It’s time India and the West shared their marketing intel

How do Indian, global and MNC brands survive and succeed in this madness of a market that India is?

Going by the boom in the Indian economy, that’s a multi-billion-dollar question that many marketers want answered. Keeping aside the luck factor, obviously, marketers in India are doing something right. At the core of their marketing ethos is their ability to embrace India’s ethnicity and not challenge it – nor insult it, nor impose upon it – by offering one product or brand that fits all consumer segments.

Applying a global marketing formula for India isn’t necessarily the best a foreign brand can do. Just because a brand has succeeded in the United States or Europe – or even Brazil or Singapore – for half a century (or more) does not mean it’ll top the charts in India as well. MNC brands like McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Nike, Reebok, Motorola, Levi’s, Ford, IBM, among others, including famous Hollywood films, have had their setbacks and have finally resorted to more amenable offerings for the Indian consumer.

The buying habits of Indian consumers differ according to regional preferences (geography), religion, cultural and socio-economic conditions. Not that these conditions don’t apply to other countries, but, in India, consumer ‘idiosyncrasies’ which determine buying behaviour have been embedded over thousands of years. Successful Indian marketers have accepted this diversity, taken the trouble to understand the sentiments (not just the habits) of Indian consumers, found ways to reach out to them, and persuade them to buy the brands which they will benefit from.

However, this is one-half of the story. Indian marketers lack in the left-brained structured approach to marketing which is the domain of Western marketers. Indian marketers come up short in terms of building systems and procedures; in conducting the enormous amounts of research that are needed to understand consumers and markets; in terms of the analytics that go with this research; and in terms of building marketing and communication models which have launched so many successful brands in the West. There is much that Indian marketers can learn from their Western adversaries.

Maybe it’s time India and the West shared their marketing intelligence.

Indian marketers understand ethnic behaviour better than others

Ethnic, multicultural, mainstream or whatever term marketers wish to use to describe their consumers, it’s foolish not to accept the fact that we share this planet with others. These ‘others’, like us, belong to various races, religions, cultures and social groups. They speak various languages. They practise various rituals and customs. They come from various economic backgrounds. Like us, they consume products and services – directly from nature or manufactured for them. They pay for these products and services like everybody else on this planet.

Because we have diverse backgrounds and lifestyles, our needs and wants are different from those around us. Our consumption patterns may also be different from those around us. Yet, together, we make up ‘the market’ for a multitude of products and services – and create demand in the marketplace. Marketers need to assess this demand for various products and services, produce them, brand them, sell them to consumers who can afford to pay for them, and make a profit for themselves.

The genius lies in accepting this fact or phenomenon – and finding ways to offer the right product/service (usually as a brand) to the consumer. Consumers will buy this product/service, consume it and, therefore, express their demand for it. However, not all consumers will buy/consume all products and services offered to them. Nor will they accept the form or format or formulation or price in which the marketer chooses to offer the product/service. That’s because consumers belong to different races, religions, cultures, economic backgrounds… and they have different needs and wants.

Indian marketers understand this well – perhaps better than their colleagues from other parts of the world. That’s because Indian marketers operate in a marketplace with over a billion people from diverse races, religions, socio-cultural and economic backgrounds.

Indian consumers speak in 20-odd languages and over 200 dialects. Close to 1,000 newspapers and magazines are published in India, and over 200 TV and radio channels address this billion-strong media-consuming population. All of them, presenting news and entertainment, and persuading these billion consumers to buy a plethora of brands they are pushing to sell. Added to this is a 5,000-year-old history, with matching heritage and lifestyle, making up one of the world’s largest markets of multitudinously-diverse consumers. Virtually every one of India’s 35 states and union territories is a melting-pot of (unique) ethnic behaviour.

I doubt if marketers from other countries possess such expertise.

The coloured nature of the future American consumer

Much to my dismay, Americans are rather fond of the word ‘ethnic’ (I prefer ‘multicultural’), using it to demarcate the white Americans of European origin – defined as the mainstream population – from ‘the rest’. ‘The rest’, as you can guess, is ‘ethnic’ – people of non-white race, culture and skin-colour. This, of course, has cultural, socio-economic as well as political ramifications; but, for the sake of this post, I’ll stick to the marketing point of view.

From the marketing point of view (which includes demographics and consumption patterns), ‘the rest’ of the American population is made up of African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans. Even Native Americans (the original ‘Red’ Indians) don’t have enough purchasing power or command over the marketplace to make a difference to the American economy – and be counted.

This means, American marketing has primarily had an Anglo bias. Marketing strategies and communication campaigns, historically, have been targeted to the white American audience, and white Americans were by far the dominant consumers in the marketplace. Consumers of ethnic origin were ignored because of their lack of purchasing power.

It’s been some 40 years now that advertising targeted specifically to African-Americans have appeared in the mass media; with the Hispanics coming into focus in the mid-80’s, and the Asian-Americans more recently, probably from the beginning of the new millennium. Today, American marketers are clearly aware of the growing power of ethnic consumers – coming from ‘the rest’ of the population – and responding to the need of the hour with targeted marketing efforts.

The need for ethnic marketing is not a sudden phenomenon, but has grown over the last 40 years. Predictions were made about the growth of the ethnic population and their purchasing power, but were ignored by mainstream American marketers. It’s only in the last 10 years that any serious attention has been paid to understand this market. Here’s an excerpt from a 1999 article by Lisa Skriloff and Dawn Cornitcher of Multicultural Marketing Resources Inc.:

“Population growth and economic force tell a powerful story. The African American, Hispanic and Asian populations have a combined buying power of over a trillion dollars and minority populations are fast becoming the majority population in major markets. Not only is this trend fuelled by the growth of traditional ethnic segments but a growing influx of immigrants from Russia, Poland, and the Middle East continues to shift the mainstream view of how to define ethnic markets.”

There’s been a big hue and cry about this in America. Billions of dollars have been (and still continues to be) spent on researching and understanding ethnic groups, their culture, their media habits, their behaviour in response to targeted marketing, their brand associations, and their consumption patterns. To complicate the issue, differences have been found in the characteristics of immigrants (new on American soil) compared to their second and third and subsequent generations.

Questions abound: What language to use? Which cultural symbols have relevance? How to avoid controversy and not offend the audience? Are their communication and/or cultural pitfalls to guard against? Are there differences in consumption between or within groups for the same brand? What kind of communication stimuli generates the most favourable response? Etc.

To find answers to these questions, research is littering the streets and entering the households; studies and reports are being filed; monitoring tools and tracking devices are being created; specialised advertising, marketing and communication agencies are being set up. The mandate is clear: reach out to ethnic audiences, gain their approval, and sell to them. For, therein lies the future American consumer – the consumer of a different race, culture and skin-colour.

Targeting the ethnic market

Marketing and advertising professionals, internationally, recognise the importance of ‘targeting’ (to consumers) while creating effective marketing and communication strategies. In this regard, it’s said that direct and 1-to-1 marketing specialists are better at it than most communication professionals, as they actually reach out to individual consumers (in flesh and blood, and by name) through personalised communication and the tools they use. The rest of the industry is left to do the best they can with the media options available to them – newspapers, magazines, TV, cable, outdoor, the world-wide-web, etc.

To be good at targeting, communication specialists (and, really, everyone in sales and marketing) need to know a great deal about the consumers they target. The effectiveness of their communication, and the response to it, depends on it. However, this is no easy task. When you look at the millions of consumers in your country, many of whom you may not want to target in your communication because they do not fit your brand/consumer profile, the task can be daunting. The problem becomes more complex when you need to reach out to various ethnic consumer segments with your brand.

The United States, which leads the world in advertising, invests a lot on research to find suitable ‘targeting’ models. The hope is to reduce the ‘chance factors’ in formulating marketing strategies and designing communication packages tailored to reach a specific target audience effectively. The strategy and the communication differ according to the brand and the target market; and there are questions, of course: What specific consumer segments is the brand addressing? How different are they? Does one communication reach and make sense to all segments? Are there any ethnic consumer segments – i.e. consumer segments with cultural differences – which need to be addressed?

American brands and advertising have mainly tailored their communication to the white American. Over the years this has changed, and their advertising has gradually included the African-American, with several brands – not to mention extensions and variations of existing brands – specifically created to sell to the African-American consumer. Today, American marketers and advertising agencies realise that the ethnic market holds a much bigger promise than the white market. Largely made up of African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans, the ethnic market in the United States is growing at a faster pace than the mainstream white American market, and is a potentially huge market.

The question is, can America find a successful formula for marketing its brands to this growing ethnic market?

Sub-cultural viewpoints

I guess, today, very few countries in the world can claim to have a 100% homogeneous population in terms of cultural purity. Even Iceland, an island nation with a population close to 300,000 people, has Nordic and Celtic origins going back to the days of the Vikings; not to mention a smattering of immigrants from various parts of the world. Perhaps a Polynesian island would prove this axiom wrong. For, to maintain cultural purity, a tribe or a nation would have to be ‘untouched’ by tourists or immigrants or invaders – or the media.

Cultural or ethnic differences are bound to exist in populations of countries. India is a prime example of this, being endowed with her ancient tribes (the Adivasis), a debate over Dravidian-Aryan roots, and a history of invasions – both political and economic.

