The Market Is Changing.Will the Marketer Come Up with New Rules or Just Tweak the Old

The Next Frontier

The market is changing. Will the marketer come up with new rules or just tweak the old?

Prasad Sangameshwaran

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Today it has become obvious that advertising is entering a new era. An era where creativity is no longer the key to success. Today's marketplace is no longer responsive to the kind of advertising that worked in the past. There are just too many products, too many companies, too much marketing noise. Advertising is entering an era where strategy is king." If someone mentioned that these words were written 40 years ago, you would ask them "what were you smoking?".

It was probably a similar situation in a different day and age, when the lines were written in 1972  by a certain Al Ries and his co-author Jack Trout. They penned them for their article-series  in the marketing and media magazine Advertising Age titled, "The Positioning Era Cometh". The rest is history. The concept of ‘positioning' that was articulated by the duo came to occupy pride of place in the marketing lexicon. And these articles were followed by a seminal book, Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind in the early 1980s.

Decades later, one could argue that it is time for both the marketing and advertising functions to be repositioned. Marketers, particularly those in India, are facing too many products, too many companies and too much marketing noise — and this is by no means a suggestion that we trail the West by four decades.

In some ways, India is probably facing a unique situation as the marketing game is witnessing two revolutions: the emergence and growth of modern retail formats and the digital revolution are happening almost simultaneously and, not one after the other, as most western countries have witnessed. That, in turn, changes the way marketers have been looking at product placement and distribution as both formats demand completely different skill sets.

Then, unlike most of the world, digital in India has a significantly higher mobile phone component. Around 250 million phones are estimated to be Internet-enabled. And, Statcounter, a web analytics company, estimates that almost 42.25 per cent of these consumers use their handsets to access the Internet (as of January 2012). That number has shot up from just 18.8 per cent in FY 2010-2011. And this time, India has no global example to follow to craft a marketing strategy — unlike the prkkevious media evolutions from radio to the television era.

In the absence of precedents, it is no surprise then that senior marketers such as Hemant Bakshi, executive director, home and personal care at Hindustan Unilever (HUL), one of the foremost marketing companies in India, think this is a huge opportunity for the marketing industry in India. Referring to the usage of mobile phones as a digital channel for marketing and advertising, he says, "We have an opportunity to create models for marketing and advertising that can be adopted by the rest of the world." China — if at all — is just a few months ahead of India as a benchmark, he adds.

While creating new marketing models, will some of the time-tested ones, like the 4Ps (product, price, placement and promotion) or even positioning, come under the scanner? Some like Larry Light, the former global chief marketing officer of fast food giant McDonalds, and marketing wizard Don Schultz have already questioned whether marketing concepts such as positioning are relevant in current market conditions.

"It does not make sense to ignore principles that worked in the past, just because the environment has become more competitive," argues Ries, in an interview with BW (read interview). His former partner, Jack Trout, had similarly defended his position on this issue in an interview with BW in 2008.

While some would argue that both Ries and Trout had to be defensive, a large number of senior marketers, professors and consultants agree that while the game of marketing is constantly evolving, some of the old rules still hold good.

"Everything has changed. And nothing has changed," says Graham Hales, CEO of Interbrand, London, one of the world's leading brand consultancies. He argues that nothing has changed as far as the principles of marketing are concerned — creating a credible, differentiated and relevant promise to customers that is based on what is driving demand and  meets their future needs. But on the other hand, "everything has changed as the ways to meaningfully deliver that promise have moved on significantly and continue to change constantly," says Hales.

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He finds support in Kevin Lane Keller, E.B. Osborn professor of marketing at the Tuck School of Business, who has co-authored recent editions of Marketing Management with marketing guru Philip Kotler. "Some people make it seem as if there is a complete revolution and things are going to become completely different. I do not think that is right. Some of the old rules still apply," says Keller (See: Keller Apps). But that is not to say that there is any dearth of changes both across the world and in India.