Part I: The Customer’s Perspective

© Priya Narayanan, Assistant Professor at IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal.

The other day, I shared a thought on LinkedIn on the Mothers’ Day video of a jewelry brand. Mine wasn’t a well thought out analysis, it was simply a spontaneous reaction to the content of the video. Writing the post, however, made me wonder: why did I care so much? Why was I so strongly unhappy with the ad? (The tone implied in “golden shoulders” surprises me now!)

Well, eight years ago, I on about this very same brand, on wearing the Tanishq Mia mantle of confidence.

Rereading that led to some introspection, which then led to the conclusion: I am in love. Yes, I don’t wear much gold jewelry but I love the brand that is Tanishq. Naturally, I felt the possessive anger that only love can lead to when Tanishq made a statement I didn’t feel good about or agree with. So says the marketer in me about the consumer in me. Me e mia. Me and mine. Me and my brand.

Tanishq is one of those brands that are apt for brand love, and not just because of the ishq (love) in the brand name. The brand brings up thoughts of high quality products (beautiful and believable), good customer service (“nice” purchase experiences), transparency (the caratmeter at the Tanishq store showed me why I should always buy Tanishq and no other brand!), class (the brown color of the Tanishq product package), and I could go on and on.

My oldest memory of Tanishq is of wanting to grow up and start working so that I could wear a Tanishq watch to office – not just any watch but the one that had a separable colored ring around the dial, so that the color of the ring could be matched to the color of the attire (usually a sari in those days). That could even have been the moment when it all started, the story of me and my brand, the story of me e mia (me and my).

The only thing better than the product has been the way Tanishq has slowly shifted jewelry advertising from showing passive bedecked brides only worth being seen to truly beautiful active women who are worth being seen doing what they like. Tanishq has been one of the earliest Indian jewelry brands to take up this shift and consistently so. From good old weddings (same old) to a divorcee/widow remarriage (bold), and from there to Mia’s confident professional (my favorite, all my students get to see it once in class), and then to ekatvam (ahead of its time, hence controversial), and dua ka sona (love for the artisan) and several others (some inspiring, some provocative, some simply beautiful), and now “the interview.”

Who are we kidding? Motherhood as a “bootcamp”? I laughed at the idea because, from whatever little I have seen and heard (including a series of interviews with professional women as part of a research project), the professional domain denies the very existence of motherhood to various degrees. Even today, and potentially more so with the return to offices, women with children and women returning after a childcare break find it tough in the professional realm. To compare the experience of motherhood to a corporate experience simply glorifies the latter at the cost of belittling the former.

The worst stance that one can have on women empowerment is the view that women have to empower themselves on their own – ever heard of Oliver Twist? Of course, the issue is much more complicated, but to imply that the burden of their own upliftment is that of the women and not of society is to, at best, be ill-cognizant of reality and what’s really possible, and at worst, to sound like a sham.

All said and done, the motive of the ad is clearly good but the manner of presentation made me cringe. Of course, now that the Mothers’ Day brouhaha is over, most other companies have done a similarly cringeworthy job – reinforcing the mother stereotype is just one example in the jewelry industry – and expect to be appreciated for doing so.

So, what does all this do to my brand love? Well, love is never just love, love is a mixed emotion. And it comes straight from the heart. It endures even when the customer switches brands or stops being a customer. So the story of “mi e mia” goes on, and as I mentioned in the original LinkedIn post, I wait for the sparkle of Tanishq advertising to come back. I wait also for a Tanishq store in the small town where I dreamt of wearing the ringed watch!

P.S. This article has no commercial intent or affiliation.

(Part II of this article will explain the marketer perspective. Likely to be less personal and more pedantic. Subscribe if you don’t want to miss that one.)