Whether we monitor ancestry and language (which is difficult enough for India), or complex variables such as self-identification and ethnic individuality in the age of globalisation, cultural diversity is a fact of life. A fact, that is forever changing, as migration between (and within) countries, national populations, and interracial marriages are increasing. Add to that the spread of global and MNC brands, and we have a new economic and socio-cultural order. And then, there’s the Internet. The fact is, new identities are forming everyday on shared relationships and socio-cultural experiences between individuals and groups of people… all over the world.

Within this changing world lies a host of sub-cultures: racial, religious, political, professional, popular, physically-impaired, environmental, social, historical, traditional, gender, genetic… the list is endless. These are groups of people, centred on an ideology, claiming some point of difference from the others, and from what is considered to be the mainstream population and culture. All these groups feel marginalised at some point or the other, expressing a loss of dignity and of their civil and political rights. They feel their contribution to the mainstream cultural movement, as well as to the economy and society, is underrated and often goes unrecognised. This feeling, sadly, is true in India as it is in the United States or anywhere else.

However, the mainstream population is not always sympathetic to these sub-cultural viewpoints, even if the governments of these countries are. The mainstream regards these sub-cultural viewpoints as politically motivated, with little to do with culture or civil rights, and responds with its own rhetoric: Are all sub-cultures equally valuable to a nation? Are they all worthy of our support? Do they deserve special treatment? Do they all deserve inclusion in our mainstream cultural movement? If these sub-cultures are given equal status and included in the mainstream cultural movement, would they still continue to function as sub-cultures?

The ethnic conundrum

The word or term ‘ethnic’ puzzles me. I believe ethnic means belonging to a specific community; sharing a language, a culture, a religion; practising rituals and exhibiting certain types of behaviour common to a group of people. I also believe ethnic means sharing a lineage, since it is common practice to marry within a group and procreate. However, I do not use the term ‘ethnic’ to describe my many friends, neighbours and colleagues at work who come from various parts of India, carrying with them various languages, religions, cultural practices, food and shopping habits. Nor do I use this term ‘ethnic’ to describe people who have arrived from other parts of the world and now live in my country. These people share their land with me. To me, they are all Indians.

Fortunately for me, this feeling is reciprocated. In India, with its 35 states and union territories, 23 official languages, several established and practising religions, food habits, costumes and cultures too many to name, I am never classified as someone belonging to an ethnic group. Yes, since I originally come from West Bengal, I am identified as a Bengali – perhaps explaining my mother tongue, some of my preferences for food and literature, and my work ethos – but the identification ends there. Never has my status in India been described or defined as ethnic… though it probably has every reason to be described so. Yet, in the UK, the US or in Australia, among other countries, I am clearly categorised as someone belonging to an ethnic minority group.

This makes me wonder: Does ‘ethnic’ mean not belonging to the mainstream? For, it is true that, in the UK, the US or in Australia, as it is in other countries, I do not belong to the mainstream white majority population. I do not share their preferences for food or literature or music in totality. And, when I’m not communicating in English in their presence, I’m using one or more languages unknown to the white majority population in that country, putting them through some amount of discomfort. Curiously, this also happens in India, and people in India do mind if I speak in Bengali which they do not understand. Still, in spite of my Bengali antecedents (and perhaps poor social decorum), they do not go so far as to describe me as someone belonging to an ethnic group, let alone categorise me as ethnic minority.

Across the seas in the United States, the story is somewhat different. In the US, the white majority, defined as European Americans, makes up approximately 80% of the population. The balance 20% of the population is made up of various ethnic minority groups (this nomenclature is used by the US government and seems to be a socially accepted term): African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, Alaskan Natives, etc. Nobody seems to mind that the European Americans of the mainstream White America are made up of European immigrants and their descendants: English, Irish, Italian, German, French, Scandinavian, Polish, and Russian, among others. Even though, in this case, each group makes up a small portion of the majority European American population.

This makes me wonder once again: Is this classification of ‘ethnic minority groups’ really a matter of language or culture or religion? Or, is it about race and the colour of one’s skin? And, perhaps going a little further, is it something designed by the white population of the world?

Restructuring our lives

Our perception of who we are is a dynamic process. The change in perception of our own identity that occurs as an immigrant, and once again upon return to our original homeland (which I’ve described in my previous post from a personal experience), reifies the fact that our identity has a social context. Shifts in perceptions of our identity occur with social (and geographical) displacement; and, once again, with adjustment with the new environment.

Although we talk about our culture, ancestry, language and religion, our identity is usually rooted to a place. A change in location unsettles us. Going back and forth between two (or more) places rocks our sense of identity. We then tend to ascribe ourselves an identity on the basis of where we live at a particular moment, in the present context. We build bridges between the past and the present, restructuring our lives, in order to create a culture which is acceptable… habitable.

Sometimes, of course, we are suspended between cultures, even though we are stationed in a locality. We then identify ourselves in a continuous process, in the order of our experiences.

Identity: views from my childhood

I had always considered my identity as something I always had. Like an inheritance. By virtue of being born and raised in a country called India, geo-politically, I had a nationality. I was an Indian. By virtue of my parents being from West Bengal (a state in Eastern India with a distinct history and culture), I was born and raised in a Bengali family, thereby, adopting Bengali as my language, and Bengali customs and traditions as standard practices of a life well-lived. Since my parents followed the principles of The Brahmo Samaj (as laid down by Raja Rammohan Roy some 150 years ago), I had a religious identity as well… right from birth. All these facets of my existence were inherited. They were my possessions, my identity.

Growing up in Australia I learnt that the colour of my skin was also my identity. Along with my ethnic features which identified me as an obvious Asian. So was the accent with which I spoke English. However, upon my return to India five years later, the process of forming a pseudo-Australian identity was reversed. The accent with which I spoke Bengali as well as English identified me as ‘foreign-returned’ and, therefore, not 100% Bengali or Indian. By virtue of an Australian orientation during my formative years, some of my Indian uniqueness had been replaced by a preference for westernised clothes, food, books, films, music, habits, lifestyle, the friends I chose to hang out with, and even my ideology (to an extent). These changes added a new dimension to my life and defined my identity in a whole new manner. The difference was, these facets of my existence were acquired; not inherited.

What are we when we have nothing?

Possessions can be extensions of the self (see my previous posts). According to a ground-breaking paper on consumer behaviour by Russell W Belk, “The functions that possessions play in the extended self involve creation, enhancement, and preservation of a sense of identity.” In his paper, Professor Belk cites William James, who laid the foundations for modern conceptions of self, as having said that we are the sum of our possessions. He, then, goes on to review the basic states of our existence – having, doing, and being – following streams of thought more famously identified with Jean-Paul Sartre and existentialism.

Since Professor Belk’s work is on consumer behaviour, we must be fair to him and grant him that his construct of ‘possessions and the extended self’ (that’s the title of his ground-breaking paper) works perfectly well on consumers – i.e. on people who have the ability to create, or express, demand for products and services in the marketplace. And that, we know, is a function of our ability not just to desire a product or a service, preferably in a branded form, but also the money to back up that desire. It’s certainly a good case for capitalism – if not existentialism.

Does that, then, mean that our identity is really an economic entity? That, it’s really a matter of our purchasing power? And, if so, does that also mean that economically weak persons have weaker identities than those with more purchasing power? If, according to William James and Russell W Belk, we are what we have, what are we when we have nothing?

Possessions

Here’s some more wisdom (see yesterday’s post) from Russell W Belk, sociologist and consumer behaviorist, and his inquiry into consumer behaviour and consumption:

“…Possessions are an important component of sense of self. The most direct form of evidence is found in the nature of self-perceptions. Additional, especially striking evidence is found in the diminished sense of self when possessions are unintentionally lost or stolen. More evidence in the role of possessions in sense of self comes from anthropological studies of the way possessions are treated ritually and after death.”

We are what we have. It’s a simple concept, and a basic premise of consumer behaviour. But, it has boggled the minds of the best psychologists, sociologists, consumer behaviorists, advertisers and marketers for half a century at the least. For, as it turns out now, this simple concept is really a combination of two others. Not only are we what we are seen to be (the ‘me’ concept), we are also what is seen to be ours (the ‘mine’ concept). It seems we, as human beings, create our identities using both these – the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’ – concepts.

A lot of research is available defining the ‘me’, but it is in the inquiry into the ‘mine’, in the last 20 years or so, that has now led us to believe that our identities are not complete unless we take into account all our material possessions, the people we are connected with, and our experiences. Even our memories of the past.

That’s where Russell W Belk, among several other notable psychologists, sociologists and consumer behaviorists, comes in. Professor Belk contributes the metaphor of an ‘extended self’ as a possible explanation for the reason why we tend to create meanings for ourselves with, and through, objects and our surroundings. Why we tend to extend ourselves into the objective world around us; and, in turn, create our selves. Professor Belk suggests that the answer lies in our desire to possess… to collect… to acquire.

Dr Jan S Slater, who pursues this point further, elaborates his thoughts on possessions in his dissertation, ‘From Trash to Treasures’. He refers to Russell W Belk throughout his dissertation, particularly in ‘Chapter Two: Collecting Literature’, where he gives us a meaning as to why we would want to possess: “To possess something is to have it under one’s mastery or control and to identify it as one’s own. Possession may be individual, joint, or shared. Although objects of possession are most often tangible, possession may include certain experiences and knowledge, symbols and, in some cases, other persons (Belk, 1982).”

