this sporting type (not ‘sporty’!) appeal. They could be like the BMW on which much has been said! They could be like Pepsi that cannot desist from poking fun at Coke and this is what makes it tick. Back home, it could like Kingfisher airlines – all about beer and babes (Point to note: it is still has mas appeal)! They could be about like the Harley itself with its burly big dark indulgent side, it raw adolescent appeal because some men never grow up!They could be Virgin Airlines with its fabled massages in the sky! They could be like the Rolls Royce that continues to retain an anachronic design with almost a perverse sense of opulence caring two hoots for the blinding spotlights it places on its users. And so what should that say about the user himself! It could be a brand like Apple that refuses to be trapped in the clinical mundaneness of the technology category, breaking free almost joyously, celebrating form far more than function, thereby almost taking ‘function’ for granted. For computers are not supposed to hang and have viruses in the first place, are they!

Funny and surprising how people choose electronic gadgets on the basis of looks and not technology, yet manufacturers continue to look into their cocoons only!

A housewife buys a fridge for her kitchen not because she loves its compressor, but because she loves the kitchen!

If Apple starts making a TV, imagine the colour! And then the appeal. But then edgy brands are more about focus. Their customer loyalty is accordingly reciprocated unlike mass brands that simply cannot focus and have to flirt. Their customers merely return the compliment.

I once bought an HTC phone. Helluva looker it was. It has two problems however. One that you can’t hear voice. And two you can’t read anything on its dark screen. And so here I am with a good looking HTC phone which I haven’t thrown only because of the fear that some unsuspecting person may pick it up!

Sometimes looks don’t matter. But that’s true of people too, isn’t it?

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!

COCKING A SNOOK AT THE CATEGORY

It takes guts to cock a snook at tradition, but more than that it sometimes takes caliber. Of course one isn’t talking of celebrating the social iconoclast, but instead brands that belong to a category and yet choose to hoodwink the codes of that very category.

Now.. now before this turns longwinded and circuitous, let’s go down that old familiar path of raining down a few examples.

Let’s just go down memory lane into those adolescent years in college when the forbidden had to necessarily be tried, albeit a bit gingerly. The first puff of a cigarette (tee totallers, the next know your brand may be more up your street for this one is in a bit of a tipsy mood!), the early sips on a glass of darkened liquid indulgence punning and cunningly labeled ‘triple X’.

You see when boys eagerly declare their much awaited manhood, they do so quite conclusively. Then two top shirt buttons open and forested chests (so what if the forests are still scanty, at least they have arrived!) are displayed. Oiled hair in school (brylcreamed for some) give way to a breezy devil may care carelessness that is carefully nurtured. To add to this, the voice is made to growl out of the pit of the stomach so that no one misses noticing the ‘man’ who spoke. It is precisely at this adolescent junction when males school themselves in the art of ‘swagger’, the attitude of a ‘drawl’ and develop that sense of worrying maleness that forever threatens to go out of hand. ‘Macho’ is more a destination, than a word now.

But all this was then and not now because it is the natural scheme of things that every attitude that characterizes youth has an expiry date after which new characteristics take birth. Oh those were the days of the Malboro man when air conditioning was few and far between. Manhood inexplicably entailed the rawness of sun burn and not the spray of deo (that was girly in those days of fierce intent); the ruddiness of the outdoors not ‘shapely’ muscles in sanitized gyms; of straightforward accents that gave away the place you came from and not the consistent accents of the place you wish to head to – oh yeah! Those were days of no mineral water, of helmetless pillion riding, of eating street food from vendors who scratched themselves with brazen gusto. And speaking of mineral water, we find our way back to the subject of brands that hoodwink the category.

