The Power and the Glory
Highlights from recent JWT study on Global Indians
For the global Indian, work is clearly worship - at the altar of fame and money - and a stepping stone to playing God, some day soon.
• Work is worship
*Career is at the heart of life. * Work is an avenue for creativity and innovation * Independence, reduction of distance to the leadership and organizational backing of ideas are important values that companies must offer * There is a driving desire to have the power to take decisions and have people reporting to you * One must build one’s name to be bigger than the company one belongs to * There is growing unwillingness to work for others and need to get credit for one’s own work and not give it to the company * Younger men like the idea of having a hold on their leaders through being a specialist/expert * Dealing with younger, more talented people is one of the challenges for the older people.
• Globalness
*It is important to work for an international company * Ambitions must go beyond India. * Through work, they “want a name for boosting the country’s economy”. There is thirst to play a role in the global impact India is going to have; create jobs, wealth and technology * They feel a certain responsibility to make India a better place.
• Relationships
*All other areas of life stem from success at work and must contribute to the search for glory. * Family respect depends on career success * Wife must actively help and support the search for glory * Men feel wife is second to career, and she knows it and it is to her advantage, because his success brings her greater social respect * Friends and networks are important because “they come in handy”, “you never know who you will need, when” * Friends must help you with your ideas * Women want their spouses to be a source of inspiration.
• Money
* Money is a natural consequence of success at work * Money leads to better lifestyle, which again reflects success at work, and feeds back to climbing the social ladder, which is seen as an important part of work life rather than separate * Heightened personal confidence, ability to take risks, broadening of views and fearless expression of views, social and legal insulation, are some of the other payoffs of money * Relaxation is important but also a waste of time, the time is better spent making more money * Money is better spent, leveraged and shown-off in India rather than outside the country.
• Social give-back
*Extreme expertise at work and money allows one to transcend to social give-back, which actually makes you feel you are playing god. This benevolence too is a reflection of, and route to, glory.
• Spiritual liberation
* It’s the cushion of affluence that will allow and facilitate even spiritual liberation* Experiences * The value of life is now estimated in terms of the quality of experiences one has, and work is central to this too * Work itself is among the possible enriching experiences * Work leads to money, and money makes many new experiences possible – leisure experiences, tech experiences, entrepreneurial adventures as well as (supposedly) noble activities.
• Technology
* Increasing familiarity with technology and the fact that more numbers of people are actually involved in creating technology, means that technology products need to talk a different language – and this is not necessarily a marketing language * These workers take great pride in the ability of individuals and like minded groups to create revolutions; there is some disdain for large organizations even as they work in them * They see through organizations and “manufactured” claims very quickly * They demand proof, higher degree of relevance and demonstration of experiences.
• Masculinity
* Above all, the global Indian spirit is in fact driving the Indian male’s rediscovery of his masculinity, which was somewhat under question in the light of growing woman power, growing child power, and too much media talk on the feminine side of him.
• Implication for brands
1) Compliment, partner and further the newfound rediscovery of a high level of self worth.
2) Give him a role to play in shaping the brand’s success rather than be passive receivers of brand messages, co-custodian rather than consumer.
3) Stand for more elevated, inspiring, larger life purposes – brands that aim to transform economies, societies and the way individual lives are lived, will find greater relevance than brands that offer transient payoffs or operate in the area of just reflecting his personality, attracting female attention or being a statement of style and achievement.
4) Draw from the 16 hot payoffs that most resonate with this leading edge target group. Brands - with messages, products, services, activities and associations - should help to: look at life with courage, symbolise their influence over others, partner their goal oriented nature, reflect and reward their highly competitive spirit, make them feel more intelligent than others, bring out their creativity and innovative ideas, encourage them to do things that have not been done before, inspire them with wisdom for a higher level of leadership.
This study was done throught Brand Chakras™ - a proprietary toolkit of JWT India.
Brand Chakras is a strategic planning tool for brand development based on a 2,000 year-old system from the Indian Upanishads – the Chakra system as laid out in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras – the first system of understanding human behaviour based on the human body, that has never been applied to brands.
The seven major chakras are seven basic energy centers that create the seven driving life themes that we live by.These chakras correlate not only to levels of consciousness but also to archetypes and personality dimensions that shape everything from fundamental values and beliefs to fears, desires, motivations, habits and day-to-day behaviour of every human being.
Brand Chakras™ is constructed on seven different “playgrounds of desires” as it were.
The Brand Chakras™ toolkit spans quantitative and qualitative tools to understand and measure target groups, brands, as well as payoffs. This study used Chakra Payoffs Reading, which creates a battery of payoffs that brands can offer consumers and is useful for insight mining/qualitative research as well as quantitative analysis of consumer relationship with category or expectation from the brand.
Chakra 1: Muladhara:Urge for survival – Abundance and physical strength
Chakra 2: Swaddisthana:Pursuit of pleasure – Sexual vitality and physical creativity
Chakra 3: Manipura:Drive for power – Good will and right actions
Chakra 4: Anahata:Quest for love – Higher emotions
Chakra 5: Vishuddha:Voice of creative expression – Truth and higher creativity
Chakra 6: Ajna:Desire for transcendence – Active intelligence
Chakra 7: Sahasara:Surrender to spirituality – Mental and intuitive intelligence
This study found that the global Indian today is largely driven by:
* Manipura: the drive for power (solar plexus);
* Vishuddha: the voice of creative expression - in search of truth and higher creativity (throat);
* Ajna: desire for transcendence - active intelligence (third eye).
