Demographers speak of the youth bulge triggering protests in many countries. The anti-Vietnam war protests in the USA in the late ’60s was triggered by the youth bulge. A youth bulge occurs when in the general population the youth, the sixteen to twenty-four age group, become a dominant number. If a country is witnessing a youth bulge and if that coincides with high unemployment, you can be sure to see a mass-scale protest movement. In India, this bulge happened around the mid-’70s, say Isabel Ortiz and Matthew Cummins of UNICEF2. Chances are that if the Emergency had not been lifted when it was, you may have witnessed mass-scale protests in India as well. You could argue that the Emergency was resorted to because of mass-scale protests spurred by the youth bulge. And you could be right. In the 2010s, we are seeing signs of stronger youth presence, through candlelight marches and so forth. I think this has not been spurred as much by the numbers as by the presence of yet another weapon in their hands, smartphones.
The lifting of Emergency also saw the exit of several global majors, including IBM and Coca-Cola. Thus was born a range of Indian soft drinks. Thums Up, a carbonated cola drink, was launched by the Chauhans who owned the Parle bottling company. As a sign of things to come, the brand was launched with a tag line: ‘Happy days are here again!’ How true. Emergency had been lifted, the press was free again. Why not celebrate with a bottle of cola. Parle soon followed it with Gold Spot, an orange soda, and Limca, a lime-and-lemony drink. Limca was an outstanding success and was for many years India’s largest selling carbonated soft drink.
Thums Up advertisments created by Trikaya Advertising captured the imagination of a nation that was starved of Coca-Cola. Thums Up’s Delhi-based rival, Campa Cola could not stand up to the Thums Up anthem. Thums Up did classic soft drink advertising showing beaches and young people having fun. The brand sold itself as ‘the refreshing cola’. Its magic formula was higher carbonation as compared to Coca-Cola.
The Indian teenager’s appetite for soft drinks kept growing and this was brought to the attention of the global major Pepsi. In order to enter India, Pepsi had to comply with a number of laws of the land that were in force in the late ’80s. They promised to give the brand an Indian flavour, so the name ‘Lehar Pepsi’ – apparently the word Lehar with its other connotations in English was not loved by the American bosses of Pepsi and was soon dispensed with. They entered India through a joint venture with Voltas India Limited and Punjab Agro Industrial Corporation (PAIC), a state government undertaking of Punjab. Finally, the brand was launched in 1988 with the theme ‘Yehi hai right choice, baby, aha!’ (This is the right choice, baby, aha). In a sense, they were signalling to the youth that Thums Up is an imitator and Pepsi was the right choice if you wanted a global cola beverage.
Over the last thirty years or so, Pepsi has managed to capture the imagination of the young with catchy campaigns. To their credit, the first ever screen appearance of Aishwarya Rai was in a Pepsi commercial which also featured Mahima Chaudhary and Aamir Khan. An Indianized version of the Michael J Fox Diet Pepsi commercial from the USA, Mahima Chaudhary knocks on her neighbour’s door asking if he has a bottle of Pepsi. Poor Aamir had just finished his last bottle. Not to be left out of a potential date, he jumps out of the window, rushes to a store nearby to grab a bottle. After performing this miracle in a few seconds, as counted in a television spot, when he offers the ice cold bottle to Mahima, she asks if he has another bottle for her friend, Sanju. As he is perplexed about who this guy ‘Sanju’could be, in walks Aishwarya, who is Sanjana or Sanju in that film. Aishwarya went on to win the Miss World crown and become the sweetheart of millions of Indians.
Thums Up came under attack and they hit back with some terrific advertising. Since Thums Up was sweeter and more carbonated, Parle decided to give the brand a more aggressive position and thus was born the ‘Taste the thunder’ campaign created by Ashok Kurien and team at Ambience. Ashok claims that Thums Up is the only soft drink brand in India to have retained the same tag line – and almost same campaign with/without celebrities – for twenty years. Gold Spot was sold as ‘The zing thing’, while Limca ruled as the ‘Thirst choice for thirst’. But soon Ramesh Chauhan of Parle decided to sell his brands to Coca-Cola in 1993 for $60 million. It is reported that when it was sold, Thums Up had a market share of over 80 per cent.
