Customer Acquisition

I am writing this blog drawing inspiration from one book and few incidents of my life. Around a decade back I bought a path breaking book “New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-created Value through global network” written by eminent Management Experts Late C. K. Prahalad and M. S. Krishnan. This book was published in year 2008 and for me then it was another book from the world renowned experts which I must have in my shelf. Until last year, the theory of “N=1 and R=G” was another management jargon for me to make me look like updated management professional in the meetings. But before proceeding further, this piece does not represent the exact management philosophy conceptualized and propagated by both the experts. I am using it to only drive across my point.

I don’t remember but sometime in April or May last year, I bought a 500 ml copper water bottle to carry during morning jogging schedules from one of the two leading online retailers of the country. Next time when I visited the site after making the purchase, I saw a notification with the communication, “people who bought ___, also bought ___”. First space was carrying the image of water bottle I had purchased and second space was carrying the image of three water bottles made of copper in different designs. Now, if at all they apply simply their head and not the much talked about analytics probably based AI, I wouldn’t have been recommended what they had recommended me. My purchase history with them was mostly books, few clothing for myself and dry fruits. Seeing that, anyone can make an assumption about me being a bachelor with very limited needs. And let me tell you, this is not just an isolated case.  

There is another experience which is around twelve years old and I assume things might have changed now. There were couple of grocery stores in Gultekdi Market Yard, Pune, which used to do more business than any of the store of modern retail. I am sure they must be doing more business than what they were doing then. If you had visited the store, you would have found a format mentioning all the items in their store, along with column for quantity, price and total price. There was also a board hanging outside the store indicating the current price of items whose prices were volatile. Now what you were supposed to fill the details of quantity against each item, handover that sheet to a staff in the store and sit on the chair lying outside. Store staff packs your merchandize, raise the bill and call your name to pay the bill. Since our store was nearby and these stores were competition, I used to benchmark these stores regularly. 

Around five-six years ago, I was talking to one gentleman who was heading sales and business operation of a retail company engaged in selling premium furniture in Delhi. He told me that he doesn’t ask his sales team member about his/her sales numbers for first six-seven months of joining. Instead, he sends them to foreign tours to understand the taste of rich and famous, because his clients are rich and they demand exclusivity. For his clients, money comes last in order of concern; they first look for exclusivity of design and material. Moreover, these clients can’t be found buying their toothpaste in the nearby grocery store and they don’t allow everyone to get into their circle. So, for him and his team to sell furniture to these set of clientele, it is very important to understand their need and get into their proximity. 

Having been connected to retail industry for so long through either work experience or colleagues working at different senior positions in different retail organizations, I never had experience of either asking my customers about their monthly basket and their other shopping needs as above stores I mentioned or being myself asked by any retailer. We let incoming data to do the talking. Asking about the family profile of the customer seems out of bounds for any retail organization. They again depend upon the incoming data to do the talking. 

It is important to note that “Data leads but incomplete data misleads” and that’s why a multinational retail company with billions of dollar suggests a consumer with no dependent family member to buy four copper water bottles of 500 ml each. That’s why all these sound around AI based retail analytics will be helpful only when incoming data is complete. Why retailers don’t ask about the monthly basket and family profile of their customers may best be known to them. I assume they may be finding these questions as intrusive or another tedious task supposedly not core to the business, but asking AADHAR details for Payment banks are more intrusive.

Now let me bring back the reference of “N=1 and R=G”. Central thesis of the book is exhorting companies to customize their products for each customer by gaining access to assemblage of suppliers. “N=1” requires companies to focus on the importance of individual customer experience and tailor their product accordingly. It requires companies to be resilient, dynamic and flexible in their business processes and approach to reach the level of customer delight. They also advise companies to be very strong at analytics to allow management to discover opportunities and unique trends and enable companies in product co-creation. 

