Have you ever considered a brand of tea or jewellery or holiday travel as a time machine? The author H.G. Wells, in his book The Time Machine , wrote about a wondrous machine that could move human beings instantly from the current time to the past and the future. Other writers of science fiction have developed on this fantastical idea. Now, marketers must also learn to treat their brands as time machines.

Breakfast Oats as Time Machines

Before you react to this statement with disbelief, permit me to quickly narrate two brand stories. Let me begin with my favourite breakfast cereal, Quaker Oats. They are now available not merely in the original natural variety, but also in exquisite diverse flavours that appeal to the Indian palate, such as Homestyle Spicy Masala, Lemony Veggie with Capsicum, or kesar with kishmish. What do these products promise me? First, they provide instant gratification on the breakfast table – a hot, spicy breakfast that can compare favourably on taste with idlis, pongal or dhokla . Second, an equally significant promise for the future – that consumption of oats will bring down my cholesterol levels, and keep me healthy for many more years.

So you will note that Quaker Oats (or indeed, its worthy home-grown competitor Saffola Oats) offers me two clear benefits, one for the present and one for the future. Therefore, when you eat these cereals, you don’t have to sacrifice the present for the future, or vice versa. On the other hand, the brand, like a good time machine, transports us between benefits in both time zones. It is this unique “time machine” property that has made me switch to Quaker Oats for breakfast today. Contrast this with very tasty Indian breakfasts such as puris and aloo bhaji , or stuffed paneer parathas . Lots of instant gratification, but very little health benefit extending into the future. At the other end of the spectrum are the normal bland variety of oats or plain brown bread, which contain lots of goodness for the future, but offer little or no instant gratification on the breakfast table.

Holidays and their future benefits

Another brand that has effectively played a similar “time machine” role is Taj Holidays. Promoted by the Taj group of hotels, the instant benefit which this brand offers for the present is a wonderful break from the routine, a place where you can pleasurably chill out with your spouse or family. You can do this on the beaches of Goa with a glass of wine, or in the jungle resorts of Madhya Pradesh chasing the sight of a tiger, or in Rajasthani palaces living the life of Rajput royalty for a few days. However, the brand also emphasises atleast two future benefits of Taj Holidays – first and foremost, that the holiday will help refresh your relationship with your loved ones, leading to a more meaningfully positive life in the medium-term future ; and second, that the holiday will create permanent happy memories for the long-term future, which you can always draw on even ten or twenty years later, when the stresses of the real world are back upon you. No wonder so many of us long to get onto a Taj Holiday whenever we can, because this brand is, once again, a time machine, offering us benefits both in the now and the future.

stronger appeal

Let me move from these specific stories to the important generic point of this article. My view is that there are several product and service categories where marketers can make their brands effective time machines. To do so, the brand has to cleverly emphasise both present and future benefits, and thus become a time machine which can transport consumers and their minds pleasurably and postively between these time zones. It is my hypothesis that many brands and categories don’t do this well enough today though they have the potential to, and are thus losing out on building far stronger appeal to their consumers.

For instance, consider the product category of gymnasiums and health clubs which are mushrooming everywhere – a market crowded with modern brands such as Fitness First, Gold’s or Talwalkars. All these brands offer a set of strong future benefits – assured weight loss, toned bodies, all leading to better future looks and health. Yet the emphasis on current benefits is sadly missing. Because a workout at the gym also provides an instant high, and often makes your day. It is such a pleasurable activity if performed to wonderful music or with like-minded friends, and therefore something that gym addicts such as myself look forward to every single morning. Yet many of these brands do not emphasise any of these instant gratifiers, choosing instead to only focus on future benefits. Surely their appeal will be far stronger and wider if they move towards becoming time machines.

Tea, Jewellery, Watches

There are so many other categories where the same “time machine” appeal applies. Here are some of them, and I limit my observations to categories where I have personally worked in over the past decade.

Green Tea is known to provide strong health benefits, because of the antioxidants it contains. This is a “future benefit”, which has a positive impact on the drinker’s health over several years into the future. Several brands of green tea talk about this in many countries, and indeed this is one of the key reasons why consumption of green tea is growing so rapidly worldwide and in India. Yet green tea also offers instant gratification – apart from quenching thirst¸ it has a unique taste that many people get to love. In addition, drinking green tea or offering green tea to your visitors is increasingly becoming a sign of sophistication and a new-age lifestyle. Also, green tea immediately leaves you feeling very light, compared to many other sugary beverages. These are “current benefits” that brands of green tea don’t necessarily leverage today, but can profitably focus on, even while they continue to dwell on the future benefits linked to health.

Gold jewellery offers the long-term benefit of being a good and liquid investment for the family, and in particular for the woman of the house. Indian women and men are of course fully seized of this, which is why gold is such a major draw in the country, particularly during wedding seasons. However, it is only when brands of jewellery began emphasising the current benefits they offer – of specific adornment and differentiated design, of purity and therefore instant peace of mind, and how they score over unbranded players in these areas – that they began their trajectory of rapid growth in India.

Wrist watches offer the immediate benefit of adornment on the wrist, and are therefore a much sought after fashion accessory. They also offer the instant attribute of accurately telling time. However, all wrist watches also offer several future benefits. Many watches are storehouses of fond memory, based on who has gifted them to the user, and on what occasion – and these memories remain a source of happiness for decades. Luxury watches can also be storehouses of great value as they appreciate over age, and are therefore rightfully heirlooms in addition to being accessories. Do brands of watches necessarily communicate these future benefits with the right emphasis, to transform themselves into time machines of a different kind ?

As marketers scan their respective products or services, they will undoubtedly see that many of their brands can become powerful time machines, each offering a basket of current and future benefits to consumers. Of course, the balance between these two time horizons has to be drawn intelligently, based on the category and the brand. Sometimes, the brand’s time machine will have to constantly transport consumers between the current and the future, to ensure that flashes of both are always playing on consumers’ minds. While technology has not yet been able to create a working model of H.G. Wells’ time machine, perhaps brands can.

Harish Bhat is Managing Director and CEO of Tata Global Beverages, and author of Tata Log: Eight Modern Stories from a Timeless Institution. These are his personal views. > bhatharish@hotmail.com

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