90-90-1 Archives

The Need-Barrier-Solution-Release Quartet of Marketing

Each marketing problem can easily be broken into 4 simple questions that you can answer to arrive at the solution to even the most challenging problems.

Today’s day 6. I missed yesterday. I tried but there was a social obligation that I couldn’t get out of. So, let’s go.

So marketing to women is a tough one for me. Multiple reasons. Lemme talk about one of those. That I am a man. And that means at a deeper, personal level I dont understand women. I may read a lot, I may consume a lot of literature, I may do deep research, I may create a panel of women to talk to, I may do whatever. My experience and understanding will remain superficial at best. One of my writing teachers told me that while writing unless I feel like the person living that emotion, I will never do justice to what am writing. The same probably goes for marketing. Till I can feel the need-barrier-solution-release journey in my bones, I will never be able to do justice.

In fact, this need-barrier-solution-release is what I can sum whole of marketing in. Lemme talk about each. From the lens of women.

A/ Need. Aka Want.

I know these two are different but for argument’s sake and to keep things simple, let’s assume these are one and I will use these interchangeably. So there is this need that the woman wants a solution to. The need could be any of the following – look good (for whatever reason / occasion – wedding, date, family function, every day etc), take care of the family (nutrition, health, budgets, holidays, etc), manage her career better (navigate politics, balance work-family, provide for the family, etc), fly despite all the shackles imposed by Indian culture and more.

Often the woman is clear about her need. She may not be able to express it in words but deep down, she knows what she needs / wants. And to fulfil that, she starts to look for solutions. Often in the shape of products, services, etc.

To make this easier to explain, let’s take Renu for example.

Renu is 35, a fictional aam-aurat from a regular tier-1 city in North India, a tier-2 locality and middle-middle class. She got married at 26 and has a 7-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter. The husband works at a bank as a manager. She doesn’t work apart from managing the house and wants to give the best to her family, especially the “raja beta”. She doesn’t even know that her managing the house qualifies as work. And since she’s a typical Indian, she is a maximiser and wants more value from each rupee she spends.

PS: I will use Renu as a recurring archetype in these posts. Over time I will create more archetypes that can encapsulate about 80% of women in India.

B/ Back to Renu. And Barriers.

Now Renu’s want of “giving the best” could take numerous shapes – education, nutrition, clothes, experiences, extra-curricular classes, comfort and all that. And she has a limited budget and limited understanding. Her barriers are money and knowledge. The money bit, she can’t solve for. And she knows it. She may want to work at some point but knows that it may not work out. The knowledge bit, she knows she can figure.

So Renu would probably go around seeking knowledge. She would read magazines, talk to elders, connect with others that have given a good life to their children, ask neighbours, look up content on her WhatsApp (shes not gonna do any deep research), experiment with a few things and then probably invest a large chunk of money and time and attention into the son’s life.

C/ Solutions.

As a marketer, you have two potential paths from hereon. Two potential approaches to the solution.

One. Peddle your wares. Make a quick buck and move on. Of course, spend money on acquiring Renu as a customer (CAC) and hope like hell that she spends a lot over a long period (LTV).

Two. You decide to help Renu solve this information barrier (and not just sell a solution). Your CAC is spent on educating, knowing very well that she may pick a competitor once she’s aware. You expert LTV to come to you as an outcome of the newer Renus that you would be able to acquire as a result of the salience that you would have built, thanks to your attempts at helping Renu bridge the knowledge gap.

D/ Release.

Once Renu what to do for her child, and she actually does it, she would pause and catch her breath. Before she jumps head first into the next need. Which may or may not be for her child. But she would carry the experience of this one loop with her. Each time she goes through this loop and she interacts with others (people, brands, influencers etc etc) she would “train” herself into doing better the next time she goes thru this loop.

And as a marketer, your job is to walk alongside her, if not just ahead of her where you pave the road that she would walk on!

So that!

Think about all the brands you love. At each opportunity, they would take the second route where they solve for one of the barriers and not just “sell”. And that ladies and gents is the idea for the day. And the post for the day.

PS: I am not sure if this is helpful to anyone. However, it did make me sit down and think about things. If you are reading this, please do tell me how do I make these posts better for you. And hopefully, over the next few days, I will find things that make sense.

Index: 90-90-1 Project. Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (missed), 6

Pink Tax in India

Brands and businesses often impose an additional, discriminatory “Pink Tax” on women. In this piece, I explore it in more detail.

It’s 6:30 PM. I was supposed to write this in the morning but I woke up late, dived head-first into the day and still reeling from all the work. I will no longer stay in bed beyond 7 AM. I have been waking up without alarm last few days but I will start using it now. I can NOT miss this 90-90-1, especially now that I found out that I want to write about and learn about marketing to women.

