How brand Anna achieved what brands spend millions & a lifetime to attain

MUMBAI: He’s got a compelling proposition, he’s been consistent with it, and it has stuck in people’s minds. By unwaveringly focusing on his crusade against corruption, Anna Hazare has achieved what brands spend millions and a lifetime to attain: carving out space in the consumer’s mind.

In today’s India, where graft in political and corporate circles is earning the wrath of a mushrooming middle class, the core consumer of Brand Anna is the youth. This lump of energy and aspiration under 25 that constitutes more than half of the population has found an unlikely poster boy – an austere 73-year-old in a Gandhi topi who eschews all the trappings of modern consumerist India.

So what’s the secret behind Brand Anna’s mounting market share? “Youngsters will cheer people who espouse the values they cherish. So if winning by defying odds is what endears M S Dhoni to the youth, they also know for a brighter future they have to involve themselves in changing the morass around them. So what if it’s a 73-year-old leading them,” points out Abhijit Avasthi, co-NCD at Ogilvy India.

“The youth is more idealistic, unlike the previous generation who have moved from being seeped in idealism to being blasé about it,” adds Avasthi. In many ways, India’s youth find themselves in a pretty similar situation that their counterparts in the US found themselves in the 60s. If rampant corruption is disillusioning Indian youth today, lack of civil rights and the Vietnam War disenchanted young people in the US then.

The unprecedented anti-corruption wave is India’s version of the counterculture movement of the 60s. The most vivid face of that movement was the Woodstock Music Festival between 15 and 17 August in 1969---coincidentally, exactly 42 years before Anna Hazare’s detention in Tihar Jail had a nation gnashing its teeth. Hazare continuing his hunger strike on the Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi is India’s Woodstock moment.

“Anna has captured the imagination of the Indian middle class, particularly the youth, because the movement has become an outlet to vent their frustration and demand change,” says Santosh Desai, CEO, Future Brands. Every movement has its hero, its attire – if the hippies had their tie dye shirts and blue jean jackets, Hazare’s army sports Tees and Gandhi caps that scream ‘I am Anna’ – and its medium.

Social network blogs and Twitter are abuzz with rallying cries and bulk text messages implore people to support the cause. “Traditional media will tell you what’s happening, but social media tells you who else is supporting. It’s a good activation campaign with symbols and rituals -- Gandhism is the symbol; agitations and vigils are the activation,” says Jitender Dabas, head - planning at McCann Erickson Delhi.