6
Ethical Challenges in Marketing-II
Ramanujam Sridhar
DO ETHICS AND MARKETING GO TOGETHER?
When one of the organizers asked me to speak in this conference, I agreed primarily because I have spent a good part of my life in Loyola. As I studied there for five years, I naturally spent a lot of my time there. In all those five years, I learnt only two things in economics: one was that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and the second was that in the long run, we are all dead. I do not know for sure if either of these statements is related to economics, but I suspect they both are. However, having agreed so readily to participate when I was given the topic, I thought I should not have accepted because, to my mind, ethics and marketing and communications do not go together. When I was given the topic, my reaction was—you must be joking. Please forgive me because that is how I am. Only Mr Srinivasa Raghavan1 will find it difficult to digest, but I can take some liberties. Paddu2 and I were classmates in school, although at first glance it will seem that I am the teacher and he is the student. Krishna Mohan3 is a veteran in the field of advertising who looks like a trainee. I know both of them very well. In any case, the senior members in the audience, please ignore, I am talking to the students. How do you describe me? I am an out-of-work banker, I have spent six years in my life counting other people's money and writing other people's fixed deposit receipts.
ETHICS SHOULD BE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC
I believe I am a demanding customer, and today I am going to talk about ethics and marketing communication from a customer's point of view. I can do so because many of us wear multiple hats; we are professionals on one hand and customers on the other. When we are customers, we are very demanding but when we are serving somebody, we immediately withdraw and say, ‘How can the customers be so demanding?’ It's a very funny conundrum but we are all contributing to it. India wants respectable quality at reasonable price. This is what we have seen with many products. But does your attitude determine your product or the service quality? This is the question that I always have. There is a famous Tamil song ‘Ponal pogatum poda’ (‘It's okay yaar, chalega’): a refrain you hear particularly from manufacturers and marketers. If there is anyone from Bangalore please forgive me. This is the most common expression in Bangalore. Everybody there says ‘chalega’. So, there is this conversation between two guys; one says, ‘My wife has run away with my best friend.’ He will say, ‘oglibudy.’ But if you tell him that you want a glass of Cauvery water, the expression is very different. So, this is the bottom of the problem, we can all talk about ethics till the cows come home. But really, I have to be ethically right.
IF THERE IS NO COMPETITION, PRODUCERS EASILY BECOME UNETHICAL
So here is one famous product of my time. This was a brilliant ad done in the ‘80s. In fact, whenever we went to meet a client he would say, ‘Can you do a Hamara Bajaj ad for me?’ I said we do scooters. But other than that, the point we made was that Bajaj was a brilliant scooter of that time. You had to wait seven years to get it and after using it for seven years, if you sold it you got the same price, but the quality of the scooter is another thing altogether. For many years, I thought the only way to start a scooter was tilt it to left as the engine is to the left. And Bajaj just got away with whatever they did, because there was no competition.
TENDENCY TO TAKE THINGS FOR GRANTED
And there was this car which we were all used to. In fact, I tell you that India is a very religious country but the amount of religious fervour that increased because of this car had to be seen to be believed. The moment we got into this car you would say ‘Oh God!’ So what is the car manufacturer doing today? He is giving better cars; we have 721 options in cars, if you want to buy. The way forward is not in ethics, it's in competition.
One must realize that one can't get away with inferior products. We were doing this work for a mall in Bangalore and were talking to the manager and he wanted space for 200 car parks and I said it won't work. He said ‘This is India yaar, they will find a way’. So that's the starting point, ‘This is India’. And that's the point I will like to make—that we do not do anything until we are forced to do. So, we should force the marketers to do the thing that is right.
As Stephen Leacock once suggested, advertising can be defined as anything that is long enough to arrest the consumer's mind. We are not exactly the legal framework. There are many things that I am going to show you that you do within the framework. The most beautiful ad, if you look at it from advertising point of view, is the one that hits you straight in the gut. This is India, where boys are preferred more than girls. I ask my students, ‘Will you marry a dark girl?’ and they say ‘Yes’. ‘Please call me at your wedding, and I will be there,’ I tell them. It has something which hits you there but it's on the verge of being outrageous.
CELEBRITY MANIA IN PRODUCT ENDORSEMENT
Another great obsession is the celebrities endorsing products. For example, the Victor advertisement, here is the beautiful ad in the motorcycle sector, but one wonders if Sachin really rides that bike, or any bike for that matter. Another ad of celebrity endorsing products is the Santro ad. And at a conference, Shah Rukh Khan mentioned that his favourite vehicle is a special utility vehicle (SUV). I am sure Preity Zinta and Shah Rukh Khan's favourite car is not Santro, but that's how life goes.
Next ad is the Parker ad with Amitabh Bachchan endorsing it. I am not sure Amitabh Bachchan has a pen priced Rs 50. This is the question—why should a celebrity use the products which he is only endorsing. This is where the legal framework comes in. We don't have any free trade agreement (FTA) where it says the endorser should use the product except for the shoot. These are the loopholes that we use.