So, today’s post is about Pink Tax.

What is Pink Tax?

In simple words, it’s the extra money that women need to pay for products that are apparently tailor-made for them.

For example, shaving razors. Multiple women told me (see the disclaimer at the end of this post) that a women’s razor is at least 20% extra (than a man’s) even though it functions the same. The makers do the smart thing of doing communication around it that justifies the inflated price. In the case of the razors, apparently, they say that the blade and the rubber thingy in between the blades are coated with Aloe Vera that keeps the skin of the user safe. They also say that the design of the razors “glides” smoother on the curvy skin. They added a roller to make the functioning better.

I mean wow!
To me, all these are mere gimmicks to charge more.

Other categories where I am told this pink tax exists in India are garments (the same tee-shirt for women is about 10% more expensive (as per pop research I did), travel (multiple women told me that they get fleeced more), jewellery (simple things like rings are gram-for-gram more expensive for women), healthcare (contraceptives, condoms etc), personal care products (does) and more.

The pink tax is valid if the products and services rendered require additional effort. For example, a haircut. In general, women tend to have longer hair and thus the person working on hair for women will probably need to make additional effort. And thus the additional compensation makes sense.

But for categories like razors, garments, health products and others, I think it sucks that the pink tax exists.

So, why does the pink tax exist?

To be honest, I couldn’t think of any specific reason apart from corporate greed. From whatever I know the products are not really different from what they make for male audiences. To “expand” their offering and create newer markets, businesses create these ~~products~~ gimmicks and try and charge more. And of course, they would justify the same by throwing information, justification and a combination of some of Cialdini’s principles of influence at us!

Anyhow.

So pink tax exists and there is no denying it. Just that a lot of people aren’t aware of it. And for women as consumers, better awareness will translate into more value for money.

While writing about this post, I realised that there seems to be a lack of content and literature about the pink tax in India. Apart from one post on Mint, an article on Outlook, a BusinessLine piece by a professor of marketing from IIM Amritsar talking about research her students did and a Logical Indian piece, I couldn’t find anything worthwhile. The piece by the professor is worth reading, in case you want some data.

I wanted to research more and learn more but I am not sure what more to read. If you have access to some work on this space, please do point me to it. I am beginning to think that the pink tax may not even exist in India and this could be a mere anecdotal theory that has got more wind than it deserves or merits.

Guess this is about it. See you tomorrow.

PS: This was a painfully short post and a disappointing piece of text. When I come back tomorrow morning (for sure) to write, I hope I have something substantive to contribute.

PPS: For this post, I leaned onto what I already knew about marketing, what I found via desk research and what members of the #SoG told me in one of our #janHitMeJaari sessions. All errors are mine and please help me fix those.

PPPS: As I write these over the next 3 months or so, I plan to share early drafts with some people. If you want to get those, give me feedback before I publish, lemme me know and I will add you to a WA group. Lol, I love these groups ;P

Index: 90-90-1 Project. Day 1, 2, 3, 4

Marketing to Women in 2023

How in 2023 brands need to take a stand and do more than mere communication. Specifically for cohorts like women!

Today’s day 3 of the 90-90-1. In case you don’t know about this, you may read this post to get a sense of what C and I are trying to do. The last two days were spent trying to build a habit of clearing the calendar and not doing anything else but writing. At some point in time (hopefully today), I want to start talking about marketing. After all, that’s what I decided yesterday.

The times we live in are, well, interesting. The world around us is changing faster than you can blink and it’s still the same. We now have self-driving cars, chatGPT and LK-99. And yet we have countries divided over religion and race and color and all that. As a marketer, the job has never been more exciting. Or tougher. People no longer hide behind veils and mumble disapprovals. They now assert their individuality and talk about things that don’t fit into their value system. And when they do that, they are louder than the loudest cheer of fans in a stadium and more articulate than the politicians at the altar. And they spread their ideas with a distribution that brands are envious of.

So, conventional wisdom would say, tread carefully.

And this is where I sort of disagree.

Why tread carefully? As a brand, while you are out there to make a profit and create shareholder value, you have the obligation to lead the charge and herald people into the new. You need to play the role of an instigator, a politician, a pastor, a provocateur, a pop star, a painter. As the brand (and you as the brand manager, the custodian of the brand) you need to take stands. And have what it takes to face the music. Or the cacophony.

