The concept of retromarketing is new to the world and obviously very new in India. The entire field of marketing is however, experiencing the `Retro Effect' i.e., things, which are inspired from the past, be it advertising, branding, fashion or even films. This article tries to find out why a company goes for `retromarketing' and the recent trends in retromarketing in India.
Sometime back I went to Hyderabad Central, a premium shopping mall in Hyderabad. As I
entered, I saw a showcase displaying some designer garments with a tagline“Retro Fashion, Please Visit .............”. The garments were broad collared shirts like those which
Amitabh Bachchan popularized in the 1970s and 1980s and Polka dotted women wear popularly
known as ‘Bobby’ print as this was popularized by Dimple Kapadia in the film Bobby. Though I do not
belong to the 1970s, I got to see movies of that period and had an idea about the fashion at that time.
Timelessness is also an important feature of Retro brands, which was very important in the case of
Star Wars. Critics have argued against retro brands because of the lack of ‘innovation’. However, if we
look into the meaning of the word innovation we will see that it comes from the Latin word ‘innovare’,
which means ‘to change’. That is exactly what retromarketing does.
Like it happens in many other fields, retromarketing was late to arrive in India. The Indian consumers
are always very fond of their past heritage. But surprisingly there were no active attempts by the
marketers to cash in on it. The important fields that need to be discussed regarding retromarketing in
India are: Advertisements, Knowledge, FMCG, Films and Fashion.
The concept of customer
focus was present as an undertone in various
Economic Literature of the 18th and 19th
centuries, but the man who collected and
presented the concept of customer focus was
Theodore Levitt. In the field of knowledge and
intellectual capital, India has a rich heritage and
that is being used in all fields and especially in
the field of business management. |
