Roopak Saluja’s Blog:

India is a brand, perhaps one of the world’s most underleveraged ones up until 2004. Then ‘India Shining’ happened, which, in many ways, was quite the case of the image being brighter than the object. Kill me, patriots! But remember that I too am one.

China is a brand. And so are the United States, Britain, Japan, Brazil, Australia, France and even obscure nations like Vanuatu, The Gambia and Burundi. And just like consumer and B2B brands, some are more valuable than others.

There’s a chap named Simon Anholt, who is the undisputed nation- branding guru. Simon says (that was unintentional, I promise) that a country has a positive brand image if other people in the world are happy that it exists.

But why is branding important for countries in the first place? To quote Anholt, “In this era of globalization, people take decisions every day as to where to go on vacations, what music to listen to, what books to read. This impacts the future of countries. In such a situation the country’s reputation is very important, because people make these choices based on prejudices which may have nothing to do with reality.”

I’m fairly certain Italy is the world’s most popular nation. The world loves them…their food, clothes, wine, cars, women and even, men. Quite frankly, it would seem that Mussolini, Fascism, the Mafia and any other not-so-positive stuff couldn’t put a dent in their image. Then there’s the curious case of
Argentina. How is it that in spite of decades of military dictatorship, a random  territorial war against Britain, defaulting on international debt and a recent economic crisis, the world still thinks pretty positively of them? It can’t be thanks to just football and tango.

Switching tracks to the evolution of nation brands…time has a great effect on them. Post-war Japan was considered to be a source of cheap goods- both cars and electronics. By the early eighties most of the world had forgotten that stigma, passing it onto the Koreans, who also managed to shake it off fifteen odd years later. Samsung is now in the same league as Sony, in case you
haven’t noticed. And now China has to do battle with Haier, HTC, Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo. Watch that situation change by 2020. Coming back to Japan, even though by 1985, the world was snapping up Hondas, Toyotas and Sony, cars and electronics were it. But by the mid-90s, Issey Miyake, Kenzo and Yohji Yamamoto climbed into the upper echelons of global haute couture. And with
Japanese food taking the world by storm in the past decade, Japan has transcended most categories. Today, I would buy Japanese chocolate, icecream or vodka. And my favorite single malts are Japanese too. The concept would have been laughable thirty years ago.

The point I’m making is that the shape of nation brands can evolve very distinctly and quite rapidly based on a range of inputs, both deliberate and unintentional. I’m putting all my money on Brazil and India to be the fastest growing brands in the next two decades. They’re quite a similar pair in many
ways- giant democracies with pretty unequally distributed wealth, robust manufacturing and service sectors, rapidly growing economies and oodles and oodles of soft power in the form of music, dance, varying traditions of sensuality (Kamasutra vs samba sexiness), capoeira, yoga and more. If we (us and them) play our cards well, we have the potential to be success stories to the level of Japan.

There are a million ways to play our cards right including curbing corruption, cleaning the streets, being nice to tourists, praying for a charismatic PM, winning Olympic medals and more. But just for a moment, I want to focus on tourism in the broader sense of the term because it’s the type of area that has a very strong link to national equity, especially for India. Taj and Oberoi, two of my favorite Indian brands across all sectors are doing us very proud. The Leela isn’t far behind. We’re getting the hotel bit right for sure. A decade from now, all three are destined to be far ahead of where they currently are. At a global level. The airports are kicking ass (although Bombay’s international arrivals is beginning to remind me of eighties India). But the airline front needs rapid action. Dissolve Air India before we lose more taxpayer money. It’s a lost cause, sunk ship, black hole, etc, etc. And Jet and Kingfisher (and IndiGo when it starts flying internationally) really need to dial up the fact that they’re Indian. I don’t mean behave more Indian. I mean the world really needs to know they’re
Indian. If we get this right, throw in the proliferation of yoga and Ayurveda, and we’ve got most of what comprises a very powerful strategy in place to ride our way to the brand equity high table.

By the way, talking of Simon Anholt, I remembered a story about how, as a young Account Executive in Europe, I was secretly recruited to recruit for Cave Anholt Jonason, an international agency launched in 2000 by Anholt along with two others. I have to rush for dinner though, so I’ll have to save it for next time. Sorry!

