Culture - The googly that foxes every one!

I have given a test in culture to my final year students of Management and not surprisingly most of them did not do well. I think understanding culture is like learning swimming. You can’t learn swimming by staying on the shores. One has to get into water. Sample some of the questions asked. The following questions were asked and the students were asked to suggest changes in any of the 4 Ps (that is in the product, Price, Placement or Promotion).

Mac Donald’s hamburgers in Middle East: What changes are suggested?

Answer - Mac Donald’s hamburgers in Middle East: The word ham burger is itself a very dangerous word in the Middle East. Muslims hate the animal PIG so much that the word for dirty in Urdu is Suar (PIG). The product called hamburger had to be tinkered and tinkered severely. Mac Donald does not sell Hamburgers in Middle East. (Ham is the meat of the pig).

Muslims only eat Halal meat. Halal means permissible. Halal meat is the meat of the animal that is slaughtered by Dabihah the prescribed method of slaughtering all animals excluding fish and most sea-life as per Islamic law.

So Mac Donald serves only Halal mutton (sheep and goat meat), Halal chicken (meat of the hen meat) and Halal beef (Buffalo ox or cow meat) burgers in middle East.

Mac Donald’s hamburgers in India - What changes are suggested?

Mac Donald’s hamburgers in India: Mac Donald faced another set of problems in India. One of them was that if hamburgers are served in India the 15% Muslim population would not eat their burgers. Another was that if beef burgers are served the more than 80% predominantly Hindu population would not eat as cow is sacred. So a via media option was chosen. India is one of the few countries in the world where Mac Donald serves only chicken burgers. Even Mutton burgers are avoided as there is a big fear by many Hindus that costly mutton meat could be mixed with cheap beef.

Another problem was that most of the Hindus population even though non vegetarian prefers to eat vegetarian food most of the days. And India has a huge population of pure vegetarians who don’t touch any meat products at all. Mac Donald caters to all these vegetarians by offering many vegetarian items like Mcveggie, McAlooTikki, Paneer Salsa Wrap, McCurryPan and Pizza Mcpuff etc.

The vegetarian Indians love the products especially offerings like Paneer Salsa Wrap and Pizza Mcpuff which are very close to the popular Indian snack the Samosa.

An interesting side light - I had worked in Ethiopia and I had many Ethiopian Christian and Muslim friends. Giving a party was a nerve wracking experience. The Muslims would not eat the Haram meat (the non Halal meat) and the Christians would not eat the Halal meat. So two different sets of meat dishes had to be prepared and I had to be extra careful that even the utensils had to be separated. This made life so difficult to my  wife (who was a vegetarian)  that she came out with a dikhat (rule). 

My wife served only vegetarian menu to my Ethiopian friends and colleagues. Even though vegetarian  food  is labeled fasting food (Ethiopian  Christians while fasting  eat vegetarian  food) my friends enjoyed the food and appreciated the variety of vegetarian cuisine that my wife could dish out in no time at all.    

Electric razors in Japan - What changes are suggested?

Electric razors in Japan: American electric razor companies were puzzled that their popular electric razors were not doing well in Japan. This was surprising as Japanese are tech savvy customers and lap up any product that is technologically advanced. Investigation showed that the average hand of the Japanese man was smaller than that of the average American. The electric Razors designed to fit the American hand had become too big for the Japanese.

It was imperative that the electric razor fit the hand snugly. The snug fit is very important. The razor had to be gripped and only if the grip is good can the user get a neat and a clean shave. The sale took off once the electric razor was redesigned to snugly fit the hand of the average Japanese customer.

Marketing lessons from Kellogg Positioning strategy correction

Kellogg strategy correction: Kellogg very quickly realized that it made a mistake by taking the traditional Indian breakfast head on. It was too much of a risk and a Himalayan task of overcoming eating habits inculcated over the centuries. Kellogg took a leaf from the marketing strategy of Nestlé’s Maggi two minute noodles.

The USP of the Maggi noodles is that it is fast, convenient and a fun product. It is convenient for the mother to prepare and it is very attractive to the child to consume. At the same time the mother is very careful about what her child eats. Maggi noodle is positioned as the ideal snack between the time the child comes home and dinner. It is given to the child as a hunger quencher when the child comes home. The child’s hunger is satiated but only till the dinner time. Maggie’s strategy was brilliant and it paid off.

Kellogg did a quick re think. It latched onto the supplement positioning. It came out with a campaign which stated that Kellogg corn flakes come in where the Indian breakfast stops. In other words if the Indian breakfast gives the child 85% nutrients the rest of the nutrients can come from Kellogg. The positioning of the food supplement was taken by Kellogg. It was saying to the Indian consumers “eat whatever breakfast you want to eat but to get that extra nutrition have Kellogg”. 

