All too often, some of the boardroom conversations I join this side of the world leave me wondering if I live in some parallel universe. Marketing and advertising professionals who spend big advertising budgets talk big about all the clever things they do. Often, the segments and target groups are neatly labelled with funky names.
I remember some that buzzed around in my advertising days, years ago. “Baby boomers”, “DINKS” or Dual Income, No Kids, and “Generation” this that or the other are a few that spring to mind. All of these handles came out of global memos and global conversations about global brands. Almost all of the learning came out of developed Western markets for leading Western brands. I don’t recall anyone putting in a word of caution, to take life in the “global village” with handfuls of salt.
I suppose we enjoyed the time-out at these conferences, and then went right back to doing what we were doing, impressed but incapable of using most of what we had “learned”. That’s because there was very little reliable research data available. What little there was, came out of a handful of cities in each of the Asian developing markets I worked in. Return on investment (ROI) became another fashionable conversation piece, but there were no real measurement tools anywhere. If sales went up, and they usually did as Asia galloped, everybody was happy.
In most of Asia’s emerging markets, not much has really changed. In Indonesia, we now have Roy Morgan Single Source producing robust data from 6,000 households every quarter, projected to cover almost 90 percent of the population, and updated every 90 days. There is TV audience measurement reported by Nielsen daily, from 6,000 Peoplemeter homes in urban Indonesia. Data for TV viewing is periodically from Roy Morgan, using a media diary. The two different methodologies validate each other, for a medium that still consumes a major chunk of most marketing
budgets. Nobody has stopped to think about, but that puts Indonesia right at the top of Asia’s developing markets in terms of marketing and media insights. Like everywhere else, several marketers run trackers of their own, but almost all of them are restricted to Indonesia’s urban 45 percent. Yet, the majority of customers today for most fast-moving goods right through to SIM cards hail from rural Indonesia. Guess who runs the only nationwide survey, other than Roy Morgan? It’s a cigarette company.
In this large consumer economy, many marketers and their advertising agencies can in fact have real conversations today about segments, target groups and ROI. That’s because they have the tools. That’s a lot more than anyone can say about any ASEAN market, or South Korea, or India. Surprising, but true.
I am in India presently, another parallel universe. There are over 300 TV channels here. Every day, there are CEOs of the biggest names in business spouting textbook wisdom about brands, marketing excellence, ROI and every other new buzzword on channels like CNBC and Bloomberg.
Yet, there are just 8,000 Peoplemeter homes in all of India, projected to cover barely 18 percent of a country of 1.2 billion people. Amazing, but true. That does not stop CEOs and marketing directors talking about ROI. Equally amazing, equally true. This is the real state of affairs, in a country where the advertising industry has grown by almost 20 percent per annum for almost 20 uninterrupted years. I suppose that’s because party chatter about a new TV commercial, the new campaign featuring a Bollywood star or cricket celebrity is a lot more fun than talking about meaningful consumer or media insights.
Contrary to popular belief, more housewives are staying home these days, simply because they can afford to. In recent years, when the price of everyday essentials had spiraled upwards, many women had joined the workforce just to help pay the bills. As a result, the national average of about 48 percent of people living in 1-income households went down to 46 during 2007-8. The number of people living in 2-income homes went up, from the recent average of 52 percent, to 54 percent. With more jobs and better wages for the main breadwinner, the number of 2-income homes has been coming down in the last two years, not going up. So if you think more women want to be working mothers right across the country, you are wrong.
That’s indeed the trend in the big cities. Over the years, the number of university-educated women eager to build independent careers has grown. Many of them choose to keep their careers after they get married and have a family, assisted by the ubiquitous pembantu or domestic helper. But such 2-income homes form a small fraction of a small percentage of privileged Indonesians. They don’t even add up to a percentage point. For the rest, the average Indonesian woman, the second income is a financial necessity, not a lifestyle choice.
Though we are talking about a small percentage, there is clear evidence that a growing number of middle-class housewives are going back to the traditional role of looking after the home, the children, the husband. If the trend continues, it will confirm what we so often ignore. This is a conservative country with traditional values. The number of people with liberal mores and “nuclear” lifestyles is in fact shrinking as a percentage of society. No wonder, the fastest-growing “Values Segments” in the 10-segment social map of Indonesia is none other than “Real Conservatism”. There’s nothing funky about this, to the disappointment of many in marketing and advertising circles I’m sure. Let’s just keep it real.
The writer can be contacted at debnath.guharoy@roymorgan.com