ADVERTISING SHOULD NOT PROMISE WHAT CANNOT BE DELIVERED
India loves music and the advertising agencies have discovered that they can engage us by giving us the opportunity to hear their loud commercials. Children are watching TV and the father says, ‘Why you are watching TV at such a high volume?’ The kids say they haven't done anything. They just played a commercial. For example, take the IDEA ad. We know even if you do not see the ad, you want to hear it and that is a wrong conception. In India, we don't have what the US has, for example, they have a channel equalizer where, even if you shoot the ad in high volume, it will play only at the level which audience can take. In India, they know that we don't have any restrictions. All commercials are recorded at high volumes. I am sure Mr Krishna Mohan is going to deny it but these are things that are not right. Will you do it to your family? Of course, you will when you are in business. So, why does advertising promise something that it doesn't usually deliver?
Here is another beautiful example, the Hutchison advertisement. At my office in Bombay, they are very fit unlike me. The moment they get a call, they are all running out to pick it. The reason is they can't hear inside the office. The network, they say in the ad, is so brilliant that it works in all parts of the world. The commercial goes like this, wherever the boy goes, the network will follow. I am sorry but that's not how it is.
MEDIA CONUNDRUM
What about the media? It's a very common practice in business that if I want to be the greatest brand guru of all times, there are certain papers that will make it possible. They have a rate card. And my photograph will come, my quotes will come, my family will come. I will be there on ‘Page 3’. There is a rate card for everything and you can believe everything is true but do speak about plant and networking companies. What opened the flood gates was the advertising on the private channels. RAJ TV and SUN TV used to take ads, but Doordar-shan never used to take ads from big companies. So, once it started coming on TV, everyone thought it's true. And many people lost crores of money. So the media also, to my mind, is a culprit. Thus, as customers, we should look after ourselves.
I am sure everyone is familiar with the term ‘caveat emptor’: things get done only if you go to the top. I have a friend in Mumbai office who had problems with his Indica and he ran up and down trying to fix it, but nothing could be done. So, finally, he wrote to Ratan Tata saying that he was from the media and will take the issue to press. Within two hours, his car got changed. The car which was giving him trouble for three months was changed in two hours. One friend of mine in Chennai who had a Scorpio had a problem with it and then with the next one, and the dealer couldn't do anything. So, she wrote to Anand Mahindra who replied saying that ‘the mail was very distressing since he had the goal of making Mahindra customer-centric’. The moment you write to the big boss, something happens. Otherwise, who is to look after the customers? Here is my own example. Corporation Bank refused to give me an ATM card for three months. When I wrote to the manager, they came and delivered it to my home. So, I say what the hell is happening here. It's high time companies realize that the customers are not dumb. Today's consumers are very aware. You don't even have to be aware of the company. We all swear by brands. Another brilliant ad is the Nike commercial. I asked my son about the company and he said, ‘Great shoes but why do they employ child labour?’
THE NEED FOR VALUE-LED MARKETING
This is what you should remember, it's not the ad, the product, the brand. It's everything including the corporate brand. There is another thing to remember that the only thing that is worse than goodwill is ill will. Nowadays, customers have blogs where they speak on the brands. Discussing the services of an airline they wrote: ‘It is like we are catching a local train in a crowded station in Bombay’ and, ‘Even the old and sick people are not spared’. Here is someone else comparing one airline with another. This is what manufacturers have to tell everyone—they ought to know about the products and their features. Because that's the only way people will learn. Companies must move to two important points. Companies must move from value for money to value-led marketing. This is the future. Everything you do from products to advertising should be done keeping these points in mind. Brand relationships are created for people and by people. Marketing has got it completely wrong. Look at the jargon ‘marketing warfare’. We talk about campaign, ambushing the customers, but why can't we talk about ‘brand building with the customer’. The way I am approaching is that ‘I am going to fix this fellow’. The moment you look at that point of view, where is the question of ethics? So, let us look Westward at some perceptions. I am sorry but advertisement is not really at the top. Pharmacy is at the top at 64 per cent. The worst are the car salesmen at 5 per cent and advertisers are at 10 per cent. We are not there, but we are not that bad. We are getting there. This is what people like Seth Gordon are talking about when they say, ‘All marketers are liars’. Unfortunately, for us in India, this is what Bill Burnback had to say: ‘50 years ago, our industry was so carefully watched by the governmental agencies with their FTC ready to pounce on everything. And with every claim we can make, what we can say, we are narrowing down to the only sharpest tool left. Be creative, but don’t tell me the things which are not true.’
TREAT CUSTOMERS WITH CONCERN
We in India are most fortunate in terms of freedom, but let's not abuse this freedom. There is a lot of laxity and not all the customers are really waiting to take you to the court, but don't force people to do it for you. David Oglivy once said that the consumer is not a moron; it's your wife. I would like to refine this a bit. I have been married for 25 years, and a wife is someone whom you take for granted. If David had said that the consumer is your mistress then you would have taken greater care of her. What I say is treat your consumer like your child. Good business sense is very critical. If we do not treat our consumers like our children, we would end up where we rightly belong—in old age homes.