Though theory focuses on one experience or one problem at a time, but I am talking about the all the challenges of one customer at one place. Deployment of this idea will definitely have area and location challenge and scaling up will again lead to automation, standardization and templatization of solution reducing the human connect, but if this idea is deployed in smaller geographical area, it will bring in immense result. 

“R=G” requires companies to take horizontal approach to supply rather than vertical integration. The focus should on obtaining the access, rather than ownership, to the resource from assemblage of suppliers from outside as well as inside of the company. 

In today’s time, probably a marketer has every tool to connect and engage with the customers. If anything is missing, that can also be developed without much hiccup.

If you look at all the marketplace companies like Ola, Uber, airbnb, Amazon, Flipkart etc., you will find the examples of idea pioneered by great management thinkers. While Ola, Uber, airbnb are solving one challenge of a customer while Amazon and Flipkart are trying to solve many. Just look at the business opportunity and look at valuations; they are humongous.  

But in order to scale up at exponential speed and capture the global market, their customer engagement and delight exercise seems limited to quiz contests on app or sending promotional emails. Though primary challenge gets resolved but even entire exercise doesn’t push the market imperfections surrounding primary challenge much away from where they were. That’s why, one can find consumers having multiple apps for same services in their smart phones and browsing for best price and availability. Price and availability becomes front face of conversation between retailer and consumer. Service providers are deliberately anchoring their customers in this direction, knowingly deviating from the fact that customers buy a service or a product to solve their problem in hand and not to get the discount; discount is extra advantage. If someone is booking hotel room using either OYO or Goibibo or Makemytrip, he or she is booking the hotel room; that is the primary challenge. First priority of the customer goes to place to stay and relax, next priority goes to safety and cleanliness, third to food and of course if all of it comes at a good price, then it is considered the best deal. That’s why customers look for fellow customer’s rating of facilities, images of hotel and facilities etc. before booking the room. But in many, service providers jump directly to pricing. While writing this blog, I opened the website of a prominent travel and ticketing portal. I selected the location, but didn’t do any other activity for couple of minutes. Immediately a page dropped down anchoring me to take the bite of 25%-50% discount or straightaway Rs.1350/- discount at certain level of booking amount. Further, if you look at the event of recent acrimony between Zomato and Restaurant Association of India, the bone of contention was deep discounts offered by Zomato to its customers for Gold membership. If a food aggregator like Zomato in India thinks of discount as the first and foremost incentive to its premium customers, then nothing remains premium and exclusive in that offer. This is the not just the case with Zomato; almost all the service providers have reduced their customer engagement and delight activity limited to offers, extra money and savings. It leads market imperfections to remain not far away from where they were before these companies started their services.  

With this attitude, companies will keep burning money. Someone with better connect with deep pocketed investors will stay afloat for bit longer, but they will also have to make money and for that they will have to anchor their customers not towards discount they offering but how they are helping them in solving their primary challenge. According to Hubspot, leading inbound marketing and ERP company of the world, chances of converting a satisfied customer for a new purchase is 58% against 20% chance of acquiring a new customer for a new purchase. It makes all the sense to look beyond loyalty points getting converted in extra monetary benefits. 

It gives the rise to the idea of Consumer Engagement, Acquisition and Delight organizations or a department separate from traditional sales and marketing, because both the departments often suffer from traditional definition mindset. While one keeps trying to increase the adrenaline rush in its team members, other remains busy in writing slogans and jargons. More appropriate will be to bring sales and marketing under a separate CEAD department to bring synergy.  

A separate organization can also be very apt option in this entire gamut of sales and marketing, because then companies involved in buying and selling or creating marketplace can remain engaged in their core business. The challenge of data ownership and security can’t rule out the necessity of this set up. Challenge of data ownership and security will be of utmost importance without negating the importance of customer engagement and delight. This will require very strong analytics and lead to best Artificial Intelligence driven results. 

Customers need attention and solution of their problems and companies need reduction in the customer acquisition and retention cost, increase in revenue and margin, which only this vertical can guarantee.

