Opinion... Fendi fashion is not enough to entice India's poor

The irony that the price of any of the accessories in the photos would have fed the family shown for a year was lost on the creators of the feature. And while this act of numbing stupidity is an extreme form of insensitivity, it is by no means the only one of its kind seen in India. An earlier air-conditioning ad depicted the daughter of a housemaid filling some cold air from the machine into a jar and running across to a farm to try to cool her toiling father. The problem is not one of insensitive representation alone.

The task of speaking to the 'bottom of the pyramid' (BOP) consumer has turned out to be particularly challenging, especially if you aim to unearth the fortune that allegedly lies buried there. Professor CK Prahalad’s famous postulation about the enormous opportunity that the emerging consumer offers is something that clearly excites the business sector in India given the huge numbers that lie in this segment. But finding a way to convert this potential into reality and doing so profitably has proved to be difficult. A good example of this is the concerted effort that Coke made a few years back to widen its consumer base with an aggressive pricing and an innovative promotional strategy. In spite of getting many elements of the mix right, the volume generated was not enough to be viable.

There are structural reasons why the BOP consumer is difficult to speak to. Getting the right product at the right price is the biggest challenge. The usual approach is to strip the product of features until a semblance of affordability is attained. The trouble is that the emerging consumer, for whom every act of discretionary consumption is an act of sacrificing something essential, is looking to be seduced rather than patronised. Compromise products grant consumers access, but to a world that is not particularly desirable.

The need is to develop products that are appropriate rather than merely cheap. Nokia created a mobile phone with a flashlight; no technological miracle, but an innovation that understood the rural Indian’s needs. Anchor created a vegetarian toothpaste, something that no MNC had ever thought of.

For all the talk about the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, few companies are doing much about it because it requires them to change their mindset. The impression that the fortune is a pot of gold sitting there waiting for the first bounty hunter to land creates a lazy desire to exploit the opportunity without doing much in return. Add the social distance between marketers and this segment, and it leads to superficial, almost stereotypical, understanding.

Seduced as India is currently by its newfound status as the next big thing, the urban elite has little time to include others in this conception of the country. In the India imagined by this group, progress equals highways, malls and flyovers, not food, sanitation, education and health. Poverty is boring; it makes for lousy television. The emerging BOP segment had better quickly start buying the stuff we have if they want to be part of this new India, is the underlying feeling. This kind of insensitivity in their representation comes from seeing them as consumption props rather than as people.

So while there are undeniable points of light, India seems disinclined to address the BOP consumer. This is a shame, primarily because the Indian market is attractive to the rest of the world precisely because of its numbers.

Draping the poor in Fendi bibs is unlikely to be the answer.




Santosh Desai, managing director and CEO, Future Brands
[email protected]