Roopak can be followed at http://twitter.com/roopaksaluja

I love my iPad just as much as the next guy. I love my iPad2 even more. This,  in spite of the fact that I ordered it to my brother’s place in Mountain View (Googlepur) and had it FedEx’d here only to have FedEx ask for Rs.12,000 in cash to pay for the customs duty they had just  cleared on my behalf. Pissed I was, no doubt. But what really rubbed salt in my wounds was that the iPad2 was launched in India three days later at  a cost of Rs. 6,000 less (for the same version) than what I paid for mine including customs and courier. The price one pays for gadget greed, I guess.

BTW, in the two instances above where I use “Rs.” for ‘the-symbol-formerlyknown-as Rs’, it’s  because our lawyer told me yesterday that you can’t use the font if you haven’t paid for the license.  Bizarre!  But I digress…

Coming back to the point, I love my iPad, iPhone, Macbook Pro and BlackBerry for the empowerment and efficiency they bring to my life. But these are obvious contenders for the “Best Pieces of Everyday Technology” awards. They’re superstars. I want to  focus on the supporting cast, the unsung heroes.

Let’s start with my Bluetooth headset.  It’s a Plantronics Voyager Pro Plus. Firstly, why do I use one? I’d say I’m pretty much in the 99th percentile of heavy phone usage, so if I didn’t use one, I’d either feel one-armed or have a serious neck problem. I’ve been through about five different types of headsets and they’ve all had audio clarity issues, either for me or for the person on the other end of the line. Then I discovered Plantronics. You must believe me when I say  the clarity is better than a conversation between two people standing face to face. I’m on my fourth piece because I’ve lost one and snapped two. But it’s all worth it because it keeps my two hands free to type, scroll, hold, drive, etc. while I’m talking. In fact, I’ve even converted those around me. Prashanth from Jack in the Box and my Assistant, Divya, use it. And I’ve even got my eight-month pregnant wife, Tara (better not to have the mobile near the tummy apparently) and my Dad to be Plantronics users. Talk about a movement!

Next up is the Tata Photon Wi-Fi router. How cool is this thing? Thanks to it, I now have a wi-fi enabled car.  And that, I assure you, is not a very normal thing to have anywhere in the world. I find it rather impressive that one can have one in India for a pretty reasonable price. I guess that would depend on the price of your car of course. I even carry one in my bag for domestic day trips.  And every Bang Bang shoot that’s within an urban area has three of these routers spread across the set to keep the area wi-fi enabled. Thank you, Tata Indicom. While on the subject, I should add that wi-fi in my car meant more to me when I had the wi-fi only iPad. Now that I have the 3G iPad2, I use it with a Vodafone 3G connection. I’m not sure why there’s so much ranting against it on twitter.  As far as I’m concerned it downloads like a cheetah on steroids.

A quick honourable mention must be made to recognize the value of a portable charge pack that allows me to refill the juice on my phones.  It comes in especially handy for day trips to Delhi and Bangalore for PPMs, presentations or other meetings. Remember, I talk a lot.  And neither the Bold 3 nor the iPhone 4 have the greatest batteries.

And finally…the star in the best supporting technology category, perhaps ready to be bumped up to the superstar category at some not-too-distant point in the future….yet another Tata initiative…. Tata Sky+ HD and its trusted companion (more on that ahead). Let me begin by setting the context here. I live in a building in Breach Candy that doesn’t allow you to put up a dish so we’ve had to bear with Hathaway until recently. I’ve been forced to feel like we’re back in nineties India. After longingly admiring the clarity on friends’ HD sets during World Cup matches, a few weeks ago, I found a way. It’s a boring story, so never mind how. Cut to us getting the  Tata Sky+ HD at home. Granted there are less than ten HD channels available in India right now. But if you haven’t watched one already, it’s a sight to see. The clarity is so piercing that it’s disturbing. You almost feel like TV shouldn’t be that clear. But the real icing on the cake that I’ve been dying to get to and now we’re here…is the Tata Sky+ iPhone app. You can actually program your DVR from wherever you are. So let’s say the Cricket World Cup final is on and you happen to be in Brazil, Bali or Boston (all places that aren’t likely to show cricket on TV), all you have to do is reach for your phone to ensure the match is ready and waiting for you to watch when you get home.

