AskHarishBijoor

Q: Everybody give a tumbler on a packet of tea and a comb on a packet of sugar. Is there any one promotion you have found more exciting than all this inane stuff?

-Joel R Shenvi, Mumbai

A: Joel, I am as tired of these inane promotions as you are. Promotions are meant to create  a positive blip for sale volume. Here is one from the mother market of them all, the United States of America.

The American consumer is a typical 5^th generation marketed-to consumer. Totally tired of marketing. Totally tired of advertising. And totally tired of every consumer promotion there is.

Milwaukee saw an exciting re-invention of the consumer promotion. A company that manufactures an insect repellant and insect-killer in spray form had a marketing problem. Sales were down. The times were tough.

The promotion the company thought of was an exciting one. Five healthy American cockroaches were caught and stunned. Their bellies were bar-coded. When these healthy American cockroaches regained their presence, they were let loose into the drainage system of Milwaukee.

The next morning saw an ad in the paper announcing a USD 50,000 reward for anyone who brought in one of the bar-coded cockroaches dead or alive. The next day saw a run on the shops. Everyone wanted an insect killer spray. Stocks of every company selling one was liquidated off the shelves.

Milwaukee saw a kind of the Great American Gold Rush. Kids went about with canisters to kill. Office-goers carried a spray in their jackets and went hunting for USD 50,000 in their office loos.

A killer promotion for sure.

Q: Whether the market is on the up-turn or down-tick, there is always a value-consumer out there. Am I right? And how does she operate?

-Anand Abirami, Chennai.

A: Anand, you are right. Every market has its own proportion of value-seekers. As consumers age in terms of being consumers itself, the value dimension does get blunted and brand imagery takes over.

 This value consumer is the one who spends the most time in your super-markets. He/she is down-grading on brands. At times this is a brand to brand down-grade and at times it is a pack-to-pack down-grade within the same brand. From larger packs to smaller.

In addition to this, consumer demand is getting stretched out over lower-cost variants. For example, in the automotive category we have consumers who have had 2-box cars  for all of 8 years and are looking to change. When they re-enter the market to change, typically they would come in with aspiration to upgrade to a 3-box version(sedans). However, during the last  slow-down in India, we have had customers actually going in yet again for a 2-box car replacement. This means they want to fork out less as an outlay in tough times.

What this does is that it does not only kill the sale of a 3-box car which would have otherwise happened in the short-term, but in the medium to long-term, it postpones this family from being in the 3-box car market for a cycle time which might be as short as 6-years in India or right up to 10-years in a strong value-delivery seeking family. This is a hit not for one quarter but for successive streams of quarters.

The consumer is still brand-conscious, but this brand-consciousness operates within a price-format that is value-defining.

In terms of consumption behavior, the consumer is much more careful in terms of usage. There is no surplus usage. There is less squandering and more real usage. The toothpaste is used with care and the tube is squeezed out till the last bit is out with a 'chimta'(tong) in the bathroom, just as the cake of soap is used till its last bits are squeezed. Hotel soaps and shampoos picked up on travels by the man or woman of the house  are being used as well to optimal levels.

For this type of consumer, value is in. Wastage is out.

 

Q: Do brands over-estimate the consumer's spending capacities? Are there examples of fault-lines across categories?

-Devika lahiri, New Delhi

A:Devika, the fault-lines run long and deep. Apparel is a classic case. The gung-ho nature of the economy, the fact that the demographics of this nation are young-skewed, and the Outdoor nature of the young led apparel marketers to go a bit too gung-ho in their attitude as well recently.

This has seen inventory pile-ups, styles laid out in the market and in pricing decisions as well. Every business plan of many an apparel maker is in the doldrums due to this.

FMCGs did wrong as well. Many focused on larger volume and value packs. The small packs were ignored. Low unit and low value packs literally vacated many markets. This was an undoing for the brands in tough times when consumers want to move to smaller packs. Companies like Britannia however re-invented the wheel in time. The small-pack focus of the company is poised to reap rich dividends.

One read the market, the economy and its peoples wrong in a cautionary recession.

