Picture Diary of a month in Delhi

A horse decked out as part of the festivities.


The many layered traffic of Delhi.


Very strange humour on an ad




How they sell water-resistant watches in India




An entirely different outlook for the purpose of car horns

Short Lessons from the Developing World

This is the second last of my India posting. I was moved and troubled by the recent Mumbai bombings, much in part because I had spent time in that beautiful country. But time away from a country dulls the memory, and I have barely scratched the surface of the Indian consumer mind.

Here is a transcript from one of my field studies at D.light, a company that designs and manufactures LED Solar Lights, has impacted the lives of villagers.




Monika Singh, Indian Villager
“The D.light Nova is much brighter than the kerosene lamp. Because of the good quality light, we are more interested in studying. When we were using the kerosene lamp to study, the wind would blow out the light. Hence, it was necessary for us to study in the house. The kerosene lamp gave off a lot of smoke. We were uncomfortable with the kerosene lamp as we had to put it very close to our books. We often needed to tilt the lamp in order to read our books, and smoke would go into our mouths.

With the D.light Nova, we can now study outside in the compound. I begin studying at 7 or 8pm and study for 2.5 hours with the light. The time that we take to study has been reduced, because with good light, we can now study faster. I use the extra time to help my mother in housework or play. Because of the light, we can now go to bed early and wake up early. We now have some free time before going to school.”

By putting the customer at the centre of its business, D.light offers several basic principles in developing FMCG for the other 90% of the world’s population.

1.The product must tangibly improve lives. A silly example - instant tea does wonders for urbanites who have precious little time for anything. India has a strong tea (chai) drinking culture but if we offer affordable instant tea to villagers, the time saved has little bearing on their lives. However, if the tea leaves are formulated to give more flavour using less tea and for the same price - that’s real value for any tea drinker.

2. The product should protect health. People living in developing countries as well as those living beneath the poverty line - their environments often don’t help. Be it dust, pollution, poor sanitation, ventilation or filth. If daily use products can empower their users to have control over any of these elements, it would certainly be a more meaningful product. One of the challenges would be educating and communicating those benefits.

3. Replace inferior products at competitive cost. Good products aren’t good enough for the world’s 90%. In many ways, because people living in developing countries survive on so little, they are often the harsh test of a product’s value. Additionally, many items of use are entrenched in tradition and total mindset change is often needed.

The last India-related posting will be a photo diary of India’s quirky, beautiful, colourful culture.

FMCG & Bad Debt

The financial tsunami began with bad credit but is rippling on to all financial institutions in ways and through relationships that I am not qualified to explain. Common sense tells us that the loss of trust in financial institutions, leading directly to the exit of investors in all industries, with the falling indices matched by the falling demand for non-essential consumer goods… the financial depression will also lead to the consumer cutting back on FMCG purchases.

The first to go would be the regularly purchased premium goods, such as our good ol’ Starbucks coffee. Starbucks has reported a 97% plunge in their 4Q profits and will close 600 stores – presuming a conservative average of 10 employees per branch, that would be some 6,000 employees out in the streets. Branded goods will not see an immediate fall since we don’t purchase an MTM facial cleansing set every other day. Not only is the customer loyalty to branded goods stronger, but they tend to survive on a smaller affluent market who are not immediately affected by the downturn.

As the economic situation worsens and is felt more keenly in everyday life, consumers will begin to make brand switches on a massive scale. Top brands in FMCG are likely to suffer as consumers buy facial wash or shaver brands that would save them a few dollars and still perform satisfactorily. If we ever hit a significant depression, these decisions may extend on a wide scale to cheaper products, such as shampoo or coffee powder.

Japanese FMCGs have found an interesting brand strategy for their domestic-driven, over-saturated consumer market. Operating with leaner profit margins, there is a greater range of lower to middle range products that are extremely fast moving. Seasonal offerings form the spike in earnings while the brand is built through a combination of flagship and seasonal products. Through consistent branding, they are able to offer a range to satisfy the sampling appetite of the Japanese consumer while building an overall strong brand. There is more than a single lesson in this strategy which I will bring up later.

Back to the current situation: advertising had made credit sound so risk-free to the point that loans had become an FMCG in the sense of how it had utterly transformed the consumer’s purchasing process for large ticket items. Lucrative loan packages have provided record profits for banks, but have led consumers with poor financial habits to bankruptcy. Definitely not a happy marriage. Other companies offering consumer goods with the option of paying through interest-free monthly installments are faced with the same question: what is the moral responsibility of my company to my consumers?