Truth be told, many brands have tried this and may I say, bowed down. Tanishq had to take down one of their ads and issue a public apology when they took a brave stand of showcasing an ad featuring an interfaith couple. If you are curious, you may see it here (on a politician’s Twitter handle). Yesterday, Aditi showed #teamSoG an ad by Nike where they took the brave decision of featuring an athlete that apparently had disrespected America’s national anthem. I can’t imagine that happening in India. Staying with Nike and what’s happening around us, I found this beautiful message where they are imploring us to Not Do It! Isn’t this the exact responsibility brand custodians have?

We need brands and businesses to take such stands in India and talk about what’s happening around us. There have been some starts. Future Generali (disclaimer – I had featured their CMO on a podcast) has been taking bold bets. One of their campaigns celebrated same-sex relationships and they did so in as loud a manner as they could for that small cohort – hoarding at one of the most popular junctions in Mumbai at least. I am not sure if they did it at other places too. Axis Bank did Dil Se Open. Kotak has been the harbinger of creating communication that showcases our diversity as a nation. While there are starts, we need things to go mainstream and we need more businesses and brands to take a stand. But then, that would require you to have some spine. No?

As a passive participant in the communication industry, all I can do is stay hopeful that someday the eyes would open up. And with each thing that I work on, I can push things a bit, if not a lot.

Lemme give an example.

Women.

As a cohort. As a consumer set. As the “niche” that every brand wants to be pally with. Each brand I work on, without an exception, – from hotels to financial services to healthcare to travel to everything else wants to be the new best friend to women. And it’s not surprising to see why. Almost 48.4% of India is women. Less than 20% are engaged in “active, meaningful, paid work” outside the farm and casual labour space. And I am not even counting women that are part of the unorganized economy and the ones that “work” at home.

Even if I consider the ones in active work, more and more women are choosing to take control. Of how they live, work, think, operate and spend their money. And of their families. And have an influence over the money of their friends and relatives and neighbors. Women now assert their opinions and voices and dictate where their wallets open up.

While brands understand this trend, they are failing to do the right thing.

In the next few lines, I will make a few statements about what women want. From the vantage point of being a man. Not to mansplain but to learn more. If I am wrong, which I probably would be, PLEASE help me correct.

So, coming back to women and brands, I refuse to see why or how brands create products or communication. I mean, no woman wants a pen that comes in a pink body but writes in blue. Most women don’t really care about “whiter” intimate body parts. No woman wants to “have a happy period”.

What women probably want is equality (not special treatment). They probably want marketers to have a deeper understanding of challenges specific to them. Women probably want solutions to the problems they face as individuals – if that solution is pink or blue or black or whatever, it’s cool. Brands need to arrive at solutions first and then think of colors. Brands need to take a stand and not amplify the already deep-seated biases against women. I mean why would a brand create communication about how a woman eats last and whatever is left after her entire family has eaten? Rather, why can’t we have more pieces of work that encourage everyone to Share The Load?

So that.

I know my understanding and knowledge of these issues is flawed. I know that I don’t understand women. I know I need to do better if I want to make a dent. And that is what I would try and work on over the next few days.

While I am on the journey to do so, come help me! Tell me when I go wrong. Point me at resources that allow me to learn. Share things that I can read. You know where to reach me!

Over and out.

PS: As I write these over the next 3 months or so, I plan to share early drafts with some people. If you want to get those, give me feedback before I publish, lemme me know and I will add you to a WA group. Lol, I love these groups ;P

Index: 90-90-1 Project. Day 1, 2, 3

Why take the 90-90-1 challenge?

Why would I take the 90-90-1 Challenge? What do I hope to get out of this?

So, why would I take 90-90-1?

For the uninitiated, today is day 2 of the 90-90-1 that Chandni and I are onto. My first post is here. This is the second. While yesterday I talked about marketing, today I want to talk about why I am taking this challenge in the first place.

In the challenge, she and I have chosen one thing to work on for 90 minutes first thing in the morning for the next 90 days. In my case, it’s my personal brand and I will use the instrument of writing to work on it. I could have chosen to make videos, create podcasts, doodle, talk, think, daydream but I think like most things, I wanted to kill two birds with one stone – so build my personal brand and work on my writing muscle. Like other times I have taken challenges, I dont have a daily word-count goal. I merely want to work on it for 90 days and I want to create a visible body of work (not just a stream of thoughts).

Lemme also talk about why I am taking this challenge and what I hope to achieve out of this.

A. I suck at consistency.
This could be a good way to beat that. Apparently, habits take 21 days to form (or may be 66). If I can do something for 90 days, each day, without rest, I hope I am able to build the muscle that allows me to do the large things that I want to do.