Q: Everything is out to be tried. A new kind of try-marketing is out here where everyone is bending backwards in offering trails. Is this is a new marketing ploy?

-Revathi P Mudra, Bhubaneswar.

 

A: Revathi, this is a all about brands wanting to get tactile with their consumers. The idea is a simple one. The best way to sell anything to anyone is to show them the brand. The next thing the consumer wants to do is touch the brand. The third thing would be to use the brand and check it out for its delivery claims.

In many cases of products, the price of the product is prohibitive to allow a trial without purchase, therefore, low trials mean low buys. Marketers circumvent this by offering the free trail.

What is important to understand is the number of days of  trail or occasions of trial that is necessary for the product or service to be just right for adoption by the consumer. Once that is understood, the cost viability of the activity can be worked out.

For instance, for a  coffee brand to be adopted in a home, a total of a minimum 3 months of trail daily is necessary. This means that a competing brand should be able to work this right only if it is able to provide that deep a placement of its free stock. A simple one-time Rs.5 sachet free does not work. At best it is a very expensive waste.



The ability of the consumer to see, touch, feel and experience the product or service in all its brand and product sensorial aspects is the biggest advantage.

During a recession, this type of trail-offers spring up fast and strong. When there is not enough money to use on mass media advertising, ‘tryvertising’ becomes a very focused way of reaching consumers 1:1.

In recent months the US and Europe have seen a surge in tryvertising.

There are tryvertising websites that get you to register onto them with your database. Freebies are then sent to those registered and feedback is solicited. If you register on a couple of these websites and if you are sincere in your feedback giving mechanism, regularity and correctness, you can run an entire home on literally just this.


Q: I do believe agri-product branding is the biggest opportunity India has. Do you agree?

-Usha RR, Hyderabad

A: Usha, a whole-hearted yes. Agri-produce branding is pretty nascent in our country. The branding of sugar is a classic example. It has gone nowhere. The opportunity surely does lie here, in terrains such as these where we have had little success.

In the case of milk, each of the dairy co-operatives has done a yeoman task. Amul is one, but there are forty others in India who have done similar good work. The non-co-operative enterprises such as Heritage Foods have added to this effort.

The staples sector is far away from this movement. However, with the emergence of organized retail in India, a lot of action can be seen in this space.

Chains such as Reliance, the Aditya Birla Group, and others in this space will offer Private label brand sin staples. This will be the first big step into the branding of staples.

The agri product needs to fulfill the basic parameters of good quality and consistency on offer to be branded. Additionally, on procurement price, these products need to hold the line to be accepted as brands that are static price rather than brands that fluctuate their prices basis availability.

Q: What are the most important skills one needs to have in advertising professional?

-Josh KR, Tiruvalla.

A: Josh, many many things really.

The ability to emote with the needs of a brand is a very important trait. The ability to feel the robustness of a brand in the market-place is another. It is important for advertising professionals to step into the market and smell the sweat of the alien consumer. Most advertising men and women find this difficult.

Advertising people need to start living the life of  the ordinary man and woman on the street. Most don’t. It is important to travel in the same buses that common people travel in. It is important to watch the same tele-serials that common people watch. There is a big disconnect here. The common man on the street watches “Comedy Nights with Kapil” and the advertising man is hooked to HBO.

Living like the consumer and breathing the same air the consumer of the brand you advertise for, is an imperative to success. It is an imperative to build emotional connect, strategic content and ultimate long-standing creatives of creative and strategic merit.

Q: With the large number of mobile handsets in the country, where is the media opportunity on mobiles going?

-R K Jena, New Delhi.

A: Jena-ji, as of speaking now, we have a total of 914 million mobile phones in this country. We are still growing at 11 million phones plus per month. Most of the  new connections are coming from our small towns and villages. I do believe this is a big revolution that has occurred in India. Homes in rural areas which do not have a Television set even, today have mobile phones. In many ways every telco is seeding a medium within every Indian home. A medium that is personal, involved and involving.

The mobile phone is an excellent medium to use. Creativity in its use is yet to arrive. As newer ideas emerge, this will become a big medium to capitalize upon.