Well in the early days, it was rum that was drunk by the ‘men’ in the hostel when the warden wasn’t watching. It was dark enough for he-men to drink and dark enough for tea totallars to fear. The darkness was as befitting of the spirit as the spirit was of its choice of patrons. That kept the few manly types within its fold and equally kept many others outside its fold. No brand mattered then so long as it was triple X. Nothing interim or half hearted or halfbaked could shake the bastion of triple X, or Old Monk (don't even ask the market share, it was truly obscene). For sure there were those who tried but not boldly enough. Shaw Wallace launched ‘Calypso’ a Jamaican song and dance version of rum, but fought shy of 'cocking a snook at the category'. We know the outcome don't we.

It was only years later when Bacardi entered the lives of youth and there was singing and dancing and boys and girls. The ‘men’ had all retired into fleeting flights of nostalgia. Now there were couples instead. The rum was incidental and was drowned under the lilting strains of music. The sea, the beach, the boats, the fun and the frolic and most of all the rum was clean, for it was white. Black was now dead! Bacardi cocked a snook at the very category codes of rum, at the heart of which was a black liquid for dark men with darkened lives giving each other macho company. The access barriers of the category suddenly melted with the cool influx of white rum but did not quite stop there. Soon the rum became even more incidental. From something that took itself so seriously, it turned into a ‘breezer’ and its monotone split into a brilliant array of colours. From macho it turned happy and gay! It even blurred gender lines to appeal to both or in fact to all! It became inclusive and tolerant with the times. It’s appeal widened. It was much like a young one born into royalty, cocking a snook at tradition and thereby appealing to the hoi polloi.

It was finally possible to remain a tea totaller and still have rum!

Well, Triple X is still alive and kicking. It’s psychographic pride has been blunted. It now sits low down on the demographic axis of affordability. It’s drunk by those who can afford less than whiskey and far less than scotch.

But few remember the price of Bacardi and even fewer, care. For how on earth can you ever price those moments of joy, fun and music, those times that tell you ‘be what you want to be, taking things the way they come’.

So this was just one lonely example.

Now try and scratch the top story a wee bit and try and recall some more examples of those brands who have the guts and the caliber to cock a snook at the category. And write back.

Soon enough, I shall write again this time, celebrating tea totallers!

ACCESSIBLE EXCELLENCE

In one of my pieces, titled “The blessing of being ordinary”, I don’t know if you noticed, but it almost seemed to end in dotted lines. To recap, let us just revisit a couple of statements that were made.

“For any brand to find mass takers, the individuality must be suppressed; the statement must be subdued; the personality should not be threatening. Only when these happen, the brand becomes ‘accessible’. Such brands then become ‘commonplace’. They then swallow market share by the strength of their ordinariness, by the slouch of their posture. Their identity is now understood. They are nothing to write home about in the good looks department. Their stammering is more audible than even the oratorical advertising of iconic brands. That’s because the day they‘ rise above’ they would lose their ability to massify, for they would become inaccessible and distant. One would have to now ‘look up to them’. They would then acquire a distinctive colour, a clear identity. And then they would become like a strong personality about whom there will always be strong opinions - liked by some, disliked by others. Thus it becomes necessary for a mass brand to not look intimidating by intentionally looking and feeling ordinary. The language must be common place and clutter must be welcome. It’s no wonder these are the easiest brands to build.”

Well all this is almost like any good ‘rule’. And good rules have exceptions that prove the rule! It is the exceptions that this particular article is about.

It’s about “Accessible Excellence” that characterizes brands which are excellent and lofty and yet carry themselves easily, radiating such an easy appeal that disguises forbidding excellence, thereby creating access. They collapse distance with a winning smile. They draw ordinary people with the warmth of their handshake, not by the glitter of their ornamentation. They invite all and sundry with the twinkle in their eyes. They are so lofty that effortlessly, they crinkle the hierarchy on which pretentious brands are placed. They are like the millionaire in scruffy jeans, devoid of vanity, bereft of arrogance. They are like the country home in a thousand acres of land and not like a castle with high walls, guards and butlers. So while they have a lot, they threaten no one. They are like mountains that people congregate to despite the most difficult terrain, for the welcoming weather, for the ‘natural’ appeal, for the warmth of the people who play host.

