Soft power: Why India needs a Brand Plan

Nye defined soft power as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than through coercion.” He also noted that soft power “could be developed through relations with allies, economic assistance, and cultural exchanges.” Joseph Nye spoke about the impact of soft power on a nation’s political strength. And this was also the topic of the TED Talk given by Shashi Tharoor (@shashitharoor) India’s Minister of State for External Affairs.

In his talk Mr Tharoor cites the example of the European racing towards an Indian in a foreign airport pleading “You’re an Indian, can you help me with my laptop?” In my book I talk about how complete strangers in the US now approach me with “You’re an Indian? In IT? You must be smart!” This, when just a decade ago, even Indian-origin in the US cabbies sweetly declined tips from me because they felt I wouldn’t be able to afford it.

The above two examples show the symbiotic relationship between country brand and seller power - when Indian IT started out it was battling a negative country image which it overcame by sheer technical excellence and a dollop of savvy marketing. Now, anything IT from India benefits from the country’s reputation in this space. The TATA Nano did wonders for India’s automotive industry, again by raising the world’s awareness that we possessed engineering excellence.

Undoubtedly soft power helps with political influence, but it also helps with economics. People pay a premium for stuff from countries that they admire or aspire to belong to. The US is of course a leader in soft power - Apple says “designed in California” because across the world this connotes hipness, tech-savviness. American movies are big cultural ambassadors - many of us know a lot about US though movies, serials etc. When we go into a McDonald’s we’re going in for a taste of that culture, not just the food.

You might argue that US is not just a soft power, but also political and economic. True. But what about little (pop. 300,000), bankrupt Iceland? I was recently there for a vacation, and they did a fantastic job of marketing their culture, green credentials - geo-thermal power, green data centers, design excellence and natural attractions. Right from the moment you got on the plane there was a not-so-subtle message of “Iceland isn’t that cold - we just got misnamed. New York in mid-winter is colder!” Right. In a country where at -2C they are still waiting for winter. Whatever. The marketing push appears to be working - Reva has begun marketing its electric car in Iceland and is exploring opening a plant there. Oh, and they have an IT product firm LS Retail that looks like it is doing pretty well in India.

In the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index (NBI) of 2008, India came in at 26 - one step ahead of China and below Brazil (20) and Russia (21). This is a survey of 20,000+ interviews across 20 countries including India. We didn’t make the top 10 in 2009 either. The release cites improvement in the rankings of US (possibly due to the election of Mr Obama) and China (possibly due to the Olympics).

India, for its wealth of marketing assets, hasn’t really put together a marketing plan. I have a lot of respect for our ministry of external affairs (my father was in the Indian Foreign Service) but I think we are letting Bollywood and private business shape our external perception way too much. They are doing a good job within their limits and commercial ambitions, but it is tactical and not held together by a common theme or plan.

The criteria used by the NBI rankings are:

People: Measures the population's reputation for competence, education, openness and friendliness and other qualities, as well as perceived levels of potential hostility and discrimination.

Governance: Measures public opinion regarding the level of national government competency and fairness and describes individuals' beliefs about each country's government, as well as its perceived commitment to global issues such as democracy, justice, poverty and the environment.

Exports: Determines the public's image of products and services from each country and the extent to which consumers proactively seek or avoid products from each country-of-origin.

Tourism: Captures the level of interest in visiting a country and the draw of natural and man-made tourist attractions.

Culture & Heritage: Reveals global perceptions of each nation's heritage and appreciation for its contemporary culture, including film, music, art, sport and literature.

Investment & Immigration: Determines the power to attract people to live, work or study in each country and reveals how people perceive a country's economic and social situation

Those of you familiar with India can decide for yourselves how we fare along each of these parameters. I think that there is sufficient content here to put together a very decent outreach program. And it must be an outreach program - not just an ad campaign.