I would propose that it is a question that FMCG companies would need to answer as well. While FMCGs are not directly responsible for bankruptcies, they do, in many cases, offer channels for bad habits, such as impulsive and overbuying, overeating and surprise, physical laziness. Even when products are not a direct medium for bad habits, the way that FMCGs are advertised and portrayed presupposes and moulds consumer habits. Even when the responsibility for bad habits may not be that of the FMCG company, the moulding of consumer perception and buying behaviour certainly is. Simply put, if we want a company to continue on to posterity, it would depend more on healthy happy people living long lives than unhappy people who use the product for only a couple of years before we need to find more unhappy people to target.

The question that needs to be asked is “What is the real value that I am providing to my consumers’ lives that is not measured in dollars and cents?” This is not counter-intuitive to an industry driven by profit. There will not be any profit to be made if your strategy or your market is not sustainable. A sustainable strategy must offer real value to a consumer’s life – it must somehow extend or support life. Only when you have a product providing a real, non-superficial value, (which may be transient or age-based), would you have real sustainability in a product, bringing the product life through generations.

For example, it would be a moral decision not to offer mega, oversized-packs of potato chips in order not to encourage consumers to buy or eat more than what they need. While these are great for parties, these chips land up in front and inside of obese people. In Asian markets, where chip-binging is not habitual, parties manage just as well through buying a range and selection of chips. This is where the Japanese strategy would come in useful in addressing the consumer appetite for variety and change. If our customers do not die of cholesterol-related diseases – it does mean that they would continue consuming the product for a much longer period of time.

Investing in developing healthier products and helping the consumer develop healthier buying habits is not necessary a paradox. Both good and bad living habits are passed down through the generations, and through other friends we are influenced by. Bad habits that are detrimental to your quality of life, such as smoking, binging or overleveraging on credit, may either shorten your life or land you in a poverty cycle. Neither of these would benefit FMCG companies. We can't point the finger at the financial industry and say that this mess is all their fault. Who gave the idea to consumers of quick and fast purchases that make them feel good? Who offered unhealthy food or supported unhealthy lifestyles that resulted in unforeseen medical bills that finally pushed bad credit over the edge? We are all part of the same ecosystem and each have a responsibility.

Companies may argue that if they don’t resort to such “overselling”, they would lose out to the competitors. Or even in the idyllic setting where this becomes a strategy in FMCG industries, other industries shaping consumer purchasing patterns may prove such a naïve approach laughable. The fact is that we have collectively created today’s consumer purchasing pattern. It is also a fact that in some cases, single companies or industries have changed the consumer’s mindset (think instant food or McDonald’s). The responsible product behaviour suggested here may go against the tide, but with the appropriate marketing and communications, it is a sustainable and profitable strategy for brands and for their companies.

Diwali and Decision-making

Since I haven’t posted for the past two weeks, I have accumulated some India entries. These would be my last India entries as I am actually back in China. In this post I would like to focus on consumer buying patterns in the rural areas.

As most are familiar, Diwali is the biggest event in the Hindu calendar. Known as the Festival of Lights, it celebrates the triumph of good over evil. Diwali preparations begin months before, with family members booking tickets to go home; wives planning on the food menu and decorations; and men deciding on major purchases and the arsenal of fireworks that accompany the celebration. The pictures in this posting shows the mad shopping on Diwali as well as celebrations at Dussehra, which is marked by Dandiya, a social dance form that features the use of paired lacquered sticks. Dandiya events occur before Diwali, and is itself preceded by nine days of fasting for the devout.

Similar to any other major festivals in the world, families would save up throughout the year to make major purchases during Diwali. In the rural families, this usually means new clothes, candles and flowers for the festivities, crackers, gifts and major purchases (such as electronic equipment). One thing I’ve learnt from visiting towns and villages in India – the men do the important shopping. This is especially the case for villagers where men are the ones travelling into towns to make major purchases. The trading areas in towns are populated with men. It is not socially acceptable for women to be seen by themselves in such an area, unless it is an area of town where the womenfolk go.

Hence, the pattern of purchase would be the men viewing the item at the shop – going back to ask their wives and relatives for opinions – and then taking permission from the eldest person in their family to make the major purchase. If the wives do view or hear of a certain product, she still would tell her husband, and the person making the purchase is invariably the father of the family. Additionally, men speak with other men in the village through daily social settings and word of mouth travels powerfully. Relational communication plays a large part within the village, as well as across to towns and cities.

These basic observations also mean that a different kind of brand building for the world’s other 90% is possible. The good news is, you don’t have to spend anywhere near as much money on above-the-line and you can still get good products to people who benefit from it the most. The bad news is, it’s really time and manpower intensive. But that also means you’re creating more jobs, training more people, connecting across social divides and ultimately, redistributing wealth.