The mobile phone is closer to you than anyone else. It is on 24 X 7, is kept closest to your heart in your shirt pocket, is compelling in its demands as you rush to read every message that beeps on it. It is demanding even more when the call rings. You leave everything else and rush to pick it up. It is a media that packs a lot of expectation. Every call that rings can bring a promise to you that enhances your value, your life and your economic well being. The mobile phone is a promise.

The mobile is better than your spouse as well. It demands nothing. It does not fight. It listens to you all the time. It is only as intrusive as you want and allow it to be. And you can shut it off when you want to. A great medium for sure.

The mobile phone is a promising media. A media whose promise is yet to be exploited. There is an ideas-drought here. If you carry that brilliant idea and patent, now is the time to attack the medium in India.

 Q: Brands are jumping onto social media marketing in too much of a hurry. Is this not a double-edged sword of a medium?

-Devaki M, Ludhiana

A: Devaki, a double-edged sword for sure. Totally. But this is good. Brands must ride the good with the bad. Social media is hopefully run by real consumers more than planted and paid consumers. If that is true, true democracy will prevail in marketing as social mediums tell brands what they must hear, but were hitherto too distant to hear.

 I do not believe negative WOM can carry too far if there is no fire to stoke this negativity at all. Social networks are good because they are reasonably fair. They are democratic. In that manner a spade will be called a spade and not a sickle or a gun.


The problem with Marketing and marketers today is that all of us want only the positive. We shun the negative.

It is important to understand that the consumer is a positive and a negative person packaged into one body , mind and soul altogether. The Yin and Yang will be at play forever.

No brand can expect its image and experience to be positive forever. Further still, no brand can expect its image to be ten on ten positive. There will come times when consumers will want to articulate the negative as well. In such times, your brand will be 9 points positive and 1 point negative. This is good for the brand.

Brands must learn that they must ape the lives of their consumers. No consumer is perfect. The perfect being is a myth. Similarly, the perfect brand is and should be engineered to be a myth. If your brand is too perfect, sit down and re-engineer the brand. The brand must be equally fallible and real and alive as is the consumer. Consumers forgive small faults. I go the extent to say that brands that have perfect offerings must engineer small faults that will come by time and again. Brands must get as real as their consumers are.

Negative impact of WOM is a reality that brands must be prepared for. In a world that is democratic you cannot have brands that are autocratic in their orientations. Brands need to step off the pedestals they live upon. Social media is a great step-down ladder for brands.

Q: I have a big problem with shop-lifters.  Mine is a small self-serve outlet for gifts, but my losses on this count are big. Of the 200 customers I get every day, a minimum 20 must be robbing me.  Is there gyan here?

-Rohit Ram, Delhi.

A: Rohit, that’s a large number of shop-lifters in your gift shop. There is something surely very wrong. Ideally, your shop-lifers must not be more than 4 on 200. Even that is a big number.  Sadly those who shop-lift pick the more expensive items, and therefore the value of shop-lift goes up. You must be closing shop soon.

A shop-lifter is normally a very young person. At times children in their teens. College students and young people at large. Look at them keenly through those close-circuit cameras keenly. They are shifty-eyed, are spotted wandering aimlessly, visit the same shop many times, but buy very little. Spot them in groups as well. Groups that have wandered off a college or school even.

       Add to this the solo performer. The bored young and old person alike who meanders and hangs around a bit too long in a shop. Profiling your customer carefully and keeping a keen watch, and catching a few and making great examples of those catches is a way to go. Name and shame publicly for one.

Apart from CC TV, investing in shop-wardens in plainclothes who hang around the store without looking like a part of the store, is a good thing to invest in. Further, shop-lifting time-slots can be identified by the trend of catching people on the job. Intensify the vigil in these time-slots.

       Apart from Sensomats and other such pieces of technology, nothing like the sharp human eye to assess and catch the culprit.

       Take care on aspects of store-design and layout of merchandise as well. Positioning of those items that are really small and liftable very close to the cash-counters is what many outlets attempt. This however spoils the store at large and affects the spontaneity of store design and layout. However, worth a try.

Women-magnet Deodorants

By Harish Bijoor

Q: What’s this deodorant controversy all about? Why does the I&B Ministry have to step in?

