Brand Baba Bazaar

Recently in Hisar we saw unprecedented support for the then baba and now an inmate in Haryana jail. This can happen only in India when we make bullshit in India and celebrate it with such doped enthusiasm. But hey we should also see the economic impact of such babagiri and the babanomics around it. Guess someone has official numbers with articulated CAGR for the addressable market of babaism ( religion agnostics). And interestingly the allied market is no less impacted with the babagiri. ATMs to small departmental stores, general grocery to medical to travel counters – everyone enjoys the maha boom of stupidity. I am not surprised if we have an App to calculate the spiritual quotient or the healing touch which we missed to understand in schools. And while we grow old this babadolls grab our imagination like spitted chewing gums grab pants when you sit on empty park benches.

Organic to inorganic they have the product and they have the growth strategy. It is not the in and out breathing rates but it is about the spiritual retail ( may I name it spritail ) sales conversion rate which is driven by words of wisdom from the mouths of non-dyed black hair white clad sometime orange sometime green dudes. They also have their bands played at the background.

They have the all the Cs – concert, content, commodity, channels ( including tv)  and the consumer.

Perfect market to operate B2C ~ baba to consumer

No don’t laugh as the money into this will gag your imagination! India’s spiritual and religious market ( baba bazaar) is estimated to be over $30 billion (SOURCE: TOI, Feb 2014)

 They even use PCs and smartphones.

And they have brand managers! PRs! They are more organized than some of the investment banking companies which could not sustain recession and got diluted, and perhaps some of the headhonchos from the same i-banks went to attain the evening prayers with spiritual speeches. They even sell DVDs for your missed out opportunity of understanding. Oh boy!

So you see there is so much opportunity slowly unfolding…  I am afraid if they have touched the cloud and big data … internet of things would be challenging my own imagination.

Back to earth from cloud – as I was mentioning the allied market success and the spiritual branding … remember emotional attachment triumphs rational analysis, thus give rise to brands to applied spirituality! 

I also find organic goods making inroads to market India - which sometime have very ethnic and spiritual resemblance kept in up market showrooms. Though I can’t directly claim them as part of spiritual market but they are marketed and branded niche to attract the health conscious, go-green wallet share.  

The spirit of spiritual branding is not new but it is so well rooted that they do not need much or no digital marketing tactics to reach consumers. It is a threat to some of the leading FMCG companies especially in India and perhaps outside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The spiritual biscuits of the future might give nightmares to FMCG giants. We will track the spiritual space till then babaji ki jai ….