These brands have an additional layer(s) to soften their exactitude, their precision, their lofty quality standards, their painstakingly developed value systems. They have no faultlines. And this layer is consciously nurtured with the objective of creating a human appeal, which is loosely called ‘emotional appeal’ but runs much deeper than the rudimentary nomenclature. Emotions are two broad based and when seen in paid-for-advertising, are as credible as theater! On the contrary, emotions of these super iconic brands are internalized in their very construct, in their DNA, in their blood, in their veins. It is not a communication trick or a tactical gimmick, for those actually work against brands. See, brands are like people, we must never tire of remembering. Just as it takes no time to see through a cosmetic person and condemn him for his artifice, so does the same hold true for brands. To use a somewhat political analogy, what these brands have is 'charisma', not emotional melodrama. When you close your eyes and reflect on their persona, you actually see them smiling. To take it further, it is the ‘chacha’ in the layer of ‘Chacha Nehru’ that sensationalizes their popularity, while retaining the highest level of universal respect.

But all is not rosy till. Such brands demand very high standards of customer service, because that is what one gets to expect from them – quality along with sincerity. One breach of faith and they wilt like sunflowers in the rain. At such times, more than what happens to them in the eyes of the world, they lose confidence internally and it takes a herculean effort from them to stand stand straight again. They then become like a matinee idol who once was. So as a matter of revival, they turn nostalgic and try to recreate the past by imitating themselves - all the motions that once made them what they were. But sometimes it is in vain.

They are really high on brand experience by their very construct (incidentally their birth was conceived as 'brands', not products, in the first place), but also by their service, the standards of which go to such levels of personalization and customization, that automation can never support, given its essential character of standardizing. As a result, these brands, thrive on human interaction. Their mantra can never be ‘untouched by hand’. They are the gourmet cuisine. So while they may automate back end processing and manufacturing to achieve quality, but they will never ever automate customer interaction, which for them, cannot be without the vital human touch.

"Word of mouth"

There is something about the commercial world (of which we are a part) that makes it block out any thought which does not entail the spending or earning of money. So while we can talk about 'low cost' ways of marketing, we understand very little of 'zero cost' ways of marketing.Not because they don't exist, but because our corporate mind allows thoughts in, only if they carry the gate pass of money.

Years ago, one vividly recalls, entering office to see a huddle of colleagues engaged in excitable conversation early in the morning. The subject under discussion was that all over the country, our lovable elephant headed god Ganesh was drinking milk! This merits not one but several exclamation marks, if the event indeed did happen. But this story is not about whether it happened or not, but about its rapid propagation and its seeming anonymous authorship. It is almost miraculous that someone (how can there ever be multiple authors of the same myth at precisely the same time) started the tale about Ganesh that early morning (couldn't have been the previous night, because at least someone should have mentioned it then) and by the time one reached office everyone in office and in fact everyone in every office in this vast nation of a billion hearts and minds, knew the tale by heart, with no distortion as one should normally expect in Chinese whispers.
Imagine a car being launched this way.
One zero cost whisper and 100% awareness.

Even the redoubtable question of whether one is reaching a sharply defined target audience is redundant simply because in this case one is actually reaching all!The commercial world, on the other hand, somehow ends up at the wrong end of the stick. In the late 80s, LML Vespa opened bookings for the 'Vespa XE' scooter. This was India's first 100cc scooter (many consumers don't know what is 'cc' about a scooter and yet it matters!) which established a world record in the sheer number of bookings made. Consumers paid Rs 500 for the booking and in the next few days all hell broke loose. Rumours flew far and wide from mouth to ear across the vast geography of this hungry consumerist nation (that's how it was for scooters then, just in case you don't know because you didn't exist then or were perhaps not even thought of!)) that this 100 cc scooter was unsuitable for twin riding (the pillion seat of the scooter was then the main reason to buy one and perhaps still is). Who started this story (again can't be simultaneous authors) and one doubts that Bajaj Auto could have gone so far, especially since while LML thought Bajaj was competition, Bajaj had no clue! The cancellations in the scooter bookings was another world record. And a rumour started it all.