-Zarine Wadhwa, Mumbai

A: Zarine, to the un-initiated, we need to set the background right.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has stepped in and has termed “indecent and vulgar” a whole plethora of deodorant category advertisements currently being shown on television. The Centre has asked the ASCI to either get them modified or take the ads off the air. The brands named: Wild Stone, Addiction, New Axe Googly, Zatak Axe, Set Wet, Denver and Axe.

If you have been a viewer of mass media television, you have certainly seen the tone, tenor and decibel of deodorant category advertising. Something has taken over this category and any and every advertisement in the category seems to be promoting the category more or less like a woman-magnet item of desire. Deodorants today seem to be marketed as pheromones that seem to have the power to attract the opposite sex. Thus far, it has remained in the terrain of the opposite sex. But then marketers are creative people. You never know what will follow.

All this seems to have caused some degree of societal consternation and churn. There sure have been complaints, and the Ministry of I&B has had to take note of this. The last time this happened, was in the case of the under-wear and banian category where Lux and Amul (not the soap and not the butter) had a nation abuzz, with questions being raised in the house of Parliament.

Why does the Ministry have to get into it? Very simply because these advertisements seem to have stoked all kinds of questions in society at large. We must remember that television is a mass medium consumed by the masses. Advertising needs to be restrained enough not to irritate segments that comprise this mass medium viewership. Questions such as these will keep coming up. And advertisers and marketers need to show restraint.

If advertisers use the niche medium of the digital such as the Internet for such advertising it is fine, but when the mass medium is used, one is bound to face questions.

Mass mediums are just too mass for such pieces of communication.

Q: Are the summer months a great time for television channels in terms of viewership?

-Rajat Panda, Kolkata

A: Rajat, yes, there most certainly is some meaning in what you say.

Summer means summer holidays as well. Summer holidays means a sudden surge in television viewership. This goes not only for the student audience of this country, but goes in general for the mothers of this country as well. And a smaller set of fathers.

As most homes in the country are small homes with a common drawing room television set, we need to appreciate that in most homes the drawing room doubles up as the study room for the child at home as well. During exam times, more often than not, the mother equally sacrifices watching television, in a bid to act as a conducive parent who helps the child at home study.

Summer vacations mean vacations for the mother and child alike. This causes the surge. In more ways than one, the surge is sudden and peaks. Peaks because there is an urge to make up for lost television hours.

Q: Quite a few brands seem to be going in for disruption in their advertising formats. Why? And how many such formats exist?

-PP Ramani, Bangalore

A: Ramani, I typically classify disruption as follows:

1. Disruption due to boredom/fatigue.

2. Disruption due to competitive pressure.

3. Disruption for the sake of disruption.

Marketers today are indulging in disruption formats that span all these three. Typically, disruption due to boredom/fatigue and disruption due to competitive pressure are formats that can be appreciated. The third is really the one that needs to be discouraged, as it leads nowhere, except resulting in some degree of brand activity, some degree of notice ability for both the brand and brand manager alike.

When a brand wants and seeks out change, it disrupts. It can disrupt either its APS (Advertising Positioning Statement), its big idea or its BPS (Brand Positioning Statement). The worst is when a brand tampers with its BPS.

Brands that attempt to do this do it when they are losing shares and when they believe the basic brand proposition is not living with the times. Bru changed its basic proposition from "Closest in taste to filter coffee". It believed this does not work as a BPS anymore in a new and modern society where coffee is not coffee anymore! Its beyond!

When a brand is stagnant in its volumes and when a brand is really nudging the downward curve, one needs to think disruption. But think disruption only after you are totally convinced that it is the only thing to do. Disruption for the sake of disruption is riding the hobbyhorse of branding a bit too casually.

Q: How does one brand food products to advantage?

-Mahesh Nadkarni, Pune

A: Mahesh, the question is just too generic. I will give an equally generic answer.

My simple take: God is in the taste. Create a tasty product, and people will rush in from every corner to buy. The classic example is the Shrusberry biscuit of Kayani bakery in the city you live in, Pune.   Making a bakery product a planned purchase item is related to how well the taste can actually propel a consumer to make an articulated choice that can travel distances. And this taste travels long distances for sure, as people from all over the world pack and take.

