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The consumer-catchers, BUSINESS INDIA

NAAZNEEN KARMALI

01/24/2000BUSINESS INDIA

Copyright 2000 WorldSources Online, Inc., A Joint Venture of FDCH, Inc. and World Times,Inc.

Marketing men may be the new stars in the corporate firmament, but they will have to rev up ifthey want to stay there The biggest stir in the Indian consumer electronics business in recenttimes was not, as you might imagine, the arrival of digital, flat-screen TVs. What set themarket abuzz was Dutch giant Philips luring away marketing honcho Rajeev Karwal fromKorean competitor LG Electronics. Karwal, a consumer electronics veteran who learnt the nutsand bolts of the trade at Onida, built his whiz-kid reputation by reviving the flagging fortunes ofLG, which notched up a decent market share in the cut-throat TV market.

Karwal's bag of tricks included taking the brand rural in a big way (to drive home that point, soto speak, he happily posed for Business India perched on top of a tractor). That strategy paid

off for LG and for Karwal too, whose professional cachet is valued by Philips, according tounconfirmed estimates, at a stunning annual package of Rs55 lakh plus a Mercedes-Benz.While the envious carp (is he really worth that much?), Philips is banking on Karwal to put thesizzle back into its brand, which has seen a steady erosion of market share in recent years.

That defections of marketers now make front page news is a sign of changed times: they arethe stars on the corporate firmament, sharing the limelight almost equally with their CEOs.Indeed, a stint in the marketing school of business is today a valued qualification for gettingthe top job itself. A swathe of companies have former marketers at the helm. There's SanjeevAga at Birla AT&T, Vijay Singh at Sony Music, Pranab Barua at Reckitt & Colman, RajivBakshi at Cadbury, and Sunil Alagh at Britannia, to name just a few.

This trend is gathering pace and even bastions that have traditionally put a premium on otherfunctions are falling. Take Hindustan Lever, the country's foremost brand machine, which hasnever been headed by a marketing man. This anomaly will soon be a thing of the past. It isalmost a certainty that Lever will be powered by a marketer after current chairman KekiDadiseth's stint ends. A finance man, Dadiseth's predecessors -S.M. Datta, Ashok Ganguly,

and T. Thomas - were engineers (Ganguly was a scientist). Today's odds-on favourite M.S."Vindi" Banga, who is currently ensconced at Unilever's London headquarters, used to headthe all-important detergents division. Next in line for the top job is Harish Manwani, director incharge of personal products and another hard-boiled marketer. Manwani earned his spurs byensuring that Lever ate up Colgate's lunch in the toothpaste business. Even the public sectoris not immune to this trend. Over at automobile giant Maruti Suzuki, former marketing chiefJagdish Khattar is facing the ultimate CEO challenge: reinventing the corporation ascompetitors make inroads into its pre-eminent turf. No doubt his marketing experience iscoming in handy to deal with this. By leveraging Suzuki's porduct portfolio, Khattar is creatingflanking devices for the Zen in the shape of the Wagon R and Alto. At oil PSU Indian Oil,chairman and managing director M.A. Pathan is also a former marketing man. That marketingprofessionals have moved centre-stage doesn't surprise marketing guru Shunu Sen a bit.Sen, who now heads up Quadra Advisory, a strategic marketing consultancy, began hiscareer in the trenches at Lever back in 1960. An economics graduate from Delhi's StStephen's College, Sen says he stumbled into the profession quite by accident and didn'thave a clue as to what he was getting into. It is only apposite that marketers are finding a placein the sun, he feels.

"Remember Drucker? In 1956 he said that the basic function of business is to createcustomers at a profit. If a business does not do this, it stops existing. So by Drucker'sdefinition, busines is marketing. All other functions - manufacturing, finance, HRD - helpbusiness achieve its central mission," he argues forcefully.

Savvy entrepreneurs have taken this lesson to heart. To go back to the consumer electronicsindustry, 27-year-old Kabir Mulchandani, who turned the business topsy-turvy, is both CEOand chief architect of Baron Eectronics' creative marketing strategies. And so creative isMulchandani that, from being a has-been, Baron is now an act that competitors wait to follow.

At the Rs3,500-crore BPL group it is no secret that Rajeev Chandrashekhar's writ runs when itcomes to brand strategising. No adspend, campaign, or promo hits the market without going