For more details on Brand Chakras™, see http://www.brandchakras.com/
Highlights from recent JWT study on Global Indians
For the global Indian, work is clearly worship - at the altar of fame and money - and a stepping stone to playing God, some day soon.
• Work is worship
*Career is at the heart of life. * Work is an avenue for creativity and innovation * Independence, reduction of distance to the leadership and organizational backing of ideas are important values that companies must offer * There is a driving desire to have the power to take decisions and have people reporting to you * One must build one’s name to be bigger than the company one belongs to * There is growing unwillingness to work for others and need to get credit for one’s own work and not give it to the company * Younger men like the idea of having a hold on their leaders through being a specialist/expert * Dealing with younger, more talented people is one of the challenges for the older people.
• Globalness
*It is important to work for an international company * Ambitions must go beyond India. * Through work, they “want a name for boosting the country’s economy”. There is thirst to play a role in the global impact India is going to have; create jobs, wealth and technology * They feel a certain responsibility to make India a better place.
• Relationships
*All other areas of life stem from success at work and must contribute to the search for glory. * Family respect depends on career success * Wife must actively help and support the search for glory * Men feel wife is second to career, and she knows it and it is to her advantage, because his success brings her greater social respect * Friends and networks are important because “they come in handy”, “you never know who you will need, when” * Friends must help you with your ideas * Women want their spouses to be a source of inspiration.
• Money
* Money is a natural consequence of success at work * Money leads to better lifestyle, which again reflects success at work, and feeds back to climbing the social ladder, which is seen as an important part of work life rather than separate * Heightened personal confidence, ability to take risks, broadening of views and fearless expression of views, social and legal insulation, are some of the other payoffs of money * Relaxation is important but also a waste of time, the time is better spent making more money * Money is better spent, leveraged and shown-off in India rather than outside the country.
• Social give-back
*Extreme expertise at work and money allows one to transcend to social give-back, which actually makes you feel you are playing god. This benevolence too is a reflection of, and route to, glory.
• Spiritual liberation
* It’s the cushion of affluence that will allow and facilitate even spiritual liberation* Experiences * The value of life is now estimated in terms of the quality of experiences one has, and work is central to this too * Work itself is among the possible enriching experiences * Work leads to money, and money makes many new experiences possible – leisure experiences, tech experiences, entrepreneurial adventures as well as (supposedly) noble activities.
• Technology
* Increasing familiarity with technology and the fact that more numbers of people are actually involved in creating technology, means that technology products need to talk a different language – and this is not necessarily a marketing language * These workers take great pride in the ability of individuals and like minded groups to create revolutions; there is some disdain for large organizations even as they work in them * They see through organizations and “manufactured” claims very quickly * They demand proof, higher degree of relevance and demonstration of experiences.
• Masculinity
* Above all, the global Indian spirit is in fact driving the Indian male’s rediscovery of his masculinity, which was somewhat under question in the light of growing woman power, growing child power, and too much media talk on the feminine side of him.
• Implication for brands
1) Compliment, partner and further the newfound rediscovery of a high level of self worth.
2) Give him a role to play in shaping the brand’s success rather than be passive receivers of brand messages, co-custodian rather than consumer.
3) Stand for more elevated, inspiring, larger life purposes – brands that aim to transform economies, societies and the way individual lives are lived, will find greater relevance than brands that offer transient payoffs or operate in the area of just reflecting his personality, attracting female attention or being a statement of style and achievement.
4) Draw from the 16 hot payoffs that most resonate with this leading edge target group. Brands - with messages, products, services, activities and associations - should help to: look at life with courage, symbolise their influence over others, partner their goal oriented nature, reflect and reward their highly competitive spirit, make them feel more intelligent than others, bring out their creativity and innovative ideas, encourage them to do things that have not been done before, inspire them with wisdom for a higher level of leadership.
This study was done throught Brand Chakras™ - a proprietary toolkit of JWT India.
Brand Chakras is a strategic planning tool for brand development based on a 2,000 year-old system from the Indian Upanishads – the Chakra system as laid out in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras – the first system of understanding human behaviour based on the human body, that has never been applied to brands.
The seven major chakras are seven basic energy centers that create the seven driving life themes that we live by.These chakras correlate not only to levels of consciousness but also to archetypes and personality dimensions that shape everything from fundamental values and beliefs to fears, desires, motivations, habits and day-to-day behaviour of every human being.
Brand Chakras™ is constructed on seven different “playgrounds of desires” as it were.
The Brand Chakras™ toolkit spans quantitative and qualitative tools to understand and measure target groups, brands, as well as payoffs. This study used Chakra Payoffs Reading, which creates a battery of payoffs that brands can offer consumers and is useful for insight mining/qualitative research as well as quantitative analysis of consumer relationship with category or expectation from the brand.
Chakra 1: Muladhara:Urge for survival – Abundance and physical strength
Chakra 2: Swaddisthana:Pursuit of pleasure – Sexual vitality and physical creativity
Chakra 3: Manipura:Drive for power – Good will and right actions
Chakra 4: Anahata:Quest for love – Higher emotions
Chakra 5: Vishuddha:Voice of creative expression – Truth and higher creativity
Chakra 6: Ajna:Desire for transcendence – Active intelligence
Chakra 7: Sahasara:Surrender to spirituality – Mental and intuitive intelligence
This study found that the global Indian today is largely driven by:
* Manipura: the drive for power (solar plexus);
* Vishuddha: the voice of creative expression - in search of truth and higher creativity (throat);
* Ajna: desire for transcendence - active intelligence (third eye).
For more details on Brand Chakras™, see http://www.brandchakras.com/
Sahasara: Surrender to spirituality also plays a very important role these days.
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