Marketing to Indians 101

 

Selling to Indians is definitely not an easy task. For sure, I am not the first person nor will be the last person to (re)discover this fact. Why is that Indians are a difficult community to advertize both for multinational companies, easily attracted to India because of its huge market and for regional companies aspiring to become a national player. Those companies which have found the holy grail of selling to Indians either by accident or by research have managed to keep their cash register ringing all the time.  But what is so unique about Indians that modern thinkers and marketing guru’s are unable to decode and devise a strategy that can guarantee success.

 

For starters you can never a common strategy / approach to appeal to the Indians, in short you just can’t straight jacket them. You have to employ the Divide and Conquer, perfected by Robert Clive of the East India trading Corporation. The country “India” can be divided into 5 major regions.  For sake of familiarity I have named them in the most elementary manner. 

 

Market 1 – Jammu & Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Old Delhi, North eastern states

Market 2 – Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh

Market 3 – Rest of Maharashtra, Rest of Andhra Pradesh , Goa

Market 4 – West Bengal, Punjab, Rest of Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat, Rest of Tamil Nadu

Market 5 – NCR (New Delhi, Gurgoan, Noida ), Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore

 

Why you can’t never treat India as a single country where people have the same mindset or cultural background is beyond the scope of this essay. Things can change after 2040 if we are to trust the demographic guidance given by the ‘Experts’.

 

The main idea of advertisement is to make people buy your product. We all have five senses to learn and explore this beautiful world. The art of Advertisement is to ensure that you appeal to more than one sense of the viewing public or to their vanity. If your advertisement appeals to only one sense then you’re ad is lost in the zillions of data the common man is exposed to in these days. Depending upon the target market you have to create the Ad’s appealing to multi senses.

 

At the basic you should appeal to the public’s sense of sight, and sound. Since these two are the most commonly used sense for mankind in TV / Newsprint medium. As you move from Market 1 to Market 5 we can start including the other ‘higher’ sense of thinking and rationalizing, like quoting technical facts, results of survey, latest results of research studies etc.

 

Examples of Brands which captured the imagination of the public

 

1.       Catchy tagline / jingle – Pepsi, Nirma, Ujala, Pulsar, ICICI bank , Idhayam Gingerly oil

2.       Excellent audio / video - Leo coffee powder, Shakthi masala, Power Soap, Cadburys chocolate

3.       Appealing to vanity : Axe chocolate , Sunflower oil, Fair & Lovely, HDFC Life insurance

 

 

The other way to capture the imagination of the public is through Brand Ambassador(BA). In the Indian heartland the best place to shop for BA’s is Bollywood / BCCI.  The choice of BA plays a crucial role in catapulting your brand in the Wild Wide West of consumer imagination. When the south Korean chaebol’s arrived on the Indian shores they had to compete against American and Japanese brands who had a better brand value and recall. They smartly employed New age Brand Ambassador, (Samsung – half of the Indian cricket, Hyundai – Shahrukh khan and LG – Bunch of bollywood actress) these people were the epitome or icons of the Indian dream, a dream which the Indian people believed in and worked hard to achieve them.