Economics of Marketing and Privilege

The BLM Movement was initially founded long back, but recently gained momentum for the GenZ and the millenials when the tragic new of George Floyd hit the media. Protests have taken various shapes and forms, ranging from on the street to social media. And as much as I am appalled by racism and colour privilege still prevalent in a time where we can literally land on other planets (though there was an entire phase of teenagers eating Tide-pods), I want to talk about the fair privilege in India, and the backlash HUL is facing for renaming the very popular fairness cream "Fair and Lovely" to "Glow and Lovely". And no, as much as I want to, will (probably) not talk about the gravity of the grammatical blunder. Knock-knock, parallelism? No? Okay.

While everybody was raging about BLM and blaming double standards in India on being "woke" enough to post a story on Instagram about it but ignorant about calling someone ugly on the basis of his/her colour, HUL, an FMCG giant took this opportunity to showcase the changing mindset in the supply side world as well, or perhaps the changing mindsets of the demand side, enough to radicalize the supply side. Radicalize would be a strong word since stocking up on goodwill, and playing with semantics in a not so subtle manner, by changing "fair" to "glow" isn't much of a revolution. The announcement about the word being dropped from the brand invited a lot of appreciation and applaud, but that was short-lived as HUL faced extreme backlash on the marketing gimmick. 

I mean, of course, that is morally wrong, as an FMCG giant it has the potential to eradicate a bleach inclusive product altogether and play its part in "making the world a better place". Now, HUL is not a non profit, nor is its Marketing Department. Regardless of the definitions of marketing on Investopedia or textbooks, in the corporate world, especially in FMCG, marketing is like a bloodbath, and if I may,in my opinion, it basically monetizes on the prevalence, privilege and stereotypes. No, I am not defending HUL, but I believe the supply and demand side in this case are interdependent. Why do you think stretch marks removal creams keep popping up on my instagram feed? Apart from my obvious insecurity about everything? Because we are conditioned to believe stretch marks aren't normal.Gender inclusivity is such a vital issue, but it's Kareena Kapoor and never Saif Ali Khan flexing the colossal kajal (except for Pride month, when literally every company decides that everything is for everyone and then back to pavilion). The entire Marketing department is based on monetizing fear prevalent in the society, the desires of people, conditioning (moral or not) (though, what is objective morality, really?). It is not a one way street, you cannot criticize HUL and go back to wearing Garnier's whitening serum. The product exists because demand does (though, yes, I agree, this is not always the case). Fairness creams were valued at 480 million dollars in 2018. And hence, it is lucrative for a brand to hit the stores. 

And no, I am not defending the Marketing department of HUL. In my opinion, the thing is corporate support based on circumstantial advantages (and opportunity costs, eh competitors?) and appreciation of corporate support are not necessarily separate ideas. Like I said before, it is very much possible that is the result of shift in consumer mindset and that being manifested through entities that work through this mindset, and yes, I agree the fair to glow transition wasn't as progressive as we hoped for, but the very fact that the parent company took this opportunity to rebrand themselves, means they perceive some change in the market. If they were to make this change a few years back, when body positivity was not such an aware topic, or every household had one Seema Aunty as their acquaintance, the hype wouldn't be huge. 

I don't want to be uninformed and blurt out bullshit, because I don't really know where the fair privilege dates back to. Is it the colonial era, or the fact that low income workers like labourers and construction workers worked in the sun and became tanned so that became associated with them or whatever, i don't know. But the analogy is same to the prejudices faced by the caste system. The past defines the present. And I see educated souls around me normalizing fair privilege and that is the basis for the marketing. Everything including bollywood songs promote fair privilege (Though, Honey Singh, my man). 

The fact is, I don't know how that will affect the demand, because those who brought fairness creams must be conditioned to years and years of thought process that makes them want to be a certain colour, and if a word change is gonna stop them. Also, one thing is clear, the mindset does not manifest itself on a macro level, because if it would, the competitors would quickly react to HUL stocking up on goodwill instead of waiting and analyzing the sales trend.

Thanks for reading my rant.