Definitely a climb down for Kellogg. Its advertisement says that it. The advertisement shows a small child eating the traditional Indian breakfast and the ticker quickly adds and shows 85%. That is the amount of nutrients that the child had received. The next shot show the child on his tricycle going to a mock petrol station and he gets a fill of the rest of the 15% nutrients from his smiling mother, courtesy Kellogg. 85% of nutrients from Indian breakfast and the rest 15% of the nutrients come from Kellogg.

Over the next few years Indian cereal buyers were introduced to Kellogg’s Wheat Flakes, Frosties, Rice Flakes, Honey Crunch, All Bran, Special K and Chocos Chocolate Puffs – none of which have proved to be very popular.

Kellogg India also attempted to indianize its range. Its Mazza branded series of fusion cereals, with flavors such as mango, coconut and rose, met with lukewarm response. It also introduced less priced packs priced at Rs10/-. This strategy might work in a price conscious market place like India.

Recently Kellogg has decided that it would take the route of repositioning. It has now come out with a campaign that says that its corn flakes are very good for people who want to lose weight. Its has  repositioned its corn flakes as diet food and according to Kellogg consuming its cornflakes for two weeks could lead to a weight loss of 2.5 kgs! (watch the advertisement).

Marketing lessons from Kellogg’s Indian experience

Kellogg’s is a name to reckon throughout the world. It is the company that introduced the concept of Corn flakes as a breakfast item throughout the world. They have taken on markets where corn flakes has never been very popular as breakfast and converted them into corn flake eating nations over a long period of time. They are experts in changing breakfast eating habits of customers’ across the world.

In the early nineties Kellogg came to India with lots of hope and confidence. The Indian organized breakfast market sector was expected to roll over and die. After all Kellogg’s annual turnover was so big that the Indian organized breakfast sector was written off even before the skirmishes started.

Kellogg did lot of home work and launched its products in India. They had the best products, packaging and their marketing strategy was excellent. The advertising campaign was handled by a leading Indian advertising agency.

Kellogg did not do as well as expected. The witch doctors (read marketing research firms) were called in. The research findings were very surprising. The areas where Kellogg went wrong include: 

1.   Kellogg pitched itself as an alternative to the regularly consumed breakfast. The Indian breakfast is heavy and there is a feeling of fullness at the end of an Indian breakfast. What with oily Parantas, Puris and Dosas, the feeling of fullness is real and not imagined. Kellogg’s Corn flake breakfast does not give that feeling of fullness and that went against the grain of having a total breakfast. In short after having a corn flake based breakfast the Indian consumers were still hungry. 

2.   Indian breakfast is known for its variety. There can be 30 types of Dosas (there is a restaurant in Hyderabad that offers 99 types of Dosas!) or Idlis, Parantas or other types of native Indian breakfast items. Indians are used to a variety and one item that is eaten will not be on offer for the next two or three weeks. Asking Indians to have the same type of corn flake based breakfast was too much of a cultural change for the Indians to accept.

  3.   Indians have spicy and hot food for breakfast. To ask them to eat the sweet tasting and cold corn flake breakfast was too much of a sweet breakfast for the Indians to digest. 

4.   Kellogg in its advertising campaigns hinted that the Indian breakfast was not nutritious and that Indian breakfast was not very good for health. This deeply hurt the sentiments of the home maker. The home makers said to themselves “We have eaten and served the Indian breakfast for decades and centuries. My family is doing fine”. Once the home maker’s ego was hurt they psychologically turned themselves against the concept of corn flake based breakfast. 

  5.   Kellogg corn Flakes have to be consumed with cold milk. Indians have be taught right from their childhood that milk has to be consumed every day and that milk should always be consumed hot. In a tropical country that is very logical. If the milk is bad once it is heated it will become undrinkable. So for the Indian family eating corn flakes with cold milk was unbearable. So hot milk was poured over the corn flakes. Once hot milk is poured the corn flakes become soggy and there are no longer tasty and edible.

Paying the Price - Restaurtant business

Hotels and restaurants are known for their ambiance and excellent service. It is said that the waiters at a five star hotel are always hovering in the background and would come to the guest as a soon as the guest raises his face and looks at the waiter. That is the level of service. The chefs of a five star hotel can customize the dish to the taste of the diner. 

The trickiest part of a visit to a restaurant is to order the food. The host and the guests are given the menu cards. The problem is that the guest too can see the prices. The guests get shocked with the prices and try to minimize the order so that the host does not have to pay a heavy bill.