Some of the obvious first-steps are:

• Set up a cultural outreach center like Alliance Francaise, USIS, British Library, Max Mueller in key countries ie our potential trading partners. This will help educate at least those who are interested in our culture, language, and educational opportunities.
• Either set up a world-class English-language media channel and take it global, or encourage the existing Indian media to do so. CNN, FOX News, Al-Jazeera, CCTV (China), BBC, Voice of America, all do their bit in promoting their country’s point of view to an international audience. This is a good channel for our thought leadership.
• Create a vibrate online presence to promote India’s interests. This is a modern tool and India, with its technological expertise should be able to leapfrog the others in savviness, relevance and content. We can also tap into our highly-skilled graduate pool to run a great twitter presence and blog.
• India is seen among certain countries as a source of excellent education. Combine this with our technology brand and use this to push for international students to study in Indian institutes, and also for Indian centers of learning to set up shop outside the country. Currently, neither is easy, but it should be as this fosters the right kind of immigration.
• While, yes, televised proceedings of Parliament are a PR-disaster, we do have some very articulate, sophisticated politicians. We should get them out in front of the right audience through, well, a GOI Speaker Bureau. The MEA website lists the PM’s visits but just 14 of them. A little known fact is that India’s big IT CEOs spend upwards of 200 days outside the country at meetings and events. Sure, one doesn’t expect the PM to do that, but surely the others can chip in?
• Lastly, promote India as a Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Events (MICE) destination. This will help bring in prospective business investors as well as tourism.

This isn’t a comprehensive list. I am hoping that if more people raise the need for India’s soft power to be built in a more structured manner the current government, which has very brand savvy folks like S M Krishna and Shashi Tharoor in a position to make a difference, will do something. It could be their lasting contribution to India, one that will outlive them.

(For those interested in knowing more on how country brand can be a marketing lever, there is a chapter on this in my book, No Money Marketing.)

Ok, what the heck is Paul Writer Strategic Advisory?!

My belief - reinforced by my recent attendance at TED India - is that India has an amazing amount of innovation. Often the product of a constraint driven economy, we come up with fabulous ideas. But, as per Peter Drucker, innovation is just one face of the coin, with the other being marketing. This is where we sometimes lag - due to a combination of resource constraints, lack of marketing infrastructure, absence of common marketing knowledge. More so in B2B services/hi-tech which is a relatively new space in India.

My book, No Money Marketing, is an attempt to provide common marketing knowledge particularly to those working on challenger brands. Going by initial feedback (and sales) it seems to be helping entrepreneurs and young marketers.

Now the time has come for the next step. After 4 1/2 years in Wipro and over a decade (since 1998!) in IT services, I’ve decided to leave my rather cool job as CMO and try to do more in building India’s infrastructure in the B2B marketing space. Am launching a firm called Paul Writer Strategic Advisory, and broadly, intend to focus on three areas:

1. Strategic Advisory & Marketing Management: Provide positioning advice, go-to-marketing strategy and marketing program management & execution for challenger firms
2. Marketing Crashers: Crash courses and collaborative learning opportunities for those who want a marketing primer on topics such as Positioning, Executive Branding, Social Media etc
3. Networking: Construct a networking platform for B2B marketers

And for those curious about the name, “Writer” was (and still is) a term used to refer to the manager of a tea or coffee estate. A trusted executive and steward of the estate-owner’s wealth, this person was in charge of operations including maintaining accounts, managing the estate, and taking the crops to market. I intend to become the trusted advisor to those who value brands, and thus function as their “Writer”. And there’s a personal connect - my grandfather was a “Writer” around a century ago.

I’ll be with Wipro till Jan 8, when I step off into the great unknown. What I want to do continues to evolve, and feedback is most welcome. Wish me luck!

Hard Times: How should marketing evolve?

The current downturn is, according to many, a reset. Things will get better, but the marketplace will not be the same. It is a restructuring and a reset, so marketing has to adapt and evolve too. In this article I discuss four approaches that are likely to be helpful in this new, digital, global economy.

1. Think Flat:

Harness globalisation to treat

the world as your potential marketplace and potential supplier base.

You and your customers are no longer constrained by geography and communication resources; she can be anyone, anywhere and buy from you at any time that she chooses. Similarly, you can be based anywhere and sell

globally.

