Executive Interviews: Interview with Harish Bijoor on Social Cause Marketing
September 2009 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary

Harish Bijoor
Harish Bijoor,
CEO Harish Bijoor Consults, Inc.

• Do you consider social marketing to be an effective tool in influencing the buying behavior of the customer? If it succeeds, what is the longevity of this marketing approach?
  Social marketing can be a single idea or it can be a cascade of many ideas that are campaignable. Tata Tea Jaago Re is a single idea. An idea that attains relevance during election time in a big way. This single idea can be used in different ways altogether. The joy of this idea lies in the fact that tea is a wake-up stimulant. The product story can be woven intrinsically into the campaign with no disconnect at all. Longevity of such ideas lies in the creative excellence that can be achieved through differing and different campaigns.

• Take for instance, the Jaago Re! campaign, the ad focused on election-related issues. Would people still remember the Jaago Re! campaign even after the elections? Will this make some kind of impact on the customers? If the customer’s memory is short-lived, to what extent can they relate the ads with Tata Tea? Will this drive the sales of the brand even after?
  Most Cause-Related Marketing (CRM) campaigns are poor on sale generation. They do much more than create sale. They seldom create sales. They help build a positive brand image. Tata Tea will need to create separate and disparate campaigns to create sales. Jaago Re essentially creates brand salience, and brand positivity. For sales, you need campaigns that operate at a crass level of consumption oriented dynamics.

• If social branding becomes the long-term initiative of Tata Tea, what can be the other socially relevant themes for the brand? Would Tata Tea continue coming up with the same kind of advertising in the future?
  I do believe Tata Tea must lapse into its standard format of advertising once again and must not get carried away by it all too much. It has done an excellent job with Jaago Re. But the company must move on. Remember, the number of customers who sit at the self-actualisation level in India are a nano-percentage of the total market. Time to move on. Move on with campaigns that will sell more and more tea once again. The memory of Jaago Re will be there as a good and positive stroke for a brand right through. It is important for the brand management team of Tata Tea not to get bogged down by all the accolades all around. Brand managers need to be realistic and in sync with ground level needs of the sales teams.

• How do you look at this initiative? Is this Tata Tea’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or just any other marketing/branding initiative?
  I do believe this is Tata Tea’s social responsibility activity that has a brand piggybacking on it. I do believe it is an excellent campaign and has created for the brand and the company a very positive appeal in the minds of consumers – not only consumers of tea, but consumers of the democracy that we live within.

• Tata Tea is also a global brand with significant market shares in countries like the UK and the US. In the light of growing cause-related marketing programs, do you see any need for the company to take up such initiatives even at the global level?
  I do think the opportunity lies open in this realm. There can be campaigns that talk the green language for instance. Tea is green and the green cover it adds to, is a story in itself. The global opportunity is big, but highly cluttered as of now.

• Tata Tea took up Jaago Re! campaign after it attained first position in India in terms of volume. As such, do you establish any relationship between brand life cycle and social-cause marketing? At what stage of brand life cycle does it make sense for any company to come out of its traditional advertising model (highlighting as usual the emotional and physical characteristics of product/brand) and focus on intellectual and self-actualization issues?
  It is the role of the leader to appropriate this role normally. In the English print media, the Times of India is the leader. The paper therefore appropriates a leadership stance and position in its campaigns, be it ‘Lead India’ or ‘Teach India’. When the leader in a category takes up such campaigns, spread, reach and credibility levels are far higher. There certainly is a relationship between leadership stance, CSR and the age life-cycle of a brand and the campaigns it can get away with.

• What will be the success of cause-related marketing programs, if they are initiated by a company at introduction or growth stage?
  Will be weak, will suffer on credibility scores, and will most likely flounder for most of its part. Therefore everyone cannot attempt this. Brand heritage is important. Brands go through the standard stage of being a novice, a student, a learner and finally a teacher. Only when a brand attains the teacher stage can it attempt such campaigns. Brands with grey hair to boast of get away best with such campaigns. Tata Tea is one such. So are Surf and Lifebuoy!

• Just the way a celebrity is commissioned to endorse a brand, should a social cause be endorsed by a powerful brand? Will such endorsements bring desirable results? What if a social cause is not endorsed by a not so well-known brand?
  Not necessary at all. It is only incidental that this campaign of voting with gusto has been endorsed by Tata Tea. The Polio drops campaign of the Government of India and the NAB campaign on eye donation have not needed commercial brands to endorse them. In fact, when noble causes get touched by brands, more often than not, they lose sanctity.