What are we, really, without these possessions?

Self, extended self

“In its widest possible sense, however, a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If the wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if the dwindle and die away, he feels cast down – not necessarily in the same degree in each thing, but in much the same way for all.”

[William James, from his book The Principles of Psychology, Chapter X: The Consciousness of Self (1890)]


“We cannot hope to understand consumer behaviour without first gaining some understanding of the meanings that consumers attach to possessions. A key to understanding what possessions mean is recognizing that, knowingly or unknowingly, intentionally or unintentionally, we regard our possessions as parts of ourselves… That we are what we have is perhaps the most basic and powerful fact of consumer behaviour.
The premise that we regard our possessions as parts of ourselves is not new… If we define possessions as things we call ours, [William] James was saying that we are the sum of our possessions.”

[Russell W Belk, from his award-winning paper Possessions and the Extended Self (1988)]


Russell W Belk goes on to say that there’s a relationship between our possessions and our sense of self. This relationship is important not only “to the understanding of consumer behaviour, but also on the premise that understanding the extended self will help us learn how consumer behaviour contributes to our broader existence as human beings.”

Identifying ourselves with brands

I’m sure we identify ourselves with the brands we wear, carry, consume and use. Or desire. We feel good about them; even feel proud to own them. Which means, there is obviously some connect between us and the brands we use. What that connect is, and how do advertisers and marketers take advantage of it in order to create marketing communication that attracts consumers, are issues that have dogged the best of us from the marketing profession.

Let’s take the TAG Heuer brand for instance (see my previous post) and ask ourselves a few questions: Do we know who we are? Do we know what we are made of? Do we know what relationships we have with the brands we use?

The answer is ‘yes’ every time. Of course, we know – at least, to an extent. If we were to be interrogated intensively (or, perhaps, under hypnosis), we may be able to tell who we really are; explain our actions; or justify the brands we use. Even then, our answers may not correlate with our behaviour in real life. Why not? Is there something wrong with our answers? Well… not wrong, but there is definitely a gap between our understanding of ourselves and who we are. That’s because, knowing who we are requires self-awareness, which is a subject of spirituality, rather than psychology or marketing.

Sure, TAG Heuer can ask us ‘What are you made of?’ and rejoice over the cleverness of their advertising. But answering that question requires us to gaze inwardly towards some mental model we have of ourselves. That isn’t easy because we have several mental models of ourselves, each one quite different from the other; some of them are quite incomprehensible. Psychologists, social scientists, advertising and marketing professionals have been working hard at finding solutions to this, and one possible explanation seems to indicate that the answers go back to our ancestors. That, our ability to recognise ourselves, and explain our present behaviour, has anthropological roots.

What do we mean by this? Well, why not let British Neuropsychologist Paul Broks do the explaining?

“But evolution did not equip us to recognise ourselves. How could it? The mirror is a novel artefact. For most of our history, the most singular emblem of our identity – the face – has been invisible to us.

Recognition of oneself in the mirror requires mental manoeuvres beyond the activities of the brain’s outwardly oriented, automatic face recognition units. It presupposes an inward gaze towards some mental model of the self: in other words, self-awareness. Humans are almost, but not quite, unique in this regard. Before indifference sets in, animals generally react with alarm or curiosity when placed before a mirror. They behave fearfully, aggressively or affiliatively, as if confronted by another animal. Chimpanzees, though, share our fascination with the reflected image.”
[Excerpt from Prospect Magazine article]

Closer home, the advertising and marketing fraternity is also chasing this elusive phenomenon of consumer identification with brands. After all, a brand’s future rests on their ability to make successful consumer-brand connections of the nature TAG Heuer is well-known for. Much of this chase is through brand personality research using anthropomorphic research tools, among many others, based on translated theories of anthropology, human personality and behaviour.

There are many notable models on this subject, but let me mention just one from Young & Rubicam, a leading advertising agency based in New York. According to Young & Rubicam’s BrandAsset®Valuator and The Four Pillars model, a brand’s ‘esteem’, or consumer regard for a brand, reflects a brand’s popularity and perception of quality in the consumer’s mind. In their model, ‘esteem’ is a determining factor (they use the term dimension) in diagnosing a brand’s health, strength and stature.

TAG Heuer's search for self-recognition

To keep pace with changing consumers, market forces and new technologies, brands need to change their marketing strategies and the brand communication that is created from it. Successful brands are quick to respond to changes in the marketplace, so as not to lose their market share or brand salience, but there is always one question that haunts marketing professionals: How often should a brand change its positioning and marketing strategy? The answer is not simple. It varies from situation to situation, brand to brand, and therefore foolish for anyone to provide a single formula to resolve this problem.

But, I guess, there’s no harm in discussing the problem in the context of a brand. A brand that has achieved its success while searching for self-recognition.

The brand I have in mind is TAG Heuer; especially since it introduced its latest advertising campaign “What are you made of?” recently, featuring several sports and film celebrities. TAG Heuer, as you probably know, is the market/consumer reference in prestigious sports watches and chronographs – and a renowned luxury brand. It has an interesting history – specifically from 1860, when Edouard Heuer started his Heuer Watch Company in Switzerland – of being actively engaged in sports, making the most accurate measuring instruments and sports watches in the world.

However, it’s not easy to create a sports-luxury – and now, lifestyle – watch or brand like TAG Heuer. Sports brands normally stand for high performance, technological innovation and contemporariness; while luxury and lifestyle brands typically represent fashion and glamour. TAG Heuer had its beginnings in creating stopwatches and water-resistant watches, and being recognised for its high degree of accuracy in measuring time, such as those needed during sporting events. And so, TAG Heuer came to be associated with sports: the Indy 500 and Formula 1 racing, international ski championships, golf, the Olympic Games, among many others.

As its brand profile improved over the years, TAG Heuer adopted a more fashionable and status-conscious appeal for its brand and morphed it with its sports-watch positioning to create the brand TAG Heuer is today. The brand used glamorous models and actors from around the world as its brand ambassadors, including India’s Shah Rukh Khan and Sushmita Sen. The latest advertising campaign “What are you made of?” uses Hollywood actors Uma Thurman and Brad Pitt, as well as Shah Rukh Khan, alongside sports celebrities Tiger Woods, Jeff Gordon, Kimi Raikkonen, Juan Pablo Montoya, Yao Ming and Maria Sharapova. This morphing of sports and glamour is not a new phenomenon for TAG Heuer, but has been cultivated over time.

In fact, TAG Heuer has strategically built its brand over the years, blending in physical prowess with mental strength, passion and beauty. In the last 15 years, the TAG Heuer brand has created one advertising campaign after another: “Don’t crack under pressure” in the early 1990s; “Success. It’s a mind game.” in the mid-1990s; “Inner strength” in the late 1990s; “Another side of me” in 2001-02; and “What are you made of?” in 2003 and its current version this year. TAG Heuer’s latest campaign exudes charisma, from the watches and the celebrities who wear them – successful people, their passion and the glamour that surrounds them. That’s TAG Heuer the brand… as it has always been.

This is what it says about the new advertising campaign from one of the press releases on the TAG Heuer website:

The signature “What are you made of?” has not changed: the question still interrogates but is never intrusive. It opens up a true mental dialogue with celebrities about their exceptional successes in sport or film, as well as the positive emotions they generate among their worldwide audiences.

“What are you made of?” offers values but never imposes them: to each his or her hero, to each to find him or herself in this quest for self-recognition.


[Citation: TAG Heuer brand advertising on the TAG Heuer website and Brandchannel article, Sports Brands Play at Life Style, by Alycia de Mesa (25-Oct-2004)]

What's changing...

Changes in consumer behaviour are also a result of technology: its introduction and its application. Apart from everyday technology-based products such as TV, quartz watches, computers, home videos, microwave ovens, mobilephones, digital cameras, etc. which have changed our lifestyle in the last 30 years, it is digital technology that has really revolutionised the way we do things and live our lives.

The first major change came with TV and the news and entertainment it offered. It offered an audio-visual format like film through which we could find out what’s happening in the world around us. Even beyond. TV expanded our world as consumers, creating desires for more and more products and services by actively stimulating the aural and visual senses. As much of the TV viewing was done by the family together (as it is still done to a large extent in a country like India), a brand could reach out to the entire family, pass on its message, and speed up the decision-making process for buying.

Of course, things have changed. Many families have more than one TV set at home and much of the viewing has become personal. Today, there are many more channels to cater to smaller segments of consumers, with the content as well as the style of delivery of the content for these segments having changed over the years. Messages are more personal, playing into the basic nature of the audiences, creating stronger desires of ownership for products and brands. A current trend shows an increase in the demand for versions or models of the same product – TV sets, music systems, mobilephones, cars, computers, newspapers, TV programmes, ringtones for mobilephones, computer software, computer games, etc. – for personal use and families, today, have more of everything in their households.