A solution to the above problem could be very simple. The waiter finds out who is the host and gives him the menu with the prices. The guests are given the menu without the prices. They can order anything that they wish without bothering about the price.

A wag from the hotel industry came out with a interesting tidbit. According to him this practice is already prevailing in France. He provided a very interesting twist in the tail. In France when a couple comes to a restaurant they are given two different menus. The lady is given the menu with double the price and the man is given the menu with the real prices. The lady is very impressed with the money that the man spent on her!

New innovations are being tried out in the restaurant business. A British restaurant for the first time has allowed its clients to have the meal and allowed them to fix the price for the meal that they consumed. Contrary to popular belief that the clients will not pay a proper price, the clients paid little more than 10% than the regular price. That is the reward for being innovative.

The way of thinking about customers too has changed. The BART railway system is the life line of travel in and around the Bay area of California. The cafeterias that dot the BART railway stations have tuned their services to the arrival and departures of the BART services. The cafeterias keep showing the train timings. The impending arrival of the next service is loudly announced. This activates the travelers who finish off their coffee and rush to the platform. That is value added service to the customer!

Food - oh my darling!

The way to person’s heart is through his stomach. Food has a very important role to play in all things are associated with a person’s life and way of living. That is way in a Sanskrit we call food as Annam Parabrahma swarupam.

In a busy person’s life food has many functions including relieving of boredom and food is what people bond over.  Food and things that are connected with food leave us with a warm glow in the stomach. Let us examine how food marketing can enhance the experience for the eaters.

Subway Napkins: Subway has a very clear USP (unique selling proposition). It is a very clear that only calorie conscious eaters visit the Subway. The clientele attention is grabbed with the innovative paper napkins that stress the healthy way of eating at Subway as opposed to eating at other fast food joints. Effectively this will take care of the guilty feeling of eating fatty junk food and also reinforces the feeling that one is eating healthy.

Visual display at Subway: The visual display at Subway is very alluring. The different types of breads, the types of toppings and the garnishing are visible and add to the drama of the food getting prepared. It is as if you are preparing the food yourself.

Tray liners:  Mac Donald uses tray liners every effectively. The tray liners are full of advertisements of products that are available at Mac Donald’s. They are visually pleasing and tend to make the customers order more once they are finished with the existing food that they are consuming.

Play pens: Not seen in India due to exorbitant real estate prices. The Play area was the concept that Mac Donald made very popular. The family could go to the MacDonald and experience the entire deal, food, ambience and a great place for the Children to play. In the same way Macdonald also made popular the concept of celebrating the birthday at Mc Donald.

Happy meal: An innovation that looks very simple but is absolutely brilliant. It is all about knowing and cashing on the children’s psychology. Children are fond of toys and Mac Donald made toys a part of the product package offered. The happy meal concept has become a rage and there are millions of children throughout the world who queue up at Macdonald to have these toys. Incidentally they have to buy the happy meal. The children are not overtly bothered. The onus of buying the happy meal rests with the parents.

Food Marketing - India

Kababs

India is a country of more than a billion. It is said that in India the food, the culture, the language, the customs, the soil change every twenty kilometers. There is diversity in everything about India. We have meat eaters  who swear by their food habits at one end of the spectrum to Jains who wear a cloth over their nose (they believe that even small insects should not be killed during inhalation of air) at the other.

Chicken Tikka Masala

But   surprisingly  in the Food category India has not exported its dishes as well as it should have. CTM  (Chicken Tikka Masala) the very Indian sounding dish is not Indian by origin. It is patented in the UK. United Kingdom holds Indian food in high esteem. Curry is so famous that trying up to be overtly friendly is called “currying up”.

Laddus

Indian food is not packaged very well. Indian sweet dishes like the laddus though tasty are crudely circular (have no exact shape) and show traces of physical handling. The Pedas and other North Indian food stylishly cut in the form of squares and diamonds with a silver foil on the top have a better chance of finding universal acceptance. Indians should also  take cue from the cookie queen in USA who tried the sampling method of sales promotion for many years before her brand of cookies were accepted  by the public.

Also food habits take time to change. Indian food manufacturers  have to believe in themselves and their products and stay the course. Food is a horse for the long distance. It takes time for the market to accept the products. Once accepted the sales could just zoom.

Samosa and Papad

One of the products that could do well is the Samosa, (triangular) the deep fried patty like snack. Salty and filled with potato, it could give  a scare to the burger. But packaging should be taken care off. The humble papad (circular) has already proved to be popular in Russia. It could be promoted as a very light snack that could go well with salads. It needs to be roasted lightly or micro waved. The feeling of stickiness or oiliness would put off the calorie conscious westerners.

