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Executive Interviews: Interview with Harish Bijoor on Social Cause Marketing
September 2009
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By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary
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You are known to be one of the pioneering marketers of coffee. Can you brief us on your stint with working for tea and coffee brands? Did you intend to specialize on tea and coffee or it just happened over a period of time?
I started my career accidentally. I joined Brooke Bond, a Tea and Coffee company for a start. I worked on different varieties of tea and coffee and then went on to specialize in the terrain. In the beginning, it was all about marketing tea and coffee. As I grew in the company, it was all about plantations, operations, export and more. I moved on after 8 years with the HUL group over to Tata Tea Limited, and then on to Tata Coffee Limited. That was a startup operation in marketing coffee from scratch. It was exciting. Within the HUL group, I had a given portfolio of brands to manage. At Tata Coffee, I had to play a major role in creating those brands and options for the company to have a marketing front-face – from being a plantations oriented company for decades. In short, I guess it all happened over time. Over a span of 16 years across two companies. HUL at one end and Tata Coffee Limited at another. Exciting times! In one of the presentations made by you at PR Pundits workshop held in Mumbai on November 30, 2005, you said that brand is just a thought, a simple thought that lives in a person’s mind, whereas, few consider brand to be a perception. How would you like to justify your idea?
The brand is really not a perception. It is simpler, it is a mere thought. A thought that lives in people’s minds. Perceptions are formed much later, the wings and tails that brands sprout in people’s minds after living there for a while. A brand is a thought that lives in people’s minds – not necessarily in consumer minds. Brands live in the minds of all – consumer or not! One of the big and powerful brands in your mind could be your mother. This is a powerful thought. This is not a perception. It is a thought. Thoughts are more powerful than perceptions. Simple as well. According to you, why is Social-Cause Marketing important in present day scenario? What are the origins of Social-Cause Marketing? Is this similar to Cause-Related Marketing?
In the beginning, marketing is all about selling products. About selling tea, car, tractor, pantyhose, etc. Then it is about selling services. Marketing of services is a higher end development. When products come to a standstill, services take over. To that extent, I do believe everything is a service. Nothing will remain a pure product at all. Coffee drank at home is a product. The same coffee partaken at a Barista or a Café Coffee Day outlet is a service. God worshipped at home is a product. God worshipped at church or a temple is a service! The service dimension adds value to a brand. Value, that is unique. Irreplaceable even! Products and services are sold at the lowest common denominator level by the use of simple marketing. As societies and people evolve, marketing assumes a higher dimension of play. Look keenly at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for a clue. When marketing to society is simple, simple marketing rules. When society is deprived of food, clothing and shelter, simple marketing rules. As one climbs Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, marketing itself needs to morph. When social needs dominate, marketing needs to focus on societal mores and moods. Marketing is all about classiness and experiential benefits here. Still, one lives at the functional satiation level. As society morphs still, and as people reach levels of self-actualization in their lives, when money and societal scores do not matter, marketing needs to morph to a level of emotional gains and cues. At the highest end of these emotional gains and cues lies social marketing. Social marketing dominates in a society that is operating at the highest common denominator level of its customer profile and not at the lowest common denominator level. Societal marketing attains relevance in categories where there is enough ennui with standard brand positioning stances. Take tea for instance, in the beginning it was marketed simply as the ‘tasty’ tea. The selling line was generic. Simple. As society grows up from one degree of want, need, desire, aspiration and deprivation to another, marketing itself morphs in its appeal. Tea therefore becomes functionally positioned. It becomes the tea with ‘taste’, the tea with ‘strength’ and the tea with ’aroma’. And then, comes another tea with ‘taste, aroma and strength’ all together. This functional stance can then moves on to economy (the tea that gives more cups per kilogram) and more. Society morphs and grows again. Functional attributes and functional positioning stances give way to emotional ones. The tea that gets you to fall in love? The tea that helps you work more (the work-mate tea) and more. Society grows up. Society is tired of everything else now. Consumers are matured and are self-actualising. This is the time for the ‘social cause’ USP to come in. Tata Tea’s Jaago-re campaign fits in here. Tata Tea is not the only company that has experimented with this to success. Lifebuoy has, with its “Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetana” and the Lifebuoy clean up the locality campaign ads. So has Surf, with its Do bucket paani bachana hai campaign with Shabana Azmi in the lead. It sure is cause-related marketing as well. Can you give us a few examples of highly successful global Social-Cause Marketing initiatives. What can be the insightful perspectives for marketers and brand managers from these initiatives?
Very simply, when you involve society in your marketing mix, it can be profitable. Society that is self-actualising emotes with your brand that much more, when you support society and its many causes. This is a terrific way to make consumer connect happen through brands. Are there any Indian brands that have succeeded in coming up with social campaigns?
HUL and Tata Tea are leaders in this space (social campaigns) of social- cause marketing.
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