Pepsi continued to focus its energy on understanding and connecting with the youth. When Coca-Cola – which had entered India as a 100 per cent Coca-Cola-owned company, when laws permitted it to do so – decided to bond with the country and sponsor the World Cup Cricket 1996, Pepsi hit back cheekily saying ‘Nothing official about it’ – meaning that one day cricket was not official cricket and so there was no place for an official drink. It spoke of how new-age cricket played under lights, in bright coloured clothes was not ‘official cricket’, so why drink the ‘official drink’ Coca-Cola.
One should remember that in 1991 the government of India had opened up the country for foreign investments. New products and services started streaming in. The television sector saw the entry of Zee, Star and many others. New car brands started being seen on Indian roads. Waiting lists started disappearing rapidly. Brands were now chasing consumers in category after category.
Pepsi captured the new-found energy of the young in its 1998 campaign ‘Yeh dil maange more!’. The brand spoke in the voice of the young who were standing up and wanting to be counted. The Pepsi tag line became the mantra of the youth of the late ’90s and early 2000s.
The year 2002 saw Coca-Cola launch its ‘Thanda matlab Coca-Cola’ campaign as well as the 5/- bottle. The multiple executions of the ‘Thanda matlab’ campaign, starring Bollywood star Aamir Khan, written by Prasoon Joshi of McCann, captured the imagination of the young. The brand, though American was reaching out to the young Indians in their own fun language. In spite of the terrific campaign, the brand could not sustain the 5/- price point and later even abandoned the tag line.
The angry young man of 1975–1984 was a distant memory. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ) released in 1995 spelled a new era in reflecting the ethos of the young. They were no longer wanting to rebel and fight. They wanted societal acceptance. Eloping was no longer a solution to the problem. So while the heart wanted more, that more had to be got with societal approval.
PRODUCT PLACEMENT: The growing corporatization of feature film industry, especially Bollywood, has opened up yet another opportunity for brands to reach consumers. For a fee, the hero or heroine can be made to drive your car or drink your soft drink.
Come 2000s, how are the youth being depicted in the ads? Are they all jumping around asking for ‘more’ or are we seeing newer shades of youth dynamics?
For instance, Center Shock chewing gum presented the youth differently. A young man walks into a barber shop, shows the aging barber a picture of an afro-hairstyled model in a magazine, and asks for the same. The hair dresser just pops a Center Shock bitter chewing gum into his mouth; and his hair stands on its end, giving him the style he wants. There were numerous such ads including the immensely memorable one by Happydent where after chewing this teeth-whitening gum, the villagers are able to light up the whole palace with their bright teeth. Written by Prasoon Joshi of McCann and produced and directed by Ram Madhwani, this ad went on to win international awards by the dozen. This ad, in fact, used the Nawabi past of India, the palaces, the chandeliers, the lamps to sell a relatively modern product. There have been many such examples of brands picking up a figment of India’s past to sell a modern product. An ad for Scotch-Brite in 2015 showed a mythical God who offers eternal life to the scrubber instead of the woman in a misdirected boon.
Amid these depictions of the youth, Tata Tea, through its agency Lowe Lintas, launched its ‘Jaago Re’ campaign asking Indians to not just wake up in the morning but to rise up and raise awareness about specific social causes. One of their memorable ads had a politician asking a young man for his vote. The young man asks the politician what his qualifications are, and why should he
vote for him? Tata Tea managed to blend in a very relevant social message along with its core message of refreshing tea. The campaign launched in 2008 was refreshed in 2014 as the ‘Power of 49’, where they goaded the women of India, the 49 per cent, to get out and vote.
The rebellious nature of the youth also got its expression in television programming. The biggest of them is MTV Roadies which debuted in 2003. Roadies has now turned into a cult youth programme. The show has put an amazing 1.5 million youth through its auditions. According to Afaqs, a portal that writes about advertising and media, Roadies season 7 viewership in India stood at 60 million and this rose to 80 million in two years. The show has 8.8 million Facebook fans and over 300 million views on YouTube.
