• Hindu Business Online, Monday, November 7, 2011 10:07 AM

Columnist Shekhar Swamy argues that marketers need to think of how "brand gestalt" in a nation like India is strikingly different than in, say, the U.S. because how people create the idea of a brand is culturally determined.

 He writes that since advertising is about connecting with the masses to effect a change in behavior, "hand-me-down models borrowed from other, essentially Western, cultures and societies" won't hack it. "It is not that the Western methods are bad or wrong. They work well, in a context. It is good to know them. It is just that to view the Indian consumer primarily through Western methods or eyes can be misleading and extraordinarily wasteful."

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