Emerging economies have proved to be resilient, and are likely to exhibit growth in the long term. The current economic situation may provide great opportunities for growth in these new economies for those who are not already present there. Conversely, the current market disruption provides a window of opportunity for firms from developing countries to establish a toe-hold in the lucrative G-7 countries.

This period may also be a good time to re-evaluate whether you are actually doing work where it makes the best sense to be done, and redesign your global value chain accordingly.. Your supply chain can be infinitely innovative and flexible. Instead of rigidly applying off-shore supply or on-shore proposition - why should someone choose your offering and not buy from the competition.

It is very tempting to position an offering as serving many needs, but it is hard to communicate so many benefits on a limited budget. Look for the reason why 80 per cent of your clients choose you, and go with that.

This will change over time as both your product and the business landscape evolve so you must keep revisiting it. But being focused here will simplify your communications and enhance word-of-mouth, referenceability and memorability - all big money-savers.

The client always buys the holistic experience. But the main driver for purchase can vary depending on the customer’s mindframe. Understanding what is the key driver can help you optimize the experience. For example, in the current economic climate, for many buyers, price and ROI become far more important than other factors which they had considered important, such as after-sales service or loyalty points. Building a solution around their key purchase drivers would allow you to minimize cost even while improving customer satisfaction.

2. Think Collaboration

Communicate to all elements of the eco-system, not just your key buyers. Buyers can hear about your offering from different parts of their industry, and some elements (for example media) may have a higher level of influence in their decision-making process, and are often lower cost than other, traditional channels.

Moreover, a service really takes off when it acquires a critical mass of knowledgeable people who are willing to endorse it. Broadening your eco-system and facilitating cross-communication can speed up this process.

Often, there is no cost to contacting the members of an industry eco-system, though you will have to put in the effort to identify them and create relevant, custom communication. But you can save a lot of money by avoiding the mass media required for a direct contact with the buyer.

With the advent of social media, distributed marketing has become an important tool. How can you get customers to become brand ambassadors? Is your entire value chain promoting your company? If customers spot something nice, have you provided a means for them to share it? Customers recommending your firm is the best possible sales channel, and in most cases it is low-cost or free. Enabling it can be a big boost at any time, and during hard times can even be a life-saver.

3. Think Frugal

Constraints can force you to be clever. In general, the easiest way to reach your audience will be the most expensive. That's because someone else is doing the thinking behind creating that opportunity and also bringing in the audience for you. But if you were to create the opportunity then the costs go down.

Here are some suggestions for frugal thinking:

Avoid Waste:

If you have defined your target audience tightly, most mass media vehicles will be too broad for you. But today with some savvy negotiation you can bring down the reach (and thus the costing). This is true not just with the Internet - where tools exist for IP-level targeting - but also in print media. And online, and in social media, you can pay on the basis of results. The old saying of John Wannamaker that “I know one half of my advertising is wasted, I just don’t know which half”, is no longer true.

Be Interesting:

There are many things that we do as part of our business - hiring, training, signing up suppliers, going green, selling, producing, customer service. Make each of these things interesting; seek opportunities to do them differently or uniquely. This can catch the attention of both customers and influencers at a very low cost.

For example, all listed firms have to manage their investor's relations. But, some of them have raised this to an art-from and have been recognized for this through various accolades. Providing food to employees is an old practice - but Google took it to another level of sophistication and used that as a differentiator.

Consciously think about whether what you are doing can win an award or be covered in media, even while serving its functional objective. Be insightful: Thanks to the Internet, information is easily available. What customers and prospects value today is insight. A good way to stand out amongst the clutter is to have a good point of view, and provide insights into the industry.

This will generate word-of-mouth buzz and free publicity, in addition to creating a loyal base of customers. Providing insight is also an excellent way to trigger viral communication - people tend to forward insights to their friends.

Conclusion: Savvy marketing can reduce costs and increase market-share during a downturn. What is important is that firms revisit their marketing strategy and organization structure so as to reap maximum benefits.

PHOTO CREDIT: DAVID NEUBERT, FLICK'R CREATIVE COMMONS