IN CONVERSATION
Ramya is an author, filmmaker, journalist and communications specialist, who has previously worked for CNBC TV18, National Geographic, Star World, The Hindu and Mid-day. In her career spanning nearly two decades, she has worked across the spectrum of media from print to television journalism, from documentaries to digital media and communications. Her first book, Rebuild - How brands overcame crisis and emerged stronger, better, wiser, published by Hachette, released in 2018 and was a collection of cautionary tales of crisis management, featuring case studies of over 20 brands as well as expert interviews. Branded in History - Fresh Marketing Lessons from Vintage Brands, also published by Hachette, is her second book, which looks at brands from colonial India and the relevance of their marketing success in an era of data darkness and resource scarcity.
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You're from Mumbai - the marketing hub of India so-to-speak. So, you must've seen branding trends transform over the years all around you. Tell me a little about your journey in the world of communications. How did you get into the industry, how long have you been in it, and what do you like (and dislike) about it?
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Thanks so much for this thoughtful questionnaire, Sindhu! I knew from a young age that I wanted to work with words and stories. This journey began with my undergraduate degree in English literature from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. I followed that up with a post graduate diploma in broadcast journalism from Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. My first job via campus placement was at Mid-day, a Mumbai tabloid that aspired to do TV and was recruiting reporters at that time. I covered everything from crime to civic issues and even helped the CBI nab a con artist but their TV channel remained a pipe-dream. So, I moved to CNBC TV18 where I reported, produced and occasionally anchored feature shows on advertising and marketing. This was my first real introduction to the world of marketing and it became the guiding light for how I engaged with advertising – with affection, and criticism but always attention. I quit after four years to make long format films and worked with National Geographic on a docudrama about the 26th November Mumbai terror attacks. I also directed a 10-part series about iconic Indians for Star World. I have been in the communications business for two decades and counting and my career has spanned the spectrum of print, TV, documentary filmmaking, digital media and publishing, as well as PR – my last stint was as a communications specialist for a nonprofit. What I like about making a living in communications is the fact that you bring ideas to life, work in a creative field that’s fulfilling and challenging. What I dislike is that the business evolves in a way that doesn’t always lend itself to long term careers, and that TV news is in shambles in the country.
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Marketing has always been exciting in India, whether it was in the era of Doordarshan and AIR or now in the era of Instagram reels and YouTube shorts. We demand value as consumers, despite our aspirational ambitions. We want great storytelling and an emotional connect even if it is an ad for a lightbulb (Roshni deta Bajaj) or adhesive (Fevicol)! As one standup comic beleaguered by the current political climate likes to say in his subversive videos – "kahaan milega itna content" ("Where else will we find such rich content?"). That firmly applies to marketing too. There is never a dearth of interesting advertising in our country despite the repeated dirges that proclaim the death of the business.
I'm a confirmed vintage aficionado. Love the designs, the typeface, prints, all that old wording. What drew you to vintage brands? Was it design? The history associated with it? The fact that you (like me) are from a former Presidency town?
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To be honest, the draw with all things vintage was initially entirely about the aesthetic – to use a Gen Z term. I loved the way vintage products were designed, the cutesy way they were marketed and the twee taglines that sold our grandfathers and grandmothers on parting with hard earned money to splurge on a bar of soap, a transistor, or a snack. I had heard stories of how during times of deprivation during the 60s and 70s in India, when we subsisted on millets because wheat and rice were not widely available, Parle G or JB Mangaram biscuits were seen as great nutrition. I have also grown up with radio jingles that were immediate earworms as hummed by my father, or recounted by folks from that era. The Binaca Geetmala was a favourite in my mother’s household. That’s what triggered my curiosity because I was surprised at how much advertising they consumed - despite the scarcity of resources in marketing in those days. I wanted to know how brands reached out to consumers in a data dark era and what convinced parsimonious Indians to loosen their purse strings to splurge on brands at a time when DIY was the best way to save money and feed or bathe or entertain a large family. And yes, like you mention, having grown up in Mumbai, the colonial past is obviously a big factor that draws you to the pre-Independence era, especially if you live in Mumbai, Chennai or Kolkata and like me, are entranced by the Gothic, Indo-Saracenic architecture and stories of the haloed companies that prevailed at that time. I also wanted to know how Indian brands – that minted the Swadeshi term – came up in a time when European goods were a shorthand for superior quality and had a stranglehold over the market. That’s essentially where the idea for my second book Branded in History came up – to seek out the origin stories of vintage brands and uncover business histories of the companies that captured our minds in an era that was thought to be devoid of modern marketing tools.
