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| Crossing swords: Satish Kumar (L) and
Mohan Menon spar on whether the South is relevant to marketers
and ad agencies |
Destination
talk in Chennai tends to have little to do with advertising. But
with the BT Crossfire determined to stir voices up, and with BT
Editor and debate moderator Sanjoy Narayan looking forward to an
appropriately combative discussion, the audience in the hall had
an inkling of what was to come.
The motion for the evening was: "The South
is just a translator's destination." Mohan Menon, former board
member of O&M India, spoke for, and Satish Kumar, Chief of Henkel
Spic India, spoke against.
Menon began with a hint of his defence strategy-resisting
pre-debate inebriation-but got onto the offensive straightaway,
quoting a Delhi visitor to Chennai as saying: "It seems to
be a different country, yaar... nobody speaks Hindi." He spoke
of branding gaffes such as Nova, a car which went nowhere in Mexico
because it meant "won't go", and Umda, a cooking medium
which failed in the South "for obvious reasons". Yet,
the Indian ad industry saw little shame in inflicting one culture
upon another, with Southern sensitivities almost ignored (reflected
in Northern ads merely being given a Southern voiceover) to the
point of induced alienation. Example: Chevrolet Optra's sunroof
ad-on a North Indian custom-left Chennai mystified. "There
are a million examples where cultural, social and religious cues
are totally lost in a different geography," said Menon, sticking
up for the South as a progressive, creatively vibrant region that
actually coined 'josh machine'-a successful 'Hinglish' adline. "Is
it apathy? Is it ignorance? Is it insensitivity?" he asked,
concluding mournfully that in the advertising scheme of things,
"The South doesn't count." To wrap up his argument, Menon
showed the audience two Hindi commercials translated into Tamil:
Asian Paints' 'Sunil babu' spot and Vanilla Coke's 'parampara' spot.
At the opposing podium, Kumar opened his case
wondering whether Menon was speaking on his side-against the motion.
And against, he himself certainly was. The South, he argued, was
no more a translator's destination than the whole of India is. In
a country featuring a "complex interplay" among many "competing
cultural forces", the South had got a raw deal, Kumar admitted.
"But I'd remind him that gone are the days when anything below
the Vindhyas was called 'South', and anybody from the South was
termed a 'Madrasi'," he continued, to emphasise the point that
change is in the air, and Southern advertising is coming into its
own, even if some ad professionals still fail to notice how North
Indian wedding customs draw a blank in the South. The four linguistically-varied
states of the region continue to be clubbed together, by and large,
"but language is just one of the many textures of communication''.
Much is happening by way of symbols, values
and rituals-and the South has its idiom here. CavinKare, for example,
is running an ad for Mera Shikakai that's based on the Friday oil
bath ritual that people in the North would not understand. "If
you look at even MNCs like Coke, Pepsi, Nescafé or Lever,
and even if you look at Indian companies like Bajaj or TTK, all
have separate creatives for the South," said Kumar, adding
that where local competition is strong, regional adaptations are
getting more localised-with Southern cine stars being used. Examples?
Ajith for Sunrise, Vijay for Coke and Madhavan for Pepsi. "At
the end of the day I think both marketers and agencies have started
realising that things have changed; local brands are gaining share
and becoming stronger," said Kumar.
The South, however, seemed quite dissatisfied.
Who was to blame? "But Satish," posed Narayan, "are
you saying that it is the advertising agencies who are not taking
into account all these various factors that you're talking about?"
"To a large extent, yes," responded
Kumar, "Because I think you need a local presence, understand
the local culture, customs, rituals before you start making a storyboard."
But why, asked Narayan, "do the clients not pull the plug?"
Cost-efficiency, according to Menon, was the
answer. The localisation decision was one of cost-efficiency. Kumar
agreed, citing resource constraints, and even revealing a personal
preference for localisation of Henkel's Fa commercial.
On how well translated ads actually work in
the South, Narayan threw the question to the audience. The consensus:
most translations are too poor to click. Then why does the South
get bulldozed by the North? A management lecturer in the audience
wanted to know. Or, as Narayan phrased it, "Why doesn't the
Southern head of marketing get up and say, 'this is not going to
work here'?" Menon put it down to the market's low relevance:
marketers prefer spending funds where they expect the biggest impact.
Another questioner wanted to know why the translation
fixation persisted, even though national ads with a Southern touch
had always done well-such as Feviquick. "The thing is that
the South has always been an object of merriment for lots of North
Indians," replied Menon. To which another audience member responded
that all advertising is little more than amusement to most people-and
since no ad can work for all, why all the fuss?
BT CROSSFIRE/KOLKATA
Point Of Motives
'Advertising in Kolkata: business or
ideas?' was the topic. Ram Ray spoke for business. Ishan Raina for
ideas.
