Rakesh Wadhwa:

How do you make people trust the brands again? That the product is safe? Safely produced? The package?

 

Harish Bijoor:

If you really asked me it is a re-education process. There are two kinds of people out here. There's a rural person. There's an urban person. You have to re-educate both of them. The paranoid consumers - when the milk comes home in a plastic session in the morning what's the first thing you do? You go pick it up from the doorstep take it under the tap use a little bit of soap and wash it completely and then wash your hands with soap and water. And some of the better enabled people like you all who have possibly dishwashers taking packets of chips anything that comes in from cold storage et cetera and put it into the dishwasher. Now as each of these things happen it is extremely important to re-educate people. And that's where I'm making most of my money from in the last 50 days. And because every air-con industry I'm talking to every one of those COVID ostracism industries. Whether it be air con whether it be ice cream whether it be newspaper industry any of these everybody wants a campaign.

In a post COVID era when you go to the consumer and approach him, he's not going to look at advertising in a benign manner. He's going to look at the thought behind that advertising. So I have a simple terminology and I'm a brand person so I can get away saying these kinds of things. Brand strategy is the dog and advertising is the tail. Brand strategy must wag advertising. In the sense brand strategy must drive advertising. Advertising must not drive the brand.

Keep that in your communication.