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Wanted: CEOs from India

: Is presenting the brand just about an identity and how the identity is communicated? In his book Experiential Marketing, the author Bernd Schmitt explains the need for all brands, FMCG, consumer durables and service, to envelope the consumer. With increasing trends towards commoditisation, nanosecond reverse engineering, brands have to derive ways of connecting with consumers in many different ways.

Take one of the oldest success stories in India, that of Usha Sewing Machines. In order to get more and more Indian housewives to learn the art of sewing and stitching, this company went about creating a chain of Usha Sewing Schools. The ladies learnt how to use the sewing machine, went out, and bought one to do simple household sewing and stitching.

The story goes that when Hindustan Lever was launching the Dalda brand of vegetable shortening, or vanaspati, they hired a number of vans to do demonstration cooking at busy market areas all over India. Indian housewives were convinced to taste the delicious puris and bhajiyas cooked in Hindustan Lever’s Dalda. This doing-in-front-of-your-eyes way of selling, slowly got the vanaspati habit into Indian kitchen.

Yet another example was the way Johnson & Johnson got the sanitary napkin habit into Indian homes. The task was done not through mass media advertising alone. And just imagine how could they have shown the use of a sanitary napkin on television (products of this nature are not permitted to be advertised on TV in many countries; Doordarshan, the Government owned TV channel, had at one time restricted TV advertising of sanitary napkins to the post 9 pm slot). The company hired thousands of women—sales promoters—to go door to door, explaining the product in the living rooms of the consumers’ houses. They showed them the product, gave samples, and a discount coupon to be redeemed at the local chemist outlet. The sales promotion call had to be made when the woman was alone at home, a window of 11 am to 3 pm. But this method of missionary selling got the product category going even in conservative Indian households, where women during their monthly periods are expected to stay out of the home.