On consumption formats that can be tweaked to make a product run, I have an idea.

This is an idea whose time has come. Cross-positioning an eatable product with a beverage is a great idea to use here. Take the case of the US. Bagel(a bakery product) goes with coffee. Take Europe: Donuts go with coffee. Some QSR chains such as Dunkin Donuts have made on-the-go a part of their cutting edge differentiated business model itself. And it works.

As India becomes more on-the-go oriented with working couples, breakfast itself is going to become an on-the-go item, as might lunch. For these two occasions, one needs to position the bakery product as a quick and healthy option. It needs the company of a beverage though. A fruit-juice and a muffin might just be right as well. It’s all in the marketing.

The Elevator Pitch

By Harish Bijoor

Q: I am a start-up and have been told to make an elevator pitch. The VC has little time. What is the essence of an elevator pitch?

-Gubbi Sathish, Jamshedpur

A: Gubbi, let me say it crisply, in an elevator-pitch manner of writing.

An elevator pitch must pack a lot in little time. It must have the compelling consumer- need argument for a start. It must review and indicate what it will replace as habit. It should speak loud on the score of irreplacability and longevity of idea and concept. And finally it must have its profit argument in place.

Happy pitching.

Q: Is the DVR (Digital Video Recorder) the biggest enemy of marketing? Are we not wasting money on television advertising without knowing what is going where, and what is being zapped?

-Shekhar Khanna, Mumbai

A: Shekhar, most certainly yes. But this trend has been scented in the top niche of the viewing masses. The rest of the masses of viewership still remain profitable, and still want to watch advertising without zapping it.

Apart from DVR's proliferation of channels and the ubiquitous remote handset has caused for a generation of viewers that is promiscuous in its channel use. Boredom is worn on the sleeve, and zapping out of channels due to advertising ennui is a habit today. The person with the remote is normally the youngest one in the house as well, and the young are even more impatient than the old.

The young is what I call the I-Gen: the Impatient Generation. This generation's patience levels can be best amplified in all of 140-characters. Advertisers on television get the raw end of the stick when viewership is mixed, with family audiences that have the young and impatient viewer amidst it as well. Patience thrives better among solus older audiences.

The flip side of it says that if we make our advertising compelling and something that has something for everyone to watch and enjoy as well, this will not happen. At least not as much.

Q: Could you list out a set of things I must look out for when I pick a brand ambassador?

-Varun Mishra, Rohtak

 
A: Varun, brand ambassadors represent your brand and everything it stands for. Therefore, when picking a brand ambassador, pick with care. Show as much care as you do when you pick vegetables and fruits at the local market. If you still do that today.

See the ambassador, touch the ambassador, feel the ambassador, smell the ambassador and taste the ambassador. Not physically of course, but metaphorically for sure. All from your consumer perspective. Look for consumer fit as a compelling attribute. Not whom your girlfriend or wife likes, but whom your consumer group emotes with.

And do this not with your eyes alone, but see it through the eyes of your consumer always. Don't get excited by the fact that you have picked a celebrity of status and mass appeal. Go by what is required by your brand, and go with what the brand ambassador represents to your target segment consumer.

Brand ambassadors need to have stature, support of the consumer base your brand appeals to, aura to hold the audience interest and credibility to ensure repeat usage and purchase and more.

Q: The late-night slot on television is getting to look more and more exciting. It is getting hotter still with direct marketing companies going for the kill. How did it come by? Where is this going?

-Alok Bhaduria, Kolkata.

A: Alok, the genesis of this slot is in the business plan of the direct marketing company. Companies that had products that would not otherwise sell without a deep insight into the ability of the oblique product to deliver, such as exercise equipment, tummy trimmers, nose-hair trimmers and certainly aphrodisiacs and bust and butt-enhancers alike, sought out television slots. Channels were only too glad to offer slots that had just no takers otherwise. This was therefore a win-win situation for both the direct marketing company and the channel.