Then in 1984 as the body of Indira Gandhi lay riddled with bullets at AIIMS in Delhi, even buses stopped as the driver braked on hearing the news. The news was near simultaneous (need I stress the size of the nation once again). The country came to a grinding halt. It's crippling and paralytic sense of shock is but one part of the tale, with the miraculous propagation of the news being the other. One thing is certain. That the news entered the idiot box after one had already heard it in what is jargonistically called 'word of mouth'.

Some of us have of course had the default vision of starting life before dotcoms began, so that we always know the difference! The experience of the world before emails and dotcom and the world thereafter is not just about the simple insight of institutionalising organisational politics through technology enablers like the bcc button or the tendency of pretending to talk to the 'To' while actually talking to the 'cc', on which we will surely cover ground in some other post in this blog very soon. But this time it's about how all of a sudden without seeing a single ad anywhere we started opening yahoo.com to search something (and now anything! it is now moved to window shopping! on this in some other issue of know-your-brand). And then one day someone told us about google and also told us it was better, though google did not once tell us so and still hasn't! We weren't able to decode this word of mouth phenomenon, so like we always do, we gave it a new name! Another matter, we still don't understand it.

Now we call it 'viral marketing', but it remains laboured and lacks the power of the word of mouth.In the 90s, an excited (urbanised) India awaited the entry of foreign brands with bated breadth, minus much knowledge about them, but many of then failed. They assumed strong 'word of mouth' about their famous selves unmindful of the fact, that their fame was confined to the white parts of the world which were suspected of being blessed with cold weather. So in came International Tourister and no one lined up for it. And in came Pepsi with Remo Fernandes on TV strumming a guitar wildly and screaming "Open Up! Open UP" to a stubborn bottle of Pepsi on the table. And presto, it finally did open! The trouble however, was a simple one. While the Pepsi team celebrated this high decibel launch, the consumer wondered why Remo couldn't have used an opener instead! So with the commercial world on the other hand, even high decibel high cost stuff appears vain and shallow to consumers who can't fathom what the commotion is about.Because somewhere it seems that something that is free (Google) or something that will help (Ganesh) or something that is poignant and calamitous (Indira Gandhi - in life and in death), or something who is talked about but not talks for himself, fits the bill better for word of mouth.Consider this.

All our religion is passed into our ears through the mouths of well meaning grandmothers (even parents lack the seniority). The messenger's credibility, good intentions and selflessness (an atheist would add: the recipients innocence!) power the word of mouth, without which it has no engine, no motor, no wings. And in the commercial world luxury brands enjoy a jaw dropping reputation for no fathomable reason, but then their price is often behind the pretense one launches while displaying awareness about them. Some inane words are heard "Oh man! Louis Vitton bags are quite something!" The grey hair on marketing heads have learnt to interpret this as a pricing story.

A powerful word of mouth is not necessarily about the cause, which in turn is about collective wisdom. It can also be about the effect which given it's singular authorship can very well be, the case of talented and individualistic fraud.

One shudders to think what would be the word of mouth consequences if google and gmail were to crash one day!
But on this, not next time.
In fact, not anytime.

"We" and "I"

There is something about the 'We' that is different from the 'I'.

For starters, somehow "We" tends to surge, while "I" tends to stand.

To dive deeper... I once heard a political scientist remark that collectivism is great for movements but bad for accountability. And then of course Psychology is replete with explanations for the basis of unification. Roughly speaking, for two people to unite in a static state, all that is required is that they stand on the same geography! But when people have to move in unision, they either need a common enemy or a common goal. Or as the famed McKinsey 7S framework puts it - 'shared values'. But it is this last one that is the toughest, because while it looks right from a 'framework'-of-management perspective, it sits poorly when it comes to human psychology.