The theme of entrepreneurship and the Swadeshi movement underpin your book, Branded in History: Fresh Marketing Lessons from Vintage Brands. This is very interesting. Esp. since India is in a sort of *decolonial* moment of flux right now, where there's political & social churning + the fact that India is one of the largest economic markets in the world. Entrepreneurship is second nature to millennials and Gen Z. Where do you see things going from here? Do you see a lot of homegrown brands (& branding) popping up in India currently? Or is it about integrating/repurposing foreign brands (& branding) into the Indian market? A mix of both. Do you see any parallels between then and now?
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This is a fascinating question. I think the answer isn’t straightforward. I remember the big story in marketing in the decades following liberalisation was the collective excitement about every big MNC entering India and how they had to adapt or perish. Every brand, like Kelloggs, McDonalds, or Starbucks, that entered was celebrated as a sign that the world was finally looking to India as a market worth reckoning with. Today, the story is a bit different. We have all the major luxury as well as mass market brands that you would find in most developed markets – our population is a major lure for any company that wants to engage in demographic dividends. Our purchasing power has also grown in the last few decades – we may still be value conscious but Indians spend when a brand is buzz-worthy or is something to be flaunted. While homegrown brands are now where the marketing is most exciting – it is also about which brand can leverage and sell to Indians in a way that taps into our unique sense of identity. In the recent past, the companies that have done this (CRED, Zomato, Make My Trip, Tanishq, etc,.) have emerged as champions of viral storytelling – and showcased our love of pop culture, our heritage, and our appetites while also defying expectations. The focus is not so much on Swadeshi per se – though the "Make in India" campaign was successful in creating a "Swadeshi 2.0" atmosphere.
It is about capturing the zeitgeist and conveying it in a way that sticks to consumers’ minds. That remains the fundamental litmus test of a successful campaign and I don’t think that has changed from the 90s till now. The more we see ourselves in our advertising, the more it resonates with us – from Chal Meri Luna to Dil Toh Roaming Hai. Brands that invest in good marketing communication that can break the clutter are being rewarded – it's not always about "Be Indian Buy Indian" as it was in the colonial era – though the success of brands like Patanjali and Paytm may belie that. Government support helps in propping up and boosting brand fortunes, but crafting a brand legacy is not as easily done. It takes time, and requires prioritising direct and honest communication with the consumer and not all “Swadeshi” brands see that as a non-negotiable. The rise of branded content, where brands communicate directly to consumers via their social media pages or via content they have created themselves, without the disguise of advertising, has also muddied the pool. It is not as easy to gauge effective consumer engagement simply from virality. So perhaps we will have to return to this question in a few years to evaluate what has stood the test of time.
The image of Bharat Mata in vintage ads is something I've dwelt on. Wrote a little piece about it too for VoF. Mostly from a feminist POV. Can you tell me a little about what sort of brands used the Bharat Mata image during the Swadeshi movement? Was she an ideal prototype of Indian womanhood & an icon of femininity? Were there any other subversive uses of her image extending beyond that of challenging colonial rule (perhaps, in the domestic sphere)?
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Bharat Mata was used by a gamut of brands – from soap manufacturers to matchbox labels, from textile companies to steel and infrastructure companies. The brands that emerged before 1947 came up at a time when being Swadeshi was seen as a national imperative. It was also a foolproof way to garner loyalty – to associate with rising nationalism as a product made for Indians by Indians using techniques or raw materials that spoke to the Indian sensibility. For instance, Godrej went from making safes and locks to soaps made from vegetable oil to placate Indians who didn’t want any animal products in their hygiene routine. They eschewed using low hanging fruit like filmstars to rope in patriots like Dr Rabindranath Tagore, Dr Annie Besant and Mahatma Gandhi to endorse their soaps. Textile labels and matchbox covers went from images of colonial stereotypes of exotic markets, nautch girls and courtesans, or Indian royalty to khadi sari clad female leaders of the freedom movement, or images of the map of India as a woman with a sari draped over her. The imagery was in line with Victorian standards – a modestly dressed and thus morally acceptable version but it was also a subtle way to ensure the borders of India that were being drawn up were not portrayed in an incendiary way. A map of India could potentially foment trouble if it showed disputed borders but a lady in a sari that we venerate as Mother India – that’s a win-win.