This is the story of Tapasya, Meenakshi, Karan, Rajeev and Manish, caught in the web of complexities of life and emotions. Unfulfilled Love
Tapsaya and Meenakshi were two woman with completely different approach towards life, but their aspirations of life were same; "love".

While Tapasya could not fight her battle the way it should have been fought, Meenakshi fought her way to get whatever she wanted out of her life. Both of them couldn't take the decision on time when it needed to be and desired love which had all the markings of remaining unrequited due to being against the social norm. Both of them were ready to break the social norms, but Tapasya couldn't do so and Meenakshi did with all her strength.

In the end, Tapasya died a lonely death despite being surrounded by all her family members and Meenakshi lived a lonely life despite fighting and nearly getting what she wanted.

Love is complex. It has its own rules for everyone for every relationship. There is no template for love. One's story can't be repeated by other. Everyone has to fight his or her own battle, even for love. One has to decide what he or she wants out of this word 'love' and for what it is meant for one person and every other person of his or her life.

Manish thought he loved Meenakshi madly. But when he got engaged to her, he started missing his family members, who didn't accept Meenakshi in their family fold.

Rajeev loved Tapasya a lot, but he couldn't make Tapasya see what she meant to him. And when she realized and accepted, it was already too late and she just wanted her last wish to be fulfilled before closing her eyes.

Karan remained pragmatic in life but he had his own battles to fight.

In fact, life is complex and is has no template. Complexity and separate rules for everyone for everything is its only template.

As any Post Graduate in Marketing, core of my focus for the professional reason was always on consumer behaviour and their decision making process, which gradually took the shape of interest in Neuroscience, Neuromarketing, Neuroconsumerscience, Behavioural Science and Behavioural Economics.  

Latest in the series of books which I just finished reading is “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions” by Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Economics at Duke University. Though this book was published twelve years back, but I became serious about this topic for last four years and I am taking one book and course at a time and I am glad I picked this book. 

Divided in thirteen chapters, this book is masterpiece which helps us to sneak behind the façade of rational mind and tells that there is nothing called ‘rational mind’ when it comes to decision making and that also financial decisions. We all are construct and reflection of our memories as we have perceived them, loosely tagged with each other defining our narrative and we don’t make any rational decision. Our decisions are captive of our biases and heuristics which are formed over a period of time by our gender, social, educational, economical and demographical set up and can be primed and anchored in one direction.  

All thirteen chapters, namely The Truth about Reality, The Fallacy of Supply and Demand, The Cost of Zero Cost, The Cost of Social Norms, The Influence of Arousal, The Problem of Procrastination and Self-Control, The High Price of Ownership, Keeping Doors Open, The Effect of Expectations, The Power of Price, The Context of Our Character Part I, The Context of Our Character Part II and Beer and Free Lunches having my experiments and findings conducted by Dan himself. 

This is a must read book for anyone interested in Behavioural Economics. You can buy book from Amazon following this link Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

Lockdown due to the fear of community spread of COVID19 has brought in unprecedented situation and it has led to unprecedented buying behaviour. Some of the examples are from my family itself. I reached back my native village to attend some urgent work before the lockdown. Here I am, staying with my sixty five years old mother in the village for last five months and no, my life is not difficult except I have to manage my work according to the situation of electricity supply.

As the lockdown was imposed on 24th of March and became effective from 25th March morning so to say, because by 12 of the night of 24th March, half of the nation must have fallen asleep anyway. Movement of even essential items were difficult initially because law enforcing agencies were not able to figure out difference between essential and non-essential items and they were not ready to take any chance to be called negligent of their duty. So, the vegetables grown in rural areas were not finding its way to urban and town market. Prices of vegetables fell drastically and we were able to buy things at around 35-40% of the earlier price. Though lockdown was dampening news, but not for my mother, for whom travel meant walking in our campus or on the road in front of our house. She was very happy to buy vegetables so cheap and she started buying it from everyone and anyone selling vegetables and I was emotionally manipulated to gorge on vegetables much beyond my capacity, otherwise she would have been forced to throw a big portion of it in the dustbin. For first two months, despite my cautious advice and sometime angry retort, she continued buying vegetables in huge quantity, because it was cheap. Something which was supposedly cheap cost us a lot during that period.

