Is Masala Journalism Bad Business?

“When ice freezes, all the excrement rises to the surface. And so, when the dialectic was frozen, all the sacred excrement of the dialectic came to the surface. When the future is deep-frozen – and, indeed, even the present – we shall see all the excrement come up from the past.” (Baudrillard 1994, p.26)

2012 is sliding into history in the land of Curry Munchers, India. Although the year has been pretty ordinary from economic, political & social angles but it has brought to forefront a sort of journalism which had been confined to sectarian-vernacular ghettoes of the media. I call it Masala [Spices] journalism in TV news-media. Most characteristic feature of masala- journalism style is preeminence of the style over substance. It does not matter how insignificant is the event the anchor would make it point to adulterate the facts with overdose of shrill high pitch voice, background sound effects & graphics of the screen to grab your attention.  Channels honchos believe that since majority of Indian watch Bollywood movies full of unrealism so they would seamlessly connect with shouting screaming anchors.

Mothers do give attention to crying babies but if a baby keeps crying for hours better take it to a doctor. The Masala journalism is not an isolated phenomenon but a prevalent malady afflicting the entire TV News-media in India in 2012. The English language print media for almost fifty years maintained a distinction between national & vernacular press. That boundary has been obliterated now with rise of Hindi journalism. In 80s the largest selling vernacular newspaper was non-Hindi Malaya Manorama which has been replaced by a Cow-belt Hindi language paper. 

So the growth in Cow-belt lead to spilling over of low cost journos into English media. Traditionally media in India was notorious for paying very low wages & field correspondents were supposed to hawk advertising for the publication. This invasion of English language media by Hindi trained journos brought in new way of thought & expression into the profession. Unfortunately the Cow-Belt has remained most underdeveloped part of India with large number of districts caught up in insurgency. Social conditions shape the personality of people. So these new journos adopted an attacking slandering style of interviewing people in public in the way police interrogates criminals in privacy of police stations in India. These Masala journos will keep asking you same question repeatedly & at the same time telling you that you are wrong to hold your view.  The Masala journos pretends to be educated than IAS, Senior Execs, professors & the other educated elite.

Arnab Goswami of Times Group once threatened the principal of India’s premier college St. Stephens Delhi on public television demanding that the principal must give class attendance to a student who had not attended the college. The compliant political class pressured the VC Delhi University to pass the order making an exception in the case. The principal must have lost his motivation to maintain the tradition of excellence in his institute. Masala Goswami subverted the Taj Mahal of education in India & successive generations would pay the price of his stupidity.

There is general agreement in the media czars in India that electronic media is suited for sensationalism to get viewership. So they have let loose the marauding semi-literate armies on TV screens beaming right into homes with kids watching slogans of “Hang them, Castrate the bastards” & other puerile carefully selected jargon.  All this is done to get the attention of the viewer. These blocks think that minuscule viewership of BBC & CNN in India is because they haven’t matched the profile of consumer with the offer service. So it’s profitable to offer highly spiced curries to titillate the masses.

The media managers are rare in India because the owners want complete & total control. There is an established tradition in India to hire managers for growth phase of the business. Once the business has scaled up to an economic level the managers are often ejected & replaced by a lackey or family. This in media has led to a unique challenge that editors have come back into power in a capital intensive business. The editor wants advertising revenue to grow, so a critical level of viewership would be required to gain attention of media planers. Therefore instead of creating a business strategy they get distracted by a content oriented move to lure the masses. Here they spill the curry !  The business cycle for a hindi movie has to be shorter than a 24x7 New-media.

The media czars have fallen into trap of Editorial led strategy for a capital intensive News-Media business.”The Hindu’ commands a brand value much greater & beyond the covered markets. Masala journalism can increase the TRP but it will completely distract & destroy the attention of viewers from advertising.  Why would some business advertise on a channel where the audience is always emotionally charged?  There would very poor recall scores for the advertising message presented to an emotionally charged audience.  Masala journalism is not only bad business its poor journalism also.  Media must soothe the nerves of low-income country like India instead of rabble rousing. Look at the Hindi movies, light action based comedies do more business than others. People want some peace in their life and want to eat homemade food than spicy stuff available at the street corner. 

