Pradipta Mohapatra was perplexed: ‘What is this Chennai New Year Sale all about? It does not exist anywhere else in the country, but in Chennai it seems to be a craze. At our Spencer’s store we have expanded our offering recently. We would deﬁnitely like to know how we can capitalize on this New Year Sale phenomenon. Can you ﬁnd out more?’Our Chennai ofﬁce was working with Spencer’s in the early 1990s and this question was posed to me. I could understand Pradipta’s confusion. He had moved to Chennai after a successful stint in the tyre industry, spent largely in Kolkata. He was very erudite and in his own manner wanted to engage me in a debate on the topic.When we work on brands, we often try to dig into the past to see what lessons it holds for us. We call this ‘brand archaeology’. This helps us ﬁnd what drove the brand’s success in the past and if some fragment of that DNA can be revived and made relevant to the modern consumer.So I decided to do some brand archaeology on the New Year Sale phenomenon of Chennai. I was no stranger to this. I was born and brought up in Chennai and knew that my dad used to go and buy something interesting every New Year.Tamils have strong beliefs about the importance of timing in everything in life. They have a good time of the day and a bad time of the day, rahu kalam, and will avoid embarking on any new thing during the latter. Similarly, there are good months and bad months. Margazhi, roughly 15 December to 15 January, is seen as a month of penance and so no new ventures are initiated then – no weddings, no purchases, etc.Sales of durables would plummet during Margazhi. An astute retailer in Chennai, Vivek & Co, decided to turn the logic on its head. They approached leading manufacturers, all resigned to poor sales during Margazhi, and got them to agree to huge discounts based on volume commitments. They also got them to fund the advertising. After the back-end was tied up came the challenge of attracting consumers. On 1 January 1985, Vivek & Co unleashed a never-before discount festival. The Chennai consumer had not seen such a blitzkrieg of advertising with tempting discounts on the best of brands. Vivek & Co even created loss leader products to pull customers into their showroom (on loss leader products the retailer makes a notional loss). The New Year Sale phenomenon was born. It was a hit beyond every marketing expert’s wildest imagination. Here was a conservative town that had decided to throw off the Margazhi month blues to buy new refrigerators, television sets, mixers, washing machines and more.The New Year Sale wave caught on, and many other retailers joined the bandwagon. The movement subsequently spread to other parts of Tamil Nadu and to Karnataka. My brand archaeology expedition helped us answer Pradipta’s question to his satisfaction. We could even work out a special New Year Sale where we offered, for the ﬁrst time in Chennai, a ‘cost price guarantee’ that worked like magic. That year, Spencer’s sales on New Year’s Day exceeded their sales for the whole of December. Not just that, the store, which until then had suffered from a premium price British hangover, was seen as a real Chennai player in the hyper-competitive durables market. So what had Vivek & Co managed to do? Did they really get Chennai residents to give up their beliefs on what was a good time or a bad time to make purchases? I don’t think so. What they did manage was to get the consumer to park their religious shibboleths aside for a few days, even if the period was not auspicious. The real lesson from this story is that while Indian consumers may be hidebound in their religious views, they are willing to suspend these beliefs when it comes to getting a good bargain.The Hindu calendar or almanac that most traditional homes use is called a panchanga, or ﬁve limbs since it covers ﬁve subjects. These are solar days, lunar days, nakshatras or lunar asterisms, yoga or lucky conjugation of planets, and karana, a special division of the day, of which there are eleven in all. According to the Hindu calendar, there are lucky (shubh) and unlucky (ashubh) periods in addition to these general divisions. Then there are good and bad days based on one’s personal horoscope. Like in the Graeco- Roman calendar, in the Hindu calendar too each day of the week is named after a planet. Tuesday is supposed to be inauspicious, but to ward off the ill effects it was named Mangalvar, a derivative of mangala meaning fortunate. Again, Saturday or Shanivar, the day named after Saturn, is considered unlucky and a month that has ﬁve Saturdays is especially inauspicious.The Hindu calendar too has twelve months, but they are aligned differently from the Gregorian calendar and some months are considered unlucky. The twelve Hindu calendar months have a solar month name and a lunar month name – Mesha or Chaitra (March-April), Vrishabha or Vaisaka (April-May), Mithuna or Jayeshtha (May-June), Karka or Ashada (June-July), Simha or Sravapa (July-August), Kanya or Bhadrapada (August-September), Tula or Ashvina (September-October), Vrishika or Kartika (October-November), Dhanu or Margasirsha (November-December), Makara or Pausa (December-January), Kumbha or Magha (January-February), Mina or Phalguna (February-March).There are six ritus or seasons in the Hindu calendar