Musings From a Market Visit to Small town in India

I’m just back from yet another market visit, for yet another client, to the beautiful Indian state of Kerala, specifically Kochi and a few small towns in its neighborhood. The pleasure of another opportunity to renew my acquaintance with a part of the country I love is not diminished by a city laid siege to by Metro construction, roads that have been rubbled by the monsoon and an even higher than usual density of people. New discoveries included the Holiday Inn’s Chef Michael’s divine interpretations of traditional Kerala fare such as roast-eggs, roast beef and aapams. 

As always I am struck by the simplicity and honesty of the information you get when you take yourself to the brand touch-point where distribution meets customer. There’s purity to what you hear and see, a pleasing absence of artifice.

As always I see how large the distance can be between the beliefs about a brand in the boardroom and the truth of its presence in the market.

As always I am reminded of how vital this often neglected activity is to a brand’s on the ground execution of strategy; how personally satisfying it is for me to “pound the beat” with a sales team and learn the things they and their dealers have to share.

It is no accident that we have made Operational excellence is as important as brilliant ideation an integral part of BB&A’s philosophy, for few things give you as clear a perspective of a brand’s competitiveness than a market visit. It is no accident that BB&A rarely, if ever, starts a brand assignment other than at the market-customer end of the brand and business we are invited to work with.  I’ve noticed that the more people achieve in their careers and the higher they climb in their hierarchies, the further they get from the issues that contribute to their business’ performance.

This is an unfortunate - and often unwanted - by-product of doing well in your career. Success and personal growth are wonderful things and I truly believe everyone should aspire to and achieve them. But when success costs you the ability to stay in touch with the front-end of your business, it’s a very high price to pay - for often it is the distance success creates that sows the first seed of decline.

I have had - and continue to have - the privilege of knowing many top-notch entrepreneurs with fabulous minds and irreproachable work ethics. They started businesses, worked hard at them, grew them, brought in great partners and talent and gradually – or sometimes rapidly - scaled the heights of success.

Many of them privately bemoan that their success has taken them so far from the customer end of their business that the information they receive comes through several layers of management. And often their instincts make them question the validity and authenticity of the information. This is a problem I have also faced in my career and one of several reasons that prompted me to start BB&A.

Through BB&A I’m once again at the front-end of brand-customer relationships. I am enormously inspired to hear from someone that the chairman of a large, leading Indian durables company (whom I don’t know personally), now well into his 80s, still telephones his company’s dealers directly and learns from them what he needs to, while resolving their issues for the benefit of his brand and business.

I’d like to end with an encouragement to all young marketers, in the early stages of their career and likely therefore to be at the front-end of their businesses, never to let go of the habit of “walking the beat” to stay close to consumers. Make it a habit now and practice it through your careers.

It will stand you in great stead.

As it has me for 30 years and continues to do today.