Tag Archives: Tanishq

Next Diwali, Let’s Avoid the Condescension of Doing Good? [Financial Express]

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

This article was first published on May 27, 2022 in the Financial Express and is available here on the publisher’s website. In this article, I present my take on the “condescension of doing good” that is visible in recent Diwali advertising, and urge marketers to put human values first.

The version below includes links to the relevant advertisements that I discuss.

It was Cadbury that hit upon the idea of brands doing good during Diwali in a seriously big way – the 2020 ad from Cadbury Celebrations showed how small local stores that were hit by the pandemic could be brought into the customer’s consideration set through geography-based hyper-personalization. “This is not just a Cadbury ad,” they said, and so we believed: the ad nudged us towards local stores. Thus it was that in the midst of the pandemic, Cadbury found a way to do good and be good, and yet gain marketing momentum.

But the next year, as the prestige factor was upped, Shah Rukh Khan’s charisma was deemed essential to do the same job for a similar ad by Cadbury. In this ad, Shah Rukh Khan names local stores in his voiceover and this, again, was powered by technology. It wasn’t too bad, except the realization that our purchases of Celebrations were funding the expense incurred in engaging the celebrity actor.

But this year? With its #ShopsForShopless ad of 2022, Cadbury has, despite its best intentions, fallen prey to “purpose”, the new catchword in marketing. Somebody (or worse, everybody) at Cadbury seems to have decided that for Celebrations to stand out, it had to be tagged with purpose. So, now that good old eating and gifting are not enough for Diwali, the Cadbury ad tells us to scan a QR code on the sweet box, help roadside hawkers set up virtual shops, and buy from such shops. For the kind of “help” that they received, the gratitude in the eyes of Damodar (not Damodarji?!) and his helper is nauseating in its excessiveness.

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Me e Mia: An Introspection into Brand Love

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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.

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The Mantle of Confidence

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One fine day came a mail addressed to me by name, and it was from a classmate of mine from b-school. I was thrilled – oh, so A has shifted to a new role with the Tatas, I thought. It was an invitation to participate in a blogger contest by Tanishq for their newly launched brand Mia for workwear jewellery. (Find out more at the Mia website.) I realized very soon that this A was not my classmate, but that didn’t reduce the enthusiasm any bit, because by then I had watched the Mia TVC as well. There was something in the bold, smart and confident protagonist which struck me – I could see a little bit of me in her. And so, here goes…

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Just like bad hair days, there used to be bad attire days. Those were days when I would stand in front of my wardrobe, choose clothes for the day, put them back, pick others, put those back, and after a couple of rounds of this, settle for something safe. Something that wouldn’t draw too many comments in the day’s meeting, or distract from the serious business at hand.

But I always felt there was something untrue about dressing down, because it stopped me from looking as beautiful and confident as I felt about my work. And so, one day, I decided to take a little risk: I wore a puff-sleeved pink shirt to a meeting where anyone who knew me would have expected a staid grey striped shirt. Because I felt beautiful in it, and it was the real me.

That day, I was harking back to something I had wondered over two years ago as I started a career in business strategy consulting: why shouldn’t a woman look her best when she is doing her best at work? This question came back to me as I watched the Tanishq Mia TVC. If you are a woman professional or have women professionals at your workplace, you might want to spare 60 seconds to watch it.

Megha, the protagonist, is told not to wear attention-grabbing gold earrings in a client meeting. But in a flash of confidence which lets her be true to herself, she decides to go into the meeting with the earrings. Her boss is not too happy, but Megha’s presentation of her work goes so well that she (the boss) changes her mind. As Mia wearers, both of them are confident of their work and the value they bring to the table; their relationship is one of mutual trust, of confidence that recognizes confidence and tolerates differences. Even when they both wear Mia, their choices are very different, and yet equally elegant. Even when there is difference of opinion, the two of them understand each other.

Megha embodies what I call wearing the mantle of confidence. The mantle could be an item of clothing or an accessory, it could be a pen or a notebook, it is anything that acts as a repository of confidence. It helps the woman do her work well, be it preparing a document for a meeting, having an important conversation with her team, or presenting before a client. And this is what it means to be beautiful at work. After all, confidence and beauty are inseparable, and a balanced mix of beauty and confidence is what all of us value as poise. The poised woman is smart and confident; she knows it and she will show it.

Like Megha, I too prefer short hair that doesn’t have to be touched. While she wears her Mia earrings, I have a gold chain and locket. There was a time when gold was off limits for women professionals in Western attire, but those days are passé. Today’s workplaces are no longer about pale shirts and dark suits. When women are around and they feel confident, they will wear what they like, with effortless ease. They set norms and lend legitimacy to what they do simply by being themselves. They know that diversity is about being unique and confident, and they give others – both men and women – the confidence to be themselves. They tolerate differences and bring out the best in others.

So nowadays, on bad attire days, when I feel like putting the clothes back and picking others, I ask myself the reason. If it has anything to do with appearing more staid and less beautiful than I feel inside, I don’t change my choice. Instead, I wear what I choose and let my confidence carry me through the day.