With computers, the Internet, PDAs and mobilephones, the digital world has further revolutionised the format in which consumers receive messages. Playing on the personal-use route, the new technologies have made two great contributions to our lives: one, they have made life more instant; and two, they have enabled interactivity. Not only can we have access to news, information and entertainment as they happen, we can choose to receive these messages when and where we want them. Furthermore, should we feel the need to respond to these messages, provide feedback, or begin a dialogue, digital technology now allows us to do so.

For the brand and the marketer, this is a great boon. The choice of media has increased. The style and delivery format for the marketing message has increased. The opportunity to design creative messages has increased. The opportunity-to-see for the consumer has increased. The level of personalisation of the message to the consumer has increased. The ability of the consumer to respond to the message has increased. And, with the availability of multiple payment gateways, the purchase mechanism has increased. All this, apart from the fact that the new technologies now allow consumers, their interests and their purchase behaviour to be tracked using various software tools.

So, what’s changing for the brand marketer? Plenty, as you can see. It’s now time for the brand marketers to build their plans on these opportunities created by new and emerging technologies… to address changing consumer expectations, lifestyles and behaviours… to build new relationships, or renew old ones, by adding value to their consumers and their brands.

What lies beneath!

“You think you know who you are. You have no idea.”
(Dialogue from the film ‘Crash’. Also the film’s tagline.)

This bit of dialogue (delivered by bad cop Matt Dillon) from Paul Haggis’ award-winning film ‘Crash’ this year could have come from any frustrated marketer or brand manager. For, this dialogue sums up exactly why thousands of marketing and brand managers across the world struggle every day to ensure their products and brands hold their ground in the marketplace – and continue to win new consumers.

The reason for their frustration is simple: consumers do whatever they feel like with a brand. Accept it, reject it, recommend it, bad-mouth it, ignore it… change their minds about it without giving a clue to explain their behaviour. This has been a great stumbling block for the marketing profession and, no matter how skilled or experienced or gifted the professional is, no marketer or marketing strategist or advertising agency or account planner can predict with any certainty how a consumer will respond to a specific brand or brand communication.

That’s where motivational research comes in, trying to get to the root of the problem, explaining why consumers behave as they do. It tries to dig into the human psyche – using various tests and techniques – to unearth motives that lead to specific types of consumer behaviour. Motivational research can, and does, help bring to surface some of the latent motives – as well as the obvious ones – to explain human tendencies and patterns of behaviour.

But, that’s only one part of the story. Thereafter comes the consumer behaviour model: the interpretation, the correlation with market research and field sales data, even transaction data if a CRM programme is in place, and the application of the motivational hypothesis to a marketing problem at hand in order to predict consumer decision-making processes and behaviour. A question, however, comes to mind: To what degree of accuracy can human and/or consumer behaviour be predicted?

Human beings are complicated creatures. What they say, they may not do. How they respond in a motivational test may not be how they respond to an advertising campaign or a brand displayed in a retail store. Although economic, cultural, sociological and religious influences may be accounted for in a consumer behaviour model, there may still be personal and/or circumstantial biases which become evident only at the moment of truth when the consumer makes a purchase. Even then, future purchase behaviour may not be consistent with the consumer’s previous purchase.

This really is the crux of the matter. In fact, some psychologists – and some marketing strategists like me – believe that human behaviour is not stable. That, it varies according to context and, therefore, cannot be predicted with certainty through motivational research or any kind of psychological assessment or marketing model. What lies beneath the human psyche, what forms the human personality and how it manifests itself in life, what goes through the mind of a consumer, particularly at the point of purchase, is indeed difficult to unravel and predict.

Who are you?

How would you describe yourself? Your spouse or a friend? Your boss or a colleague at work? Your customers or business associates? What adjectives or descriptors would you use? How would you classify or categorise them as similar to, or different from, you? How would you accept or analyse or respond to their behaviour? How would you decide whether you, or a person you have in mind, are fit for a specific relationship?

These questions are no longer solely in the domain of psychologists or those involved in motivational research. Today’s marketers and creators of brands are equally interested in using motivational research to identify and find consumers for their brands – motivating them to buy not just once, but more and more, and even refer your brands to others exactly like them – and build lasting relationships with them.

Unfortunately, most theories on motivation, and the research that accompanies them, have been used in the corporate world for HR and personnel evaluation, and for team-building purposes. The MBTI, 16PF, TAT and FIRO-B assessments, among several others, are typical examples of this practice. Very little of motivational research is used for marketing. Marketing’s ever-present market research usually deals with consumption.

Yet, questions like ‘Who are you? Why do you do the things you do? Why do you buy the things you buy?’ have dogged marketers and creators of brands ever since the Industrial Revolution spun off mass manufacture. And, in spite of marketers offering a single product for their customers (remember Ford in a single colour, black?), markets have become fragmented according to different consumer needs and wants… as well as consumer response to marketing messages.

Thousands of consumer segments have emerged across geographic, economic and socio-cultural backgrounds, indicating that consumer expectations from a product or a brand really do vary from individual to individual. New research, using new techniques, is now available to address these consumer expectations, and creators of brands are now beginning to experiment with avant-garde theories of motivation and consumer behaviour. Mette Kristine Oustrup’s mood theory and elemental experience (see my previous post ‘Elemental’) are some recent examples of this practice.

However, there’s a lot we can still learn from older theories of motivation. But, that would mean we have to go back a hundred years.

Please understand me

In his book, ‘Please Understand Me II, Temperament Character Intelligence’, David Keirsey writes, “the point of this [book] is that people differ from each other, and that no amount of getting after them is going to change them. Nor is there any reason to change them, because the differences are probably good.” He goes on to say, “The task of sculpting others into our own likeness fails before it begins. Ask people to change their character, and you ask the impossible.”

If this is true, then not only is it a huge learning for a marketing strategist like me, it is also something of a roadblock. For, essentially, the job of a marketing strategist is to understand and change the way people behave towards, shop for, and use brands. If people’s attitudes and behaviour cannot be changed, because attitudes and behaviour are derived from their character and their temperament, then a strategist’s job is near impossible. Perhaps, even meaningless.

David Keirsey, who has done an enormous amount of work on understanding people, their character and their temperament, suggests that people belong to one of 16 temperament types, grouped according to common human traits. Understanding a person’s temperament type (from the matrix of 16 types that he offers), and accepting the fact that his or her temperament (type) may be different from ours, is the key to understanding people and what motivates them. He also cautions us that, “Our attempts to reshape others may produce change, but the change is distortion rather than transformation.”

To the marketing profession, and the marketing strategist in particular, this study of temperament and character leads to various avenues of understanding consumers, their behaviour towards brands and how they shop for them. However, David Keirsey leaves consumer behaviour squarely in our hands, preferring to stick to aspects of human compatibility in life and in the workplace. Much of his work – as reflected in his book, ‘Please Understand Me II’ – deals with human behaviour in terms of leadership, parenting and mating.

Types, and human behaviour

Marketers are not the only ones who wish to know who their customers are and what makes them buy their brands. We all wish to know what type of people we are and why we do the things we do.

This is not something humans have thought up recently, say, with the advent of industrialisation and mass consumption. Nor has it developed from the time Sigmund Freud and his team began their work on psychology. Man’s interest in understanding himself, what moves and drives him to do the things he does, individually and collectively, has been central to the development of philosophy for thousands of years. Not just in the West with great philosophers like Socrates, but also in the East… with countries like India, China and Japan arriving at their own solutions.

Interestingly, this subject of understanding human behaviour has not been confined to the realms of philosophy alone. It has included nature, science, medicine, history, literature, and even cosmology. The result of all the thinking and observing and learning and analysing by these philosophers across the world – as well as in their own domains – has led to some common grounds. The chief among them is finding (or trying to find) a method of classifying human beings into ‘types’ with common traits. A rather astounding inference from this is the fact that humans are basically of four or five types.

With no psychoanalysis or psychometric tests, no consumer behaviour theories or sales data, to back them up, these philosophers had to rely on the only thing they believed was the source of everything they saw and felt as true: Nature. So, they took the basic elements from nature and applied them to human behaviour and, hey presto, they arrived at a theory of human behaviour. The essence of it, simply, was that man behaved according to his ‘type’. And the ‘type’ was determined by matching his personality with the four or five elements from nature.

These elements were [the Hindu name is indicated in brackets] fire (agni), water (jala), air (vayu), earth (bhumi), and aether (akasha). There was some dispute concerning the number of elements (whether four or five) in nature, with some philosophers having dropped aether from the list. But more or less, philosophers from both the West and the East seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion… on their own. These elements and their corresponding human types were what the world was made of; and even today, many philosophers, psychologists, scientists, cosmologists and marketers believe there is a lot of truth in this typology.

If this subject interests you, you will certainly find this webpage [on the Classical (Greek) elements], ‘Elemental: The Four Elements,’ from Tracey Marks interesting reading.

Elemental

If we are what we buy, then we are also what we say and do when we buy them. In short, we are how we behave, typically, at a point of purchase such as a retail store.

This aspect of buyer behaviour has fascinated marketers, merchandisers, interior designers, psychologists, economists, sociologists, anthropologists and others for some time now. Shoppers have been stalked at stores and shopping malls; they have been interviewed and surveyed; and even secretly video-taped. Because, not only do marketers want to know the answer to what we buy, they also want to know how and why we buy them, and when and from where.