How the politicians find what people want ?

Political parties in a democracy are answerable to the electorate goes the cliche, but do our parties undertake any scientific research to enumerate the priorities of the masses? Well in India leaders assume that majority of the people do not vote on a rational basis. Those leaders are right as the results of elections indicate.

Majority still vote for caste, religion, regional and ideological orientations. Economic issues do not seem to motivate the masses to vote in large numbers. But how do the parties find out what the people are thinking in their constituency? Politician in India seems to go by judgement approach and expert panel opinion taken from experts from within the party.

I have undertaken a focus group exercise in the youth segment to unravel their mind and the issues that they think are extremely important for the nation. The list in the order of priority is given under;

1. Population: Surprisingly no political party has talked about it in 2009 elections. What can the electorate do? Population growth remains the most critical issue that is slowing down the growth of India.

2. Respect for talent: Most participants feel that there is no room for talent & talented individuals in India. Youth is perturbed that the talented individuals do not stand a fair chance of achievement in our society. People still give too much importance to other factors over the talent of an individual. Students believe that it stifles the growth of talent, consequently growth of country.

3. Corruption: Why we have accepted bribery and corruption as part of life in India?Corruption weakens the country but no party seem to make it as an election issue and has offered no solutions to curb corruption in public life.

4. Economic policy: Major political parties do not present a clear cut industrialisation plan that could create jobs for the educated. All parties make similar noise about their economic policy.

5. Removal of poverty: Youth do not find mention of how much growth in per capita income would the political party would like to achieve in their tenure of five years.

Distribution Strategy for the MSMEs

Several Small & Medium Enterprises [MSME] go through the pain of trying to set up a distribution network and most seem to set it up by trail & error method than in a planned manner.  So you have seen many flourishing & established businesses in north India that have been struggling to strategise their distribution  network to match the sales objectives, financial strategy and the production capacity. Many firms find it impossible to balance sales force’s strengths & weaknesses to the cumbersome traditional system that it has got saddled with. 

For consumer facing business it’s extremely critical to leverage the distribution network in order to stay competitive for a medium to long term. The myth of financial leverage associated with existing trade channels has long been dispelled by many players across India. Just having a good product, an attractive trade policy and transport network is no longer enough. You need to have great packaging, trained sales force, marketing support and strategic & tactical plan to get your share of the market. You need to benchmark  certain percent of repeat sales from your market otherwise you may look like those primary agriculturists who used to burn the jungles and cultivate it once and then move on to the new pastures. 

You must ask yourself how much repeat sales are you getting from your served markets and which direction you are headed? Generally we start thinking about marketing & sales after manufacturing has been taken care of.  Recently I came across a firm from ludhiana, Punjab that faced classical dilemma. The CEO wanted a sales & Marketing network that could handle higher volumes, whereas the Sales & Marketing Head would blame bad production planning for poor sales. The conflict between production & marketing is normal until the organization is not riddled with inventories.

Having no inventories or moving all your production could not be the aim of a good CEO/CMO, you must strive to get the max share of market on a given day & plan for that. If you are happy with moving everything you make then you are complacent about the competition just eating away your share. That in turn would lead to fierce competition in future.

It’s wise to plan marketing well in advance & test the network before you get into real battle. Integrate all nodes of supply chain into one whole with help of readily available solutions. Must look for contract manufacturing and concentrate on brand building and supply chain. There are many suppliers for manufacturing operations available but hardly any for managing the distribution in a manner that amy suit your growth plan.

Start up companies must negotiate the trap of creating a corporate brand in comparison to product brand. A product brand is easier to market than communicate the umbrella brand. I have observed many SMEs trying to do a corporate brand. Most ludhiana based hosiery & apparels companies suffer from this problem they spread their brand too thin. They thought they were emulating a Nike or Adidas without understanding the nature of those companies. Its necessary to have a well oiled distribution network served by a motivated sales & marketing team to match the competition in the growing India.

