‘A new marketing jargon is born’
- By Gautam Nath
Recalling our days at the Management School, we were taught and
learned all about Marketing and Advertising and have seen our compatriots in Corporate India over the years sing the same old song. The four P’s, the four C’s and the rest of the marketing jargon.
Advertising agencies earlier dealt with the Marketing side of their clients business and focused their attention to handling above the line spends while leaving below the line to the Sales team to handle.
Over years, soon the priority of below the line and one on one marketing began to take up importance and advertising agencies as well as DM agencies started to take an interest and build business models around both above as well as below the line.
But what no one saw and a new terminology for our marketing fraternity is: What about ‘Beside’ the line?
Yes, you heard me right; I am talking about ‘Beside’ the line. That wasn’t termed when we read our Kotlers but it’s shaking the Marketing tree today.
Marketing today is also about ‘Beside’ the line and more and more organisations are budgeting and spending big bucks ‘Beside’ the line.
A strong example of ‘Beside’ the line spend is the entire gamut of initiatives that Corporates take up and call CSR, or Corporate Social Responsibility. This intervention is clearly neither above nor below the line and a fit student of ‘Beside’ the line activity. Funds are usually controlled outside the regular Marketing budgets and in case of large corporations, can add up to Millions of Dollars each year.
TNS recently conducted a Global Corporate Social Responsibility study among automotive and related sectors covering 18 countries and 5 industry sectors which showed us how companies the world over are serious about their Corporate Social Responsibility and that this ‘Beside’ the line activity is becoming a strong tool for the corporate world.
In today’s competing world, where space is crowded and consumers are being hounded by both above the line and below the line media, this strategy is being used more and more by corporations across the globe. ‘Beside’ the line marketing enters the consumers mind through uncluttered space and leaves a far greater and lasting impression. Psychologists have shown the value of being seen as doing Good for Society has a positive rub off on the observers mind about that corporation.
More and more consumers are asking corporations what they are returning back to society and when addressed professionally and in a systematic basis, this activity falls under the ambit of ‘Beside’ the line.
Last month was talking with Nanda, a senior manager at a Diamond export firm based at Surat which had adopted 2 villages nearby and has taken responsibility for providing two things: free medical facilities and free education for children. They had been running these initiatives for the last year. When I asked him about its outcome, he said that it made them proud as much of their labor force came from these two villages and also their US buyer increased their business three fold when they heard about the kind of return to Society this company was involved in.
CSR Europe has over 60 leading Multinational corporations as its members and works towards integrating CSR into the way they run their day-to-day business.
Dipak Jain, Dean, Kellogg School of Management in a recent forum opined as to how today’s Management Education has to make it a necessity to train Socially responsible Global leaders of our future corporations.
‘Beside’ the line marketing is here to stay. Marketing experts need to sit down and review what other activities categorize ‘Beside’ the line and soon we will see the rise in consulting companies offering services to maximize the ‘Beside’ the line effectiveness. The Corporate Boardroom will also be witness to ‘Beside’ the line budgeting on a more professional and regular basis.
The fact that these activities exist is not new and there is a lot of knowledge available on this account, the author’s intention here is to give it a handle and ask for its natural place in our Marketing Books alongwith the jargon of ‘Above’ and ‘Below’ the line.
The Author is Executive Vice President with TNS India, a leading Global Market Research Agency.
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