Brands Must Be Careful About Their Cultural Strategy

Dr. Gaurav Sood Nov 16, 2021

Though Peter Drucker referred to the organisation’s culture in the above quote, it may be true to our societal culture and ideologies which bind them together. Here I am referring to the advertisements that have faced consumer backlash due to the failure of the cultural strategy adopted by the brand. I am referring to the Dabur India (Karwachauth ad), Sabyasachi (Mangal Sutra Ad) and Tanishq (inter-faith marriage ad). Immediately after these advertisements were released, they faced consumer backlash for promoting innovative ideologies which do not resonate with the cultural norms of the Indian society, according to some sections of the netizens.

Tanishq the Tata Jewellery brand was accused of promoting Interfaith marriage (Love Jihaad) and it did not go well with certain sections of the society. Following the consumer backlash, the brand withdrew its Ekatvam campaign from all social media channels and YouTube and issued the following statement:

Well, a repeat of this happened when Dabur India released its “Karva Chauth” Fem bleach advertisement showing same-sex couples ready to celebrate their first “Karva Chauth”. Though the advertisement was released with an innovative ideology as part of Dabur’s Cultural Strategy to juxtapose a traditional Hindu ritual with an inclusive message. Though the advertisement got praised for inclusivity, it was also criticised for showing two women celebrating the Hindu ritual “Karva Chauth”. Dabur soon released an unconditional apology on Twitter and withdrew its advertisement from all its social media handles.

The third case of recent Sabyasachi Jewellery “Mangalsutra” advertisement, which showed a woman wearing a low-neckline dress and posing solo and in an intimate position with a man.

Now, in India, the significance of “Mangalsutra” is that the groom ties the auspicious thread around the bride’s neck on the day of their holy nuptial as the significance that their relationship would be as auspicious as the thread. The term Mangalsutra is a combination of two words mangal and sutra. The word mangal means auspicious and sutra means thread – together mangalsutra means an auspicious thread uniting the souls”. As with the others, this ad also talked about inclusivity and empowerment but the users found it against the Hindu culture and obscene content. The netizens brought down the above campaigns by trending hashtags #BoycottSabyasachi, #Sabyasachi_Insults_HinduCulture, #BoycottTanishq, #Boycottfem etc. mainly on Twitter.

So what went wrong?

Advertisers have been adopting various advertising and branding strategies which have been focusing on building a “better mousetrap” through “Unique Selling Proposition” (USP) or pitch for consumers’ “mind-share” space to position their brands in the mind of the consumer. But somewhere they ignore the cultural ideologies while creating a cultural innovation to create a “better mousetrap” or gain a significant pie of the consumers’ “mind share”. All the above cases have tried to break the norm and deliver an innovative cultural ideology like in the mentioned advertisements. Somewhere these brands failed to decode the cultural code or were ahead of their times and in return hurt the sentiments of certain sections of society. After the consumer backlash on social media Sabyasachi wrote an Instagram post stating, “The campaign was intended as a celebration and we are deeply saddened that it has instead offended a section of our society. So, we at Sabyasachi have decided to withdraw the campaign.”

In the case of the Dabur India advertisement, forget about cultural acceptance of same-sex relationships or marriage as portrayed in the advertisement, the law has only decriminalised section 377 of the Indian Penal Code and allowed same-sex companionship in private so long it does not violate the fundamental rights of others. Even the central government has opposed any move to accord legal sanction to same-sex marriage in India. So the advertisement though may only be referring to same-sex companionship but it did not go down well with netizens, when two women in a same-sex relationship were shown celebrating the festival together. Similar reactions were witnessed when in 1998, Deepa Mehta’s “FIRE” movie caused a huge uproar on same-sex relationships. The movie showed two women finding love and solace in each other and eventually leaving their husbands to live together. It seems that we have come a long way, but there is still a long way ahead of us, especially when it comes to innovative ideologies in advertising or maybe films.

Though the advertisers have the freedom of creative expression and can choose innovative ideologies to attract attention and persuade consumers to buy the product. Ultimately, it has to resonate with society’s cultural beliefs and religious rituals. In the above cases, this is where things went wrong for the brands or were these advertising campaigns ahead of their time? Well, advertising impacts cultural values and beliefs, it also has the effect of ‘normalising’ values or behaviours. Who could have imagined a few years ago that men will be targeted by cosmetic brands for moisturisers and other cosmetic products or women will be portrayed as independent and empowered? But this is a reality now and who knows that the Tanishq and Dabur advertisements may get appreciated for inclusivity and creative expression tomorrow and may change the way we look at the world.

*The author is Dr. Gaurav Sood, Professor of Marketing, Amity University