Political Giants & Media Monsters !

Media and the Political players are like married couple. Both understand each other’s temptations so readily forgive the flings unless it becomes damaging affair for either of the stakeholder.  They fight but make up soon for sake of continuation of the relationship with renewed vow to support each other every time.  Like most marriages this too is an unequal relationship wherein the political player can lose reputation and elections but the media firm can lose its existence. 

Politicians need media to put across their promotional communication to citizens at large and media need them for advertising money and sensational content. News Channels use no holds barred approach to find content that brings highest TRP to their business so that they could charge premium from advertisers. Therefore the so called Breaking News stories have not much to do with journalistic mission or nation building pronouncements for sake of audience benefit but a direct greedy tactic to get better TRP for raking in the moolah.

Let us also resolve the conundrum of politics for nation and people or politics for pure self aggrandizement.  In my considered opinion all Political players work for themselves only and some of them are more open to sharing the windfall gains with some number of people. There is no political party that has worked for all the people of a country. Show me one and I’ll show you people the victimized and marginalized in some clear manner.

Let’s get back to the issue of how political parties should handle media or leverage the communication opportunities presented to them. Firstly in pays to have own dedicated mass media machine that is run professionally. Most parties in democracies have ‘close’ linkages with media houses but since last decade in India many parties own pretty powerful media monsters of their own to unleash at the opponents. The serious weakness in all those strategic assets is lack of professionalism as toadies generally lack competence to get audience interest. Such dedicated media firms must be run by professionals with Editorial policy control with the party. Aligning with an outside media firm is more expensive & less effective.

Political players generally get carried away by the media attention and tend to speak endlessly on any topic under the sun. Have you ever heard a politician say on camera that they need some time to answer the question if the muck racking seems to be working to their advantage? When you target the opponent it’s better to go prepared for your best shot. You must always depend on written prepared communication for better results and always desist from off the cuff shibboleths.

Political parties must plan the media rendezvous and must not exceed a given limit. Please note that more communication may lead to more confusion so in order to have positive impression on masses keep all political communication around few specific points that a binds your politics with your target audience.  A political player must avoid expressing views on topics that strengthen the opponent camp as bad publicity is also welcome publicity in politics.

Finally political parties would benefit if the work of communication management be left to professionals than party managers because the insiders can’t have a 360 degree view of a communication situation. 

Skill Development & India: Challenges !

Would you like to become someone who is looked down upon in society? Say an ambulance chaser? Just imagine that you have a choice to become a doctor or a fashion designer, and the society you live in accords more respect to a doctor, would you prefer the later route? Besides livelihood people work hard to earn respect of society around them. Can you say I bought a Ferrari by selling contraband? People are identified by their profession and skills so skills are important part of what a person is? Isn’t it?

Government of India has realized that no economic development is possible without inculcating critical skills in people of India. Economic growth based on capital has limitations as compared to skills the capital as resource is less impact on sustainable growth. CK Prahalad & Gary Hemel introduced the concept of Core Competencies into Management literature. Michael Porter, another strategy stalwart, advised many governments to persuade them to build a Competitive Advantage for their economy and companies.  Presence of large number people having knowledge of English language available at low cost provided  competitive advantage to India in the BPO sector for couple of decades. China took few years to scale up their assembly & manufacturing on the basis of manual skills present in the Chinese people. Indian people on the other hand don’t seem to have manual skills needed for achieving success in manufacturing space.

Ustad Ahmad Lahouri a Persian is the architect behind India’s iconic Taj Mahal built during Moghul period. Silks in India come from Karnataka as people have traditional skills in silk rearing & weaving Punjab has grey yarn spinning industry as cotton is grown in large quantities here.  Religious men from Hinduism & Islam claim to predict your future on the basis of their knowledge of astrology etc.  But skills in India have been associated with caste classification of society as per the Hindu belief system. And perhaps the caste system is the culprit for vanishing of skills among the people. Another view is that since the British ruled India for couple of centuries wanted to prepare clerical slaves for the Empire, so they manipulated the education system to produce educated people with just average communication skills rather than preparing masses for vocations as the British wanted to flood the made in UK goods into India.

