I love you, dear readers! Happy Valentine’s Day :)

A massive fluffy red heart pillow hung from the aircon vent (and blocked all cooling) in yesterday’s Uber. From lurking in the shadows as “Rose Day” and “Friendship Day” this year Valentine’s Day has clearly become mainstream in urban India.

Back when it was still “friendship day” I had my first experience with entrepreneurship. My friend and I sold a service to deliver a rose and a pink hand made card to your friends within the college campus. We were the second entrant into what was then a monopoly controlled by the Rotaract club. There was naturally much opposition from them, but we lucked out – there was a bandh/strike on Valentine’s Day but the flowersellers took pity on us two young entrepreneurs and sneaked the only roses they had to us!

 

From there to now where the local quick delivery app has two options on its home screen “single mode” and “relationships”. Valentine’s Day has come a long way!

 

It is still not acceptable among conservatives, but it is gaining ground as a day to celebrate relationships. As disposable incomes rise there will be more ways to express this.

The last scoop of ice-cream tastes the best. Or the last piece of cake. Generally fear of missing out ensures we hastily make up our minds rather than saying “I’ll get back to you”. In a modern consumption economy, most stuff is seemingly available in endless quantities, so the scarcity tends to be artificial.

 

For example, my daughter looks forward to the “pumpkin spice latte season” at Starbucks. No reason they can’t sell it round the year, except to keep their customers excited.

 

If, like Apple, you’re tied to an inflexible supply chain and long R&D cycles, you can’t launch a special laptop for every occasion, so you count on “Valentine’s Day offers” to excite customers.

 

A clever supplier of strawberries is selling them in a heart-shaped plastic box for the “festival”. My daughter bought eight of them as she plans to “bedazzle” the boxes as gifts for friends and household staff. It’s cheaper than buying an actual heart-shaped box, go-figure!

 

So. Marketers love occasions because it gives us a logical scarcity to work with 🙂

Just as Blinkit gives us an option to stop the annoying pink-washing, I wonder if the app will give me the option to say I don’t want to see offers for other festivals I am not interested in? Or to opt-in for specific ones that I like? That opens up a whole new way of marketing to individuals!

 

I’ve been out of Tamil Nadu for 30 years. I didn’t even know that Tamil Rap was a thing until I attended the Hanumankind concert in Bangalore and heard the opener, Killa K (Kevin Lourde). But just as Spotify and YouTube have opened up the market for multiple languages, online apps can open up the market for hyperlocal, niche regional products at the click of a button!

 

If you’d like to know the other pillars of a persuasive campaign as per Google’s research, refer to my previous post on this.

Now that AI is controlling my access to info I don’t seem to be getting information on any nice marketing conferences. So, I come to you, dear humans, humbly – let me know if you come across some good ones in India! I am willing to travel to Europe if it is really good and I have company, but for starters I’d like to go to a nice one in Bangalore 🙂

 

And with that, I must rush now to find a suitable red t-shirt to wear tomorrow!

 

Have fun!