My elder brother living in Bengaluru got so panicked when lockdown was announced that he assumed he won’t get any vegetables to eat. So, he bought a year’s quota of salt thinking that if he doesn’t get vegetables then he will eat chapatti with salt.

Few days back I was talking to a friend, who is heading staples business of major retail chain about the news around impact of COVID19. I told him that I not very comfortable with the way news about miseries due to COVID19 fed to the entire world after locking them inside their houses and flats. They are regularly and without fail being fed with the news of death, despair and conflict. I also said that there is news of biscuits companies are doing roaring business, which means tea business must also be doing similarly good business. Upon hearing this, he said not only biscuit and tea, but savouries, mixtures, noodles etc. are also doing very excellent business.

COVID19 is having whatever impact it is having on all of us and it is visible, but what is not visible is the impact of continuous fear feeding by media after locking us inside our houses on our mind. Hypertension, stress, blood pressure, gas and acidity, arthritis, diabetes and many other lifestyle diseases will start demanding its share from our savings once this is over or there is some respite.

Another friend of mine who is with a retail start-up told me that his neighbourhood store in Thane, Maharashtra, which was unaffected by spurt in organizations dealing in online grocery retail is seeing more than 60% de-growth in customer walk in; many of them have shifted to online shopping due to the fear of the spread of COVID19.

These examples are very few among many. How can we forget the sight of couple of kilometres long queue outside grocery stores in US and European countries or people stocking years quota of toilet paper.

This period has brought out the extremes of human behaviour unlike before. COVID19 is not going away soon. There are many government administered nudge which will change the human behaviour permanently. I am sure many neuroscientists and behavioural scientists must be studying it, but retail organizations must not let this opportunity go away and they must test as many hypotheses as possible and figure out the change in human behaviour and decision making process while shopping. Analysing data may not be able to speak much after this pandemic is over. Once it is over, people won’t be able to recall the entire journey; they will remember the peak and end of the experience. This will lead to loss of many data points which can help the business in future. EEG, fMRI, Mobile EEG and eye tracking devices etc. may come to help for in-store study and placement of products on mobile, laptop and other digital devices real estate, nudges, priming and anchoring stimulus applied should be closely and critically analysed, because this phase will bring out the human decision making process which will be new normal.

Though using tools mentioned above to study human behaviour is the domain of experts from neuroscience, but we can offer our services in setting parameters and calculating outcomes free of human bias.

I can be reached at mukul.bhartiya@reviewboard.in. You can find the detail presentation on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Retail Analytics here. Interactive Retail Analytics Solution

Four month has passed since lockdown was imposed in Indian due to COVID 19 pandemic. We still have long road to cover before we pass this test successfully, but it has impacted our life, our behavior and our decision making process emphatically. We all have started looking at life from completely different perspective. Our buying behavior of daily grocery items has undergone tremendous change. I requested Shri Suresh Pillai, Head- Merchandising, Retranz Infolabs Pvt. Ltd. to share some of his observations with my readers.

Mr. Suresh Pillai has worked with top retailers like Big Bazaar, Tesco, more., Reliance Retail, Godrej Agro vet and start ups like Shresta and Ion Exchange Envirofarms. Mr. Pillai is M.B.A in Marketing from Vaikunth Mehta National Institute of Cooperative Management and M.Sc. in Agriculture from College of Agriculture, Nagpur. He has also completed One Year Special Management Programme from IIM- Kolkata.

Here are his observations; in bullet, short and succinct…. 