Will anyone want to scale a vast plateau at 8848 m? Clearly No. But the summit of Everest at the same height is a different case altogether. A summit is a goal, a single converged point, a pinnacle that leaves no scope for more. Goals have to be high and narrow. They can't be generalisations. Imagine a company vision that reads: "We will be the most preferred manufacturer of three wheelers in the north east part of south west Delhi"

The 'goal' legitimises the purpose. Remember images of the first version of the Standard Chartered Marathon? Well, the very first version of this was actually societal and not commercial. It really was Gandhi's Dandi march that started it all! At the end of it, it was just a fistful of native salt, symbolism at its very best - the very basis of any movement - without which it would remain no more than a static statement of intent akin to a huge number of people standing or sitting in the same geography.

Now this is where Marketing comes in. Marketing is directional. It is a vector, for direction without magnitude is no more than a platitude. So it often suffers (but withstands) invasions of oversimplifications. When all the dust of oversimplifications have settled, Marketing must brush it off, gather itself with its related disciplines of social science, psychology and anthropology and set about the task of creating a surround around the product, a Venn diagram of sorts, in which the consumer alternates his existence within the many layers of the brand world. The world itself is no more than just four concentric circles with the innermost (or bullseye) being about the core value of the brand and the others being the rituals, the role models and the symbols associated with it. Like just about any popular religion.

Now this is exactly the point where the road diverges into two different methodologies. The first one is the weaker one that defines the target audience in singular terms, adds it mathematically ignoring the simple insight that the behaviour of a human being alters when collectivism happens. In other words each individual when affected by the "We" phenomena, behaves differently than how he would have behaved all alone as an "I".
If each person was asked to separately do his own Dandi march, or if Gandhi chose one person at a time - the idea seems unfathomable!
It is like the television reportage of the human chain. the order is that first we marvel at the fact there is a human chain. And then we rationalise with a 'cause', which is just symbolic and not transformational.
So we first run the marathon simply because others are running it and then we defend our action with a laundry list of justifications ranging from good health to charity. The number of people who run together is surely more than the simple addition of each individual running by himself, before the marathon. The effect of collectivism is to snowball. A few lose snowflakes gather more in their wake and assume the shocking proportion of a monstrous avalanche.
Perhaps only part of the credit of building a cult brand called Harley Davidson should go to Harley Davidson; the other part should go to its customers who snowballed its appeal collectively, so much so that now consumers were getting consumers through multiplication and not addition.
The dictionary has a way of leaning on history to invent words that represent a phenomenon. The word 'Solidarity' was the name of an independent Polish trade union founded in 1980 that went on to play the lion's role in the ouster of communism. The dictionary, an incorrigibly plagiarist of history writes the meaning of "solidarity" as " a union or fellowship arising from common responsibilities and interests, as between members of a group or between classes of people".
So "classes of people" may unite either against other classes of people or may march towards a fistful of salt. Or in their corporate avataar, grow straggly beards and big muscles, don a bandana and evil black clothes and speak in booming voices and then sit on a cruiser caller Harley Davidson that growls away into a long dusty American sunset. What a cause! Or when 'men' collectively form a class implicitly turned against 'women' as a class and wield a lasso, astride a horse, with a stetson shadowing strong jaw lines, in the Marlboro country.
This is not the typical target audience definition and thankfully has no baggage of SEC A & B. It is psychological and societal and easy to develop in hindsight, but actually possible only through a philosophical bent of mind without which observation is hampered. And without observation, insight is impossible.

"We the people of India" while having united to fight a common enemy called the British are now facing the problem of accountability. Can the "I" please return?

"EXPENSIVE" Vs "PREMIUM"

It's astonishingly different - the difference between 'expensive' and 'premium'.
And a really recent example comes starkly to mind.