I do believe we will see a lot more of these around. There will be a polarization of players. At one end you will have global players with superior products and at another we will have the local players with inferior street-side products. You will have high-end under-eye wrinkle remover gels rubbing shoulders with Rudraksh beads from the Himalayas. And then, in will step regulation. Regulation that will want restraint. Alok, till then, enjoy the experience.

Q: How important do you rate branding in India? Have we arrived?

-Priya Ganpule, Mumbai

A: Priya, India is emerging to be a brand conscious country. From a generation that grew up with commodities in every sphere, today's Indian, particularly the urban Indian, is a brand-besotted animal. At times this besotted-ness is not even acknowledged. Instead, brands have become a part of the subliminal DNA of consumption today. Young adults in particular are totally wound up by brands. Brands turn them on, equally as brands that do not perform turn them off. Brands have become part of the social economy we live and thrive in today.

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Sweat Driven India

By Harish Bijoor

Q: How do you view the Mall development of India? What seem to be the mistakes?

-Rohit Patra, Mumbai

A: Rohit, the development of Malls in India is not a recent phenomenon. This has been going on for the last 22 years. We have however not yet learnt the valuable lessons we are meant to have.

Most malls in the country have been constructed with a very B2B focus. The idea is to sell space to retail brands. Once that has been achieved, most Mall managements have abdicated the responsibility of bringing in customers. This is the grass-root level reality.  The point really is that the core competence of the developer is really not in the space of bringing in customers. Some focus on this arena would help.

 There is a Pareto you can do on the Malls of India. 20 per cent of them bring in 80 per cent of the customers. The others just about languish. Some successful Malls are really about professional managements and a lot of scientific planning and thinking, whereas a few are successes despite everything else being adhoc, except location. 

Malls can attract more footfalls by getting more and more community proactive. It is important for a mall to emerge as a destination location that can take care of the entire family and its entertainment, shopping, eating and drinking needs. Malls will replace the parks and public spaces of yore, if only they are able to achieve this. This is a sad fact, but that is what has come of modern consumptive society. The Mall is the new place to hang out at. Not the park.

 Another key issue in a Mall development is the tenant mix. You not only need an anchor tenant who offers visibility to the location, but a good and healthy tenant mix that thinks of every constituent of the family. A Mall must think of the toddler, the child, the man, the woman and most certainly the Senior citizens in a family as well. And this must cover every need, want, desire and aspiration of each, pertaining to entertainment, food, drink, medical and more.

Q: The deodorant category is a high visibility category today. Why?

-Shweta Gopal, Tiruchy

A: Suhail, your question pre-supposes that there is a problem. I will answer from that perspective.

 
The big problem is that we are yet to pay enough attention to the end-user and end-consumer dynamics in Franchising.

There is an important need for the industry to be besotted not with the Franchisor or Franchisee. Instead, one needs to be devoted to the consumer who brings in the money. One important thing to remember is that Franchising as a business with potential is not about the Franchisor or Franchisee. Instead, it is about he consumer at large.

Focusing on the delight end of the business is important. Delivering seamless service that is consistent is the imperative. This is where the failure lies. And this is going to be the big emerging trend as well.

The Franchising industry will progressively start relying on the practice of delivering high quality service. This is an experiential business. Creating the right experience for the right segment, and staying one step ahead of the consumer and his expectation is going to be the cutting edge, if not bleeding edge stuff to focus upon.

The industry faces the key problem of people as well. That is the biggest challenge to handle. This industry is unable to keep its hold on people. People remuneration practices are also antediluvian. There is a great emphasis on out-sourcing, which is not necessarily a great practice as well. Add to it attrition numbers in the industry, and we have a potent cocktail that points at business inefficiency at the point of consumption. And that is the biggest challenge of them all.

The e-commerce Gold Rush

By Harish Bijoor

Q: How do you explain the spree of Private Equity funding in e-commerce start-ups? Is this another bubble waiting to burst?

-KP Sundar Moorthi, Hyderabad

A: Sundar, I really hope this is not another bubble. We have had too many going bust in our faces in the past. We don’t want another.

