Enough with topical marketing

Brands need to rethink their social media topical posts and ask themselves what kind of topicality is intrinsically related to staying relevant.

Enough! 

Topical marketing needs a serious rethink now more than ever. 

In a week when citizens of this country are outraged by the brutal rape and murder of a doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College, Indian brands largely carried on with Independence Day posts ignoring the mood of the nation. 

Brands in India prefer to stay apolitical and do not typically make statements about the injustices that the people of the country suffer. Brand activism has high stakes, it is, therefore, understandable that a brand might not want to risk calls for boycotts, mobs attacking showrooms or burning products of the brand on the streets. 

It is no surprise then that India has not seen brand activism of the Nike flavour and may never either. Truth be told, there is very little that consumers expect from the brands they consume, least of all activism. The ask is as basic as — providing quality, unadulterated products and don’t pollute the environment. 

But what we can hope for is sensitivity from brands when the national sentiment is overwhelmingly solemn in nature. Instead, what we got were tone-deaf takes on India’s Independence and some early ads from brands for Raksha Bandhan too.

Maybe take a pause and let the social media calendar not dictate all brand posts? 

A brand must ask itself, is a forced post about Independence Day what consumers want from their brands in a moment like this? Moment marketing puts on display the insincerity of brands. Vinesh Phogat’s almost Olympic silver was one such instance.   

Brands stayed silent when women wrestlers including Vinesh Phogat sought action against sports federation chief Brij Bhushan Singh alleging he sexually abused athletes. However, they uniformly jumped into action with congratulatory and supportive social media posts when Phogat made it to the finals of the Olympics and was later disqualified. 

A topic leveraged. 

Protests, crimes, and injustices are not brand-safe, we get it. Maybe it is time to review the idea of brand safety in the context of the role a brand plays in society.

Brands that desperately seek relevance and thereby get fooled into believing that a topical/ moment marketing post will make them relevant to consumers have to ask themselves — what kind of relevance do I seek? 

So, brands, please, before hitting publish on that Raksha Bandhan post, don’t forget that “brothers” of India have once again failed their sisters.