Pictures from a ride around Delhi + Noida

Part of the extensive construction going on around Noida - flyovers, metro system, multiple roadworks, all in a rather haphazard manner with fragile-looking scaffolding and flimsy hoardings. This one appeared to be using steel... for residential projects, bamboo scaffolding are used.


Typical bus in Noida - this one's already in a better condition.


Dome of the ministry of finance. The gap between the grandeur of the government buildings and the poverty of the masses is just staggering.

Pictures taken on a Lumix LX2

Religion and Consumerism

Early next year would be the elections for India. From the local talk, it seems that politics is largely influenced by religion. My question is how much of consumer patterns are influenced by religion here?

The above image of chillis and lime strung together was taken in an auto, and it's a local formula to ward off evil. The basic raw food materials have been with humanity long enough to be integrated into culture and beliefs. In terms of modern necessities, of which I would include an array such as soap, mirrors, photos and metal cooking utensils used even in villages, it appears divorced from religion and married to the more evolutionary elements that is culture. Take for example - Indians, from all levels and castes, are enamoured of their Bollywood stars. The nagging thought is this: for a nation where religion and culture is as thick and pervasive as the dust in the Indian air, can products weave into the patterns of thought that are created through these unique rituals and culture ingrained in the lives of 1.13b Indians?

A couple of quick possible examples:
1) A respect for elders that extend to the eldest person in the family giving permission for significant purchases. This eldest person may be a female, which is a unique position in a patriarchal society;

2) This idea of significant fasting periods which are often accompanied by elaborate preparation leading up to the day of breaking of fast. Retail such as tailoring and food supplies are obvious beneficiaries of such traditions. What can modern products offer to bridge these traditions? Or perhaps one could create a experience of purchase for a premium product that is similar to a ritualistic experience in the local context. This can be achieved not just through the in-store experience a la luxury brands, but the way that advertising campaigns are constructed to the way words are phrased on a packaging.

A possible method of developing a new product in India could be to construct indices and corresponding studies/surveys that are a combination of typical market indices (colour studies, competition survey, pre-market testings, brand perceptions.. etc) as well as indices unique to the culture and social strata (why the most popular rituals are so popular, the most patronised Hindu Gods...) The fine art would be in the selection of these indices and keeping them closely relevant to the thinking and emotive processes of the target market, while providing sufficient novelty or points of differentiation.


Below: It is quite a common sight for drivers to have heart-shaped stickers of their favourite Bollywood stars on their rear view mirrors.

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Noida Streetlife

When switching on the light elsewhere, I had gotten used to the fact that it will stay on. Not so in Noida, although it could be considered a large industrial town. The electricity had even gone off for 2 hours in the middle of a hot and humid night. Delhi is supposed to be moving into autumn, but the heat and dust of India are certainly holding that off.











During my first day of work, we took a small CNG-powered "tuk-tuk". The government had moved into CNG for its public transport in a big way, but it was certainly ironic that the dust that covers the whole of Delhi and Noida did not improve the air quality one bit. Public transport here mainly took the form of overcrowded buses, CNG-powered auto-rickshaws, as well as trishaws. The trishaw riders were lean and wiry, with a number of them having ankles thinner than mine. It is a hard life when you have to ferry 2 to 3 customers at one time using a trishaw with no gears. Their wheels are threadbare, the paint is often flaking off and the trishaw rider's own clothes would sometimes be patched.

The streetlife betrayed the fact that Noida was still much in the third world. Countless beggars slept in their clothes along the streets, while entire families had stretched tents across tree branches. These tents often formed the shopfront where small businesses of selling tobacco, necessities (in satches) and sweets are found. Sometimes, entrepreneurial young Indian men would hawk their wares along stretches of the road, and I saw a stretch of inflatable floats (the type you put into swimming pools) today.

My Indian colleague tells me that the beggars are happy in the street of Noida. A newspaper did a survey of children begging in the street and found out that they could earn more than a worker in a call centre if they just begged 2-3 hours each day before and after school. This was hard for me to reconcile as just last week, I was in the small town of Dankaur, and the villages of Navrangpur and Derin. Although the people there are much poorer, I could see that each of them had a job and had a home to return to. Not so the beggars in the streets of Noida.

Having interviewed the villagers, it was apparent that their life was difficult - they wake up at 4 or 5am in the morning, milk the buffaloes and then work in the fields till the evening meal. Perhaps this is a reason why the beggars would rather beg in the town, then living a laborious life in the village. Furthermore, although all the villagers are sending their children to school because of the incentives provided, they often do not do anything about the education. Once a girl becomes of a marriagiable age, she stops school at about 8th or 9th grade. Sending a girl for further education is frowned upon and there is much social pressures from the other families in the village. Education has not done much to lift the villagers out of poverty, in comparison to industrial development and technology transfer.

