Day 3/ What makes marketing in India unique?

Hello! Today’s day 3 of my attempt to write one post a day for all of April.

On Twitter, V asked me, “What makes marketing in India unique?”

So, while this is a tough one to answer in a short note on LinkedIn, here’s my attempt at an answer. I will talk about two things in this piece.?

• A/ What doesn't change irrespective of where you go in India?
• B/ With that as a background, what makes marketing in India unique?

A/ So what doesn't change??

Lemme start with a cliche.?

In India, they say, ???-??? ?? ???? ????, ??? ??? ?? ????.

I can add more to this - not just languages and tastes but everything that makes us human changes - how they think, how they behave, what they prefer, why they prefer what they prefer - it all changes.?

They say that India is not a country. It's a country of thousands (if not more) of small countries. But then there are a few very fundamental things about us that do not change. Irrespective of where we are.?For example, the following are consistent across the length and breadth of the country…

1/ We seek value for money. Not low prices.?

There’s a tiny nuance. We are ok to pay lakhs for seemingly useless things and yet we would cry about the extra three rupees that a rickshaw would take from you. In both cases, we aren't optimising for price. We are seeking more value from our spending. We want our rupee to work harder.?

2/ We love to bargain.?

It is more of a sport than a price-discovery mechanism. Anchoring (thanks, Dr. Robert Cialdini ) works well at places where the opportunity to bargain is missing (say, at supermarkets).?

3/ Cricket is a religion.?

I dont have data handy but my sense is that if I applied Pareto’s rule, I can safely say that you can capture 80% of your audience if you dont operate in a niche. Throw a cricketer at a marketing problem and you can create a solution that will work.

Of course thanks to all the sporting leagues, other sports are picking up steam as well; but when do they become a pan-India phenomenon is anyone's guess. I remember I had once bet someone that we would have as big a football star from India as we have from cricket. I of course lost that bet.

4/ We are mad about films.?And we love stories.

Bollywood has been the mainstay but since the OTT platforms descended on us, Mollywood, Tollywood, Kollywood and all the other woods are catching up. The regional cinema is getting bigger. STAGE announced recently that their Haryani business is now profitable.

This not only means that we can use these filmstars for marketing (we've been using (anyone remember Lux using Leena Chitlis?) but also means that we need to take inspiration from stories.

So whatever you do, tell a great story. Complete with a story arc. And characters.

--

I am sure there are other things that dont change throughout the country. But these are the four that come to the top of my head.

B/ So, with that as a background, what makes marketing in India unique?

You may ask, "If there is homogeneity in how the country behaves and operates, marketing can't be a challenge" and this is what makes marketing in India unique.

Lemme try and respond in bullets.

1/ Regional nuances play a big role.

While across the country each person wants better value for money, what they also want is to understand and respect their regional nuances. You need to know how is Gudi Padwa different from Ugadi and tweak your communication per that.

Further, if you are a consumer business that has customers across the country, you will have to create communication in regional languages. You can not win in the market unless you do so. Your customers may be educated, on the Internet, available and all that but your regional teams, trade channels, distribution channels and others will demand for communication in their language.

In my experience, I've seen brands opt for superstars from Bollywood for North, East and West and from Tamil or Telugu for South (even though South as a region itself is made up of 5 large regions, tight budgets dont allow you to get stars from each language)

One of my clients, they have a Bollywood action star only to appeal to their trade partners. And they have a Telugu superstar for their South market. And then they have a Bollywood diva to appeal to their customers.

2/ The urban-rural, digital-physical, young-old, rich-poor divide gives and takes a lot of opportunity.

Ages ago when I worked on Frooti for Parle Agro Pvt Ltd , we had to ensure that everyone would want to buy and have it. While there were perception challenges of Frooti being a kid's drink, and being more popular in certain pockets of the country, we had to come up with communication that appealed to everyone.

Plus with more than 800 million Internet users, India today needs you to market to people who have information at their fingertips and yet rely on ???? ??? ?? ??????. I recently saw a print ad from Flipkart where they've filled the front page with QR codes. I think it's brilliant. A great marriage of digital and traditional mediums. We need to be able to create more marriages like this.

If I am to quote Blume Ventures 's work on understanding the Indian consumer (funny that a VC firm did the work needed to help us understand the customer), we see that the rich-poor-divide is getting starker. More and more people are willing to experiment with new things. Businesses are changing their business models to appeal to these consumers. I dont have access to the brains at companies like 联合利华 , Marico Limited and others but from the outside, they seem to be buying D2C consumer brands to fend off competition than to offer better value. Yeah this, is a conjecture. Please make an informed opinion.

Anyhow, the point is, the gaps are wide and getting wider. And more gaps are beginning to come up.

3/ There's always someone or the other to offend.

There are way too many opinions and perspectives in India. You need to be extremely cautious about what you do. You would find it rare that marketers in India take a visible or public stand on "sensitive topics" like religion, politics, celebrities et al.

If you do take a stand, you will try to hide user the veil of humour or irreverence. You run the risk of getting cancelled so fast that you would not know what hit you.

I can think of many brands that had to recall their ads because someone took offence where they didn't have to. Tanishq (from Titan Company Limited ) had to issue an apology. Starbucks India faced the music recently for being too woke.

--

So that! I can think of these three at this point. I am sure once more people read this piece, they would tell me how to think better on these. In fact, I invite you to let me know what you think makes marketing in India unique. Would love to learn from your experience.

PS: I wrote this one in a rush. I had a fairly busy day. This may not be the best piece of writing but it is a piece nonetheless. Thank you for reading.