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The Indian woman portrayed in advertising at the time was not always a feminine or idealised vision of womanhood – for instance cigarette ads of the time that were marketing to Indian women, featured them in a sari, with a bindi but as the epitome of coolness with a cigarette holder in their hands. The garb was traditional but the messaging was modern, perhaps because the Indians who bought such products were the 1% of their era. Tata Steel has a series of wordy ads that compare Indian civilisation to other ancient ones, and talk about how every endeavour they take up is in service to the country. It is very patriotic and certainly rousing in a way that may seem cliché or jingoistic today because there is no common antagonist like an oppressive colonial power to bind us together. It is entirely heartfelt, inspiring and convincing in the early 20th century as a way to portray Indianness to a country that was defining what it meant to be self-governed.
Let's talk over some tea now! I have been researching tea adverts from the late 1800's and early 1900's for my PhD project and it's fascinating. The sort of women who appear in it range from beautiful tea pluckers to suave Bhadralok ladies. Can you tell me a little about how tea was branded between 1847 and 1947. It was clearly a posh thing to drink (although the tea was homegrown; the faff of consuming it was British). So how was colonial tea marketed to the "natives"?
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Tea was seen as almost synonymous with opium of the time – both products were better known in China than India and tea was even branded as ‘drug food.’ It was first cultivated in India in Assam, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu under oppressive conditions, primarily for export to the British Empire and the companies set up at the time even assiduously kept the word tea out of their names. The first company that made tea commercially was called Assam Company and set up by a Scot in 1839. They wanted to keep their options open for trade in other commodities but it also tells you just how rare the tea habit was in India. In this aspect too, the patriotic fervour influenced the brands that were set up. Wagh Bakri Chai is one such example – its founder Narandas Desai was inspired by Gandhian ideals to set up a tea brand in Ahmedabad in 1915 after experiencing racism in South Africa where he ran a 500 acres tea estate. Their logo was a wagh (tiger) and bakri (goat) drinking tea from the same cup – an ideal of equality that must have been attractive to Indians suffering under colonialism in that era. And with the emergence of local brands, tea became the social lubricant of its time – replacing alcohol. While British brands like Lipton, Twinings or Tetley, were the swill of choice for the British in India, they were replaced by homegrown brands for Indians. Thus began our long love affair with the chai ka pyala or even chai biskoot at tea time. While the aspiration was to be more civilised, the way Indians consumed their tea differed from the English high tea.
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Also tell me about "biskoots" - about Britannia and Parle G. Brands that have weathered the tests of time. I suppose these brands have rebuilt their image in keeping with the tenets of your first book Re-Build. What was it about their branding that helped them survive market crises?
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Biskoots were an essential part of the chai experience in India – in the case of Parle G they offered much needed sustenance and nutrition to a deprived nation and in the case of J.B. Mangharam, and Britannia, they were initially more popular with the British population in India and then had to pivot to the independent Indian population after 1947. Britannia had more success with this as did Parle G – but the marketing was always memorable and unique. Parle G for instance featured a baby on its packet, with distinct wax paper – yellow with stripes and the red logo – that has continued to this day. Affordable pricing, having a product people viewed as nutritious, and memorable marketing, have led to longevity in a market that is famously ruthless, especially in the snacks sector. These companies witnessed the transition from a colonial to a free India. Despite the euphoria of freedom, we were a poverty and famine ridden country with only 63 percent of area under wheat cultivation post Partition. Deprived of wheat, these companies made biscuits from barley, and Parle G urged patrons to make do until supplies were restored. Thus, the transition from a fancy snack to an essential part of the Indian diet was made by touting the nutrition of Glucose in biscuits at a price the common man could afford and by aligning with the national cause so their troubles were ours.