There are volumes written on the subject of consumer behaviour, some of it actually discussing consumer behaviour at a point of purchase, which is what matters a lot to marketers and brand managers. A portion of this smaller universe has an even smaller universe – an area of specialisation, you might say – dealing with the subject of how our basic nature influences our buying behaviour, typically, at a point of purchase like a retail store or a shopping mall.

This relatively new subject deals with techniques – and, of course, the theory that goes along with them – on how to create greater consumer and brand experiences in a retail environment. Once again, much has been written about consumer experiences in the retail environment, but not a great deal that actually considers our individual personalities in relation to the retail stores we visit and buy from. The hypothesis, that our basic personality type can determine our buying behaviour, is a relatively new one.

In the past, most of the discussions on buying behaviour have been on demographic profiles of consumers and their lifestyles. It’s only recently that marketers, designers, psychologists, etc. have got together and tried to understand the deeper emotional connection that exists between consumers, the brands they buy and the places they buy these brands from. Easier said than done! The question is, how do we measure consumer emotional experience?

Since this subject interests me as well, I was delighted to receive an email from Mette Kristine Oustrup, detailing some of the work that she is doing in this area. Ms Oustrup, an inspiration behind MOOD theory, calls this fascinating subject ‘Elemental Experience Design’ (EED) and has built her recent work around it. To find out more about Mette Kristine Oustrup and EED, why not visit her website or download the latest from her elemental experience?

We are what we buy

Our loyalty to brands defines who we are. We are what we buy.

The more faithful we are to a loyalty programme, the greater the rewards we earn and enjoy. And now, with a wide range of participating partner companies, ready to woo us every step of the way, our urge to venture outside the loyalty circle is reduced substantially. It makes sense to limit our choices of purchase to a few brands and optimise our rewards. In fact, many of us do so, hungrily.

This makes us valuable prospects in the hands of those managing the loyalty programmes. Purchase transaction data is collected at points of purchase, then collated, sliced and diced, sorted and analysed to generate qualified leads for prospective brand purchases. Thus, allowing marketers and their brands to send personalised advertising messages and make customised offers to us, catering to our needs with more and more accuracy.

Moreover, with IT and telecommunications as the driving forces, many loyalty programmes are now online, helping their programme managers track and analyse our purchase data in real time. Every time we identify ourselves online (sometimes unknowingly through cookies) or in real life with our loyalty ID number, our entire purchase history and customer profile is available to the programme manager. In the future, with RFID (radio frequency identification) built into our loyalty cards, it becomes even better. Marketers and brand managers can make customised offers on-the-spot as we visit a point of purchase.

Don’t believe me? Well, here’s a look into the future of loyalty programmes: Remember the scene in the film 'Minority Report' when Tom Cruise, after replacing his eyes with another person’s to change his ID (the RFID chip was embedded in the eyes), enters a mall and is greeted with various offers as he moves past the counters? That’s what I’m talking about. That’s the future of customer loyalty. That future is almost here.

Loyalty can be bought, even traded

In business – and in life too – loyalty can be bought. Even traded. In fact, at times, it might be necessary to do so.

Take the airline industry, for example. Most of the airlines are hard-pressed at putting up frequent flyer programmes – eventually leading to full-fledged loyalty programmes – just to keep up in business. Competition is stiff; costs are soaring; and customers seem to drift away every time another airline offers a lower fare. So, they add up the miles travelled by their customers, award points on the number of miles, and exchange the points for tickets or upgrades or gifts.

Customers are happy because they would travel those miles anyway – whichever airline they choose to fly on. For the business travellers, this is a huge bonus, because the fare is most likely paid by their company, yet the miles and the points accrue in their names. Indeed, it’s a happy situation for the customer. They choose to fly, frequently, if not always, on the airline that offers to pay for their loyalty. And, why not? We all want a little appreciation for our loyalty.

The airlines are, of course, business entities. They take their business of rewarding their frequent flyers seriously. They look upon customer loyalty as an investment, necessary to stay ahead in the game. So, they turn the frequent flyer programme into a brand – creating a brand name, a logo, a customer identity plan, a rewards system, a whole new travel experience, and all the paraphernalia that goes with it – and market it wholeheartedly. The strategy behind it being competitive differentiation.

The airlines use their frequent flyer brands to pitch for price-sensitive customers who are otherwise being drawn into the low-fare net by, typically, new upstart carriers. But that’s only one-half of the strategy. The airlines also use the frequent flyer brand to insulate their own business travellers – who are, incidentally, their primary revenue base – from price sensitivity. And, if opportunity prevails, even ask for a premium price and offset it with rewards galore.

It’s a simple system of rewarding and debiting frequent flyers on usage. But, expensive for the airlines to run. Tickets cost money; upgrades cost money; gifts cost money. However, undaunted, the airlines have thought of ways to reward customers without having to give away tickets or upgrades or gifts… simply by tying up with a bevy of partners: travel destinations, hotels, restaurants, car rental agencies, telephone and mobilephone services, shopping malls and retail stores, credit card companies, insurance companies, etc.

There seems to be an endless list of such partners... most of whom are willing to pay a little extra per mile to partner well-established frequent flyer programmes. Where else would they find a database of such ‘pre-qualified’ customers! As it turns out, this trading of loyalty miles is a pretty good source of prepaid travel for the airlines. So much so that, now, frequent flyer programmes not only make up for the administrative costs of running the programme, but actually add some revenue directly to the airline’s bottomline.

For airlines with well-established frequent flyer programmes, there’s no turning back on rewarding customer loyalty. After all, it’s now a necessity. Customer loyalty now ensures they remain competitive in the marketplace.

True loyalty

True loyalty, like true love, is difficult to find. And, even if it’s found, it’s difficult to keep. For, true loyalty is a burden most of us can’t bear for long. For, true loyalty is a hindrance to our freedom.

Of course, the term ‘loyalty’ by itself means ‘being true or faithful to’. So, perhaps, ‘true loyalty’ is superfluous – a euphemism we can do without. The question is, can we do without loyalty?

Usually, by loyalty we mean commitment – a seamless, boundless, unconditional and dedicated relationship which promises to bring us not just material benefits, and in business a fat profit, but also comfort and happiness.

Of course, we all deserve this. But, we often forget that there’s a price we have to pay for such commitment. A price, that begins as a show of interest, and then builds into a succession of costs as proof of our loyalty.

Certainly, this can’t be our idea of freedom! To be anchored to a relationship and be controlled by it for a lifetime!

Fortunately, life, our partners and our professions – as well as businesses and brands we are affiliated to – offer us incentives from time to time, re-fuelling our commitment and keeping our faith.

The trouble with networking and loyalty

Both in life and in work, I’ve found networking and loyalty go hand in hand. They are inseparable, like twins. The principles they are built on are not just similar, but intertwined.

When it comes to networking and/or loyalty, the premise we normally work on is that both networks and loyalty programmes are set up for our benefit. They are there to help us achieve our goals and objectives, our jobs and businesses, our passions and happiness. It doesn’t matter what or how much the other people – i.e. the members, users, customers, business associates, etc. – gain from the networks or the loyalty programmes, so long we benefit from it.

We believe, a network or a loyalty programme is really an extension of who we are, and that it should cater to our needs first. Sometimes, at all cost. We believe that we own the network or the loyalty programme, and it is our birthright to leverage it to our greatest advantage. Sadly, the trouble with networking, as well as loyalty, is the superior attitude with which we embark on it – and try to maintain it. No wonder so few social or business or even niche networks, not to mention customer loyalty programmes, are successful.

So, what should we do to improve the situation?

We need to understand two things clearly. First, we alone don’t own the network or the loyalty programme. Every member, user, customer, associate or person – in short, every connection – in the network or in the loyalty programme is a part owner and has a stake in it. Second, the network or the loyalty programme must benefit every member, if it is to benefit us in any way. Perhaps it will not benefit all of them, nor on every occasion, nor in equal measures, nor immediately, nor exactly when we plan for it… but some benefit must accrue in every member’s favour in the long run.

This is likely to happen more often – and with much more payback – if we realise that we really need to care more about the success of the people in our networks and our loyalty programmes, than we do for ourselves. For, therein lies the essence of networking and loyalty.

Birds of a feather flock together

There’s a lot of truth in the adage ‘birds of a feather flock together’ – and social networks are a living proof of this.

Social networks bring us things we desire, adding value to our lives and creating opportunities which we would not have otherwise found for ourselves. Some of these ‘things’ are intangibles, such as connecting us with people just like us, so we can share our lives with them. And in the process, we can also have fun, entertain ourselves, enjoy developing our hobbies and passions, and build our careers and businesses.

There have always been social networks which have brought people together over common interests and ideals. In the Christian society, for example, the Church has always encouraged this, as it does even today, with the notion of keeping together people of the same faith. Although traditionally, religion and culture have been the prime movers of social networks, today, there are social networks belonging to almost every sphere of life.

However, unlike the animal kingdom where birds of a feather always flock together, human social networks are open to the vagaries of human behaviour. In short, there is little loyalty in human social networks. Their members (both offline and online) often switch networks when something more exciting comes along, or if their friends and associates leave one network for another. Or, they drop out altogether when they simply lose interest.

