Grey Worldwide - Life not the Agency

While flipping through the India Today Special Issue(Jan 8 - 2006 Year of Remixes),these two images struck me most! And once again there was this acute sense of realisation that no part of our world/ brand world is black and white any more. Just about everything is a shade of grey...

For many years now, grey has been the dominant colour of popular culture. And in most of the lingering images of 2006, it's position in our lives and in mass media has been cemented.

1. Sanjay Dutt, the likeable star(the 'bechaara son' of Sunil Dutt and Nargis) of the years biggest block-buster-Lage Raho Munnabhai and the proponent of Gandhigiri is actually facing conviction under TADA! Similar fate awaits the darling of the Bollywood fraternity- Salman Khan...

2. News TV, founded on the values of 'Sabse Tej', 'Sach Dikhate Hain Hum', Haqeeqat Jaisi, Khabar Waisi' has actually become 'Tamasha TV in it's relentless lust for TRPs and sticky eye-balls.

So, every jhatka of a dance bar girl, the macabre child deaths in Noida, the unfortunate fall of a boy in a ditch make for 'Breaking News' and high-decibel coverage!
News TV is the new grey zone between reportage, activism, sensationalism and ludicrousness!

3. Politics has always been in the grey zone of 'criminalisation' and 'vote bank politics'

4. Prime time entertanment(saas-bahu serials) has been in the grey zone of 'slick-and-high-decibel-marketing, 'idiocy', idea-bankrupcy' and 'regressive themes'.

5. The newspaper brand that starts the year with a 'Let there be light' slogan ends the year with 'I will get into scandals' resolution!! It's a strange variegation of light and darkness here. LOL

6. Colas have now been in the grey zone of glamour, pesticide controversy and credibility-under-question celebrity endorsements.

7. Consumer behaviour has been in the grey zone of 'brand indifference' and brand-slutness as Marian Saltzman calls it!

8. Companies are invading the blogosphere as well. Flogs-fake blogs are grey!
Few silly corporate attempts to penetrate Youtube, myspace, orkut are grey marketing examples...

Funny, how living in this 'Grey World' we still create 'pure' brand worlds/ brand keys and virtuous brand values laundry list...

Fig. The ad for Suzlon in ET today(the wind energy guys). Look at the pure world they are alluding to. A world that today exists only within the glossy pages of a magazine often not read!!(Suzlon is here just a representative example.)

- Would a grey world need a new brand thinking lens?

- What would today's kids call grey when they grow up?
Will it matter then?

- Will grey work in the long term or will there be a backlash...

- What is the threshold limit/ boundary of a grey world?

-Is this a meaningless question in an India Poised(the new TOI campaign) - that's drunk on its youthful exuberance, new found envy from the West and a general middle class(biggest market) self congratulatory mood?

- Once again Bollywood found its grey icon long before corporates or advertsing did. SRK in his various roles in movies like Darr, Baazigar, Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, Don2 has been the Grey Baadshah for a decade now...

The public has accepted him. Will the consumer do the same? And aren't they anyways the same:-)

Guys, if you get the time do rack your grey matter on the grey world!

Related Post : McHealth and Brand Grey Zone

McHealth and Brand Grey Zone

There are some big global brands about whom I feel increasingly indifferent and ambivalent. And I have an inkling this might be a shared feeling for a lot of us! Top of charts would be McDonalds and Coke/Pepsi...

Today is World Heart Day. I celebrated it by visting McDonalds with Shilpi and Neo:-)
As I had McBites and gulped Coke, a multitude of conflicting thoughts about the two brands raced my mind. Thoughts which never get captured in a focus group, a 2D Hofstede or a single lens laundry list of virtuous values compiled by the brand manager or the planner. But thoughts which increasingly traverse a knowledge-based consumerist culture!

1. Since 2003 if not earlier, I stopped believing in the McDonalds positioning - "If food is a friend, McDonalds is family". Today, McDonalds for me is a slickly packaged, kid-friendly junk food brand. Similarly, for me Coke lost it's 'always refreshing' meaning many years ago. Today, it's a brand of 'small indulgence' which has 6parts per bn pesticide( small enough not to desist me from drinking it twice weekly but large enough not to get the PET bottle home).

2. I am fairly addicted to Coke. Given a choice will always prefer it to a Pepsi. But then again I don't think I have a cache of positive feelings or loyalty towards the brand!
I am addicted to (a)it's complimentary role- Tandoori Chicken and Coke, Movie + Popcorn + Coke, Bland Canteen Food + Coke, Boredom + Coke; (b) it's taste and fizz,(c) the brand graphics and history and (d) the sense of Internationalism and Americana it still holds for me!

3. Increasingly, I find most Cola advertising(Indian) quite idiotic and unnecessary! It might be worthwhile to risk a quarter, free of cola advertising and check the resultant effect on sales. My wicked guess is nothing much will change! Cola advertsing I believe is largely an ego game for marketers and agencies played on mass media.

4. Most celebrity advertising, as I said in my last post is filtered by the savvy consumer(young and old). Celeb endorsement specifically for cola brands I feel is at best entertainment( when executed well -Thanda matlab Coca Cola) and at worst plain 'COLA noise'

5. Like many SEC A Indians, today I dole out generous reward points to health/ fitness conscious, natural brands! Climbing my mental InterBrand scale are brands like Himalaya, Dabur Real, Amul, etc. McDonalds and Coke/ Pepsi hold the bottom most ranks.

6 Hard sell doesn't work for me at all. Therefore, when McDonalds starts preaching vitamin science on its table-mats, I recoil. In similar vein, when Aamir or Rajeev Bakshi come on TV in defence of their brands, it irritates me more. My advice to these mega brands - Please don't jabber McHealth. Please be true to your junk core. I am partly addicted to your brand anyways. I will continue to indulge though in smaller SKUs. You will never regain the glory of yester years. And no amout of slick advertising, hard-nosed PR will ever change my views!

7. Well, the reason I went to McDonalds today was to check out the linking road branch for Neo's birthday! The place had a budget scheme, it had the balloons and the festoons, it had Ronald McDonald..And McDonalds would make my son and his friends happy. Yet, in my heart there was a great dissonance and resistance for the brand. Because my mind is storing a simple equation. McDonalds = Junk Food. And that's not good for Neo and his friends! It will never be...

Would love to compile a list of brands which we love to consume and hate as well! O smart consumer, welcome to the grey zone of modern brands...