Dosa

Some Indian food is simply out of the world. Foreigners have to be educated on the way to eat Indian food. Indian government had held India International melas in the past. One such mela in Paris reported a very strange sight. Parisian were gobbling up Dosa along with Gulab Jamoons.

Gulab Jamoon

For the uninitiated Dosa is like a burrito and it has to be eaten with a chutney ( a hot side dish like hot sauce). Gulab Jamoon is a sweet and is consumed at the end of the meal.

Jilebi  and Tea

Why blame the westerners. Indians have problems with their own food. Unlike in North, south Indians do not consume  sweets at breakfast. A visitor in North India would be served Tea and Jilebi (a sweet dish).  A south Indian is struck, Eating the Jilebi before the tea would make tea tasteless and having tea before eating the Jilebi would mean that Jilebi would taste like tea!

Touch screen Magic

There is a new item on the television channels about Hotels in Singapore that are offering a very unique feature in their menu rather on the table itself. The biggest problem about the  best hotel in the world is the huge crowd. The crowd adds to the ambience but mean slow service. 

Customers have two choices take it or leave it. Most customers stay back but the mood is gone by the time the food arrives. The solution - the Singapore hotels have hit it right on the head. Each table has a touch screen which is very user friendly. The entire menu is displayed. The interactiveness means that the customers can see the menu, select the items, and see the process of preparation of the dish.

Surprise of surprises the customer can have a conversation with the chef himself. Once the ordering is done one gets a message, at the table. One can even customize the food to his or her taste. This aspect becomes very important as many of us are allergic to many items. Readers would be surprised to know that many people are allergic to Peanuts. Yes you are reading it right, Peanuts or groundnuts as they are popularly called.

Touch screens also mean that table waiters can be eliminated. The sign at the delivery counter announced the number of the table once the food is prepared. The customer can go and pick up their order. Way to go Singapore hotels!

Food perceptions in India and in the USA

Food is a topic that fascinates everyone. Food for thought, something to chew upon, the belly rules the mind, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Many of our thought processes are food related.

In India eating heavy food is favored. Heaviness in the stomach is taken as an indicator of eating healthy. Inevitably that means eating of oily food like Paratas and Pooris soaked in ghee and butter. The vegetarians  feel that they are losing out on proteins and end up consuming lots of cheese  (paneer) and dairy products. This coupled with sedentary habits have made most middle class urban Indians fat.

Indians are all right with the concept of being FAT. FAT in India is prosperity.  A well fed person is viewed as Katha Peeta Kandan Ka aadmi (from a family that eats and drinks well). Fat children are adored and called “Murphy babies” (After a commercial of Murphy radio that featured a plumb child). In short in India we expect rich and famous to be big and fat and poor to be vey skinny and bony. FAT is rich and skinny is poor.

This type of ignorance about food has a very serious effect on the Indians. As it is Indians are genetically prone to heart diseases and wrong eating habits are pushing them vey close to the breaking point. The alarming signs are already being felt - Indians will have the highest number of heart related problem in the world. They will also have the highest number of people suffering from diabetics on this planet.

On the other side we have a country like USA where being slim is so much a part and parcel of peoples’ psyche. Entire lives are spent on craving for the hour glass figures. This obsession for thinness has led to disorders like Anorexia, Bulimia Nervosa, compulsive over eating and Binge eating.

In USA FIT is in and FAT is out. People exercise at all times during the day including mid afternoon. There is a very huge demand for all products and equipments that promise thin figures. Food is also driven by the same psyche and urges. In USA the food that is nutritious and less fattening is expensive. Junk food is cheap. Here lies the paradox. The Fast food that is served by MacDonald and Chinese restaurants is cheap but is less nutritious. Poultry eggs are priced normally but yolkless eggs are at a premium price. This means that in USA the rich and famous flout their rock hard six pack bodies and the poorest of the poor have become fat. Being fat in the USA is seen as a curse. Fat people are seen as lazy and get less job offers compared to normal (thin) competitors.

“Have breakfast like an emperor, lunch like a king and dinner like a pauper” What a wonderful saying. My father always says “get up from the dining table when you are still feeling hungry”. Keep your stomach light. Light stomach would mean more activeness and more activeness means less sleepiness!

World's most exotic dishes

Caviar:is fish egg or roe. The caviar that is commonly eaten comes from Sturgeon fish. There are three varieties of sturgeon caviar: beluga, sevruga and oscietra. Beluga caviar is primarily found in the Caspian Sea. It can also be found in the Black Sea basin and occasionally in the Adriatic Sea.