Everybody seemed
quite at home in the hall that evening. It was Kolkata, after all,
a city more familiar than any with the concept of slugging it out-intellectually.
Precisely what BT Crossfire was in town for. Even moderator and
former Kolkatan Suhel Seth seemed at home, dropping all moderation
to gleefully pronounce Kolkattans "insular", for instance.
The topic: 'Advertising in Kolkata: ideas or
business?' Ram Ray, chief of Response, spoke for a city of business.
Ishan Raina, chief of Euro-RSCG, spoke for a city of ideas.
True to character, Ray began with a disclaimer:
"I'm neither a debater nor a psychopath." And with a collision
report of two trucks loaded with copies of Roget's Thesaurus that
left onlookers "stunned, startled and stupefied"-as with
most debates. Rather than do that, he wanted just to make a point.
"Advertising is the business of ideas, and one cannot differentiate
between the two." This, plus the perception that the city was
losing "its teeth". To back this up, he presented an array
of 'mindbytes' from city adfolk, bemoaning the lost glory of the
city's advertising, be it business or creativity, and the fleeing
of all the action to other metros. This "dismal picture"
inspired a story in Ray. The chief of the Red Indians couldn't see
the sky clearly from the big city, so he decided to play safe and
tell his people to prepare for a really cold winter. To confirm,
he called the weather service, which confirmed his guess-and so
again, each time he rechecked. But how was the service so sure,
he finally asked. Because, said the weatherman, "the Red Indians
are collecting wood like crazy." "People," alleged
Ray, "are seeing what they want to see." The numbers,
he said, said something else. Local advertising, at Rs 500 crore,
was growing in happy double-digits-with some 250 agencies vying
for it, and with small and medium outfits thriving.
Describing advertising as a business of the
"unique configuration of existing ideas" deployed to solve
problems, Ray wrapped up his case with a flourish for Kolkata: "There
are paradigm shifts in mindstyles and lifestyles. Malls and multiplexes
are booming; pockets are swelling; desires are mounting. In other
words, it is a marketers' paradise."
Raina started off by distinguishing ideas from
businesses. "There are hundreds of Calcutta ideas, but not
businesses." Take businesses first. Britannia and Lipton Brooke
Bond: Cal ideas but Bangalore businesses. Reckitt: Cal idea, Delhi
business. Then take ad campaigns. 'Made for each other' and 'We
also make steel': ideated in Cal, but used all over India. Industries
too. Jute: Cal idea, global industry. Why, even people. "Suhel
is a Calcutta idea but a Delhi business," quipped Raina.
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| Ideas and businesses: Suhel Seth (L)
moderates as Ram Ray (centre) and Ishan Raina (R) dwell on Kolkatta's
ad industry |
"Essentially," said Raina, making
his case, "Calcutta has been a resource provider of people."
People with ideas, that is. Yet, there's something about the city
that doesn't let its own brands and businesses go very far beyond
the city. The jute industry, he added, was a good example of such
myopia.
The city has got itself a name for roshogollas
and jewellery, interjected Seth, but perhaps not advertising. Shouldn't
one also blame the flight of industry-say, Britannia moving to Bangalore-for
this? "Yes and no," replied Raina, "Yes because the
industry looks at talent and Calcutta hasn't protected, nurtured
flagships. No because advertising is also responsible. Why can't
Calcutta do some good work?"
This was too "idealistic" for Ray.
"To back a great product with a great idea, you need a big
market. Most of Calcutta's brands are focussed on the East, or Calcutta."
The city needs to rethink, and get down to serious brand building,
he admonished, to make the best of the image makeover it was getting
in the global media. "Bengal has not managed to market the
soul, unlike the French," said Raina. "To market Calcutta,"
suggested Ray, "we need to address insights that matter, and
not those that we feel good about."
On that point of mutual agreement began the
Q&A session. How could the city 'shock' India into believing
it had changed? An audience member wanted to know. Raina's suggestion:
making an aggressive claim to the city's pioneering ideas-such as
the outdoor hoarding 'skins'. The city's "civility", Seth
sighed, didn't permit too much tom-tomming-despite the contribution
to India's intellectual capital. "There is no city that has
spread more talent per square mile than Calcutta has spread,"
said Seth. "We are self-effacing," agreed Ray, presenting
this centre of intellectual ferment as a city that was too shy to
claim its rightful role in shaping the finer aspects of people's
minds.
Another member of the audience wondered if
"reverse snobbery" was the problem. "I don't think
it's reverse snobbery," replied Ray, "I think its ineptitude-not
being able to express yourself, sell yourself. It's an attitudinal
problem."
The very course of the debate, though, made
for quite some expression, the audience would have agreed. And it
wasn't left stunned, startled and stupefied by the experience, though
the wood-gatherers were still to be spotted.
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"No
city has spread more 
