How the Other Half Lives

It’s a cliche to say India is a land of contrasts. But on my first visit here, the contrasts are too striking to ignore. There’s the Taj Mahal on one hand, abject poverty on the other. Cyber-cafes sit next to open-air markets. Ads for cell phones and Web sites hang above cows grazing along the road. When first-world technology meets third-world infrastructure, the composite is fascinating.

The contrasts are clear even in the five-star ParkRoyal Hotel, the site in August of India’s first promotion marketing conference. Most sessions cover the Internet, and delegates are visibly hungry for it. Two of the three native speakers at the conference are Internet entrepreneurs, and the four foreign speakers all touch on online promotion one way or another. (I probably do the least: I present 12 campaigns, most from the U.S., and The Times of India winds up detailing the one from Spain featuring an interactive game.)

But the Indian campaigns that we talk about over cocktails and applaud in the country’s first awards ceremony have taken place mostly in the street or in schools, where brands can touch consumers. Why not? Delhi’s streets are lined with commerce, from paan shops and chai vendors to Coke-sponsored dance parties. It’s a face-to-face conversation that springs naturally from the open-air culture – ironically, the very thing to which U.S. marketers are striving to return.

But the infrastructure is all wrong here to deliver on the Internet’s ether. Marcus Starke, ceo of Bates Worldwide’s 141 Europe, shows CD-ROM and Internet-based sales presentation tools, truly cutting-edge stuff, and I’m on the edge of my seat. Then a delegate asks, “How will this help me sell to my 12,000 retail customers?” Starke seems puzzled. “Do you mean 12,000 stores?” No, the answer comes, there are 12,000 independent retailers in Delhi, with no centralized wholesaler or broker to field a brand’s pitch. “Well, forget it then,” Starke replies. “This is of no use to you.”

A Woman’s Place The conference comes a few days before Rakhi, a holiday that celebrates brothers. A woman ties a simple bracelet, a rakhi, on her brother’s wrist and prays for his well-being. There’s a whole ceremony involving candles, spices, and rice in his hair. Then the brother gives his sister a gift. It’s like a little Sibling Christmas.

The point of having a healthy brother, of course, is to have a man who’ll protect you. “All the ceremonies are kind of selfish for the women,” confides a single woman in her 20s. “It’s all about making sure you’re cared for.”

How does that tradition jibe with the female marketers I meet? Roughly 40 percent of the attendees are women, half in saris and traditional dress, half in Western attire. They’re selling cars, cookies, hotel rooms. They have good ideas, and many are outspoken. This could be New York City or Chicago. The women here are holding their own, with or without Rakhi.

Still, it’s a sobering world outside the hotel. The train porter hustles to serve breakfast without a cart, but to “automate” his job would put three behind-the-scenes assistants out of work. I buy a sterling silver ring for $3, then the next day see silversmiths working over makeshift furnaces, bellowed by old bicycle wheels, a few feet from the road. In a country where human labor is a commodity, it’s disconcerting – embarrassing, even – to see U.S. brands. Coca-Cola signs become the walls of a meager home. A billboard for Maxwell House – “Dependable to the last drop” – looms over whole families perched on a single motorbike, children begging for ice cream or shampoo. I feel vaguely guilty knowing what Coke and Maxwell House mean in the U.S.

Marketing makes the world seem wonderful, and it’s not. We spend more energy getting people to pick the right cracker brand than we do to feed everyone. It may not be possible to feed everyone, but it seems like there should be more money in trying.

In the end, I’m a cliched tourist, concluding that the contrasts are unfair.

But I still wear my $3 ring.

I’d like to thank Gillette for mailing a brand new Mach 3 razor to my husband. It was great targeting and perfect timing – for reasons no marketing research will ever detect.

My husband wears a full beard and hasn’t shaved in 30 years. I, on the other hand, left my Gillette Atra at the ParkRoyal just days before Gillette’s package arrived. Considering there’s only one week every 10 years that my household is in the market for a razor, Gillette nailed it. It just proves that coincidental brand loyalty counts for sales, too.