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Vintage matchbox designs are gorgeous. I read somewhere that the tobacco and matchbox folks often collaborated and marketed their products together. Can you tell me about some of the branding trends and themes from this industry? The cover of your book, Branded in History: Fresh Marketing Lessons from Vintage Brands is a matchbox design, isn't it?
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Yes, that’s right! My book Branded in History features a beautiful “Superior lamp” matchbox design that was made for a matchbox produced by the Sattur Original Match Company. In fact, this design, registered in 1946, is one of the oldest registered trademarks in the country and their tagline was “A sure strike for every stick”! Matchboxes are fascinating because they were used to sell a product that you used in the kitchen, in your religious room, or for smoking, but they were also a miniature brochure or pamphlet of their era, advertising everything from the largest mills in the country to holding companies and managing agencies (think of them as the mega multi-national corporations of their time). Designed in Sweden, Austria and Japan and manufactured in those countries as well, they are a true collector’s item to this day! Production in India started in 1895, when, aided by the know-how from settlers from Japan, Indians began making matchboxes in Calcutta. Soon there were factories springing up all over India. Sivakasi in Tamil Nadu would also become an epicentre for matchbox production as well as other flammable items. The themes reflected in these matchboxes was initially matching the countries they originated from or a more Western sensibility but as Indians began to make their own matchboxes, the design mirrored Indian concerns. From the Raja Ravi Varma and M.V. Dhurandhar depictions of Indian gods and goddesses we evolve to the mention of Swadeshi on these covers as Bengal is partitioned. As the independence movement unfolds, we see symbols of the nationalist cause like the Ashok Chakra, the lion, as well as political leaders of the time appearing on the labels. Interestingly another category of people who made it to these covers were the royalty of India as well as the popstars of the era like the courtesan Gauhar Jaan, who was one of the country’s first recording artists. These covers were so popular that it was redrawn and reissued several times between 1903 and 1915 and WIMCO (Western India Match Company, an Indian subsidiary of the famous Swedish Match Company) even established a brand called Baijee (the title given to a professional performer of that era) and issued labels under this category well into the 1980s! Maharajas on horseback or shown in portraits were another favourite, to the extent that the royalty of Jamnagar, Bhavnagar and Cochin reproduced their own customised versions of their matchboxes for personal use. They were certainly the influencers of the era, emulated for their style, and whose images sold products that eventually became collectibles.
Tell me more about that time when Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore promoted a soap brand. I thought only seemingly sexy actresses did that. What brand of soap did he promote (and why)?
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Dr Rabindranath Tagore is certainly not the icon who comes to mind first when you talk of a brand ambassador but Godrej Soaps had the brainwave of using simple testimonials from nationalist leaders of the time to convince Indians that their soaps were truly Swadeshi and made with the best ingredients with attention to Indian sensibilities. Dr Annie Besant also lent her support to the cause of Godrej Soaps – an advertisement quotes her as writing in her newspaper New India, “Godrej’s soaps are the best I have ever used and I am recommending them to my friends.” It must have been her role as a Swadeshi leader that gave her a blue tick in this sort of advertising rather than as an Irish theosophist, but she includes the fact that she arrived at this verdict after using the best of European and American soaps. Dr Rabindranath Tagore similarly is quoted as saying: “I know of no foreign soaps better than Godrej’s and I well make a point of using Godrej’s Soap.”
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Ardeshir Godrej, the founder of Godrej Soaps, who wanted to make soaps from vegetable sources so that Indian religious sensibilities were respected, was fighting to carve market share from European and American soaps at a time when bathing with soap was a niche at best. Indians were still using DIY products in their hygiene routine and spending hard earned annas on a soap was a novelty – so they had to convince ordinary Indians that this was a product worth their money and it was in fact on par with the best the world had to offer. Going with nationalist leaders rather than filmstars like Lux did, was a truly clutter breaking marketing breakthrough and earned Godrej real street cred – they were seen as truly Swadeshi and for Indians, by Indians – at a time when patriotic fervour was sweeping up the country. Truly, landing a Dr Tagore was perhaps the biggest coup of the time – and a straightforward testimonial from him worked wonders. Leaders like Tagore and Gandhi (his son Harilal in fact volunteered to help sell the soaps in 1920-30s) also lent their support to such brands because India was building itself to be self-reliant after the colonizers left. If we were to be truly independent, we needed Indian products made by Indians to succeed in the marketplace so that’s perhaps what led to this campaign.
