The slow-gun war

My parents in Chennai recently had their lives made jingalala by the two of us; we gifted them with a Tata Sky connection for the television at home which had for the last two years been showing them only remade Tamil versions of the Star soaps and Sahara TV as the sole “Yindi” programming. With CAS coming into effect early this month, the battle hots up. And that means, marketing slogans on over-drive. Think-tanks from rival companies stay up nights, puffing cigarette after cancerous cigarette, in order to develop that slogan that communicates the ultimate benefit to the consumer – this is why you should buy into our brand and not the other.

And Tata Sky has clearly cracked it – Tata Sky laga daala toh life jingalala.

I mean, how can any competitor hope to match that promise? The ultimate tv watchers’ need – to have his / her life made jingalala. Uh?

Top of the charts of what they don’t teach you at Business School – or is it what they do… Get your advertising slogan right and you are on your way to winning the marketing game. Er, what about product delivery please? Or a relevant product differentiation? Oh that – minor details. Get the slogan right first, won’t you. Does anyone even remember Hindustan Times’ infamous let there be light?

Take the FM radio war in Mumbai – there is a new FM station launched every day – ok, every month – and each of them plays the same mind-numbing hit pe hit pe hit song from the latest movies that rocked the box office in the last three years, and some which did not rock so much as disappeared without a trace. When I am driving to work, and I don’t get to listen to it’s the time to disco and where’s the party tonight through the entire stretch, I am a wreck by the time I reach – my hands are trembling and my eye has that terrible tic that sets colleagues scurrying out of my way. I find myself suddenly breaking into terrra suroooooorrr in the middle of client meetings and into giggles each time I am to say something to the client. (As an aside, why, oh why, do radio jockeys giggle so much? and why do all FM stations seem to hire only the great gigglers?)

As I was saying, the same hit songs in channel after channel, as if there is an invisible hand passing around an MP3 disc with a collection of fifty bollywood hits (and misses) between them. What about programming? What about content? What about differentiation? The only channel that was truly different and interesting was Go 92.5 – that suddenly turned all Hindi one morning – Britney Spears went to sleep in a room and woke up as Ekta Kapoor – why?

Ah, there we come to the slogan again. The latest station to hit (eeps) the market, BIG FM has cracked it – their slogan goes – suno sunao life banao – listen and make others listen… and make your life. Truly an utterly unique positioning stance. Big FM – daer aaye par durust aaye.

Television went through this initially when the market which had only one DD (with its Metro and other numerous regional versions) found itself flooded with tens of channels – all with film based programming – five feature films a day, countdown shows of hit songs, trailers and the like. Of course, the scene is somewhat similar today with saas after scheming saas in all the channels, but atleast there is some programming in place. Viewers – those interested enough, that is – have the choice of tuning into a program at a specific time on a specific channel.

Unlike FM where it really makes no difference where the dial is – unless, of course, like me, you have made a careful (albeit painful) analysis of the RJs across channels and have chosen to be loyal to the one with the lowest score on the gigglo-meter. Is anyone listening?