and each ritu has two months – Vasanta/spring (March and April), Grishma/summer (May and June), Varsha/rains (July and August), Sarad/autumn (September and October), Hemanta/ winter (November and December) and Sisira/cool (January and February). In some regions, the rainy season covers the four months from Ashada-sukla to Kartika-sukla (June-September).In the Hindu calendar, the dark half of the year (Dakshinayana), between summer and winter solstices, is less auspicious and seen as the ‘night’ of the gods. The light half (Uttarayana), when the sun’s warmth and length of days are increasing, represents the ‘day’ of the gods. The bitter months of Dhanu (15 December to 14 January) and Mina (13 March to 13 April) are also ashubh. Similarly, Adik mas (leap year month in the Hindu calendar) is inauspicious since it is believed to have pollution accumulated over a three-year period. The month of Ashada (June-July) is also considered inauspicious.As we know, Hindus look for a ‘good date’ for all activities, including marriage, consummation, thread ceremony and cutting a child’s hair for the first time, all of which are considered life cycle events. Auspicious dates must be selected for moving into a house and opening a store. Agricultural commencements like ﬁrst ploughing and first planting too need a good date. Maybe, they even had a good day to buy a horse or a buffalo – and now a car.In the automotive industry as well, attempts have been made to break the year-end taboo (it is also not a good period as the model year changes in January; so a car bought in January 2013 will fetch a better resale price than one bought a month earlier as it would be known as a 2013 model).Larger retailers like Big Bazaar are trying to understand the impact of religions and festivals on their business. They have even hired Devdutt Pattanaik as their ‘chief belief officer’. There are two ways in which they are using these insights. Each state and each community has its own set of festivals and celebrations. Onam, for instance, may be a big festival in Kerala but a non-event across the border in Coimbatore. Cuttack and Vizag may also have such differences. Similarly the festivals to be played up may be different in Grant Road, Mumbai, versus Andheri, Mumbai. So the first exercise is to dig deep at the state and district levels for festivals. Each of these festivals is then mapped to each store, and each store is encouraged to tailor special offers to match the festive spirit. This is indeed a very exciting project given the multi-religious nature of the Indian people. So one may need to map religious communities, festivals and stores in an interesting array of dates and offers. Stores that cater to a bigger Jain population may have a different offer during the same period from a store with a negligible Jain population in its catchment area. At a national level Big Bazaar has pioneered the concept of ‘Public Holiday Sale’, the ‘Sab Se Sasta Din’; days like Independence Day and Republic Day have become big shopping days in addition to days devoted to remembering our founding fathers.The Vivek & Co story points us towards a different dimension. As marketers we can convert what has traditionally been seen as a ‘poor’ season into a hot-selling season if we can understand the archaeology behind the belief and give consumers enough reasons to cross the bridge. Taking a leaf from Vivek & Co, retailers are trying to convert the unlucky month of Ashada, the Aadi month in the Tamil calendar, into a sale month. It has now become common to see ads from retailers, jewellery outlets and sari shops in Tamil newspapers and television channels broadcasting the super-duper ‘Aadi Discount’. In August 2013, I even noticed ads that combined Eid and Aadi discounts, a unique combination, I would imagine. Since Ashada comes before the peak-selling season of Diwali, retailers tend to use this sale to get rid of old stocks. However, you don’t see these discount ads in Kerala since the Malayalee shopping festival Onam falls in August–September. In Mumbai and other metropolitan cities, we don’t see Ashada discounts but the ‘end of season sale’.One marketing success is undoubtedly the Kalnirnay phenomenon. Conceptualized by Jayant Salgaonkar, Kalnirnay is nothing but a calendar, or a calmanac, a calendar plus almanac, or panchanga. Starting as a hand-printed almanac for 10,000 Marathi subscribers in 1973, Kalnirnay became a 19 million copy phenomenon providing information on all Indian festivals, auspicious dates and times as well as cultural tidbits. Though the bulk of the sales is from the Marathi version, Kalnirnay is also published in English, Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. Over the years, it has evolved into thirty-ﬁve variants of the traditional wall calendar, including a pocket diary, car calendar, year planner, desk almanac and even a mobile app. Salgaonkar’s genius was also evident in the way he used the back page of the calendar to provide cooking tips, short stories, railway timetables, exotic recipes, short stories, health tips and even money-saving ideas. The product was marketed as an advertising medium and large advertisers have happily advertised in it. When he passed away on 20 August 2013, the who’s who of Maharashtra politics was there to pay their