In this cover story, the legendary Alyque Padamsee expounds on the things he is most passionate about – advertising and marketing. Critically, he puts forth the pillars that make a great marketing icon – those who find their rightful place in 4Ps B&M’s Annual Hall of Fame Issue.
My lifelong stint with theatre and the ad world has taught me that in theatre, you have the freedom to be your own boss and to do, what you want to do – whereas in the advertising world, you have to work in a highly disciplined manner. You have to first listen to your client who is investing a huge amount of money on advertising and then you have to persuade your client to like the idea and to make him believe that it will work for his brand. However, advertising teaches you the discipline of thinking. It taught me too. This is something I never had before.
For any great marketing head, it all starts with research, research and more research – in fact, it is the most important thing he has to undertake. A thorough knowledge of your target customer’s perspectives is most important. Only when you understand your customers, can you generate a convincing idea for the brand’s product. The next step is to find out how your target group will notice your brand and not get swooned over by your competitor’s brands. You need to choose the right channels for that.
Advertising is a very creative art. But it has an objective – to sell your products. Regardless of how many awards a creative may win, the quality of an ad is only revealed by the amount of sales it has been able to deliver. For if it does not sell, it is only a failure. When I was proposing the idea of a new product (Fair & Handsome) for men, everybody thought I was joking. But I was serious. Research told me that by design or inadvertently, 35% of the consumers of Fair & Lovely were men. And it is because it’s not only women who would like to appear beautiful, but men too had the desire to be better at appearances; just that the desires were hush-hush. So when we launched Fair & Handsome, it was an instant hit. It delivered an annual sales figure of Rs.100 crores. It is by far the most successful brand launch in the personal products range in the last 10 years. Great marketing heads ensure that when they communicate with their target customers, they see to it that the idea is absorbed by the customers and that it connects the brand to them.
When I launched the Hamara Bajaj campaign, the sales significantly shot up. The same was the case with Liril soap. Consumer behaviour is not always based on their rational choices. A lot of times, they go by their emotions. For instance, Liril was not a rational product, but more of an emotional product. People loved the idea of freshness. And freshness is a feeling that was projected by Liril’s ad, which said that the soap will give you this feeling. And so with Liril ad campaign, the lady who was taking a shower in the waterfall symbolised a customer having a good time. The idea connected with the masses as they too wanted freshness. Ultimately, the product was a success. Similarly, MRF was at number 9, and when the muscle man campaign came in, it went up to top the charts. In contrast, in Nimbooz, the addition of lime was a rational appeal to the consumer.
The ever changing and highly evolving markets of today have made it very difficult for today’s marketing heads to be efficient with their money spent. And the figures are huge. More than 50% of the hundreds of crores spent on advertising today, I dare say, is a waste because the money is being spent either on ideas that are not well researched, or on propositions that are plain wrong or are not well presented. Hence, at first, the marketers should necessarily spend money on research.
My lifelong stint with theatre and the ad world has taught me that in theatre, you have the freedom to be your own boss and to do, what you want to do – whereas in the advertising world, you have to work in a highly disciplined manner. You have to first listen to your client who is investing a huge amount of money on advertising and then you have to persuade your client to like the idea and to make him believe that it will work for his brand. However, advertising teaches you the discipline of thinking. It taught me too. This is something I never had before.
For any great marketing head, it all starts with research, research and more research – in fact, it is the most important thing he has to undertake. A thorough knowledge of your target customer’s perspectives is most important. Only when you understand your customers, can you generate a convincing idea for the brand’s product. The next step is to find out how your target group will notice your brand and not get swooned over by your competitor’s brands. You need to choose the right channels for that.
Advertising is a very creative art. But it has an objective – to sell your products. Regardless of how many awards a creative may win, the quality of an ad is only revealed by the amount of sales it has been able to deliver. For if it does not sell, it is only a failure. When I was proposing the idea of a new product (Fair & Handsome) for men, everybody thought I was joking. But I was serious. Research told me that by design or inadvertently, 35% of the consumers of Fair & Lovely were men. And it is because it’s not only women who would like to appear beautiful, but men too had the desire to be better at appearances; just that the desires were hush-hush. So when we launched Fair & Handsome, it was an instant hit. It delivered an annual sales figure of Rs.100 crores. It is by far the most successful brand launch in the personal products range in the last 10 years. Great marketing heads ensure that when they communicate with their target customers, they see to it that the idea is absorbed by the customers and that it connects the brand to them.
When I launched the Hamara Bajaj campaign, the sales significantly shot up. The same was the case with Liril soap. Consumer behaviour is not always based on their rational choices. A lot of times, they go by their emotions. For instance, Liril was not a rational product, but more of an emotional product. People loved the idea of freshness. And freshness is a feeling that was projected by Liril’s ad, which said that the soap will give you this feeling. And so with Liril ad campaign, the lady who was taking a shower in the waterfall symbolised a customer having a good time. The idea connected with the masses as they too wanted freshness. Ultimately, the product was a success. Similarly, MRF was at number 9, and when the muscle man campaign came in, it went up to top the charts. In contrast, in Nimbooz, the addition of lime was a rational appeal to the consumer.
The ever changing and highly evolving markets of today have made it very difficult for today’s marketing heads to be efficient with their money spent. And the figures are huge. More than 50% of the hundreds of crores spent on advertising today, I dare say, is a waste because the money is being spent either on ideas that are not well researched, or on propositions that are plain wrong or are not well presented. Hence, at first, the marketers should necessarily spend money on research.
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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