This leaves us with a problem – that of retaining members in our social networks. What seems to be natural instinctive behaviour (and a law) in the animal kingdom, turns out to be a marketing dilemma in the human world.

Are we socially global or local?

Social networks are not new phenomena. They’ve been around ever since man became civilised and brought some order into living in groups. In the early days of social networking, the reach of the network was contained geographically. The concept of the globe was limited and people networked locally. In fact, homogeneity is a key feature of a strong social network; and, in the early days, sheer geographic limitations, by default, ensured social networks remained homogeneous.

With the Internet, the concept of the globe has expanded in multiple dimensions and, now, we all talk about a borderless world. Even the concept of time has taken on a new understanding. Obviously this has affected social networking. Today, it’s not strange to find people from India networking online with others in the UK, the US, Australia or anywhere else in the world for that matter. That’s because, the Internet has made us into global citizens and online social networking has now become a global reality.

But, how different is an online social network from a real one? Leaving aside the global reach it allows and the speed at which communication and sharing of information (including audio, video, picture and other data files) takes place, not much really.

Online social networkers hang out with friends just like their real counterparts. And, apart from talking about (this list is taken from yesterday’s post) music, movies, books, shopping, events, parties, dating and sex, they also talk about (this list has been added with inputs from my online social networking readers who were shocked to see that I had forgotten to mention) fashion, food, art, sports, travel, jokes and gossip. But, the interesting thing is, networking online isn’t enough. Online social networkers subsequently meet up and spend time with their online friends out in the real world.

Perhaps for this reason, most online social networks tend to have a somewhat local concentration. For instance, MySpace, the most successful online social network with 100 million registered profiles, has a strong concentration in the US. Reportedly, 86% of its users reside in the US alone. In fact, most countries have their own popular online social networks, enabling people not only to talk to others and share their passions with them, but also to meet with those around them from time to time.

According to Cliff Kurtzman, CEO of ADASTRO Inc., and his article, ‘Marketing to the MySpace Generation & The Economics of Social Networking’, “people are often using online social media to create relationships and connections which will enhance their lives away from the computer while interacting out in the ‘real world’.” After all, it’s human to want to be physically close to other human beings – and we can fulfil this need only locally.

Gen Y and why we should learn from them

A friend of mine was narrating a story about an old (i.e. aged 71) client of his who was petrified of moving to a new place. It was not the city (Pune) he was moving to, nor the flat he was moving into (a rather spacious apartment compared to his smaller Mumbai dwelling) that worried him, but the anticipation of living a lonely life. He had asked my friend, almost in horror, “But Sunil, at my age, will I be able to make new friends?”

When it comes to baby boomers like Sunil’s client, and somewhat middle-aged Gen X people like me (ok, I admit, I’m a borderline case), moving to a new place always carries with it the worry of not being able to make new friends and facing up to a lonely life. The thing is, old fogies like us aren’t quite spirited enough to go out and make friends. Nor are we quick enough – nor evolved enough – to take advantage of social networks that we can build right from home… through the Internet.

You see, old habits die hard. We’re too engrossed with reading newspapers, watching TV, talking over the telephone, or visiting friends and family to realise that, now, there are new socially-accepted – and easier – ways of making friends through online social networks. Online social networks are abuzz with millions of users, from all over the world, making friends and building communities of like-minded people. However, it’s the 16-24 years age group – the proverbial Gen Y – that’s having all the fun. If you stretch it a bit, you'll get some 25-30 year olds as well. But the rest of us are left out of the picture.

What’s common with this Gen Y group is that ‘old’ habits of reading newspapers and magazines, or watching TV, are no longer as appealing to them as they are to us. It’s not that Gen Y people don’t read newspapers or watch TV, it’s just that these media channels don’t hold their attention for long. These old-world media channels lack interactivity – the one thing that most of us are looking for. Gen Y seems to have found it in online social networking, leaving us to our lonely lives.

What Gen Y-ers do on these social networks is what most of us are yearning for. They hang out with friends, talking about music, movies, books (well, maybe not that much), shopping, events, parties, dating and sex. Exchanging news and ideas, constantly interacting. And, as registration to these online social networks is free, Gen Y-ers eagerly create their personal profiles, telling their personal stories (not all of it is truthful, mind you) to groups of friends just like them. Building their own communities.

Moreover, since online social networks allow a veil of anonymity to its users, even the shyest Gen Y-er with the poorest interpersonal skills is becoming a prolific networker… making friends almost everyday. Now, isn’t there something we can learn from them?

Achieving balance

Our love for a place doesn’t happen through tourist brochures or research on the Net or even through quick fits of yearning when we travel to a new destination (though I’ve heard this has happened to some), but by building close relationships with them over time. Most of these relationships are built slowly, painfully. A new place means making adjustments: new neighbourhoods, new shopping experiences, new traffic, new schedules, new sights and smells and noises – and new people.

The truth is, when we connect with places, we connect with the people there. It’s unlikely that we would love a place if we felt, and/or believed, the people there were awful. Our love for a place and its people is usually one – and inseparable. No mater what our motivation is for moving to a new place, a relationship with a place usually means building relationships with its people.

So, when I moved from Kolkata to Mumbai – a career move made some 12 years ago – I turned to my profession for support. Not for economic support in terms of finding jobs or assignments, but from the point of view of using my professional learning and experience to smooth out the rough edges of moving in to a new place and building new relationships. Alas, I was at a loss. My profession, marketing communication, was not much help here.

It’s not that marketing communication doesn’t deal with relationships – it definitely does. But its relationships are not with people, nor with places. It encourages us to build relationships with products and services and retail stores… in effect, with brands. In effect, with something quite intangible! Not only did I discover this, I found that, in my profession, relationships are expected to be instant. Here and now. Leaving me very little time to sit back and enjoy it all.

It was dismaying – even unnerving – at first; but after 12 years, I seem to have achieved some sort of balance.

Connecting with places

Is there something in the geography, something topographical, that attracts a person to a place? You know, some people like to live on mountains, some by the sea, that sort of thing. Or, is it something cultural, maybe even anthropological, that determines the connections we make with places? Does it have something to do with the kind of people we get along with – more than with others?

The answers to these questions can be revealing. For, the connections we make with places define our identity – and our self-esteem. They speak to us of how we perceive ourselves; what experiences excite or sadden us; what relationships we are willing to build with the communities around us. And, if we dig deep enough into the relationships we have with places, we can discover how, as individuals, we celebrate, alter, extend and repress our identity from time to time to suit our temperament and our personality.

When I think about my life and how I’ve given up many good jobs to follow an offbeat, less secure future as a marketing consultant, changing cities and cultures, I sometimes wonder how it has defined – and redefined – my identity and my self-esteem. I wonder how I have built new relationships and, perhaps, severed others. How I have found meaning and respect in my work at the cost of my ambition. How I have been honest with myself and, in the process, lost opportunities.

Our identity and our future are both connected with the place we choose to make our home… or our place of work. What may seem arbitrary may really be a pre-determined process.

Torn between two lovers

“Torn between two lovers, feelin’ like a fool
Lovin’ both of you is breakin’ all the rules.”
[Lines from a song by Mary MacGregor (of the ‘Peter, Paul and Mary’ fame)]

I was born in Calcutta and grew up there. I loved the city. I’ve spent the best years of my life there… that is, the best years of my life until I moved to Bombay in 1995. The reason for my move was purely professional. You see, professionally I’m a marketing consultant, and Calcutta didn’t offer much of a future for me back then. But, I fell in love with Bombay and decided to stay.

Recently I visited Calcutta (now Kolkata), after eleven and a half years, and fell in love with the city all over again. I didn’t feel like returning to Bombay. My old friends in Kolkata and their warm welcome must have been the reason for this… or, at least, that’s what I kept telling myself. Or, was it because I was once again connected with my roots? I’ve heard such things happened.

When I mentioned this to my friends there, they exclaimed, “You’re not going to do an Alex Hailey on us, are you?” No, I promised them. I shall return to Bombay (now Mumbai) peacefully. Return to Mumbai I did, and my friends here promptly asked me: “So, is Mumbai your home now?” Yes, I promised them, it was. It is.

This experience made me wonder what it is that attracts people to places. I understand the lure of job opportunities and money, the economic reasons, but there must be something else besides these. Is there some compatibility, some chemistry, between people and places – just as there is between two people – that we don’t know about or cannot explain? Something that involves us, engages us, binds us, enriches us, helps us to grow and discover ourselves?

And, is this something depended on our personality – our traits, our attitudes, our behaviour? Or, is it genetic and is depended on our DNA? Perhaps, it’s much more complex and is depended on both. Perhaps, it’s just a matter of willingness and adjustment due to convenience. Who knows! For the time being, why don’t I just pass it off as love?

The city of joy

[With apologies to Dominique Lapierre and his 'The City of Joy' - and the charity he is helping to bring to Kolkata.]

There's something not quite right in writing an epic about a city you've never lived in. You have to be a part of that city, a part of that city's fabric, to blend in. And only then can you realise what that city is all about. Be it London, Paris, New York or Kolkata, you just can't appreciate the nuances of that city with a foreigner's eyes. You need to be one with that city to appreciate its beauty and its benevolence, its demons and its dilemmas.

