Well, companies have used the platform of getting jobs and doing well in jobs to sell their brands for over fifty years. Old Indian print advertisements collected and presented by Arun Chaudhuri provide some interesting vignettes highlighting the way society has changed. Take the case of the malted beverage brand Horlicks. The ad, purportedly run in newspapers like the Hindu in the 1950s, presents a compelling argument for the brand in a comic strip format. The story titled Typist Promoted to Secretary has the boss pulling up his assistant, ‘This report is full of mistakes, Mani. I don’t know what’s come over you lately. You were one of our best typists.’ Mani’s colleague also adds, ‘How could you make these mistakes, Mani? The draft is perfectly legible!’ To which Mani responds, ‘I don’t know. I can’t seem to concentrate … feel so tired all the time.’ At home, his mom advises him – remember, it was the ’50s, so it is the mother, not his wife – ‘Your tiredness doesn’t seem natural, son. Why don’t you see a doctor?’The doctor recommends Horlicks to our tired hero. Mani takes Horlicks every day, learns shorthand and gets promoted from typist to secretary1.
The story may sound quaint in its own way to today’s young executives who may have no clue of what ‘shorthand’ means. But the story vividly portrayed how a brand can help you save your job and maybe even get a promotion.
In the late ’80s, Ponds Dreamflower Fragrant Talc (DFT) broke the traditional mold of talc advertising to get into the territory of jobs and interviews. The film, created by JWT and produced by White Light, starts with a young female fashion designer, played by the gorgeous model Colleen Khan, getting ready for an interview. She is nervous and practices her presentation in front of the mirror. Dressed in a pink saree – remember the other rule of advertising, the main protagonist should be dressed in brand colours – she looks confident, and after gulping at the first question, she gets her stride back to answer the questions confidently and present her designs. Shots of Ponds DFT are interspersed in the film to communicate that applying this talc will give you the confidence to face the toughest interview. As she walks out of the building, there is a man, presumably her husband, waiting outside. She gives an ‘All Okay’ sign to her husband who rejoices in her achievement. Till then, Ponds DFT used to be family centric in its advertising approach, showing women and family, all applying Ponds and going out to the beach or wherever. For the first time, the brand went out of its comfort zone to connect with the new young Indian women, who were just about getting ready to start doing white-collar jobs. Till date, that ad of DFT starring Colleen Khan is remembered in advertising circles very fondly.
If Ponds did the interview advertisement in the ’80s, it was Fair & Lovely’s turn in the ’90s. The brand which stood for ‘get fair get married’ changed track to present a girl getting a job as an airhostess because of her fair skin thanks to Fair and Lovely. Getting a job, any job, was the call of that decade. But if you cut to the 2000s, the narrative takes a different turn. A whole new breed of young people were joining the workforce and they are not just looking for any job at any company for any salary.
No ad captured this new generation better than the following one.
The boss is in a bad mood. Two young male executives are standing around his table. One is stirring his tea while the other is presenting reports which the boss flings away. Then his secretary peeps in to say, ‘Sir, hotel reservations on Line 2.’ The boss puts the phone on loudspeaker and says, ‘Yes, I need to book a table for two … Poolside.’ When the hotel clerk asks for his name, he says very gruffly, ‘Hari Sadu’. The clerk is unable to understand and asks him to repeat. At which stage, the executive, whose report the boss had been throwing away, offers to spell out his name to the hotel reservation clerk, and the condescending boss hands over the phone to the subordinate who rattles out cheekily: ‘Just write down Hari Sadu. H for Hitler, A for arrogant, R for rascal, I for Idiot.’ The boss is shocked. The super comes on saying ‘Guess who’s just heard from us?’ The brand Naukri.com flashes with the tag line ‘India’s No.1 Job Site’. The film has the second executive, who was stirring the boss’ tea, hold up a spoon and say ‘S for Shameless’.