Now here you are in the parking lot in the basement of a mall headed towards the lift. And what are doing? Well, what you always do - stare at the cars in the parking lot. There are all kinds, but your eyes linger a bit longer on the newer makes and models. The difference is in the caress of your glance, which settles a little longer and caresses the metal of the better looking car - a more premium looking car. And now there is the Fiat Linea. You look at it again. And again. And longer. Without doubt a premium looking car in its appearance, but actually priced lower than its appearance suggests. Now what does that mean. To understand this, we need to imagine the concept testing stage of the Fiat Linea, that the marketing department would have done before launch. Now if a consumer was shown the Linea (before it was launched) minus its logo and asked a question like this - "Now here you see this car. It is from a leading car company and we won't tell you which. Now tell us just by looking at it, what do you think would be the price". Chances are, that the consumer would compare it with the other good lookers on the road in his mind and say something like "Rs 14 lacs". Now that is Rs 6 lacs more than the Linea's real price!This is what makes the Linea a 'premium' car. So what's an 'expensive car', you might ask. Take the example of the Honda Jazz, minus its advertising of 'Why so serious'. And imagine the same concept testing before launch.The consumer is again asked to guess the price. Chances are he will say something like - "Rs 6 lacs" for this 'two box' car. Now that is Rs 2.5 lacs less than its real price!Its easy to tell the fate of these two brands and models of cars. One doesn't need to an astrologer or a marketing pundit.So let me stick my neck out and say it. The Honda Jazz will flop and the Fiat Linea will succeed. And that's because the Linea is genuinely 'premium' and the Jazz is tragically expensive.But that's just one side of the argument.

Sometimes the price doesn't matter AT ALL.

You are interested in buying a house of Rs 50 lacs in a certain colony and the brokerage is 2%. Where is your focus? On the price of the house and how much it will appreciate or on the brokerage? Further, if the broker reduces his brokerage to 1 %, would you buy two houses!?Now lets look at one more example. A 'Mesiterstuck laptop bag' from 'Mont Blanc' costs Rs 68,350/- only. The 'only' is ironical! But its not too surprising, considering the fact that the 'Mesiterstuck Business card holder' from Mont Blanc costs Rs 7,050/ (only!) and the 'Urban Walker Cool Blue Keyring' from Mont Blanc costs a mere Rs 19,100/- Now who buys this, you might wonder. So let's close our eyes and imagine this consumer. A laptop bag of Rs 68,000 must contain a laptop of Rs 2 lacs minimum. Now that should be a Mac. The bag should hang from a shoulder clad in a suit worth Rs 1.5 lacs. The cuff links would naturally be Mont Blanc again. So they would be "Indent" from Mont Blanc of Rs 17,800/ (only!). And the goggles (oops! Sorry 'shades') would be "Indent" again of Rs 18,100/- only and so on and on and on.Actually premium pricing is the easiest to do. This man who buys Mont Blanc buys everything at 17 times the price many of us can afford (laptop bag of Rs 68,000 is 17 times Rs 4,000). So he treats Rs 17 the same way we treat Rs 1.So now, if we like the Honda City of Rs 10 lacs and buy it, he will naturally buy the Rs 1.70 crore Bentley. To us this car is 'expensive', because it is outside the realm of possibility, not because it is not desirable.So we call it 'luxury' but can't buy it.

Finally it is simple maths.
We all buy a formula, whenever we buy any product. Perceived Value divided by Price. And if the product is more less a commodity, then what? On this, next time! Over the weekend check out the number of people inside a Bose Store divided by its square feet area. And then check out the number of people in Jumbo Electronics divided by its square feet area. And guess what you will find? That not only is the population density greater in the Bose store, the average price too is much higher. Now that is the way to check the perceived value divided by price!But go and see the two stores for yourself.

Understanding 'Rational Appeal'

The trouble with Theory (even if it is Marketing theory, which is nothing but documented practice and packaged principles) is that it is open to interpretation. For all the credit that Philip Kotler got for Marketing, one wishes he had explained the concept of 'rational appeal' such that it wouldn't have been misinterpreted for years after.
In the Kotlerian scheme of things, 'Rational appeal' is simplistically speaking one of the two types of 'appeal' that advertising seeks to leverage - the other being 'emotional appeal'. If Kotler were to re-write this today, in today's environment of deep consumer insight, he might have dug deeper and the very axis on which advertising creative is placed, would change.
From 'emotional and rational appeal', we would have moved to 'fact based and culture based' communication. Thus there is fact-based communication and quite delightfully fictional imagery or positioning that is aligned to the prevailing popular culture, both stated and tacit. The other name for the former is 'tactical advertising' and for the latter 'thematic advertising'.

