Going with the reverse swing, are you

Every morning I meet this neighbour of mine taking a morning walk but in the reverse format. I don’t know why I get tense seeing him as he goes tantalisingly close to the cars parked on the either side of the road, but he manages to sense them and avoid clashes in his reverse walk. He must be having some innovative health instructor’s advice to do so but I never felt like asking him. Sure enough, this guy is popular among the morning joggers and has earned the nick name, “back gear guy”.

Back in my own domain of advertising and marketing, everything is on reverse mode — rudalis laugh in Radio Mirchi commercial because Mirchi sunnewale hamesha khush rahate hain. Biba reverses the arranged marriage equation. The traditional system of the parents of the boy coming to see the would-be bahu in a so-called arranged marriage was up for a shock as the girl’s father springs a surprise, saying that he wants to visit the boys home to see if he can manage household chores and cook, bringing in a new dimension of ladka dekhna as against ladki. The reverse thinking is a fresh way to drive a brand point of view — change is beautiful. Communication strategy for a number of Havells group of products pivot on reverse — Hawa badlega.

Why is “reverse” galore Where does the “reverse” connect with us and why “Reverse” gives legitimacy to what is not obvious. It puts a question on the regular path and challenges the status quo. And it connects with us because it brings in excitement, drama, wakes us up from inertia. By challenging the established, reverse widens the horizon and gets into a territory not yet explored. Refuse reverse and you are refusing to embrace the new, refusing to embrace change, and perhaps refusing to access the other side of the story.

Role-flipping is perhaps the earliest virtual reality game conceived by the human mind. We have heard umpteen numbers of stories where prince plays pauper, the master plays servant, man plays woman. Child plays the father, daughter plays the mother in every house as a source of home entertainment. In a recent Bournvita Little camp commercial, the child is lip-syncing the mother’s (Kajol) dialogue and the mom in turn, dubs the child’s lines. The brand, it is heard, will also launch a dubsmash contest for the social media savvy moms and kids as an extension of the campaign. We will probably see more of these as a manifestation of the age of experience. In the experiential economy, we all want to expand the horizon of our experience without relinquishing our original role. The new marketing task is to fulfil this need — thus consumers are becoming sellers and content creators and the ordinary are playing the roles of experts in the media.

“Reverse” now is a big-time strategy in government communication. In the last two years, sidelined heroes and patriots have been brought into the lime light. Classified papers and files have been thrown open to public. Lady taxi drivers are driving working daughters home, assuring anxious fathers not to worry about the safety of their daughters at night, establishing a new social truth that the more the girls work, the less will they depend on men for their safety. Lady commandos, BSF combat troop, Air Force pilots are all unheard of. 2015 Republic Day parade showcased ladies taking over the tasks and positions so far reserved for their male counterparts. Even the coy, tongue-tied Bahu opens her mouth before the dreaded father-in-law who has taken dahez (dowry) from her father in an anti-dowry campaign by the government. Taking the proposition — dowry is bad, to dowry is a trap — the commercial showcases an outspoken bahu who proclaims that by paying dahez (in the form of a new scooter), her father has bought the son-in-law, along with the scooter. Now she being her daddy’s daughter is the lawful owner of both and warns the confused father in law — “pyar se puchhoge to dono milega, beta bhi, scooter bhi”( If you ask properly you will get both –- the son and the scooter). Mother-in-law, the erstwhile police of patriarchy, could not have agreed more and enjoys the new drama standing in the background.

Today everything is in reverse count and makes us tense. Time starts counting from future and hurtles towards us in the present. “Your time starts now, perform, deliver, act, make a move or perish”. Waves after waves of threats like these terrorise our days; either we tackle them or they drown usin the present .We save today’s deadline and earn a fresh breath for tomorrow.

“Reverse” is not just a role-reversal, the core desire of human being is to reverse time. Brands, products, media — all are conspiring with technology to reverse, compress and freeze time. Oil and shampoo are merging in the same product offering, a single solution tackles seven signs of ageing, recorded programmes bring back the telecast of your favourite programme. In an era of speed and change, life becomes a unidirectional journey to the unknown, a constant exploration. There is everything to be excited about it but nothing to own in it. We have left behind what we had loved and owned in the past. Perhaps there is a hidden need to connect with what we had. Are we getting tired of speed and all the new things Why, otherwise, is past such an important subject for communicating present products. In as much as OLX shouts — purana jayega tabhi to naya aayega — Maggi creates nostalgia, brings back college days, so do biscuits, a body lotion reminds that we have forgotten to touch each other, which forms the bed rock of any relation.

Culturally, we are masters of playing reverse. We are experts in working out exceptions and creating opposites. We love co-existence of contradictions. Jugad is in our blood and we love to beat the system. We make communication out of missed calls. Unilever picked up the tab from Indian street smarts and created a media called KanKhajura station that runs on missed calls. Give a missed call and listen to songs of your choice. However, the rider is that you need to listen to a couple of ads before that. A reverse strategy to work out a win-win situation, listener gets to hear his chosen song for free, advertisers get his audience free of cost and make them listen to their ads.

Of late, even jugad meets anti-jugad in a new sulekha.com ad. In a final show down in the marketing game, a monk is making a mockery of MNC brands. Baba Ram Dev’s reverse swing beats the defence of mega brands. The marketing yogi proclaims a mind blowing 150 per cent growth of his Patanjali group of products in a TV interview very recently as against the single digit growth of MNCs. Let’s see how the professionals prepare themselves to play his reverse swing!

The writer is former VP, consumer insight, McCann Erickson India. You can contact him on kishore.chakraborti0@gmail.com