James Bond & The Next Billion Indians.

Gutka stained streets & walls, of Bharat, bring a smirk on the face. Maybe even while reading this, recalling a man spitting Gutka from his mouth, makes one feel disgusting. Gutka belongs to the realms of labourers from Bharat, outside the social boundaries of modern middle-class India.

James Bond the charismatic spy, wielding the talismanic charm, of not only new-age gadgets & swanky cars but also playful zest & classy lifestyle. Bond is perched atop the class hierarchy of even super-heroes because unlike the latter, Bond is flesh and blood!

This chronicle begins in the year 2016, Jio was just publicly launched, MS Dhoni was beating MSG: the lionheart warrior, on the box office, Samsung was busy launching S7 and all was good with God in heaven. The term “next billion” was yet to be coined because the next billion weren’t “market worthy” in the mainstream, surely the next billion were not on the Marketer’s radar. Yet there were unmistakable signs of their advent, lost in the noise of our cliché-based approach.

James Bond (retired Pierce Brosnan) advertised for a Panmasala brand (Image attached). The uproar in social media was “deafening”. Though the concern was on the carcinogenic nature of pan masala, perhaps the unstated angst was because Bond’s image did not gel with gutka ( Gutka is Pan masala mixed with Tobacco). Gutka was crass, Bond is Class. Gutka belonged to the 'Bharat' class of people, your watchmen, that delivery boy, your housemaid. Although Gutka & Cigarette are children of the same father “tobacco” cigarettes don’t evoke such a sharp emotive repulsion. Perhaps the ridicule betrayed the amusement on the arrival of Bharat in the league of Bond, James Bond. Drowned in the brouhaha & meme fest was the signal from inconspicuous Bharat.

Ads are an interesting window in the "aspirational world" of consumers. The disdain & ridicule about the adv reflected the inherent entitlement of India over its obscure brother Bharat. Gutka needed legitimacy of being a classy product despite its rural origins and desi heritage. Bond was just a device, an image on which business wanted to piggyback, to reduce the stigma around gutka consumption. The noise drowned the signal. But it was just a signal of the coming awakening.  

The signal though was clear and not category-specific, Bharat finally had enough scale to afford James bond to dance to its tunes. Bharat may be vernacular, value-conscious but it has its own unique cocksure aspirations & consumption behaviour. As my next 2 articles will unravel- Bharat talked back to the people who talked down to it. The beauty of this consumer class, its uniqueness was its innovative pathways yet many biases towards Bharat continued, the "next billion" have made their name despite it. (Spot the pun)   

The year now is 2022, - Shahrukh, Salman, Ranveer, Priyanka and even Amitabh Bachhan do ads for surrogate gutka brands with “NO” social media outcry. We will walk through this journey of change about perspective on Bharat( & not gutka) in the series of articles. So If as a brand manager you are satisfied by your status quo, happy with improving reach in Bharat, you may witness a “Skyfall” sooner than later, scan the environment and aspirations of Bharat with a “Golden Eye” & remember “Tomorrow never dies”. You really have “No time to Die”