Snapshot of a Marketing Haven: Gurgaon, Haryana! A Monday morning. There are all of three malls in this hitherto sleepy Haryana village. More are due, I am told! Claim to fame is the proximity to New Delhi. There are more International brands out here in all of these three malls than you will find possibly in any Delhi mall! The people are hip and with it! No sleepy Gurgaon villager in any of these! This is indeed the all-new improved extension to New Delhi!

Business is brisk. Drive into any of the parking lots in the basement of the mall. International style parking with a Bay number and a slot that you can identify even in your sleep! Parking attendants help you park. You get onto a Schindler lift - an intelligent lift. You don't even need to punch on the console. You just wave in front of it!

As you emerge from the lift, the latest of the latest in the stable of Toyota is on display! This mall rivals the best you will find in Dubai or Singapore! You can pick up a Frozen Machiato (whatever that means) at a Barista. You can go through a cup fitting session at a Marks and Spencer's (and this has nothing do with coffee) and buy the latest Gossard that is a rage in London today! Eat at a Ruby Tuesday! Catch "Bhoot" at a multiplex! You will never believe you are in Gurgaon!
Business is brisk! It seems buying is a craze! The buyers are very, very young "BPO types off their shift" (as my Gurgaon friend put it!) Plenty of money on hand! Plenty of aspiration to realize! A desire to be seen around at the most happening places! And this place is indeed an oasis of consumption! Consumptive behaviour is at its craziest peak! I am told folks from nearby Delhi flock this place. The happening places in Delhi are becoming a bit too predictable! Go to PVR and you will be spotted by your Uncle, his "chachera bhai" and a whole host of folks you see all the time! Gurgaon is different!

Gurgaon is the oasis of consumption the Indian marketer has dreamt of all his life! And the Guppy (the Gurgaon yuppie, if you may!) is happening! Consumption is at its obscene best!

Twenty years ago this was a sleepy village being touted on sale. Land prices were low. Land could be bought off the desperate promoter on seven instalments that seem peanuts going by today's prices. Ten years ago, life was still placid. Who saw this happening first?

The Pioneer marketer!
Marketing today is complicated business. The basic truths one picked up on the campus during greenhorn MBA days are pretty much in question. Marketing today is a completely different kettle of Pomfret!
Marketing as taught to every marketer worth his iodised salt is defunct. At best it is a base of theory on which everything else will be built in the future. Sadly, at worst, this very foundation of knowledge itself will be questioned. Shaken and stirred!

Therefore, there is Old Marketing and then there is new! New Marketing is all about paradigm-busting marketing theory. Marketing practice that pretty often questions every paradigm set for the marketing man, be it in the realm of market-research, branding, advertising or even distribution!

The Pioneer marketer then is this guy who rolls up his sleeve, defies every thought that is static in its approach and busts many a solid wall that ensconces within it a paradigm! The Pioneer marketer is indeed the guy who builds the first mall in this desert of a dusty place called sleepy Gurgaon. The pioneer marketer is the first guy who opens up a 'Dhabha' that caters to the workers who are building this mall all up from scratch!

The Pioneer marketer is a believer! An evangelist who sees much beyond his time! The guy who wears those special lenses that see into the future. He seldom believes in trends that are straight line. The Pioneer marketer is the mad man who believes in change. Change that is not a straight-line but that is discontinuous! This is the kind of guy who believes that the next baby in the series that will happen in his house will be borne by him rather than his wife! Nothing is impossible! He is a dreamer! A believer! An evangelist!

The days ahead promise a very interesting journey for the Pioneer marketer. Very interesting in very many ways, provided he has the spleen to take it in his stride! There are rewards that will be big! And disappointments that will be bigger still!

What does it take to be a pioneer marketer then? Are there learnings already here that can be mapped? And how lasting will these learnings remain? Is there durability in the process? How fragile is the route to market? And what are the pit-falls? And what to look out for?

Some Pioneer-marketing 'gyan' then……

1. The New consumer: There is a new consumer out there in the marketplace. Change in her income-status has vaulted her many a peg in the hierarchy of needs, wants and desires. She has not only changed her hairstyle but her mind-set as well! She is open to question the static and the unchanging. She defies trends herself. She represents no single point in a continuum of change. She jumps altogether out of the standard scale a market-researcher would set to assess her movement. She is unpredictable. She questions basic values even! There is nothing sacrosanct. She will question relationships and realign them to her requirement. She is indeed new!

The marketer needs to understand this new creature-comfort character. There are no trend-tails out here to latch onto. The key lies in understanding the new consumer through processes that are holistic in their approach. Older Market-research tools and techniques will need to be kept aside. The power of personal observation and the power of diagnosis and prognosis will be powerful tools to adopt and adapt to.

2. New Market Research: The Pioneer marketer will need to depend on trends that will be discontinuous. New market research will be all about dumping some of the good old time-tested ways. The intrusive forms of market research will not reveal all. The intrusive questionnaire (both self-filled and administered) will not do anymore. The Focus Group has been done to death as well! People don't talk their deepest fears and deeper-still desires and fantasies in focus groups anymore!
The Observational method of study and analysis, in tandem with matrices that forecast attitude and behaviour trends with the use of a multiple interface of the science of sociology, psychology and branding will be the way to go! The Market Researcher of both the quantitative and qualitative variety is pretty much of a dead animal for the Pioneer Marketer. The new gods on the horizon will be the social scientist and the psychologist who paints those patterns depending on Freud, Jung and a whole host of other mind-probers of yore!