What the Consumer is buying: 

Consumer is basically focusing on Essentials, even in grocery consumers are not spending heavy on discretionary products (Ex: In Vegetables you can find more preference to spend on Basic veg, Basic fruits)

•They are focusing on Products rather than brands, so the brands that are able to make the product available is winning the game will capture market share 

•In essentials going for bulk packs

•Preferring Packaged rather than loose 

Where the Consumers are buying

•Formats: Local kiranas, Supermarkets, Online is the preferred channels where the consumers are buying (Also preference to local kirana, supermarkets doing home delivery)

How the consumers are buying: 

Purchase frequency has reduced

•Not willing to venture out in public places

•Not easy to get delivery schedule on online e commerce

•Uncertainty on product/brand availability 

•Frequent changes in lockdown 

How the Trade is behaving (Ex Mumbai) : 

Trade is Slow or not seeing rotation of Stocks 

Wholesale: Wherein a broker used to book 3 to 4 vehicle (20tons load/vehicle) daily is now hardly books 1 vehicle (20ton load) as there is no movement from wholesale market ( one reason can be attributed to , Restaurant industry not operating , no floating population, migration of people, Kiranas closed, kiranas not able to operate at its full)

Migration of People: One Classic Example can be Rice Like masoori, parimal which was low price point rice there is slow down, indicates the segment consuming these variants has moved out

Kiranas: 

Many Small Kiranas which use to be run by migrant population is not operational as paying the rentals was not viable, labour availability is a concern.

Even operational kiranas are also not stocking up, as due to social distancing, time restrictions, odd even working days slowing the stock rotation at their end. 

You can read his earlier observations here: Supply Chain Challenges of Essential Food Items during COVID 19 in India

In the second part of winter of 1999, I went o buy a watch in one of the shops of South Extension in New Delhi. For a medium range budget, there were limited brand choices, probably only two (HMT and Titan), if I remember correctly. Decision to buy the watch was already made, budget was set, and brand choices were also not many to confuse me, so my top down control of decision making was all set. Only thing needed was the bottom up saliency filter of products to match my representation of expectations and gain my attention and assure me of matching my predicted value.

I entered the shop and my dorsal visual pathway started scanning the watches available on display and sending the messages to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex via primary visual cortex VI. My entire decision making and purchase process completed in less than five minutes. My decision making completely conformed to the research of Milosavljevic, Koch and Rangel (2011) which showed that consumers makes a purchase decision as quickly as within 313 milliseconds.

Shopkeeper told me that I am his first client to compete a purchase so quickly, otherwise other customers, especially woman sucks even last drop of blood from his brain while choosing and buying a watch. Not only that, even after taking so much time at the shop, on many occasions, they again return next day to replace the product. We had a laugh at this behavior. 

As my MBA completed and work experience started, especially in food retail and my interaction with my end customers increased manifold, I realized that my laugh back then was not only in bad taste but idiotic as well.

Woman makes most of the buying decision of any household and these decisions have to fit on four wheels of decision making cart:

1)Who uses

2)Who chooses

3)Who pays

4)Who benefits

If there is any imbalance in any of the wheal, the satisfaction level derived out of the purchase decision decreases drastically and creates bad shopping experience. It reminds me one of the buying decisions my mother made in my childhood. I was probably eight-nine years old then, youngest among three sons. My mother used to buy identical dresses for three of us. One day she had an idea that we three will look good in traditional white ‘payjama-kurta’ and she bought one set each for us. My mother was my favorite person, so I put that dress on sportingly. Middle one wore it grudgingly but the eldest one, who was in his early teen, threw the fit and decided not to wear it at all. Even few slaps on the face couldn’t convince him. 

Coming back to my decision to buy a watch and complete the buying process so quickly, If I lay my decision to buy the watch on this cart, then I find that I was the user, I was the chooser, I paid for it out of savings of my pocket money (it gave me the feeling of earning it) and I benefited from the features of watch. So, the satisfaction out of that decision was at peak. But I know there must have been gap in the level of satisfaction if I had to buy a watch for my sister because she may or may not have liked my decision with the same intensity as of mine. 