B. Do more with whatever time I have left
I am realising that at 40, I am beyond my useful age and if I still have to make that dent, I need to be able to work harder than others and longer than others.

While life is not a zero-sum game, life definitely is a race. You can choose to make it a rat race. Or you can choose to make it one where you are inspired by ones you can see running to their own music and pace. Someone’s going fast, someone’s going slow, someone’s in circles, someone is merely on a treadmill.

You look at these people and you take inspiration from these people and sing your song. In my case, the song is of someone that’s out to make a dent. Whatever that dent is. While I dont know what that dent is, SoG looks like it. And to be able to be that inspirational father figure of sorts, I need to be better than most men these young kids would have seen. And within that closed circle, I may not be able to fix things (the way I dress, the hair I have, the shakal I have), but I am sure I can fix others (like, having a body of work that precedes my reputation)

C. The C4E Village
As the C4E village grows larger, as one of the early members of the settlement, I am aware of the responsibility on my shoulders. I need to be the provider till others mature and start looking beyond themselves and to the village.

Right now, most of the villagers think of themselves first and then of the village. I am hopeful that a time will come when the collective, the village will become larger than the self. Till that time, I need to make sacrifices and provide. I can’t just go buy those airpods that I know I can afford but I dont want them because I can use that money to hire one more person. I can’t go live in a fancy house because the rent I pay could be used to pay for dinner at a C4E Table. And so on and so forth. And to be able to do all of this, I need to be someone that attracts work. And that will happen once I am a magnet of sorts that attracts potential clients, large deliverables, and money!

D. The SG Personal Brand
Now the personal brand is one of those things that I can’t seem to put my finger on. On one side, I know it all. I even wrote a long piece about it that apparently a lot of people find useful. And on the other, I am unable to build it for myself. I think I know the answer to why I haven’t been able to build it. Three reasons actually.

I refuse to accept a niche. Most personal brands are built at the intersection of niches. I am a man with a wide range of interests and I refuse to get siloed into one. And this has caused me a lot of anguish.
I refuse to create click-bait-y content. The lesser said about this, the better.
I am not consistent. This I am hoping to fix over the next 90 days. 89 now. 88 tomorrow.

So personal brand.

Lemme talk more about it and see if I can make a decision today. If I can, it would be awesome. Read on to find out more.

So, what do I want to be known for?

If I were to make a list from the top of my head, I would say the following (and these are probably in order because this is the order in which these phrases came to my head)…

Poker
Writing
Films
Travel
Young People
Longevity
Brands
Marketing
Writing (I know this is a repeat but I dont want to stop)
Inspiring people
Life coaching (lol)
Investing
Teaching

Wait.

That’s it?

I thought there would be more! Most of my thoughts seem to be swirling in these zones only. I had imagined my life is more diverse than this. Lol. Rude shock in the morning.

Anyhow.

So, if I were to use the Ikigai thingy to evaluate and pinpoint what Id like to work on, I would have to make a chart. Lemme make it. But wait. Before that, I made a chart a few years ago. Lemme share that.

Funny that from there on, not a lot has changed. In fact, nothing has changed! Talk of people not evolving. Sigh.

Ok, we shall not beat ourselves about it.

Coming back to personal brand and the 90-90-1 thingy, I will get back to the reasons I listed above and marry those with things I want to stand for. I am looking at an intersection of the following…

the need of running the kitchen at C4E
the want of making a dent
the things I want to be known for that allows the two of the above.

To me, the answer seems clear like the day – that I need to write about marketing over the next 90 88 days.

While the way you market and where your audience hangs out has changed (see my piece from yesterday), a few fundamental things haven’t changed. People are still people and we are all an outcome of millions of years of evolution. There is no way that would change in a few hundred years of modern-day life. And thus I continue to believe that they want to survive and procreate. And thus the basics of marketing before the world became digital will continue to stay relevant. With a few changes. Such as…

The newer delivery vehicles that digital has unleashed (always-on, all the time, connected despite physical distances)
The evolving habits, cultures, opinions, mindsets of digital-first people
The physiological shift in the way people live and think and behave and operate because of how digital meddles with our brains (more loneliness, more screens, more need of “me” time, more individuality, more of more!)
The neverending hedonic treadmill that the entire world seems to be riding on, all the time

And I think this lens of traditional marketing in a world in flux is an interesting lens to be writing on. Just that I need to sharpen the niche. Maybe write about just a discipline. Or a cohort. Or a line of products. Or for a certain TG.

I may not be able to decide today. Hopefully, we will do so as we go along. Over the next few days, I will find a lens within marketing that allows me to take a unique position per se. You have any ideas?

So that’s for the day.