Well past is past! Presently most Indians prefer to work on white collar jobs rather work with their hands. It’s rare to find a great carpenter or blacksmith in India. Why? Because when a carpenter’s child gets a clerical job then he would not be called a carpenter but a clerk. A clerk or babu is considered a more respectable profession in India as per caste system. Therefore thousands of engineers graduating from technical universities can score exceptionally high marks in written exams but hardly anyone can use hands to fix a machine.  Unless the government addresses the social stigma attached to skilled people not many would be prepared to learn the skills required by India for nation building. India can create national level competitions every month in various critical skills and honor the winners with large sum of money. Higher income can diminish the hurt involved in learning new skills in caste ridden medieval society of India. 

India Welcomes Walmart Tesco Carrefour : FDI in Multi-brand Retail

Finally on September 20, 2012 Government of India allowed Foreign Direct Investment in multi-brand retail in India. It’s possible now for global retail majors like Wal-Mart, Tesco & Carrefour to enter the market which has 300-400 millions strong middle class. Without going into political economy aspect of the move let’s look at the management & marketing side of the multi-brand retail in India. Retail & aviation has many similarities in India particularly. Retail majors need to learn lessons from India’s aviation industry as both cater to same customer base.

Lessons: Largest of the domestic corporate giants have burnt their fingers in organized retail in India during more than decade long period. Top three of them have reported losses. Retail in India is a fragmented unorganized business evolved alongside the social structure of communities. India has more cultural diversity than entire Europe as language, food habits, customs, religions & even Gods change every 50 kilometers in India. Hindustan Lever Limited had attempted to monopolize ice cream market in India two decades ago by buying out major brands but they could not fight with local satraps.

Basics: India has population of the size of China living on 1/3 of the area. Publicity managers of brand India have projected that what makes India attractive is presence of 300-400 million middle class consumers. Let me flag this figure right here from marketing perspective. Since Indian society is highly fragmented & culturally diverse therefore it’s a challenge to find various ‘consumers profiles’ embedded in this large population of consumers.

India buys few cars just [1/6 ] as compared to China. This figure is very significant as majority of Indian people prefer buy a house before car unlike in rest of the world.  India has no problem with congestion as all metro cities are teeming with people hence retail experience to India may not be same as routinely described in classical retail plans. On the issue of buying on credit or cash Indian consumers are no different than others but majority of Indians don’t have credit cards.

Entry Strategy: What business model Walmart would use in India is the billion dollar questions. Will they go for company owned company operate [COCO] route to begin with or take the franchise route? I believe later route may be more suitable as it would cut cost of entry & provide for safe landing for this controversial roll out. If Walmart recruits 25 major franchises in the beginning it would provide substantial leverage in domestic market to navigate the social reaction in the first phase.

POS & billing: In my opinion POS strategy would be the waterloo for Retail in India. Walmart, Tesco & Carrefour would be wise to invent a new POS strategy as no other country resembles in India in buying behavior. I would recommend that CXOs of retail giants should invest lots of their time at airport lounges & Metro railway in Delhi & Kolkata to grasp the behavior of Indians and ignore Mckinesy consumer reports. It’s impossible to succeed in retail without strategizing this final moment of truth in retail trade.

India is really a more diverse country than it appears on paper. Retail industry may have to take Indian Railway route & organize the operations that could handle the diversity of buyer needs in India. Historically Indian may have lived under centuries of foreign domination but they have succeeded at maintaining their lifestyle & culture and this must serve as guiding principle to any executives involved in this service sector. 

India's Private Shame !