Now if an FD offers 9% interest, it is fact-based and tactical for there is a fact and an immediacy of action - of offer to be made and consumed in a topical way. If everyone offers 9%, then surely it isn't a differentiator, but the one who offers it fast and the one who is seen to offer it the most will benefit the most in early sales. Thus, the tactical part always was and remains a communication that takes birth after the real fact. But thematic communication has a reverse order. When it is rational or fact based, it labours and struggles and falls flat. But even when it is emotional, it may remain emotional without evoking an response in its audience.

Was Surf and Lalitaji a rational communication? Yes, as per the theory of Marketing in the past. But No, as per the more advanced consumer insight generation that we have today.
Did anyone actually figure why 'surf ki kharidari mein samajdhari hai' to kyon hai? Now without a 'why' there is no case for rational appeal. It was merely a communication that claimed to offer more for less. It wasn't actually verified by the consumer or believed by the consumer, but it got a large share of voice. But to be fair, it isn't easy for a detergent to appear very desirable in the first place. However it was many notches better than the mere (and somewhat sudden) visibility of Nirma, which gave absolutely no why-buy-me. But then they sliced the market into another part - a market that always existed but one that their MNC competitor was blind to. Sometimes, advertising cannot take a brand into all types of demographic segments and a real product is required.

True McDonald's offers a burger as it's core product but its complete value proposition is actually such that while the product can still be changed with no adverse impact, the marketing of it can't! In other words, if one changes the name, the logo, the branding, the drive in, the child focus, the family focus, the steel kitchen, the price - value package, then everything would have changed and McDonald's would be dead. It would have to restart!
But instead, if you only changed the burger and replaced with a dosa, and not anything else, McDonald's would remain the same and not have to restart!
In other words, if you change the product, no harm done. But if you change the delivery, the story and the positioning, it is finished.

This indeed is the power of non-fact based, non rational appeal based offers. Which is not to say that there is no case for doing a McDonald tactical promotion.
But, then to club it all as merely 'rational' and 'emotional' is like saying that in the races of the world, there are only two types of people - one black and one white. But we browns know better!
Now the Beetle was indeed an ugly car that sold like hot cakes when it cutely confessed that it was ugly and when it called itself an 'ugly bug'. Rationally speaking, an ugly car has no business to sell. Unless there is a story, a tale, a yarn or a clever way of appealing. One never tires of saying that brands are like people. I once had a good friend who was very overweight and his signature was 'fats'. Everyone loved him. If he was a brand, he could have afforded a higher price, a price higher than an arrogant good looking fellow who called himself 'handsome'.
Over the weekend, let's think hard to identify just one brand that was able to command a value because of a rational appeal. Perhaps there is none.

Just to caution - now before you say by way of rejoinder, that the fuel efficient 100cc bike Hero Honda is one such, I daresay, research established way back in 1990, that the bike sold because it was 'firangi' and 'Honda' and had a 'nice' ad. Rings a bell doesn't it with what happened once in America. Honda entered the American motorcycle market with a campaign that simply said "you meet the nicest people on a Honda". And this in an America where bikes were identified with hoodlums, gangs and crime. The rest as they say, is history.

And then there was Harley Davidson all over again!

'LOOK & FEEL'

Isn't it difficult to explain the feeling of going to a hill station in childhood.

Wasn't it certainly much more than just the weather?
But why only a hill station. Equally, it was difficult to explain the feeling of driving into Jaisalmer. Because it was much more than that rational something.

Now even photographs flounder in their inability to describe the 'jannat' (which again begs more descriptors) that is Kashmir, or the monument that is Taj, or in fact the soaring reality of the Khajuraho temples that mocks the pretentious photograps of the same.

Now in pictures, Kashmir looks ordinary, the Taj, overated, and Khajuraho, puny - indeed the exact opposite of what they are.