So, how to make a woman buy what you want her to buy? 

Decision making process of male and female brain is different. Both arrive at same result through different routes. Male brain, primarily driven by Testosterone, Vasopressin and Mullerian Inhibiting Substance is up for faster visuomotor scanning, faster physical reflexes, more risky behavior, aggressively defending the turf and restricting any woman like behavior. Female brain, primarily driven by Oxytocin, Estrogen and Prolactin is up for empathy, care, rapport, trust, bond etc. While male brain treats every issue as problem and jumps directly to find the solution, female brain starts evaluating the pros and cons of every action along with finding the solution. While male brain readily accepts the collateral outcome of its actions, female brain finds it difficult.  

Hundreds of hours observing customers walking in the stores and making buying decisions during my retail journey, I have figured out following points to be kept in mind before selling anything to female shoppers:

1)Establish rapport first and win trust: Opening pleasantries and a sincere effort to establish rapport and win trust works very well with female shoppers. . They like to put their trust in salesperson to give them honest opinion and step back. Any attempt to hard sell anything to them backfires. I remember one incident during my more. Retail days, when I was handling pulses category at national level. Before that, I was Category Manager of Staples for Mumbai zone. I was visiting stores in Mumbai to check pulses stock, pricing and promotion display and take customer feedback. In one of the store, I was talking to the store manager in the back office. Suddenly I heard a lady customer shouting at one of our CSA. I along with store manager rushed to scene. Upon asking, I was informed that the lady was sold a bag of rice which she found not of good quality. I immediately reached the ‘problem-solution mode’ and asked the lady about how she is cooking the rice because the bag she had purchased was of new crop. My question infuriated the lady even more and she blasted me with loud shout back, “I am cooking food for more years than your age, so don’t teach me how to cook”. I realized my mistake. I didn’t empathize with her by asking her about the problem, I didn’t ask her about the loss of faith and trust which she had bestowed on the CSA before making her purchase decision and I didn’t ask her about how she felt let down by making this decision which proved to be wrong. I calmed her down and assured her that I am with her in this process by making her believe that it not she but I along with my team are at fault. I took all the corrective actions then and there itself after aligning all the stakeholders, but this incident proved to be insightful to understand a customer.

2)Understand shopper’s world and objective behind purchase: While male shoppers come to the store with ‘their’ opinion in definite terms and they are mostly very clear about it, female shopper’s definition of ‘their’ is normally very broad. They try to make their decisions win-win for everyone assumed to be involved. So, after opening pleasantries and establishing the rapport, a little anchoring is required to understand the objective behind purchase and the people to be affected by their decision. 

3)Show alacrity in giving choices and eliminating least favored choices: Since a female shopper’s single decision leaves impact on many stakeholders, they need to be provided with choice. More implicit the objective of their purchase, more choices they would need and more time it will take. Though normally they wouldn’t like to be explicit in their demand and objective, but a quick zero down by the sales person is very necessary. If rapport is established, any change in behavior or opinion can quickly be analyzed and addressed. Though there may demand of more choices from them, neither their brain nor salesperson’s brain can handle this much amount of data. So, quick display of choices and even more quick elimination of least favorable choices become very crucial for successful closure of sales.

4)Appreciate their process of purchase: A little appreciation from the salesperson goes a long way in closing the sales successfully. Appreciation makes female shoppers believe that you are involved in their selection process and appreciate the effort they are making. This step evokes trust and faith in them towards you.  

