September 15, 2010
Communication strategy can be a funny business and the mythical perception about what constitutes an effective communication makes the job even more ridiculous for the serious practitioners of the business. More often than not the conventional wisdom that communication must aim at creating mutually beneficial relation between the organization and its stake holders goes for a toss, when the client reminds you that there are other agencies waiting to grab the account on the clients’ dotted terms. It may not shock me anymore, but definitely disappoints bitterly with the dogmatic ideas that collective consciousness of the business community carries as far as communication is concerned.
There seems to be a definite lack of understanding of how business relevant and business beneficial communication strategy can be. My failed brain storming with the management of a soon-to-be-launched consumer product reminds me yet again that India Inc communicates more to impress than to express. This lack of foresight results into a complete emotional disconnect with the audience for whom the product has been conceptualized. I fail to understand the point why a metro kid with all the polished Ps and Qs should be the face of a brand which has the least possibility to be consumed by that given segment.
I can understand a “method” into it if the product is aspirational in nature. But with a consumer product that would be mostly consumed by the tier II and tier III kids in their given comfortable budget, such an endorsement hardly reflects any serious thought process or strategy. As Ad man Suhel Seth recently said during FICCI’s “Brand Talk” that marketers who resort to Celebrity Endorsement of their products are the laziest people in the business.
With my academic perspective and market exposure of over a decade now, I often end up arguing, even at the cost of losing business, as to why all the communication (Advertising & PR) should be in the national English dailies. To an extent this is necessary from branding perspective, but the question is how much market share can be earned by shouting in a market where decibel levels are already too high. Based on my experience with TRACK2MEDIA Consulting where we always suggest for a market survey/research before any new communication campaign, I personally feel the Indian businesses still have to go a long way before they bank on expertise at every level.
In the absence of a scientifically evolved methodology, most of the board room decisions are based on perception than ground reality. A friend heading the corporate communication of a pharma major recently shared how they exhaust 80 per cent of the budget in the mainstream media and only 10-15 per cent in the vernacular media. Keeping in mind the fact that major product of the company is prescriptive medicine; this clearly defies any logic in a country where 50 per cent of the doctors are from Bihar.
But the think tank of the said pharma company is not the only one that seats in the ivory towers from where Ground Zero is more often than not invisible. No wonder, many of such management are pretty happy with their advertising in page 1 of national dailies, often with a jacket cover; while the PR campaign fails to take off. I would blame equally to the PR agencies for cutting a sorry figure before the clients. The day they stop overpromising on coverage in the national dailies, they would earn some respect for themselves and the profession as well, even if it means loss of business at times.
There seems to be an obsession of the clients to get published in the national English dailies, even if they don’t have a news value and their product does not address the readers at all. Many of them are not even open to the idea of any out-of-the-box strategy, which can earn them more reputation in terms of brand building, connect directly to the target audience and ensures more market share. But the medium is ever evolving, and it is the job of a brand strategist to make them understand that old school of communication is changing the world over.
If advertising used to be the king of communication till around a decade back, with a lion’s share of 80 per cent of the marketing budget, the rise of the branding tools and methodologies suggest it should not be more than 40-45 per cent now. Public Relations, Corporate Sponsorships, Corporate Social Responsibility, Online Reputation Management, two-way seamless communication to connect with stake holders……the medium is ever evolving. But the moot point is--before we put our foot down and say NO to the clients who believe in self medication, are we as communication consultants convinced that we are strategists and not vendors to the clients? Well, my guess is as good as many others who are in the business of communication consultancy.
There seems to be a definite lack of understanding of how business relevant and business beneficial communication strategy can be. My failed brain storming with the management of a soon-to-be-launched consumer product reminds me yet again that India Inc communicates more to impress than to express. This lack of foresight results into a complete emotional disconnect with the audience for whom the product has been conceptualized. I fail to understand the point why a metro kid with all the polished Ps and Qs should be the face of a brand which has the least possibility to be consumed by that given segment.
I can understand a “method” into it if the product is aspirational in nature. But with a consumer product that would be mostly consumed by the tier II and tier III kids in their given comfortable budget, such an endorsement hardly reflects any serious thought process or strategy. As Ad man Suhel Seth recently said during FICCI’s “Brand Talk” that marketers who resort to Celebrity Endorsement of their products are the laziest people in the business.
With my academic perspective and market exposure of over a decade now, I often end up arguing, even at the cost of losing business, as to why all the communication (Advertising & PR) should be in the national English dailies. To an extent this is necessary from branding perspective, but the question is how much market share can be earned by shouting in a market where decibel levels are already too high. Based on my experience with TRACK2MEDIA Consulting where we always suggest for a market survey/research before any new communication campaign, I personally feel the Indian businesses still have to go a long way before they bank on expertise at every level.
In the absence of a scientifically evolved methodology, most of the board room decisions are based on perception than ground reality. A friend heading the corporate communication of a pharma major recently shared how they exhaust 80 per cent of the budget in the mainstream media and only 10-15 per cent in the vernacular media. Keeping in mind the fact that major product of the company is prescriptive medicine; this clearly defies any logic in a country where 50 per cent of the doctors are from Bihar.
But the think tank of the said pharma company is not the only one that seats in the ivory towers from where Ground Zero is more often than not invisible. No wonder, many of such management are pretty happy with their advertising in page 1 of national dailies, often with a jacket cover; while the PR campaign fails to take off. I would blame equally to the PR agencies for cutting a sorry figure before the clients. The day they stop overpromising on coverage in the national dailies, they would earn some respect for themselves and the profession as well, even if it means loss of business at times.
There seems to be an obsession of the clients to get published in the national English dailies, even if they don’t have a news value and their product does not address the readers at all. Many of them are not even open to the idea of any out-of-the-box strategy, which can earn them more reputation in terms of brand building, connect directly to the target audience and ensures more market share. But the medium is ever evolving, and it is the job of a brand strategist to make them understand that old school of communication is changing the world over.
If advertising used to be the king of communication till around a decade back, with a lion’s share of 80 per cent of the marketing budget, the rise of the branding tools and methodologies suggest it should not be more than 40-45 per cent now. Public Relations, Corporate Sponsorships, Corporate Social Responsibility, Online Reputation Management, two-way seamless communication to connect with stake holders……the medium is ever evolving. But the moot point is--before we put our foot down and say NO to the clients who believe in self medication, are we as communication consultants convinced that we are strategists and not vendors to the clients? Well, my guess is as good as many others who are in the business of communication consultancy.