Tell me a little about religious imagery in branding. I know it was common during the Swadeshi movement. Sort of went out of trend in post-independent India. Is it trending again in India (what with the Hindu Renaissance project ongoing).
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This can potentially be a pandora’s box but let me try to answer this. Religious imagery of the early twentieth century is not easily conflated with the hyper-religious nationalism of today because at that time under colonial rule, we had so few indigenous icons and symbols to convey homegrown brands that a painting by Raja Ravi Varma of a Hindu god or goddess was a short-form for a brand that was serving the national cause. It is arguable that we were also a more god-fearing, or spiritual, or religious country at that time but religion was not yet the lightning rod that divided the society the way it does today. Its trending again today in all facets of communication from reboots of films and television shows about mythological figures to advertising that is paying homage to Godmen (Patanjali). But for each ad that is blatantly currying favour via religious imagery, you also have brands like Tanishq or CRED that are showcasing modern, liberal, and cool India. So, it is not all pervasive in the way that advertising in colonial India was proudly Swadeshi, nor does it have an exclusionary bias to it, the way a religious ad may today. More than advertising using Hindu imagery, national parties are using the Hindu agenda to show that they are more religious than their opponents – so it has in fact become a form of political/election campaigning, where the product being sold is a party or a political leader. In that sense, it is in fact an inversion of the marketing of pre-1947 India. We touted Swadeshi/religious iconography to sell Indian products then. Today we sell Swadeshi or Ram to woo voters. I leave it to you to guess which is more effective.
Finally, what are your thoughts on authenticity when it comes to branding? Does authenticity matter? Is it even possible to create branding that's authentic? Hello, AI. Like, have all ideas already always been done to death? Where does one look for inspiration?
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This is a tough one! I do think brands that want to be authentic in the era of AI and Social Media are creating their own content platforms or channels so that their voice is privileged and directly accessible to consumers. We have seen Tata do phenomenal advertising with their Jaago Re ads for their tea brand – where tea is again positioned as a way to channel our righteous anger into action for a better India. I do think if we view ideas as a commodity in the marketplace, we may tend to ring the death knell for original ideas but if we view them as expressions of a brand voice that is engaging with the people who co-create its identity (a brand is only as strong as its consumers, and any brand worth its salt involves them in its communication and image building) then the limit does not exist. Brands can be as creative as they choose to be – the only caveat being, they need to invest in good ideas. The reason we may reiterate that advertising is dead (this is a refrain that reanimates every few decades) is because we lack the will to invest in great ideas – not because ideas are finite and repeated to death. In fact, one may argue ideas are the only renewable resource we have. But in an age of generative AI that can plan budgets, allocate them, create targeted audience segments based on data, and deliver campaigns to them more effectively while also writing ad copy or generating visuals for an ad – it does beg the question what will humans bring to the table in this era of machine learning and language learning and processing? But perhaps things don’t have to be quite so binary. What AI may do is offer support in all aspects of data dependency that exists in the business. It will certainly help inform campaigns with better market research, and segmenting – this is only going to make advertising better. Good creative sells product. Bad creative doesn’t. The best advertising is truly the one that works. Unfortunately, the old adage about the industry may not be fully redundant yet – they say only 50% of all advertising is effective and we don’t know which half is! While AI is capable of defining audiences with much greater granularity, humans need to become better at using AI. Otherwise, it is going to remain a problem of excess data and underutilising it. It can also help creatives out of a rut, come to a client meeting with more data to back their ideas and break out of the closed loop of safe ideas that have worked in the past and create something truly imaginative that pushes boundaries but is also effective. We have a chance to break out of that mould to do something truly new now, I hope we can seize it!
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Note: Images sourced from Godrej Archives and Marg Magazine.