3. New Forecasting Tools: As change becomes the only reality that will determine the future, tracking the change chameleon will be an art that will be cutting edge stuff that will deliver results to the Pioneer marketer. Dump the old forecasting tools then. Regression is as regressive as it can get! The new tool to use to optimum advantage is the soft tool of Scenario Planning. Paint every future scenario that exists as a route and prepare for every eventuality there is. The Scenario Planning expert is going to be in demand!

4. New Accounting: The Pioneer marketer will be a cost conscious marketer. On the issue of price however, the Pioneer marketer is going to be quite a maverick. The Pioneer marketer strategises often with a poor Return-On-Investment profile. It is the idea that is basic, and not necessarily the return in the short and medium term. The focus is on the long term objectives laid out before the Pioneer marketing team. Never mind if you have to spend disproportionately to expected return. The model is going to be as exciting and money-sense defying as the dotcom model was!

5. New concepts altogether: The Pioneer marketer is a market operator who often works on the outer periphery of an exciting idea. It is the thought that excites him. It is the possibility that spurs him on. Never mind how difficult the task looks! Passion is the corner stone of the philosophy an enterprise will operate under the Pioneer marketer.
This core passion needs to be backed up adequately with enough of money-power and muscle-power in the arena of branding. Branding uniquely is going to be a point of focus. Remember, the more expenditure and effort that goes into this branding process to ensure a distinct place for the idea under the sun, the better. Every marketing rupee spent on this effort is an effective barrier to entry that will be set up. This will be the wall later settlers will need to scale before they try to establish their flag in similar terrain! And later-settlers are always a worry!

The new concepts will run from thoughts in the realm of technology and non-technology alike. The first Juice Bar chain, the first chain of Massage parlours in the country will run cheek-to-jowl with ideas that run in the realm of Embedded systems, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi alike!

The Pioneer marketer will need to get excited about ideas that straddle the simple as the complicated and the complex. There is plenty of money and joy in both realms. Plenty of excitement in both! A Barista Café is as exciting to handle as a BPO that operates in non-arbitrage space!

6. The Four Ps and One More: These are exciting times for the Pioneer marketer as he grapples with the traditional four P's of marketing practice.
The product is completely new. The product is, more often than not, in the realm of the concept…and concept-testing tools are not necessarily as reliably had, as in the realm of the established product. As micro-tests fail to deliver, the product is very much one that is developed and nurtured with a keen feeling of the pulse of the initial sets of consumers. As the Pioneer marketer gropes in the dark, he will take decisions based on acceptance of appeal and largely a personal feel for the market. He will want help that will need to come from disciplines as widely apart from marketing as ever!

The life of the Pioneer marketer is a lonely life!
The Pioneer marketer faces the challenge of pricing in an environment where there is no real comparison. The errors will happen here the most. Be prepared then to rollback and in some cases roll-forwards as well! There is nothing static out here in this lonely space. The Pioneer will set the trend and others will follow!

Promotion will happen amidst the clutter of non-comparables. Media space will be occupied by complete non-competitors in many ways. The purist Pioneer marketer will of course view every other guy in the eyeballs game as a competitor to what he is offering! As moneys will move away from above-the-line spends progressively into complete and aggressive below-the-line activities that deliver numbers, this avatar of the marketing man will experiment with stuff that is guerrilla and stuff that is low cost…..till he can get away with it!

Add another fifth P to it all! Patience - a big virtue in this business of being the first out there. Cool your heels marketing is here!

7. And finally, some worries to flag:
i) The Pioneer marketer is the one who will do all the hard work right in the beginning. He will lead the way. But he will himself collapse. It will indeed be the settler who will out-do him, with his own learnings! The later-settler marketer will possibly outdo the Pioneer marketer in terms of spread, volumes, efficiency and fast-paced growth! A risk run by the Pioneer marketer and his efforts!
ii) The first generation CEO of Pioneer Marketer is bound to be in trouble. Control his tenure. This avoids the hangers-on from overstaying and causing fatigue to the concept and its rollout!
iii) The Pioneer marketer in most categories will be big on image and small in every other domain. Restrict the urge to overdo this altogether!
iv) The First Mover advantage is old concept. There is no advantage at all! Be aware!

And at the end of it all, the Pioneer Marketer who is ready to change his model when the market so demands will be the one who has an interesting journey ahead. The Pioneer marketer must adopt no model that is rigid. The Amoeba model is the best to hold onto. Change as you learn and change as you go through the ruckus of the marketplace.

The Pioneer marketer who understands catharsis as understood in the life cycle of the caterpillar to butterfly is the one who will make it to the winning post. Even Tadpole catharsis will do!

Harish Bijoor Consults Inc is a private-label consulting enterprise with a presence in the markets of Hong Kong, London and the Indian market. You may write to the author at harishbijoor@hotmail.com.

Recommended Reading:
* The Innovators By William Davis
* No Logo By Naomi Klein
* Simplicity By Edward De Bono

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