Marketing Battles – Part III

(This was written in 1988 for the parting copy of the IIM-Bangalore hostel magazine IIMages as a spoof history of marketing management. Needless to say, the fictional company and characters do not intend to describe anyone in the real world and, if any existing company or person is mentioned, there is certainly no intent to state that the actions and motives ascribed to them are in any way the truth This was written in an era where the internet was not even a blip on the horizon and TV was a relative newcomer to the world. Furthermore, it is set in an era when even TV was barely a blip on the horizon.)
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Life was simple in the bygone days for Z. All he had to worry about was which sorry-looking nag to put his money on in order to lose most of it. Developing a system to beat the roulette table was also a great way of shedding his wealth. Having taken up the dog food business, he strangely found that he had acquired a taste for acquiring wealth. It is not as though he could find any earthly way spending all the money that he possessed. Readers will remember, if they can cast their minds that far back, that his primary intent in starting the business was to spend the wealth that his father had endowed him. It was not even as though there was any Heavenly way of spending his wealth since, by all accounts, the exchange rate for heavenly currency to earthly currency was something like infinity to zero. There are even a few who say that there is an inverse proportionality i.e you acquired as much debt in heavenly currency as you possessed in earthly currency (‘It is more difficult for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to enter the eye of a needle’ and all that!). What then was motivating Z to peer closely at his financial statements and mutter curses when the net profits dipped by even a fraction? The oldest of all impulses – keeping score! A little less money would not hurt him at all but to make lesser profits than that dirty old so-and-so? That was not to be tolerated! Profits had not really dipped but they were increasing at a much lower rate than before. Z may be at par on goals with HC but HC seemed to be scoring more tries. Z could hardly enter the cat foods business now – who wanted to be labeled a “Me-too’ in the pejorative fashion of the times? What was he to do with his sales leveling off? There was a sudden upheaval north-northwest of his neck! Were his salesmen all telling the right thing or were they contradicting themselves? What was the point in depending upon people telling one another about the virtues of his product? Could they even be depended upon to tell the right thing about the right product? It would be best if he told it himself. After all, who knew the virtues of his product better than himself? Thus was born the magnificent idea of ‘Advertising’! Within a few months, not a citizen in the country could walk the streets safe from a soulful dog looking down on him from a hoarding and saying, ‘Won’t you get me XXX dog food, please!” You could not open a newspaper without seeing a cute little dog looking yearningly at a tin of XXX dog food! Not a movie could be watched without first seeing a couple of dogs quarreling vociferously about whether XXX dogfood tasted of beef or bacon only to resolve their quarrel amicably by agreeing that, whatever it tasted of, it was delicious. Even the die-hard scraps-from-the-table feeders had to give in. Every time they looked at their dogs it seemed as though they were looking accusingly at them and complaining of ill-treatment. The surge in sales that this brought in could not, however, sustain Z’s profit increases for more than a few years. Z called in his Market Research team and put the question to them. “Sir! The market has reached the maturity stage of the Product Life Cycle. As long as our Company was a Star, growth was good. Now it can only be a Cash Cow that yields routine profits!” Z could not make head or tail of this. He turned to his trusty PS and asked him “What is all this rot?” PS said, “Sir! They are telling you that there are not enough pet dogs, which are not already eating dog food, for us to sell more of our product” “Why don’t they say that instead of talking about cows and other such barnyard animals? Think up something to improve our sales” Later in the day, at his club, Z found that Product Life Cycle came trippingly off his tongue and his listeners were impressed. The fact that even nonsense sounds like the apotheosis of wisdom when dressed up in learned language struck him like lightning. Next day, he shot a memo to his Market Research team to continue the good work. Thus was born the mightiest weapon in the armory of the management consultant – Jargon!
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