XDRTB

TED is spreading news of an onslaught of extremely drug resistant strains of TB that has arisen from drug misuse and TB non-treatment. Head over to their site for a very visual representation of its implications. Naturally, most of the outbreaks are in third-world countries...

Grasping Noida

It's a little difficult to begin a blog on a first experience in India. India's too complicated with a multiplicity of things shouting at you when you're trying to form key impressions.

I'm staying in Noida, just outside Delhi. There are somewhat secure compounds for the middle-class families that congregate about common facilities. A very rough, hand-drawn sign serves as the map to the compound of 200 500 houses, and each cluster has another hand-painted sign (pictured) for further directions.

The native visual language, like its society, is stratified. Consumers at the base of the pyramid are communicated through hand-painted signs in basic and contrasting colours, are highly text-based, with what looks to be cheesy looking pictorial accompaniment. I want to get out to a supermarket in the weekend to have a closer look at the visual language for the consumer.

Just a layer up to the middle-class consumer, who would typically have a university degree - there are multiple local versions of what the West offers. In my short 3 days here, I've seen a cafe which is loosely ala Coffee Bean, a clothes iron that looks and feels like a Tefal but is a local brand, and several small shopping malls in Noida city. The building styles are mostly modernist-influenced, with an extreme freeplay of decorative motifs and styles in house designs that reflects a certain "each man for himself" mentality.

Next up, street life, entrepreneurship and poverty in Noida.

We speak Tagalog in Hong Kong.

As all Hong Kong natives know, a significant part of Central is transformed into not-so-Little Philippines every Sunday.

The first picture showing a covered walkway is finely speckled by the ad-hoc gatherings of Filipino maids - they sleep, play cards, chat, eat and also pray for each other throughout the course of the day. While walking around, I come by several groups of maids practicing their coordinated pop-dancing - with one group having a very stern cantonese instructor.

Central is home to all the top international fashion brands found in Hong Kong - it is utterly incongruous to block out the public roads, so that the maids would have space to congregate. While it is no doubt to the frustration of the fashion boutique managers, there is a wonderful serendipity and respect for the rights of maids in this gesture.

Hong Kong has a certain sense of harmless chaos that does not inconvenience but adds to the cacophony of the city. This is most oft-found in the random aggregation of building and shop types amidst residences, small pockets of building projects in unpredictable spaces, and having an incredible density of people. Sure, non-cantonese speaking people still get ripped off on purchases, but encountering such an imageable manifestation of a sizable foreign population made me think about integrating foreign workers into Singapore.

Bad Lift Buttons

Another shot from China and I'll fast forward to transit in Hong Kong then to India, where I currently am.

This is the lift to the apartment where I stayed. Notice how the close-door button has been pressed, or punched, to the extent that the enamel coating has fallen off. People living in the area generally can get very peeved at small things - I've witnessed a very lithe lady abusing and slamming the door because she couldn't get it to open right the first time. There's definately a role for better and responsive design to sensitize people to the environment and to facilitate a healthy respect of the people around them.

Colour Me Bold.

The Chinese believe in the power of imagery repetition - the supermarket stores' offerings often have single brands occupying the entire shelf. For some consumer goods, such as shampoo, there are multiple brands to choose from. However, some other goods such as toothpaste have a very limited selection. If you can squint and see the first picture (taken on a bad camera phone), there are three brands of toothpaste to choose from - Red, Green or Blue. Go figure.

Things aren't the same so don't expect them to be.

Had my first experience of ShenZhen's supermarket. With the density of shopping centres around, and 24-hour outlets, it's clearly expat land. At some of the local supermarkets, the store is swarming with sales staff asking if they can help you. Averaging one sales staff per aisle is definately swarming.

Here's a shot of how Herbal Essence is displayed on the shelves - the bottles for the shampoo and conditioner were designed to have curves that fit together, but it's obvious in this case that something has been lost in translation. Perhaps it's the Chinese preference for order that all the shampoos have been placed together. It's a good thing in this case, because I spent some 30 seconds trying to figure out what 'conditioner' was in Mandarin. Yes - the bottle only carried Chinese words.

The great kick-off!

I've quit my job in Singapore and just moved into ShenZhen, China, for a 3-month corporate design and communications project for d.light design. The company has a great vision to replace every kerosene lamp used in rural households with solar-powered LED lights that are safe to use and affordable. It will help to increase educational opportunities and income for these rural families, many of whom earn only about US$1 per day.

On this blog, I will be sharing some of my thoughts on consuming household goods and food in Asia, as well as living in Asia. I move to India for a month next week.