The ad for Naukri.com was created by FCB Ulka and brilliantly directed by Rajesh Krishnan. It went on to be rated one of the best ads of the decade. It also helped Naukri.com become by far the biggest jobsite in India, withstanding powerful international competition.
More than the humour embedded in the story, the ad touched upon a key concern of highly qualified young executives as they start working. Research done by the agency had revealed that when quizzed on why an executive is keen on changing his or her job, many reasons are thrown up – salary, working hours, title, job description, company etc.; but the unsaid reason is that the executive does not like working with his or her immediate superior. If you hate your boss, you will change your job (and boss), even at a lower salary. And if you love your boss, you will stay on even if you can get a better paying job elsewhere.
Times of India, 10 March 2015, speaks of a study done by the Global Dale Carnegie Consulting organization and it says that a large section of the Indian workforce is only partially engaged (44 per cent), and many are actively disengaged (10 per cent). A full 13 per cent of Indian executives rated their immediate supervisor poorly and another 45 per cent were neutral. Employee engagement is affected by what managers do, how they behave, what they say and, more importantly, how they say it. Employees who are unhappy and dissatisfied with their immediate supervisor are less likely to identify with the organization’s vision and more likely to be absent or resign. The problem of being disengaged is not just an Indian problem. The organization reports that while 46 per cent of Indians were gainfully engaged (54 per cent are not engaged), it compares favourably with Asia Pacific where 35 per cent are engaged and the rest of the world at 34 per cent2.
Management thinker and author, Daniel Pink speaks of the Type I employee and Type X employee. He explains that research has shown that today, a large section of white collar employees need to be motivated through ‘Intrinsic’ means rather than through money and other such ‘eXtrinsic’ tools. Quoting a Gallup study, he says that more than 50 per cent of employees in the US are not engaged at work and nearly 20 per cent are disengaged3.
Look at the contrasts: there is a significant level of unemployment in India across all levels, but those who are employed in white-collar jobs are not fully engaged.
The growth in white-collar jobs in India is a phenomenon that got its wings post-1991, or after the country got rid of its fear of computers.
We know that India was one of the last countries to embrace technology and the power of the computer. In the mid-’80s, a computer was close to god in all companies. It was kept in an air-conditioned computer centre and, just as in a temple, you had to take off your shoes when you entered the holy portals of the computer. Companies had to wait for years to import a computer. Padma Bhushan S Ramadorai, former MD of Tata Consultancy Services, has written about the trials and tribulations faced by the IT services pioneer in the late ’70s and ’80s. Bank employees protested against the introduction of computers. Even in large multinational corporations, it was not something that was easily accessible; it was always revered and worshipped. In the early ’80s, India was immune to the PC revolution that was sweeping the world4.
IBM launched its IBM PC on 12 August 1981 in the US. Using the character of Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp in its advertising, the brand presented for the first time a friendly face for the computer, a human face that the common man could relate to.
If IBM was making waves of one kind, it took Apple to shatter the glass ceiling or the glass wall. All advertising pundits would agree that the most or one of the most iconic advertising ever produced was the Apple Macintosh commercial created by Chiat/Day. The film 1984 was a take on George Orwell’s famous book of the same name. Directed by Ridley Scott – who had directed Aliens and Blade Runner – the ad cost $1.6 million to produce; media investment behind the com
mercial amounted to just $500,000 for a single insertion in the 1984 Super Bowl. It changed the discourse on personal computers. Author and clinical psychologist, Professor Carol Moog describes the 1984 ad eloquently thus: ‘1984 is a sixty-second epic movie in which a vacant-eyed crowd, clothed in Spartan sameness, sits mesmerized before the image of the Orwellian Big Brother on a huge screen. Suddenly, a stunning powerful female athlete wearing a Macintosh logo runs toward the screen and smashes it to pieces with the force of her sledgehammer. We, the people are set free. We, the people, bought lots of Apple computers’5. To know more about the drama before the ad went on air read Steve Jobs biography by Walter Issacson6.