I remember one incident, though not as a sales person. I went with my cousin sister to buy her a dress for a special occasion. She was to wear this dress to meet her to-be husband. We went to famous mall in NOIDA. As we enter the first shop, we saw a beautiful dress hanging in very front of the shop. She asked me whether it will look good on her. In a plain definite tone, I told her that dress is beautiful and will look good on her. She looked at me and said, “let’s try other stuff”. From one store to another, one dress to another, we spent more than four hours in that mall and nearby market. Tired and angry I sat on a bench in the mall and told her to select whichever dress she likes and once she makes her mind, call me to make the payment. In the end she chose the same dress which we had seen as first thing in the mall. After reaching home, I asked her if she had to buy this dress only, then why she made me walk for four hours. She replied, “you told me that dress is beautiful and it will look good on me but you didn’t tell me that it will look good on me for the very purpose I wanted to buy it. You were not with me there.” While my mind was focused on dress and whether it will look good on her not, I was not with her on the very purpose she was buying this dress for. I was not appreciative of the situation she was in.

5)Recognize and appreciate the decision: Recognition and appreciation of the decision they have made goes a long way winning their trust and making them your valued repeat customer. This is a very complex subject I attempted to write. 

Above mentioned points gave me success in category as generic as staples and I hope it can help others as well. There may be more points and I will appreciate the feedback.

Last month’s Tanishq ad for their “Ekatvam” range of products was much talked, due to the topic it chose to show and message it conveyed. As soon as the digital advertisement was released, #boycotttanishq started trending on social media sites. It immediately drew the line of confrontation among two groups; one group were claiming to be of Hindus and other group were claiming to be of seculars and liberals. The concept of an expecting Hindu girl married in a Muslim household being nervously surprised for their in-laws celebrating “God Bharai” ritual for her didn’t go down well with a section of Hindus and they vowed to boycott Tansihq’s products. Not only that, they even started voicing their displeasure on social media. When they started voicing their displeasure on social media, another section of people jumped in the defence of Tanishq.

But this is all about responses it got; let me examine the communication decision taken by the Brand and Marketing Manager of Tanishq. Was this a brand communication or a statement of corporate or product team’s ideology?

Let us understand what it presumably showed:
-Love beyond the boundaries of religion.
-Acceptance of each other’s culture.
-Different customs and importance of jewelry in it.

And what was construed by a section of people:

-It pressed the raw nerve of inter-religious marriage where girl is necessarily a Hindu. This is a very hot social and political topic and evokes a very strong response. For many, this is a historical, political and narrational wrong perpetrated against one community.
-Some criticized the nervous surprise at girl’s face, which they took it as otherwise non-acceptance of her customs by her husband’s family.

Marketing and brand communication can’t overlook the prevalent social fault lines and it also can’t overlook the sentiments of major target customer group, because it may affect the sales. Very next day, share prices of Tanishq dropped by around 2.5% which confirmed the sentiments of that group which was angry over this advertisement.

Now let us analyse few more facts mentioned below, which are important to establish that whether it was a well planned communication to increase the sales or an ideological statement either coming from the corporate team or brand team:

-The theme of advertisement is a very controversial topic which evokes even stronger response. I will not get into the details.
-The community who were angry, i.e., Hindus have the custom of buying gold ornaments during different festivals like “Akshay Tritiya” and “Dhanteras”. They even buy gold when enter the new house. And of course, marriage is a huge thing. Women folks in villages save money to buy jewelry whether they have daughters or son, because at the time of marriage, they have to give it to the daughter or daughter-in-law. So, for them, not only it is their personal choice but social and religious ritual as well.
-Jewelry is not just a woman thing among Hindus, men also wear them.
-Muslim community doesn’t have the social or religious ritual to buy ornaments; it is completely their personal choice.
-Men from Muslim community are forbidden by their religious edicts from wearing gold jewelry.
-Population ratio of Hindus to Muslims in India is 8:1.5, so without Hindus form the main market segment.

So, when odds were so firmly placed against this brand and marketing communication, then it was definitely a statement of ideology by the team at brand or corporate level then a communication designed to boost the sales. May be the team was experimenting with an idea of brand identity they want to create or maybe they had designed it for Pakistan and not India.

Note: I tried looking for the advertisement on Official Youtube channel of Tanishq Jewelry but it wasn’t available there.