The rise of China has significantly trounced the Thatcherism on public vs private sector. The experts failed to notice the dangers of universalizing an essentially Western phenomenon. It has been argued & agreed that each economy has some unique features that differentiate it from the others. Moreover an economy also has certain competencies prevalent due to several natural & man made reasons.  Apologists for poor performance of India vis-à-vis China point to two main factors that are cultural & administrative factors in nature. Indian ultra-nationalist economists never tire of stating that China has been able to pull of spectacular economic performance majorly due to one race- one language and a political system that doesn’t allow room for dissent. Both arguments examined closely would prove nothing but mythology.

Blind faith in virtues of privatization & efficiency myth of Indian corporation must be examined in the light of realities of two decades of its operation in India. The representative symbol of economic growth in India in last two decades is the current Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh who brought in a set of economic reforms in early 90s that gave India freedom from Hindu rate of growth of two to three percent. India has posted a six plus GDP number ever since he came on the scene. His economic policies were continued by governments across political spectrum in India.

Where is the evidence to prove the hypothesis of private sector‘s superior performance in comparison to the public sector? China may have greater number of private enterprises now than ever before but the public sector enterprises continue to contribute a lion’s share to the state output.  In India too, despite domination of service sector by private companies, baring telecom, virtually in all other arena public sector organizations continue to command higher trust than the private sector companies. India remains a difficult place to do business but on the corruption front private sector companies have been found to be worse off than public sector.

Organized retail in India faces no public sector competition and FDI restrictions have kept the global competition at bay, but still is has failed to take off. How could one exonerate India’s corporate giants for failing in retail sector?  Once FDI is allowed into retail India shall see the rise of global retail corporations & reap benefits in terms of expansion of economy.

To upgrade human resources of India government allowed private capital into high education sector to boost the infrastructure. The story here too is no different. None of the higher education enterprise set up in private sector has been able to offer any competition to the autonomous public sector institutes. A management institute was launched in Hyderabad with much fanfare to augment talent creation in business management education but it has failed to offer any competition to even newly set up IIMs? The scenario in related field of health & pharma is not different. ?  India is globally known for its Information Technology firms too but unfortunately some of them have been called as chop shops due to their lack of going up the technology curve to become true tech corporation.  Story in aviation is no different private sector companies as doing as bad as public sector behemoth. Banking & Insurance services sector too portrays same picture with SBI & LIC leading the pack by miles.

Maruti Suzuki began its journey as government owned company and it remains the number one player in passenger vehicles segment.  All major Oil companies are also in public sector. Reliance despite huge industrial base could not compete with public sector companies. It would not be out of place to mention consumer electronics sector too. The moment global competition came in consumer electronics, all major Indian companies melted away like snow flakes.  Indian corporations except TATA group failed to dominate consumer goods & fmcg space despite having head-start in form of understanding local culture critical for success in distribution led businesses. Some Indian companies have made their mark in industrial goods & telecom sector that shows the private capital in same light as it’s seen globally.

India is no UK or USA. Private companies in India are run differently than global standards & practice. India has failed to romp up quality & create large capacities in private sector.  Private sector companies have failed to create & nurture talent as they are led by families in unprofessional manner. There are many factors responsible for dismal performance of Indian private sector companies that has led to enormous pains to fighting poverty in India. The Government has rolled out red carpet to private sector for close to two decades now but its performance has disappointed everyone. It’s ridiculous to give better report card to private sector over public sector in India.  Government need to accelerate state capitalism to kick start the economy.  

My inquisition into search for finding factors that show private sector in poor light than public sector has thrown up various reasons that need verification & further research.  But most prominent factor is the quality of management in private sector, the governance. Families run private sector companies assisted by small group of top executives from bureaucracy generally fail to recognize, nurture & reward the talent. Recruitment in private sector are done in arbitrary manner and religion & caste play a major part in profiling a candidate.  Private sector in the name of merit has been rejecting the state’s affirmative action initiatives for long which has led to low quality of human resource pool that is out of sync with reality of India. Failure happens due to absence of talent and private sector companies in India are no exception either. India is faced with horrendous poverty that need faster economic growth and the private sector must prepare for the responsibility.