We in India were quite immune to the charms of the Tramp and the perils of 1984. Even if we were charmed or scared, we could not afford the PC, let alone the charming Apple Macintosh, given the import duties and red tape.
I was a group product manager at Boots Company in the mid-’80s and, as is my wont, I was piqued by an ad from Ador Consulting. This company was offering training for executives on their IBM PC machines. Thanks to the support of my boss, and without the knowledge of the EDP manager of the company who may have blown a fuse, I enrolled for the three-day programme. I learnt the magic of spreadsheets and was spellbound by VisiCalc on that machine. I also learnt that Ador was open to doing data analysis on their IBM PC for companies. The next month happened to be the annual budget-setting month at Boots. The regional sales managers descended on Mumbai, worked hard bargaining for their respective regions and were anxious to take their worksheets home. The marketing department at Boots consisted of a team of analysis clerks who used to track the sales numbers, marketing expenditure, medical representatives’ expense claims etc. It was the usual practice in the company, once the overall and regional budget numbers were agreed upon by the RSMs, to call a statistician who used to work out the month-wise, brand-wise, pack-wise budgets for each region, each state using an ancient adding machine. The machine helped work out the break-ups and the process took a fornight and more for checking and validation. I offered to get the same job done through a PC, via Ador, in two days. The head of the analysis department was shocked. The RSMs were incredulous, but thrilled that they would be able to take back their worksheets when they left Mumbai at the end of that week. The first year the company decided to run the process parallelly, only to discover the power of the PC spreadsheet program and abandon the ancient adding machine method.
No thanks to my VisiCalc adventure, Boots – which became Knoll, and again later Abbott – was one of the first pharmaceutical companies to fully computerize its depot operations and was quick to adopt the PC culture.
Affordable computer training from companies like NIIT, Aptech and others transformed the computer which was seen as a job destroyer, into a job creator and as they say, the rest is history. In most of the daily newspapers, ads from NIIT and Aptech appeared in the front page or page three, at regular intervals right through the ’90s and 2000s.
The twenty-first century has aggravated the problem of skills and employment now that there is widespread awareness of the opportunities offered by a good job. On the one hand, there are high levels of unemployment, with thousands of applicants for jobs as mundane as a security watchman. When Mumbai police started hiring policemen, there was a virtual stampede. Yet at the other end, there is disengagement in work. On the one hand, there is a demand for semi-skilled workers in various sectors, but there are not enough trained workers.
PORTFOLIO: This is the big folder a young aspiring copywriter or art director lugs along to all the interviews he or she attends. With the growth of digital media, the more savvy creative folks have their portfolio on the Net and can take a prospective employer through all their work by clicking the right buttons.
The job dilemma is to be seen in the context of the larger problem of skill development. In almost all big cities, modern retail stores are looking for staff. But they are not able to find any. Similarly, companies are looking for quality executives and are finding it a problem to get the right talent.
Talented men and women are also leaving the workforce unable to balance life and work. The stress faced by mid-level managers was captured in an ad done for the life insurance company, ICICI Prudential. Offering ‘retirement solutions’, the ad shows a relatively young man who says he does not want to retire from his desires, his family commitments, his passions and his adamant nature. If at all he retires, he will retire from work, not from his life. He then refuses to take a call from his ‘Office’ on his mobile phone.
This is the other India, which is now ensconced in a well-paying but stressful job. Brands are trying to connect with their new attitude of finding the elusive ‘Work-Life Balance’.
There is the larger India which is now under-employed, which needs to be trained so that they can get well-paying jobs. The thrust of the government of India in the 2010s is to push sectors that can provide jobs to the lower-middle-class and lower-class citizens. Unlike the IT and the organized service sector, the other major sector that can give them jobs is the manufacturing sector. A report in the Times of India, 17 March 2015, quotes a study done by the government department, DIPP, analysing investment and job creation from August 1991 to March 2014. It says that for every one crore rupees investment, different sectors yield different levels of employment potential: Industrial Instruments can create 103.2 jobs, whereas Fuels create only 0.5 jobs per crore invested. However, there are areas like Leather & Leather Goods (42.0) and Commercial & Household Equipment (25.0) which yield good employment potential. I presume areas like media, apparel, software and tourism can create a lot more jobs per crore invested7.