In 2011, Airtel captured the imagination of the young with its catchy ‘Har ek friend zaroori hota hai’ campaign. The film presented how a youth is surrounded by all kinds of friends: someone who eats your food when you are not looking, someone who borrows money and does not return it, someone who is willing to help when even not asked. But the story unfolds that every type of friend is needed to make life more interesting.
The broader subtext of Indian advertising’s portrayal of the youth can be seen in two very different commercials, both aired around 2013.
In the first ad, the mother is worried that the young son is spending a lot of time on the Internet. Is he looking at wrong stuff? She goads her husband to speak with the youngster. The dad gingerly sits down on the son’s bed. The young lad says, ‘Hi’, but is still busy on the computer. The father then gently probes: ‘Son you are now old enough, I thought we should speak about “sex”.’ To which the son replies, ‘Sure, Dad, what do you want to know?’ The ad by Vasudha Mishra and Chax of FCB Ulka for Tata Docomo reflected the supreme confidence of the youth of India, in a subtly humourous way.
Consumer research tells us that it is the young who bring new products and ideas into the house. While working on the brand Clairol, FCB’s New York researchers came across the phenomenon that mothers often take haircare advice from their teenaged daughters. Several brands are using this insight to connect with the old and the young in India.
This is the second ad. The father is angry. He sees his son sitting with his mobile phone, fooling around, laughing. The father grumbles to his wife about his son sitting at home and wasting time. He then shouts at his son, ‘I told you to go and pay the electricity bill, have you done that? What about the property taxes? And the gas bill?’ To each of the questions, the son replies, ‘Done, done, done.’ The exasperated dad asks, ‘What do you mean “done, done”, you are just sitting here and fooling around with your mobile phone.’ To which the smart alec son replies, ‘Dad I can do all that through my phone, don’t worry.’ ICICI bank that offers mobile banking facility then comes with a final message about mobile banking.
Indian advertising has presented the youth of India in many different shades, not just as a fun-loving bunch of kids. The influx of technology, almost all of a sudden, has been a big challenge for the fifty-plus generation.
Jean Piaget, the Swiss psychologist, sociologist and philosopher, was the first to offer a theory of cognitive development. He presented four stages: The period of sensorimotor stage (birth to two years); the preoperational stage (two to seven years); the concrete operational stage (seven to eleven years] and the formal operational stage (eleven to sixteen years). Adding to that, David Lazear offered eight ways of knowing and teaching for multiple intelligences including Logical/Mathematical intelligence; Visual/Spatial intelligence; Body/Kinesthetic intelligence; Musical/Rhythmic intelligence; Interpersonal intelligence/Intrapersonal intelligence; and Verbal/Linguistic intelligence. I suspect the young are getting adept at managing many new things at the same time because, as Malcolm Gladwell has pointed out, they are becoming adept at thin-slicing by working with thin slices of data for taking decisions3. Unlike the older generation, they are able to absorb new technologies faster and integrate it into their lives that much sooner. The old theories of learning and intelligence probably need an overhaul in this new year when a two-year-old can play with a smartphone before she knows how to write with a pencil. Using developments in cognitive psychology and behavioural economics, advertisers are attempting to build better ways of communicating with the new attention-deficit young consumer.
Brands have figured out that using the teenager could be a good bridge in their own communication narrative, as nowadays, many parents seek technical advice from their kids on how to use the latest technology. The youth bulge may be behind us in India, but if the country has to progress and grow, the youth have to be channelized in the right direction; and, more importantly, the older lot has to learn to appreciate the spirit of the youth.
Market strategy consultant, Rama Bijapurkar too has written exhaustively about the changing Indian youth. She has said that while on the surface all youth across the globe appear similar, there are many differences if you scratch that surface. Indian youth are more ‘affiliative’ and less ‘assertive’ compared to youth from Russia. She has observed that each generation in every country is brought up in different cultural contexts, which shape their collective character and, in turn, their individual behaviour4. For instance, in my book For God’s Sake, I have examined in detail how Indian youth are a lot more religious than their cohorts in other countries. For instance, they visit temples more often, pray more often and believe in intra-religious marriage, as compared to say the youth in Europe.
