Madhukar Sabnavis: Consumer protected

Big advertisers are soft targets

I was at two seminars on branding in the past one month. In both, questions were raised about the appropriateness of marketing and advertising creating desire for products without sharing complete information about their products. In one seminar, citing a recent car accident, a participant asserted that automobile brands, while making their cars look desirable, should also warn consumers about their safety standards. In another, a participant raised the question about beauty brands making people feel inadequate in order to sell their products. On a separate TV debate recently, the marketing and advertising of fairness creams again became a punching bag, with the now familiar cry that these made dark women feel inferior and created an elevated space for fairness. How much is advertising and marketing actually at fault in each of these cases? Interestingly, all these allegations, subliminally, had big brands in their subtexts.

In a society where brands and marketing messages have become omnipresent, it's natural and fair that they come under the scanner. It's also important that society watchdogs such as the media - traditional and social - and social organisations exist as a counterbalance to a free corporate and business sector. They provide both a mirror and a non-legal regulatory mechanism to ensure that consumers and society are protected from products and messaging that hurt local sentiments or are misleading and false. These transgressions do, sometimes, happen in a business' quest for growth.

However, at the same time, it's important to give marketers and their advertising agencies a level playing field. In most such debates, big advertisers often come under the harshest of scanners from these social watchdogs. Are watchdogs today becoming wolves? Are big brands soft targets for watchdogs building their own salience and stature? Reputations are built over years, but can be destroyed by some hasty or irresponsible comment by opinion leaders. Negative news travels faster than positive. How often have we shared a great restaurant experience with friends the following day? And how often have we complained about a bad experience the next day?

First, one needs to remember that most marketers and advertising agencies in India involve home-bred, middle-class people, much like the general public. Unlike in many other countries, the existence of expats is limited and most messaging work produced and products made are by Indians for Indians - even if adapted. This ensures local sensitivity to much of the activities they do. Second, most big marketers are here for the long run. Short-termism can hurt them; they are, thus, very conscious of it. They have strong legal and commercial departments, which ensure everything is done cautiously. No one wants negative publicity or legal action. Third, advertising is one business that has had self-regulation for over two decades. Even in the quest for creativity and business, if lines are crossed, there is an industry mechanism to ensure corrective action - and most big advertisers and advertising creators are active members of this process. And finally, advertising is a trailing indicator of culture. Much as marketing and advertising talk about shaping consumer attitudes, beliefs and behaviour, they most often ride on something that exists in culture and society - it could be active or latent. The best brand messaging catches a trend early and rides on it as it grows through popular culture and social evolution.

The continued existence of the desire for fairness in Indian society cannot be attributed to fairness creams and their promotion. It comes from a deep cultural indoctrination of "fair is beautiful and good" and "dark is ugly and bad". For example, consider our mythology and the way it is communicated in Indian society. It is either through comic books such Amar Chitra Katha or through the oral tradition of grandparents telling stories to grandchildren. Shakuntala is shown and described as fair and beautiful; the rakshasi (female demon) is dark and ugly. And this continues through popular culture, albeit subliminally - in movies, novels and serials. In fact, studies in the West, too, have shown deep down colour discrimination among the most educated and evolved races. Not surprisingly, despite all the debates on colour discrimination, a men's fairness cream has found much traction in the Indian market. So, at one level, heretic though it may sound, fairness creams are actually providing a solution to this deep-seated bias and helping to build a colour-equal society. This does not mean that advertising should continue to drive colour discrimination. In fact, big advertisers and the self-regulatory body have together consciously developed a code for promotion of such creams. This needs to be appreciated. Just as much as the other cultural influences of the perpetuation of fairness obsession need to be recognised and fixed.

Similarly, there is a tendency for watchdogs to go after the safety standards of branded and advertised products. That in itself is not a wrong thing. However, it needs to be balanced with the evaluation of the safety of many other unbranded, local products that often are much less safe and more impure. And these don't become topics of public debate as they are more difficult to fix, less glamorous and maybe - just maybe - don't help to give mileage to the watchdogs. Finally, as in the car example mentioned at the start of this piece, demanding a marketing campaign carry the burden of listing all the positives and negatives of its product in front of the consumer is deeply unfair. It's like expecting a prospective candidate to put in his CV both his accomplishments and his failures! Branded and marketed products need to meet up to standards laid down by the law of the land, and this could evolve over time. Making false claims is wrong; but making the product pluses exciting is the job of marketing and advertising - and that right needs to be protected.

As society evolves, marketing will get more aggressive; messaging and brands will become more omnipresent. Watchdogs play an active role in keeping "unbridled" business growth in check, and by being the social conscience. However, watchdogs can become wolves in search of their vested interests, and that, too, needs to be checked. Most professional marketers - big advertisers - are, in my experience, very respectful of consumers and their sensitivities, whether cultural or informational. Hurting consumers is not going to benefit them in the long run. Consumers are well protected. We need to know that and recognise that. Something worth thinking about.

The writer is vice-chairman of Ogilvy and Mather. These views are personal
madhukar.sabnavis@ogilvy.com