I could carry on but I think the folks at Campaign are expecting me to mail this in…

Roopak can be followed at http://twitter.com/roopaksaluja

Why can’t we say no? What is it that scares us about being the bearer of bad news? Actually, “bad” is too strong a word. If there’s anything that we have to say that we feel could be anything less than pleasant for the listener, we just can’t bring ourselves to say it. We’re all guilty of it. You are, Mr. Marketing Director! So are you, Ms. ECD! You’re no less, Madam Media Buyer! And you, Mr. Producer, are just as bad as everyone else!

When we set up Bang Bang back in 2006, Asia-Pacific was (and still is) a very heavily cross-pollinated region when it came to  commercials production.  So  when, say, an Ogilvy Singapore  put  a  job  out  to  bid,  they’d talk to companies  in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand,  Australia, etc. but no one was talking to  India.  And the converse was true as well: Indian agencies were barely talking to directors or producers from outside the country. Main culprit:  the large domestic market syndrome, an affliction we suffer from in the feature film industry as well. Although we at Bang Bang  operate on a slightly different  trajectory (and I’ll stop talking about Bang Bang now as I’m  sure that’s not  why Campaign asked me to write this piece), this is largely still the case.

A couple of years ago, I had a reporter ask why we needed to bring in international directors.  “Our directors are just as good”, is what she told me, “why are you trying to spoil the industry?” I’m sure several of you reading this are thinking along the same vein.  I have a strong point of view on this.  Art, in the broadest sense of the word, has always benefited from external influences.  And more competition is always a good thing for any industry.  So whether you look at advertising as art or commerce, insularity is simply a regressive concept.

A delegation of the APA – Advertising Producers Association (of the UK), visited Bombay last week to familiarize themselves with the market and obviously with the ultimate aim of getting more business out of it.  India is hot.  Yes, Directors & Producers!  Be worried, be very worried. Someone is coming to eat up our lunch.  I’m being facetious. But only slightly. Not that the MJZs, RSAs and Independents of the world are going to be vying for the mid budget band of 50 to 80 Lac budget films that typify the industry.  It’s the larger among us that need to be wary of a whole new subset of competition in our own backyard.  And competition is a wonderful thing.  You now have  a reason to up your game.
Here’s a few thoughts on how…and some of this is stuff that some of us are already practicing…

Spread your wings.  I say it again: India is hot!  Go to Cannes, Pattaya (it’s Phuket this year), Singapore or any other place where global adfolk congregate periodically and see how cool it is to be Indian right now.  Go reach out to the world.  If the APA can come here, why can’t we go elsewhere?  Hold on!  When I say “we”, who am I really talking about?  We don’t even have an industry body.  How embarrassing!  More on that later…  But as I was saying, completely at the risk of increasing competition, which,  as we’ve established, is a wonderful thing, we should reach out and connect more with the world at large.  Take your directors to other markets, give them a larger playing field.

Build a brand.  For a bunch of people operating in the advertising industry, we Indian producers do a pretty pathetic job of branding our companies.  The real brands so far have been the directors.  And that’s not a bad thing.  But they do manage to strike a balance in other markets.Superstar directors like Tarsem, Gondry, Budgen and Ridley Scott have long shared the limelight with Radical, Partizan, Gorgeous and RSA.  Make sure you share credit with the agency for the great work that you do WITH them. Far too often, I see credits for a commercial here in Campaign or in rival media, which don’t even mention the director or production company.  Spend money on marketing. Buy media here in Campaign and in global media as well like shots, The Location Guide, Cannes Lions Daily, etc. and make sure your potential stakeholders know what you stand for.

Increase transparency.  Meritocracy is a good thing.  Stop greasing palms and stop paying kickbacks.  I believe the majority of this industry –clients, agencies, and production companies- doesn’t indulge in the stuff.  But we also know that there’s definitely a section that runs on ‘alternative finance’.  I know. I’ve been asked for money more than once.  Mail me if you’re curious to know by whom. Do we need our own Raja and Kalmadi before it stops?  The difference here is that a job being awarded on the back of relationships is perfectly fine.  At the end of the day, there needs to be a comfort level between the parties involved.

And most of all, let’s unite.  We need an industry body like the APA or the AICP (Association of Independent Commercials Producers) in the US.   And it needs to be staffed by experienced and decently paid professionals. But that’s a topic for another day.

Till then, VIVA LA COMPETICIÓN!