And Language?

Well that too is belaboured. It struggles and strains under its weighty attempt to describe Persons, Places and Things even though this is at the heart of its existence. And Grammar? Well grammer calls these three 'nouns' but that doesn't help and so it adds a category called 'adjectives' which try to ease the attempt at describing.

But now let's allow the argument to settle a bit.

So what did Nehru see in Coorg?
Or why did Indira Gandhi travel two days into a Kashmiri autumn? Merely to see the chinar leaves changing colours?
No, it can't be so simple.

Let's plunge deeper...

Why does a disproportionate part of the holiday experience in a remote wilderness, constitute the phase involved in getting there?

And if Kashmir was only about a few defined contributors to its heady experience, then all we need to do is put a mound of grassy mud into an air-conditioned room, surround with water, give it a false ceiling of the azure of a Kashmiri sky (technology can perfect this) with a few more condiments added to this synthetic recipe. And bingo, we should get Kashmir! But don't we know better.

Which brings us all the way back to the sprightly subject of ambiance.
Now ambiance is what retail formats thrive on. And because they struggle to add ingredients a la a synthetically created Kashmir, they fail to achieve the purpose.

In a mall in Dubai, they ski down on artificial powder snow, delighted to dole up their desert dreams. But a nature lover winces with the experience. Few people return to ski there.
The moral of the story - the mere assemblage of hard material in a retail format, does not a brand make. The 'living' experience is vital. Brands have to live and moreover, the powerful ones are those that titillate one of the five senses.

A Seagram scotch ad story line, set in a cold and misty Scotland, brings forth the fragrance of great scotch. It's like hot pakoras in the pouring monsoons of Mahabaleshwar. Or notice how the car ads convert full grown men to boys, as they watch shiny eyed, bright red cars careening, spinning and whizzing past wet roads. Now who hasn't observed the forbidding, threatening glint in the wife's eye, as a De Beers diamond pops out in media. Isn't it is known to cause blindness in alert husbands. Then you have coffee ads and frothy fragrance, which are so intertwined that they seem to have merged into one.

Some brands however, miss out on this very soft part, given their penchant for arranging strategy in linear boxes of cause and effect.

Thus when you see a Subhiksha, it appears to be apologising for its presence. Yet a Domino's confidently surveys the world with its bold masculine fascia. Brands are afterall like people...

That's why a SubWay looks cool and green. And Coke bottles look sprightly and bubbly. While big ice cream brands struggle to out do each other in showing dollops of ice cream, but Natural Ice Cream of good ol' Bombay shows the fruit instead, scoring a march on the real seeking of the teeth and the tongue. That's why one stops and enters the parlour ever so frequently.
And a few slurps into real fruit gets the brand loyalty galloping.

But if you thought it is only about soft products, then think of Dove and you virtually experience cream. And with Liril, despite all the angrezi, the uninhinderd feeling of Nimbu Paani rushes forth and the waterfall, despite advertising claims, is quite incidental. But when you Karen Lunel under a waterfall you pepper the imagination of escapist abandon in the women who watch the ad and the feeling of wanting to be there in the men who watch the ad! With that the ad takes us into fantasy land just as the product also fulfills this vicarious need. Afterall deep immersion is always a private seeking and never a public clamed rationale. That's why research makes an ass of itself ever so often when it imagines it can decode real feelings.
So will only SEC A and B want to escape the straight jacketed world! That's like saying that only men with white hair want to be younger! Now think of some of those research presentations. Aren't they arranged in sequential boxes of cause and effect! We must be machines if we behaved like that. Even sunsigns say there are 12 types of people! But at least that doesn't not pretend to not come from an esoteric place.

And then to call all this sweepingly mere "Look and Feel" is like calling everything below Madhya Pradesh - Madraasi and everything above - Punjabi.
have you noticed how in organisations sometimes Marketing is seen to be about 'Look and Feel'. Of course it is, but then 'Look and Feel' is more than just about look and feel!

Ta ta till the next round of catharsis!