Marketing Battles – Part IV

(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.) Click here for Part I
For once the MR team had come up with an idea that they considered useful. They could not contain their excitement. “Sir! We have a solution. We have to go the Indirect Demand route!” PS was getting quite good at this. Even before Z could lift an enquiring eyebrow, he said, ‘Sir! What they mean is that if more people took dogs for pets, there would be more demand for dog food!” “Ah! So, if we cannot directly induce people to buy more dog foods, we induce more people to buy dogs so that they have to buy more dog foods” “Rem acu tetigisti, Sir!” said the PS, momentarily lapsing into an imitation of his favorite fictional character, Jeeves. Seeing the incipient frown on Z’s face, he said hurriedly, “You hit the nail on the head, Sir!” “I want you to talk to me in plain language, not to talk jargon yourself”, growled Z and turned his attention to selling the idea of dogs as pets to people. Now that his advertising campaign had taken off, Z was selling through shops and mail order and, thus, had a lot of door-to-door salesmen who would have to be fired. Unions being what they are, firing was not as easy an option as Z would have wanted it to be. He decided to put them to use to create a demand for pet dogs. This, then, was the start of the era of dog shows. To be able to enter a dog for a dog show became the ultimate symbol of having arrived in Society. To win prizes in dog shows bestowed an aura on the winners that almost rivaled Royalty. The door-to-door salesmen worked to such good effect that the entire country did all the other trivial jobs associated with living in Society – like agriculture - in the brief intervals between dog shows. This set into motion a whole unexpected train of events. Since winning the shows was almost akin to being crowned, dog owners looked for ways and means to improve the chances of their dogs. As they say, where there is demand supply will follow. First came the shampoo that a dog loves to bathe in. It captioned a poor forlorn dog looking pathetically at the smirking winner and whining, “Why could my owner not have used XYZ shampoo on me?” You had the ball that dogs loved chasing; the hair brush which guaranteed a perfect doggy coiffure; tail curlers; ear shapers; eyebrow thinners and things that could not even be imagined by man or dog. The market was flooded with so many products that were indispensable to dogs that one was driven to wonder about how dogs could have borne living in the bygone days which must have amounted to the Stone Age for the dog civilization. The one noticeable failure in all these new product improvements was the textile industry. One Company came out with a whole range of suitings that were ideal for the well-dressed dog. They had a dog cap with two ear-flaps, dog suits, dog waistcoats, dog trousers, dog shirts, dog minis, dog sarees and even the hottest dog bikinis in town. Everyone was amazed by the imaginative capabilities of the designer (If you have any doubts about the imagination required, try designing trousers for a four-legged animal that still allows the shirt, coat and tie to be visible). Dog shows, however, drew the line at anything more than ribbons. This has been cited as the main reason why the venture failed. There were a couple of other reasons that are plausible enough to be taken seriously (At least the academics thought so and arguments raged in the august halls of many an institution with PhDs by the score being granted for theses on the subject). One school of thought explained with a great deal of statistics the importance of fashion shows in the success of textile ventures. Given the difficulty in getting dogs to model clothing and given the difficulty in getting an audience for models with a penchant to lift their legs and spray the first few rows, fashion shows for dog textiles were a non-starter. That, according to this school of thought, put paid to this venture. The other school of thought rested their arguments on Human psychology. They held that the textile manufacturers failed badly in doing their market research and were negligent in not having indulged in any test-marketing. In their view, had these been done, it would have been discovered that human beings did not want dogs to act as their equals. One wag even pointed out that if the dog was more elegant with the knife and fork than the master the insults that could be hurled at the master would have rendered his life a dog’s life! In short, their argument was pithily expressed as the need for men to continue to say, ‘Dogs will be dogs” That, in short, is the problem in venturing into the fashion industry. As with the purchases, you end up spending a lot on froth and lose sight of the pith of the matter. We really need to get back to the dog foods.
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