Ramesh Narayan

After building up consumer trust for brands, marketers shouldn't have to take recourse to the fine print when their claims come under fire.

CONFIDENCE is like an image. A matter of perception. Yet perceptions are taken very seriously and actually become the truth, at least in the minds of those who perceive.

Marketers spend billions of dollars building brands. The confidence a brand inspires is invaluable. We all know that brands protect price premiums, act as shock absorbers in times of crises and make damage control that much simpler and effective.

Large, well-nurtured brands like Cadbury show signs of bouncing back after a great crisis. Sure, the crisis management should be immediate and well planned, but it really helps to have a good brand to protect.

Against this backdrop one wonders why problems or crises arise in the first place. Could many of the fantastic back-to-the-wall crisis management case studies be avoided completely?

What is the price of customer confidence? An answer to this would be revealing.

Recently, Johnson & Johnson was in the news for all the wrong reasons. They were not the only ones, but I choose a well-known, well-loved multinational deliberately. One seems to think that smaller `fly-by-night' operators would try and play fast and loose. A large company with considerable brand equity would be more circumspect. Firstly, many of them have solid corporate social responsibility programmes. They understand the mood of today's customer and try to be transparent in their dealings. Secondly, on a more base plane, they have a lot more to lose than the little fellow. The sheer monetary equation should keep them sticking to a straight line.

J&J has been accused of "misleading" customers with the use of the word `baby' on many of their products. The use of liquid paraffin in baby oil allegedly violates the Drugs & Cosmetics Act and amounts to "misbranding and misleading" on the label as per the front page article of India's largest selling English daily newspaper, and several other newspapers as well.

A notice was apparently issued by the FDA to J&J and other companies as well. So why am I talking only about J&J? Very simply, because I always admired them as the company that almost owned the `baby' property. Its Baby Shampoo and Baby Oil are institutions. When I wanted nothing but the best for my baby I bought these baby products blindly believing that the usage of the word `baby' by such a leading company implied that the ingredients could very safely be used on a gentle skin or scalp. Then how do you think I feel as a consumer when the FDA tells me that liquid paraffin, which should not be used in baby products, is, in fact, used in J&J's baby products? I feel relieved that nothing happened to my baby. I feel like a fool when I read a trite company statement that it has complied with all the concerned rules and regulations, because I blindly let the equity of a brand allow me to think that it was not the letter of the law that is important but the spirit.

It reminded me of the outrage I felt when I read a Delhi High Court judgement that read "the soap Dettol is necessarily a cosmetic as defined in Section 3 (AAA) of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act. Dettol soap is neither labelled or marketed as an anti-bacterial soap or as an antiseptic soap ... contrary to the belief induced in the public Dettol Soap is not an antiseptic soap."

The last line is the most important. "Contrary to the belief induced in the public ... " The manufacturer is absolutely right in contending that nowhere has he said that Dettol Soap is an antiseptic soap. Take a dipstick survey around you and you will find that anyone you know thinks it is one. Similarly, J&J can probably rightly contend that they have not contravened any rule. That too is under the scanner now. Yet, customers have no doubt believed that the baby products are just right for baby. Hindustan Lever Ltd may have rightly contended once that the Nimbu Shakti in its Wheel Bar was never intended to allude to the grease-fighting properties of lime. It was only talking about the fragrance of lime. Yet the consumer believed that Nimbu Shakti was not there to lead an assault on her olfactory senses, but to fight the grease in her pans, and that is the point. And that has to be the point.

You build brands carefully and they win the confidence of your customers. You talk about wooing customers and building an emotional connect and nurturing a relationship and then suddenly you turn around and ask her to read the fine print or point out that that the fine print does not have what she thought it has.

The law is an ass sometimes, and genuine marketers interested in the long haul should not hide behind the letter of the law. The confidence built up in the customer means a lot more to the brand than all the legalistic interpretations that could no doubt be spouted.

Marketers could be well advised to bear in mind that the difference in perception arising from customer confidence and customer outrage is just a few heart-stopping moments apart. And then, all the king's horses and all the king's men would not be able to ...

(The author heads Canco Advertising.)

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