Over and out!

PPS: I realise that this has become a subconscious stream of thoughts that Julia Cameron often talks about. I love such coincidences!

Index: 90-90-1 Project. Day 1, 2

What’s a Marketers’s Job?

If you are a marketer, what’s your primary job? And what do you do about it?

A few days ago, one of the SoG members asked me, what’s your primary job as a marketer. At that time I would have replied with some mambo-jumbo to wiggle out of a tough conversation but now that I think about it, the question is more perplexing than I had assumed it to be. I honestly don’t have an answer. What I do have is some plausible alternatives. And I will present those to you and seek answers from you.

So, as a marketer, what’s your primary job?

Here are a few alternatives. You choose.

A. Act as the agent for the client and help them sell more. You know, by building compelling campaigns that inform the world about your client, crafting lines that nudge the fence-sitters, using design as a tool to stir emotions and sell that damn thing that the client wants to be sold.

B. Be brave. Be bold. Fan fire to ideas that shift cultures, shape narratives, and spark revolutions. Your client may not want to be a part of these narratives but you try to hide these in plain sight.

C. Use marketing as an excuse to earn a living from what you enjoy doing – writing, designing, daydreaming (aka brand planning), telling stories, and meeting people. Good work, awards, and sales is a byproduct.

D. None of the above

E. All of the above

While I wait for your answers, while writing this, my reason for being a marketer dawned on me. Lemme give a background and talk about it.

So, my love for marketing probably started when I saw that dude hit the ball out of the park on the last ball of the match and see his woman rejoice like there’s no tomorrow. The love became stronger when a simple piece of communication made me crave for Jalebis like Bablu did when Ramu Kaka talked about em. It got amplified when I saw some kids scrounging around to get their retiring headmaster a suit piece as a farewell gift. And there are many more such stories that made me want to tell stories like that.

Back then, I was naive. And even though I’ve been at it for more than 18 years now, I remain a student and I continue to marvel at pieces of communication with a gaping mouth, bated breath and nervous excitement.

Just that, the pieces that I take inspiration from have changed. The kind of things I want to put my name to has changed. While I enjoy seeing work by Cred and Ixigo and Fevicol and others, I am moved more by things like Farmers by Ram. Or Real Beauty by Dove. Or in India, by organizations like The Whole Truth and AMFI (disclaimer: I do some work for them via a client).

These are the companies and communication pieces that go beyond short-term sales goals to long-term narrative building that inspires people at large to live a better life. These pieces require long-term thinking and slow, painful execution on a day-to-day basis without losing sight of the goalpost.

No, I am not implying that we become climate-warriors, tree-huggers, veganism-paddlers, equality-champions and all that. Rather, as marketers, we need to shift how people live their lives. I mean look at Nike. It’s not a shoe company. It’s an attempt to get people at large to get fitter. Each piece of communication from them inspires me to push harder at being an everyday athlete (I just coined that phrase ;)). Look at Dumb Ways To Die. It made me look left and right and then left again while crossing the roads (trams and trains and metros are still new to me)

Truth be told, a lot of these could be dismissed as tokenism and dash-washing (insert your favourite color here). A lot of these may sound irrelevant in the thumb-twaddling world full of people with tinier attention spans than hummingbirds, each hooked onto social networks proliferated by content marketers, search engines gamed by growth hackers running “marketing experiments” and more. After all, these days CAC, LTV, ROAS and such acronyms are more important. Engagement trumps brand salience. Sales is more important than your raison d’etre. And thus, marketing as a profession has been reduced to copy written by chatGPT, designs by fivers and debates around the sizes of the logos on Instagram posts.

What we’ve lost in this proliferation of this new crop of marketers is the ability to be like poets and politicians and artists and writers and revolutionaries to fan fires to ideas that shift cultures, shape narratives, spark revolutions. Think about it. Which woman woke up and said that I want a pen that writes in blue ink but is encased in a pink body (a pen company makes this product)? Which young person wants to start their day with a shower in a deodorant that smells like chocolate (we all know the deodorant company)?

On the other hand, each parent wants their child to get a car that is safer. What if the marketer could tell that parent that apart from safety, the car also offers zero emission that is well, better!

Yeah yeah, I know that this may not be a marketer’s job to build a car that runs on water. Or electricity. Or air. But it’s the marketer’s job for sure to plant the seed about eco-first cars in the minds of people. And subsequently, make people want and ask for and force car makers to make cars that offer not just safety but greener alternatives.

And that, ladies and gents, is the post for the day.

Lemme know what you think is the job of the marketer per you.

Originally posted here.

Index: 90-90-1 Project. Day 1