I do believe there is going to be a fund-Darwinism at play. Only the fittest will survive. Yes, in the bargain categories will look like the dotcom bubble categories did, but that is the reality of transition in any space that is funded by PE funds. To overcome all this, PE funds need to believe in research at the consumer end before making key investment decisions. Gone are the days of gut-feel decisions in this space. Stop feeling up your stomach and gut and making key investment decisions.

I see this new trend of consumer research taking off. Let me give you a statistic. Between 2002 and 2009 my company got an average of 6 requests for consumer end probes and research, every year from PE funds wanting to invest. In 2010 we had a total of 17, in 2011 the number grew to 21 and in 2012 as of the first quarter itself, we are on active work on 9 PE investments wanting to probe the consumer gut before making an investment decision! This means PE funds are getting more and more rational in their investment decisions. Rational at the consumer end of affairs. They look today at more than exciting elevator pitches and gushy PowerPoint presentations of idea-evangelists.

Q: Quick-serve restaurants (QSR) like mine are on a constant struggle mode for consumer traffic. What’s the best thing to do there?

-Sonal P Singh, New Delhi

A: Sonal, It’s all in the menu. Remember, a QSR is all about food first. Don’t get carried away with your International brand name, your service, your ambiance, your advertising and all that jazz.

India is tougher still. India is a young market, and young markets are change oriented. There is a higher degree of flavor and offering-fatigue in younger markets. QSR’s in India cannot be standard-menu oriented anymore. This causes for consumer boredom. The strategy of a constant menu churn is one that is relevant for a market like India. QSR's need to think different when it comes to standard and standardized International menus. Change can be in the form of taste, packaging, shape of product and more. Menu-change works wonders, adds zing to the offerings, creates a talking point, and most importantly stops making your QSR look like a ration-shop QSR.

Q: What is this ‘Kolaveri’ about Islamic Branding today? Must my company embrace it as well? I am in FMCG exports.

-Rohit P Ganavelu, Mumbai

A: Rohit, marketers are today looking at newer and newer ways of reaching out to their existing and potential brand user groups. Marketers are seeking high-end goals in markets where the lowest common denominator appeals have dried out or are showing signs of drying up. Such high-end goals are typically being sought more in hyper developed and developed markets, rather than in emerging markets.

Marketers today want to appeal to issues such as green and inclusive in a big way. The idea is to embrace every cause that is relevant to the well being of the consumer at large. Marketers therefore want to be inclusive in every manner. Economic inclusiveness movements are typically followed by socially inclusive movements and these are then followed by religiously inclusive movements. Islamic branding is a part of this effort.

Islamic branding is really not only about the Halal branding movement. There is much more to it than food. Islam in many ways is a way of life. To that extent, Islamic branding is all about using brands as good deeds. What starts with Halal foods, can move on to Halal practice in every industry, be it the pharmaceutical or the entertainment or the cosmetic industry even.

And there's lots more to Islamic branding than food alone. Islamic branding can embrace broader pastures that cover business practice even. Islamic business models are in place that look at how a business has been funded. Islamic banking is a very old practice even, and it's tenets find acceptance in good Islamic business models.

In short, Islamic branding is an idea whose time has come. Hyper developed and developed markets will embrace it in their business models and marketing plans. Over a period of time, expect a unique Islamic branding mark to emerge as well, a mark that will tell you the entire story of the brand, it's generics, it's contents, it's business practice and more. Islamic branding is therefore more in the DNA of a brand, rather than only in Halal certification marks. It’s a good practice. Embrace it.

Q: How does being on the Board of Directors of a company help an individual? Is it a career-enhancing move?

-Shilpi Dutta, Kolkata

A: Shilpi, I have personally not found being on the various Boards that I sit on, as a career-enhancing move at all. It does not add to my career, but it does add to my personal exposure for sure.

I am dealing with issues at the apex point of different organizations. One day I could be dealing with an issue in core technology and on another I could be dealing with Media and entertainment or on the core issues facing a durables company. This exposure is value-add.

Further, on most boards that you sit upon, there is a deep level of experience and exposure you sit around with, with some 9 plus directors sitting around with perspectives that can be mind-opening in many ways. This is learning and exposure. Very valuable on the whole.

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