FCB Ulka’s youth study, Youth Mood, captures some of the current anxieties of the Indian youth. The residual impression of the youth of today is that of a self-confident, determined and tremendously focused bunch of go-getters. But under that strong exterior, this coconut has a very tender core. It is plagued by insecurities about the future, the fear of being left out – of groups/communities – or just plain being ignored. It has shed the overtly visible, almost ritualistic demonstrations of respect for parents and elders, and replaced it with an emotional underpinning of the need for support, advice and unconditional love. This feeling emerges particularly strongly whenever their own identity or self-image is under the spotlight. They are unapologetic about being focused on their objectives, whether it is material terms, stature or relationships. However, they are mindful of certain boundaries that they cannot transgress and always seem to be wanting to come back home.
Dheeraj Sinha, an advertising planner turned author, has observed that urban upper and middle class (socio-economic classes A B & C) can be classified into three broad segments: No Strings Generation (the young, at 29 million), Transition Generation (middle-aged, at 56 million) and the Partition Generation (older, at 27 million). The No Strings Generation has a distinctly more transactional and practical view of the world than the other two generations5.
Ray Titus, a professor at a business school in Bangalore who has worked on understanding youth behaviour in India endorses these views and also points to a research done in Australia by Mark McCrindle which says that the Gen X and Gen Y are ‘up-ageing’; they think and behave older than their age, thanks to the choices they have and the access to information6.
I submit Indian youth too are dramatically ‘up-ageing’.
I was speaking with Krishna Ramkumar of Avanti Fellows – co-founded with Akshay Saxena – which was one of the winners of the Tata Salt Desh Ka Namak Award, 2014. This young man had a plum job with Boston Consulting Group in New York after he had completed his BTech from IIT Bombay. He gave that up after three years to realize his dream of creating affordable coaching for engineering admissions. He had raised some first-round funding and was confident about his future. I spoke with him at length about the risk he had taken with his career and how people of my generation did not dare take such a risk. He had a simple answer to my words of admiration, ‘Your generation did not have a choice. You were lucky to get a good job. You could not give that up and there were no angel investors waiting to fund your dream. Our generation is different. We can always go ba
ck to our old employer, who will take us back quite happily. In fact, even if my venture fails, it would be seen as a positive on my bio-data. So I don’t think there is any downside to my decision. In your generation, it was different.’
I was rather touched by his words. Not only was he being humble, he made me feel good. If he stands as a representative of the millions of youth who are joining the job or the entrepreneur market, our country is heading in the right direction.
Jo Biwi Se Kare Pyaar…
THE YOUNG LADY looks like a typical, demure newly-married Indian bride. Holding her hand, the young man tentatively enters a shop selling a multitude of home appliances. Obviously, they are getting ready to set up their new home. When they ask for a pressure cooker, the wizened old shopkeeper asks the man how much he loves his wife. If he loves his wife more than life itself, then he should go for a new brand of pressure cooker which has an unique new feature. He explains in a characteristically authoritative voice how the unique ‘Gasket Release System’ will ensure that the pressure cooker will always be safe, even if the vent on the lid gets blocked by particles. When the young man agrees to get this new brand, the shopkeeper offers the clincher, ‘Jo biwi se sach-much karte pyaar, woh Prestige se kaise kare inkaar!’ (How can someone one who truly loves his wife, say no to the Prestige pressure cooker!)
This television commercial, made in 1982 and directed by Prahlad Kakkar, then a confirmed bachelor, was widely aired during the late seventies capturing the ethos of a newly-married couple and a young nation getting ready to set up new homes. Interestingly, the pressure cooker is one of the most commonly used household appliances in India; over 80 per cent of all Indian homes have one. The humble pressure cooker is so ingrained in our national psyche that it can be spotted in almost all NRI homes around the world. Obviously, Indian husbands, wherever they may live, love their wives a lot, at least as evidenced by the prevalence of pressure cookers, many with unique safety features.
Nawabs, Nudes, Noodles Page 4