respects.On the other hand, we are often confronted with a disclaimer from our team about a season not being ‘good’. Instead of taking this at face value, it may make sense to dig a little deeper to see what is so ‘bad’ about the season or month. If it is an economic reason, then it is a little difﬁcult to ﬁx, though discounts work at all times. But if it is nothing more than the Hindu panchanga, we can surely find interesting solutions. Let me present an example from a very different standpoint.Chennai hosts an annual Carnatic music season during December–January, where top-rated musicians perform at all the sabhas. I have attended a few concerts at the Music Academy and Narada Gana Sabha. I remember around ten such sabhas hosting concerts. In 2012, I decided to spend a week in Chennai, ably pushed by my dear friend Ravi of Chennaionline.com, who has been a regular at the Chennai concerts for many years. On the first day, I picked up The Hindu and counted more than fifty venues across the city that were hosting some ten concerts every day (there are so many concerts by so many great artists at so many venues that Chennaionline.com even offers a Concert Finder Service on its website). I also realized that in addition to food for the ears, many concert venues were also offering real good food for the tummy too.Upon investigating, I found that since Marghazi was inauspicious for weddings, most wedding caterers were idle during this period and they used this opportunity to set up shamianas at leading music venues and sell food items usually served at weddings. They also distribute their visiting cards at these venues, thus increasing their visibility. December-January also ties in well with the migratory season of NRIs, who ﬂy home in large numbers to avoid the bitter winter of the West and spend time with their parents and relatives in the South during the Christmas season. So, in a sense, a very inauspicious period becomes the best period to listen to the most divine music and have sumptuous food every day. How is that for a marketing miracle!I think such a concept is waiting to happen in other parts of India. Why can’t Mumbai have a music season in the same period when wedding halls are all empty and caterers are idle? You may well argue that Mumbaikars will not be interested in attending Hindustani or Carnatic music concerts. I think there will be a big market for all kinds of music, from the divine to the mundane. Someone has to pick up the gauntlet and then convert a dull season into a peak season, like what Vivek & Co did with the New Year Sale.I would like to submit that the phenomenon of the New Year Sale will become a big national movement in the next decade. Retailers across the country face a lull in their businesses after Diwali, which usually falls around end October or early November. If they can create a collective movement to drive consumers to visit the store on New Year’s Day, they will create a new selling opportunity.I have observed that the increased religiosity across the country has also manifested itself in new practices. For instance, four decades ago, 1 January was seen as the Christian New Year. It was not the Hindu New Year, which falls on different dates in different parts of the country (yet another opportunity to segment and sell). So it is logical that Hindus should go to their temples on the Hindu New Year’s Day. But try going to a temple on 1 January anywhere in India. You will be in the queue for at least an hour.It is interesting to draw a parallel between our own New Year Sale story and the phenomenon of Black Friday in the US where stores offer incredible discounts. In the US, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of every November. The date was mandated by the US government and is a big holiday. The origins of Thanksgiving can be traced to the Protestant Reformation in the UK and was to be a day of thanking the Lord for a bountiful harvest (look at how thanking the Lord for a great harvest transcends continents and religions – Baisakhi in North India and Pongal in Tamil Nadu being just two examples). However, in modern-day US, Thanksgiving Day is celebrated across all religious denominations. Even our own NRI community celebrates it with gusto, perhaps with a special puja at their local Hare Krishna temple. The day following Thanksgiving is the ofﬁcial start of the Christmas shopping season. The season should actually start slow, but retailers have ﬁgured out a way of pumping steroids into the ﬁrst day of sale and also getting rid of the autumn collection, with super discounts. The Black Friday phenomenon is so big that stores open as early as 4 a.m. and consumers line up outside from midnight to grab a good deal.Inventing new shopping occasions is a part of ritualistic behaviour across the world. So we don’t need to feel bad about our own new rituals and celebrations. What did not exist a few decades ago is now seen as common practice. In a similar vein, chances are you will be driven to buy something new every 1 January, like my dad, leaving my mom to ﬁgure out what to do with the third toaster to enter the house.This logically leads us to the next area of our investigation, the hyper-growth of festivals across India.An excerpt from Ambi Parameswaran's ‘For God’s Sake’ , published by Penguin.