The perils of fine targeting

Marketers must resist the urge to define their target groups too soon. Else, they must prepare to face brand positioning roadblocks

What if Johnson & Johnson was to come up with a campaign urging fathers to take interest in buying bath products for their newborn babies? How will India's leading carmaker Maruti Suzuki look if it reaches out to working women with the auto gear shift in its hatchback Celerio more aggressively? If you are someone working on a product launch or gearing up for the re-launch of a star product, pause to think about the best way to position your brand. Obviously by now you know your target group and chances are that you have zeroed in on youth. If yes, it is time to ask a simple question: Is it fair to simply forget about the consumers other than the ones a brand chooses to target explicitly? Can a brand afford to turn its back on this small but significant set of decision-makers?

Says Rohit Ohri, executive chairman, Dentsu India and CEO, Dentsu APAC, "Advertising is stuck in a time warp. Brands cannot choose to ignore target groups other than youth, like young mothers and middle-aged men and women."

Let us try and understand what Ohri is saying with the help of an example. While women, especially homemakers buy beverages for domestic consumption in India, the likes of Pepsi and Coca-Cola have rarely spoken to them through advertising. Some experts believe this could be one of the main reasons why, in India, the domestic consumption of beverages is still very small.

It is the same with leading shampoo brands. "The mom stereotype in advertising highlights the world around her, but denies her a sense of self," adds Ohri. Across different categories of products and services, there are many examples of neglected target groups with high purchasing power.

Earlier this month, Dentsu India launched MAMA Lab, an initiative dedicated to connecting brands with mothers, through real and actionable insights. It aims at gaining insights into mothers and motherhood in India that will go beyond oft-repeated motherhood statements. The project, which originated in Dentsu Tokyo, has a vision of being an ongoing visual and oral biography of Indian mothers. With MAMA Lab, Dentsu wants to reverse the pitch process by reaching out to the advertisers who have not paid attention to 'mothers' in their advertising so far. In fact, to understand multiple facets of today's women, Dentsu conducted a survey by interviewing 24 mothers across 12 cities over a period of one month. Interestingly, metros were excluded during this exercise.

The survey exposed the gap between how women are perceived and how they really are. For instance, while many believe that a woman is born a mother, women interviewed in the survey disagreed. Then many women refused to believe the stereotype of following a structured motherhood with clear dos and donts. They think motherhood must have an element of 'play' and it is alright to experiment to understand what works best for the child. Dentsu will use these insights to help advertisers target mothers differently. Swati Bhattacharya, principal partner, MAMA Lab, creative, Dentsu, says, "No stock character is as ubiquitous in advertising as the sacrificial mother. She is the conquering hero of child rearing, endlessly in demand but never really desired."

While some advertisers may want to listen to the ideas of MAMA Labs at this point, they will tread carefully down this new creative path. This is because in doing so a brand can, at times, runs the risk of confusing its core target group. This could impact its brand value and sales. Sachin Bharadwaj, creative director at Mumbai-based advertising agency Basecamp India, believes that any such move in a client's advertising has to be based on a solid product strategy.

He says, "Broadening your target group is never a one-off project. I will never recommend a manufacturer of baby products to talk to fathers on Father's Day and forget about it the next day."

While addressing multiple target groups can be a double-edged sword - leading to clear wastage of the ad buck if not done finely - the question remains whether inclusive advertising can actually result in higher brand sales or, at a more philanthropic level, even category expansion.