I learnt this the hard way during my visit to Kolkata. You see, I live in Mumbai now and, on returning to Kolkata after a decade or so, I looked at the city through a foreigner's eyes. I saw how Kolkata was different from Mumbai - not how Kolkata was Kolkata. And in doing so, I missed everything. It was only when I realised that I was a Bengali, born and brought up in Kolkata, did I begin to see things clearly.

Kolkata's joy - and Mr Lapierre is quite right here in using this term to describe this city - is in its bonhomie. It's everywhere. Whether you're asking for directions from a fellow pedestrian, or buying fish at the local market, or attending a meeting with clients, or having a drink at a club, or sitting in on an 'adda' (a powwow with friends or colleagues, usually over cups of tea)… people of Kolkata are proverbially friendly. It is this quintessentially Kolkata trait that makes this city great.

Mr Lapierre, Kolkata is not the melting-pot of misery, violence and struggle for survival that you make it out to be. Its joy does not emerge from misery, but rather from gladness and bonhomie.

Life between meals

Mumbai problems aren’t matters of great concern for Kolkata. And, why should they be? Kolkata has a life of its own. It’s a place far removed from the hassles of Mumbai such as those faced by Mumbaikars everyday (for instance, distance), or those faced by Mumbaikars every now and then (disturbance due to bomb blasts). Kolkata is a closely-knit peaceful congregation of (mostly) Bengalis relaxing over cups of tea, until it’s time for lunch or dinner – whichever comes first, or next. Yes sir, Kolkata is a relaxed life between meals.

Kolkata loves to eat – and it shows. Meet a friend from Kolkata and before you know it, you’re enjoying a snack or a meal with him or her. Originally a Bengali from Kolkata, I already shared this appetite for life that people of Kolkata have. But, I was re-introduced to its overwhelming power this week when I returned to this city after eleven odd years. Ever since I arrived, I’ve been eating and eating. My friends are glad to have me on board and treat me to a huge gourmet spread of the best Bengali cuisine – and along with it, Bengali culture and hospitality.

So much so that I’ve actually had to rearrange my work schedule around meals and mealtimes. It’s quite amazing really. I now realise what I had been missing for so many years.

How safe are we?

It’s been a week since the Mumbai train bomb blasts have shaken us and I’m as concerned as you are. On the one hand, it was an act of terrorism which led to deaths and injury to many innocent people. On the other, it was a blatant invasion – and violation – of our safety. For, as we go about our daily lives in Mumbai, we don’t expect our lives, nor those of our friends, family and colleagues, to be blown apart at the push of a button by some faceless, nameless terrorist. We expect our days will pass safely, because safety is one of our fundamental constitutional rights. And yet, before us, we have a blatant violation of this right. What are we supposed to do?

Well, find someone to blame it on, of course.

The situation at hand is a bit murky at the moment. As far as media reports go, no-one’s sure about how things stand. Headlines suggest that there are no clues leading to the terrorists involved in the bomb blasts. The Police aren’t sure what explosives were used. Witness descriptions of suspect terrorists are inconclusive. Many criminals – big and small, including some riff-raffs who may have never thought of murder – have been picked up for questioning. Yet, suspect terrorist and informer information hasn’t revealed anything constructive. Still, some reports say, soon the terrorists will be identified and apprehended.

While this is going on, everyone’s formed their own pet theories on why the blasts happened and who were responsible. All fingers are pointing at the Pakistanis, of course, although there’s no proof of it yet. Why? Because the Pakistanis are taking revenge on us for the Gujarat riots, for sentencing to death three terrorists who were involved in the Akshardham Temple killings, for claiming Kashmir as ours, for hating Muslims in general, for not accepting Pakistan as a country… you name it and there’s a theory attached to the Mumbai train bomb blasts and why Pakistan must answer for them.

Some are talking about flushing out terrorists from Pakistan with the Pakistan government’s help. Some are talking about sending in Indian troops and attacking terrorist bases in Pakistan. Some are talking about going to war with Pakistan if terrorist attacks continue on Indians.

How much wisdom is there in all of this?

Then, there’s the question of safety. What is our country doing to make us feel safe and secure from terrorist attacks? How can we be sure that our lives will not be in danger from another bomb attack… or, for that matter, any terrorist attack? Are our defence and intelligence services ready to intercept and eliminate terrorist attacks on Indian soil and make us feel safe again? How safe are we really in our own land?

New acts of terror

How do we move against terrorists? Or, for that matter, against others – including organisations, communities and states – that support terrorism? What skill and magnitude of preparation do we need to have to protect ourselves? For, if terrorists are enemies of the people and not just the state, in terms of not making any demands for their acts or crimes, then, no matter what methods or strategies we adopt, they will find ways to break us.

Threats can come from anywhere – anytime. The use of hijacked passenger jets as cruise missiles in the case of the WTC bombings of 9/11 is a prime example of how innovative terrorists can be. On the other end of the terrorist spectrum, you have the simple case of a bomb in a bag as it may have been used in Mumbai last Tuesday. Even if we adopt security measures to ensure that such attempts do not succeed in the future – and that’s really a very tall order for a country like India – terrorists are unlikely to be stopped.

What I mean is, it’s not the innovativeness of the terrorist campaign, nor the complexity of the defence systems we employ to thwart their moves, that are issues here. The issue that threatens us is that of commitment that terrorists have – i.e. their willingness to die for the cause. Motivated terrorists will find new ways to threaten our lives. They will carry out new acts of terror. If a bomb in a bag won’t work, motivated terrorists will doubtless choose something else.

This is not an illusion. India has already experienced the level of commitment terrorists can have. Just think of the assassinations of Indira Gandhi (shot by her own bodyguards in her own premises) and her son Rajiv Gandhi (a bomb in a garland that welcomed him in a customary Indian way at a political rally), and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Weapons of various types and sizes exist – and they can be expected to be used by terrorists anywhere, anytime.

Terrorism is here to stay

Imagine this: You’re on your way home after a hard day’s work. You board the usual local commuter train to your suburban home. You fend off the rush-hour squeeze from other commuters to get a place. You catch up on some gossip from the daily tabloid. You talk to your neighbour in the seat beside you. You answer a call on your mobilephone telling your wife that you’d be home soon. You stare out of the window dreaming many things… Then an explosion erases your entire life from this planet.

Something like this may have happened in the train bomb blasts of last evening in Mumbai; killing hundreds and injuring several times that number. Of course, some of those tales we’ll never get to know.

The instrument of terrorism was probably very simple: a bomb in a bag in a crowded train. It has been used before against Mumbai; in buses too, besides in crowded places. But more importantly, it has exposed the vulnerability of life in modern Mumbai. The terrorists knew how to exploit this. They planned seven such bombs to go off in seven different trains in a matter of a few minutes – too little time for Mumbai to spread the word to save lives.

Terrorists want to cause terror. Some say, terrorists don’t really want to kill people, but to gain sympathy for their cause. Free Ireland. Jerusalem is ours. Get out of Iraq. Release our comrades from your jails. Quit India. They want to show their power by disrupting peace, or taking hostages, or exploding bombs at places and times of their choice. They do it in order to warn, not really to destroy. What makes last evening’s act more terrifying is that no specific demands were made.

It looks like terrorism is here to stay in Mumbai. How do we prevent it? How do we reduce the damage? How do we save lives?

A short note on the caste system

If anything has endured in India, sadly, it’s the caste system. Today, caste-related discriminations abound, with no possible solutions in sight. Though it may appear to be a backward philosophy or principle of social structuring, from what I know, it was not meant to be that way. Its origins define it as a system based on ‘occupational specialisation’, with specific tasks allocated to specific groups of people according to their skills and knowledge. And, it must have benefited society at one time.

The caste system in India was probably the first socio-economic concept defining, what we would call today, the service sector. People were grouped into four basic categories (i.e. castes) according to the service they provided to (or in) the society. The Brahmins provided knowledge, especially knowledge leading to God; the Kshatriyas were skilled in the art of war, and provided defence against attackers or invasion; the Vaisyas were skilled in commerce, crafts and management; and the Shudras provided labour for all the menial day-to-day tasks.

No premium was assigned to any particular type of work or skill or knowledge. Each caste had its privileges, with the Brahmins (the priests) and the Kshatriyas (the warriors) given a greater share than the rest, as was the practice of all ancient societies across the world. If a person repeatedly failed to perform his or her tasks in society, the privileges for that person were withdrawn, no matter which caste the person belonged to. The caste system was a means of better socio-economic functioning of a society. In essence, it was a symbol of democracy. Contrary to popular belief, it was never an instrument of racial discrimination.

Somewhere along the line, people began to adopt the socio-occupational structure of the caste system as permanent – assuming it to be their birthright. They protected their social positions as if they were endowed with it, propagating hereditary guarantees to their children and grandchildren. Trouble followed thereafter. According to an article on ‘Caste and Gender Equations in Indian History’ (Tripod, South Asian History) from which I’ve quoted before, “In India, caste and gender discrimination appear to become more pronounced with the advent of hereditary and authoritarian ruling dynasties, a powerful state bureaucracy, the growth of selective property rights, and the domination of Brahmins over the rural poor in agrahara villages.”

Over the years, what may have been an excellent instrument of democracy was defeated.