There was a telling report in the Hindu Business Line, 5 May 2015, which quoted Labour Bureau statistics to say that in one of our southern states there were as many as 13.5 per cent postgraduates who were unemployed. So the question is not just about education and skills, but relevant useful skills.
While there are issues facing the manufacturing sector relating to land, power, water, air, etc., one big issue is also the non-availability of trained workers. The government of India is hard at work encouraging skill development initiatives and we hope all these efforts yield results.
The government has also been trying to advertise to the youth of the country to get skills that will help them gain respect in society. The campaign ‘Hunar hai to kadar hai’ (You will be respected if you have a skill) was all about young boys and girls getting skilled to get a job and rescue their family from poverty.
Jobs will continue to be a hot topic in India for many many more years to come, as millions of young men and women wait to join the workforce. Brands will continue to target them and, more importantly, we will hopefully see a flood of skill development agencies and institutions using the power of advertising to build their businesses. We are seeing some signs of this around the country. For instance, there is an English-training institute called Veta that has grown dramatically in the last decade. If we have to skill millions of youth, we need a hundred more Vetas and NIITs. And I am sure they will be able to use the power of advertising to speed up the skill-development process. The narrative around jobs in advertising will definitely shift from the colour of the shirt and skin to skills and abilities.
Kyaa Haal Bana Rakha Hai!
ANIL KAPOOR, THE marketing manager of the OTC brands of Boots Company India, had a problem. While Strepsils, a brand under his care, was doing well, his other child, Coldarin was anemic, even five years after its launch. It was the late ’70s. Television was yet to spread across the country and legacy brands in healthcare were ruling the roost. Coldarin was created as a tablet specially formulated for colds; it contained a strong dose of analgesic aspirin, a decongestant and stimulant caffeine. The brand name Coldarin was derived from its formulation ‘Cold Asprin’. How to help the brand grow was the challenge facing the company.
Advertising historians point out that advertising possibly got a bad name thanks to the various rem
edies they sold promising miracle cures. These products, broadly classified as ‘Patent Medicines’, at one time accounted for as much as 50 per cent of all advertising in the USA. Professor James Twitchell has pointed out that the outrageous claims of many of today’s over-the-counter nostrums (fast, fast, FAST) may have had their inspirations in the early free-for-all unregulated promise-the-moon advertising of patent medicines1.
Yet another American Professor of Media Studies, Michael Schudson confirms the dominance of patent medicine advertising in US newspapers; his analysis was that they occupied 25 per cent of all ad space, second only to department-store advertising2.
In India, too, we did see a number of those kinds of products touted through the print media. Brands like Scott’s Emulsion – ‘Each spoonful leads to health’, Vites – ‘Grows hair’, Andrew’s Liver Salt – ‘Hot weather fitness’, Ephazone – ‘Relieves asthma attacks’, Angiers’ Emulsion – ‘Recovery after Malaria’, Sirolin – ‘Stops cough’, Glycodin Terp Vasaka – ‘Remedy for coughs’ etc were regularly advertising in the daily newspapers in the ’50s and ’60s3. My granduncle, PS Iyer had an eponymous agency and had the account of a brand called Jeevamurtham for whom he placed small-sized ads in the daily Tamil newspaper. These ads continued till he reached the age of ninety-nine when he finally shut his agency.
But unlike in the US, these patent medicines did not end up making people like my granduncle very rich because they never became a big phenomenon in India, since the reach of mass media was limited and these remedies had to fight the home-remedy habit which was ingrained in Indian minds.
Nawabs, Nudes, Noodles Page 18