Beluga caviar comes from a fish over 100 years old that is virtually unchanged for 120 million years. Beluga caviar ranges in price from more than $5,000 (Rs 2,50,000/-) per kilogram in the United States

Fugu: is the Japanese word for pufferfish and the dish prepared from the meat of pufferfish or porcupine fish. It can be lethally poisonous if prepared incorrectly. Fugu has become one of the most celebrated and notorious dishes in the Japanese cuisine.

Japanese have eaten fugu for centuries. Fugu is also the only food officially forbidden to the Emperor of Japan, for his safety. Eating Fugu is a sort of bloody sport akin the Russian roulette (Russian roulette is the sport of loading a single bullet in six bullet handgun. Then the magazine is spun and the person playing the roulette aims the gun at his temple and pulls the trigger once. He has a 1/6th chance in killing himself). Same is the case with eating fugu fish. There is always a chance of getting killed and that is precisely the thrill of eating the fugu.

Exotic Arab dish: The most exotic dish in the world is supposed to be cooked in Saudi Arabia. The meat of a pigeon is stuffed into the carcass of a hen which is later stuffed into a body of a sheep. In the same way the sheep’s mutton is stuffed into slabs of beef and finally into a body of a camel. The entire preparation takes lots of time. The eater of the final dish gets taste of five different types of meat in a single bite.

Pootharekulu: or Paper Sweets is a wafer-like sweet of eastern and Coastal Andhra Pradesh in Southern India.

It is a sweet version of a Vegetable Roll where finely ground sugar powder in fine laminated foils made of rice. The wafer's size varies from 100 to 1000 micrometers depending on the expertise of the person who makes it. The best pootharekulu are made in Rajahmundry, Kakinada, and Narsapuram.

In Telugu, pootha means "coating or to coat" and reku means a foil, translating to English as "sugar coated foils".

Living for eating or eating for living - No way man! - Living for eating - Hyderabadi estyle Cuisine

Chicken 65: Go to any Hyderabadi Irani café and you would hear customers shouting out “chootu ek plate chicken 65 laana” (translated into English “Hey kid bring me one plate of chicken 65”). This deep fried chicken dish can’t be explained and has to be personally experienced. It has a rich crunchy taste that the best KFC chicken can’t even come remotely come close to.

The origin of the name chicken 65 is as colorful as the dish itself. Some say that 65 ingredients are used to make the dish, some say that it is fried at 65 degrees centigrade. Some others argue saying that it was item number 65 on the menu list and it was simply titled deep fried chicken. Customers were calling out item number 65 chicken item and slowly the item number was dropped off. Any which way chicken 65 is a mouth watering dish.

Barkas biryani: A very unique Hyderabadi saying. It means that the meeting is over and every one can go home. In a traditional Muslim Valima dinner the biryani is the star serving. Once the waiter announces that the biryani is Barkas (finished) it means that the dinner is over and the guests have to go home.

Salim Pheku: Again a peculiar Hyderabadi word. It is a name of a guy who can spin yarns that are simply unbelievable but are very enjoyable. Patrons pay good money to listen to the Pheku (fellow who can tell tall tales). Sample one “I was going from Pune to Hyderabad in a lorry carrying poultry eggs. The road was very slippery. The driver braked suddenly and the lorry somersaulted. But can you believe even not even one egg got cracked. Such was the skill of the driver”. In typical Hyderabadi style one is supposed to applaud the Pheku and goad him to better himself.

Hyderabadi haleem:  is a type of meat stew It is a popular dish that is only made during the Muslim month of Ramadan or Ramzan. Haleem is only second to the Hyderabadi Biryani in popularity.

It is a type of stew made from pounded wheat and mutton (or beef) made into a thick paste. It is the mainstay of the faithful during the Holy month of Ramadan. It is a tradition to break the daily fast (roza) at Iftar with a plateful of haleem.

Osmania Biscuit: The popular biscuit's name has nothing to do with VII Nizam Osman Ali or Osmania University or Osmania General Hospital. They are an invention of Mohammed Osman, a biscuit maker of Sultanshahi who used to supply salt biscuits to various hotels. He noticed that people were fed up with salt biscuits. Osman mixed milk powder and ghee in maida powder and started supplying the biscuits to hotels and within a week he noticed that the people loved the taste. Customers love to dip Osmania biscuit in tea and then eat them, Four Osmania biscuits absorb half cup of tea. The customer then has to order for another cup of tea. A Smart way of getting more business for the Irani café owners.

Each Osmania biscuit costs Rs 1. Serving Osmania biscuits to the guests along with samosa or egg puffs is the tradition of Hyderabad.