The backbone of Indian society

I’ve got to hand it to India. She has a thriving caste system operating in the country – leading to poverty, discrimination, hatred and killings – and she acknowledges it fair and square. There’s no beating around the bush here. No big talks about classless societies. No theories on capitalism replacing traditional stratification of social orders of the past.

The fact is, Indians have always identified themselves with their caste. And, they still do. After all, it’s rooted somewhere in their hearts and minds.

In spite of rising literacy levels, education, foreign aid and influence, the advent of technology and the spread of mass media, it’s still hard to find the free caste-less Indian. Social positions and ties are still ascribed and hereditary, and these statuses are likely to remain permanent with no-one willing to give them up easily.

Of course, the dissolution of the caste system is being talked about in high circles, but nobody is actually sure where or when it’ll happen. The point is, the caste system is the backbone of Indian society. Where will India be without it!

Modern-world superiority

As long as there’s a world with people, I suppose, there is going to be exploitation of people by people. It has been so throughout history – slavery, European colonisation, the caste system in India, Hitler’s genocide – and continues to be so even now in various parts of the world under various guises of social, political and economic superiority. For, some people believe they are superior to others.

Take the First World countries, for instance, the rich nations of the capitalist West, the ruling aristocracies of the modern world. They not only consider themselves to be the most accomplished societies of our times, they actually enforce their ideologies and expansionist theories through economic and political manoeuvring to uphold their establishments.

Are they opportunists? Is this a survival strategy? Or, is this exploitation of other countries, markets and people based on the belief of individualism, of one group of people believing they are superior to others and, thus, establishing their dominance in the world? Maybe the answer constitutes all of these questions.

The guises of modern-world superiority take on many forms: ethnicity, religion, social position due to heredity or by decree, military strength, wealth, an accomplished culture, or the economic demands of the time. Typically those based on ascribed or inherited statuses… and not those based on equality or those following national constitutions or human rights charters.

India, within its own boundaries, offers one such tragic example to the world: the exploitation of the Dalits based on the Hindu caste system.

The Dalits (or outcastes) constitute a large group of people (over 170 million – 16% of India’s population) belonging to the ‘shudra’ caste, the lowest of the four Hindu castes. They make up people whose occupations involve lower-order tasks of society such as clearing waste or dead bodies, working with leather, scavenging for refuse, peasants and labourers. The Hindu caste system classifies them as ‘untouchables’.

According to the Constitution of India, it is illegal to discriminate anyone on the basis of caste. Still, the caste system is a reality in India today, and untouchability is still a part of the daily lives of millions of Dalits. They are shunned by society and have no choice but to stick to their own communities in the outer fringes of civilisation.

The Dalit population is still disproportionately below the poverty level, both in rural and in urban India. They have significantly higher rates of unemployment and landlessness than non-Dalits, and less access to educational, administrative and judicial resources. Discrimination against Dalits is common and atrocities against them are rampant in various corners of our country.

India may be the largest democracy in the world, but modern-world superiority has its own unique way of operating here. And, the tragedy is, nobody knows when and how it’ll all end. I guess, when it comes to notions of equality, amity and social well-being, there is still progress to be made even in the world’s largest democracy.

[Citation & following quotes from Friends of South Asia (FOSA) http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/

Extensive list of atrocities against Dalits documented on website of National Campaign of Dalit Human Rights http://www.dalits.org/atrocities.html and a special report on Dalit houses being burnt down in Gohana can be found at http://www.dalits.org/Gohana1.htm.

In his presentation ‘Dalits and Globalization’ delivered at the World Social Forum held in Mumbai, Professor S K Thorat presented important data on socio-economic indicators of the Dalits. In 1999-2000, nearly 75% of the Dalits were landless or near landless; 65% of Dalit households were dependent upon wage labour; the literacy rate for Dalits was around 37% as opposed to 58% in non-Dalit; 43% of Dalits were below poverty levels, almost twice as many as the non-Dalits. During 1980-2000, a total of about 300,000 cases of human right violation and atrocities were registered by the Supreme Court with the police.]

Equal

We are all equal in the eyes of God, right?

Well, that’s what religion promises us. But I’m not so sure of it. So, I appease myself with the answer: Yes, we are all equal; but perhaps, after death. In this living world, we have to face the consequences of our birth – and all that we try to achieve ourselves. Because, this living world is full of inequality; and that’s the reality of the situation.

Many human beings feel inequality is a reality for them. Think of a child’s feelings when he or she is forced to eat a bowl of insipid porridge when the parents gobble up scrambled eggs with bacon and toast, and you’ll get the picture. You don’t have to belong to a specific race or religion or gender or social class to be stripped off your rights as a human being. It can happen to anyone.

Just for a moment, imagine this: It’s some time in the future. Things have gone out of control and you suddenly find yourself as a slave to a person who considers himself or herself, by some decree, superior to you. What would be your notion of equality? Would you feel like one of the human prisoners of Pierre Boulle’s ‘Planet of the Apes’? Or, would your world be something different?

While you think about this, here’s an excerpt from ‘The Newness of New World Slavery’ (from African American Voices, Digital History, University of Houston) about the lives of slaves in the ancient world:

“In Homer’s Greece, it was not a crime for a master to beat or kill a slave, and the testimony of unskilled slaves was not allowed in court unless it was obtained through torture. Nor does the Bible prohibit the beating of slaves. In the Roman Republic, a master might kill a slave. Vedius Pollio, a citizen of Rome, reportedly fed the bodies of his slaves to his pet fish. Flavius Gratianus, a fourth century Roman emperor, ruled that any slave who dared accuse his master of a crime should be immediately burned alive. Roman slaves who participated in revolts were crucified on crosses. In ancient India, Saxon England, and ancient China, a master might mistreat or even kill a slave with impunity. Aztec Mexico publicly staged the ritual torture and killing of slaves…

…slavery in the classical and the early medieval worlds was not based on racial distinctions. In ancient times, slavery had nothing to do with the color of a person’s skin. In ancient Rome, for example, the slave population included Ethiopians, Gauls, Jews, Persians, and Scandinavians. Unlike seventeenth, eighteenth, or nineteenth century Europeans, the people of the ancient world placed no premium on racial purity and attached no stigma upon racial mixture. Ancient societies, however, did tattoo, brand, or mutilate their slaves as a symbol of their debased status.”

Slavery is, perhaps, an extreme form of social inequality. But, it aptly demonstrates the lack – and the purposeful destruction – of human rights that we all believe is ours from birth.

Backwardness

India has been known as one of the greatest civilisations in the world… well, at least, in the ancient world. For, over the years, India has become known as the land of the poor; the land of caste divisions, untouchability, dowry, sati, and various other gender discriminations and social ills. In the eyes of the world, these social ills and customs define India’s backwardness – a land unwilling, and unable, to change with the times, despite its growing importance in the global economic forum.

I’ve often wondered who sanctioned such social customs. What gave life to these social practices that made a great civilisation dysfunctional and turned it into a backward society? Perhaps, if we could find answers to this question, we could reverse the process of social backwardness in which India has been slotted… and make India a great civilisation once again. While reading up on the Net, I came across a very informative site on History of Social Relations in India (on Tripod) and have provided here several quotes from one of their articles on ‘Caste and gender equations in Indian history’.

Historically, caste and gender discriminations have been evident in many societies. They are not uniquely Indian as many people believe them to be. Wherever and whenever there have been hereditary and authoritarian ruling dynasties, or the domination by religion or a powerful state bureaucracy, social inequities have appeared. The roots of these inequities have been economic in nature and have, typically, focused on distribution of wealth, rights to property, and political power.

Socially, it seems, this has meant stratification of societies into classes, where the elite – made up of the royalty, the warriors, the priests and the land-owners – have garnered the greatest share of privileges. Not only that, according to the article I referred, this social system has “often meant hereditary privileges for the elite and legally (or socially) sanctioned discrimination against those considered lower down in the social hierarchy.” The article provided several interesting examples of this social stratification from various parts of the world, and I have reproduced below a few of these for you:

“…in Eastern Africa some agricultural societies were divided between land-owning and landless tribes (or clans) that eventually took on caste-like characteristics. Priests and warriors enjoyed special privileges in the 15th C. Aztec society of Mexico as did the Samurais (warrior nobles) and priests of medieval Japan. Notions of purity and defilement were also quite similar in Japanese society and members of society who carried out ‘unclean’ tasks were treated as social outcasts – just as in India.”

“Amongst the most stratified of the ancient civilizations was the Roman Civilization where in addition to state-sanctioned slavery, there were all manner of caste-like inequities coded into law. Even in the Christian era, European feudalism provided all manner of hereditary privileges for the knights and landed barons (somewhat akin to India’s Rajputs and Thakurs) and amongst the royalty, arranged marriages and dowry were just as common as in India. Discrimination against the artisans was also commonplace throughout Europe…”

“It should also be emphasized that caste-distinctions were not the only way, or even the most egregious way in which social inequities manifested themselves in older societies. In ancient Greece and Rome, the institution of slavery was at least as cruel a practice, if not worse…”

Are these examples of great societies or social backwardness? Do they celebrate civilisations or deride equal opportunities for human beings? Is there a learning for us all in these examples? Whatever they be, they do not seem to justify India’s position on social, political, religious or economic discrimination of its own people. Perhaps, it’s time India looked forward.