The Gift of Love

As a people, we recycle everything, particularly gifts. We gift transactionally– marking the ‘importance’ and the social status of the recipients, keep track of what others give (indeed there are notebooks devoted to that) so that we can reciprocate appropriately and are only just learning to carry gifts with us at dinner parties. Traditionally, we have carried good wishes and not measured relationships with the value of gifts.

In our literature, popular culture or mythology, there are no stories of joyous gifting. There is ‘dakshina’ given to the guru or the mendicant, there is the boon that is granted to the devotee, the dowry that is brought by the bride or the ‘stree-dhan’ gifted by her parents, the gift from the brother for Rakhi, the new clothes bought and the ‘business gifting’ during Diwali – all are structured and proportioned by the occasion and the recipient.
Birthday gifts are an accepted norm now for perhaps one or two living generations and are a ‘learned’ phenomenon like the birthday party and the birthday cake. There is nothing in our culture that suggests spontaneous, joyous gifting that marks an outpouring of love.

Indeed, there is no Indian festival that celebrates ‘Love’. Not in the way Valentine’s Day does. As a society, we have been at odds with an overt expression of love and have sought to bury it in the transactional.The only Indian festival that comes close to this romantic notion of love is KarvaChauth, where a woman prays for her husband’s longevity. Love, here, is couched in the transactional. It is a prayer by the woman so that she may be cared for all her life. Her identity and well-being comes from the man in her life and on his death she could be destitute. Thus, the whispered blessings of “Akhand Soubhagyavat”i or “may you die before your husband” are what every bride receives.This is the Indian construct of love, submerged in carefully constructed societal boundaries.  Love traditionally, is measured, circumspect and if unleashed, met with Anarkali like consequences.

Deconstructing love, we see why it is such an addictive yet elusive emotion. Firstly, it truly blooms when it is given as it is received. (Unrequited love is a lonely and bitter place). Being loved makes a nobody into a somebody. Recognition, being singled out, being made to feel special and being accepted unconditionally (in the first throes of love at least) are gratifications that deeply resonate with the human psyche. Love is the ultimate celebration of the human condition and reportedly, the joy of the first flush is unparalleled in life. In every language in the world, people ‘fall’ or ‘slip’ in love, they become ‘mad’ and are ‘inflamed’. While this may be a transient state – it is what pushes people ‘headlong’ while throwing all ‘caution to the winds’. Love gives extraordinary courage to defy emperors or ‘Khaps’, overcome social norms and communal boundaries and transcend the ordinary, the banal. Love is the giving of oneself, of a total surrender of one’s wishes and desires to the other. It is entirely giving.



A gift is the perfect symbol of love. A true gift is giving joyously without the expectation of receiving.  When life settles into the humdrum – besieged by met and unmet expectations of lovers and the protagonists become ordinary people, a gift is symbolic of the depth of feeling that is not so overt anymore. The selflessness of love is perfectly epitomized by the joy of gifting. The success of Valentine’s Day is just that – a ritualistic marker to the affirmation of love.

In India, while the notion of love has changed and courtships and love marriages are increasingly common; we are only just learning to gift in love. In the US, 70% of jewellery sales are due to gifting by the man. In India, it is less than 15%. Overall, gifting accounts for 20-40% of retail sales in the US, depending on the category; and Valentine’s Day is a significant economic engine.

Valentine’s Day has enormous potential in India – as our definition of love changes, new rituals can be designed. The savvy marketers should leverage this opportunity to build brands based on gifting. Not just Valentine’s Day, we also need to understand the potential of KarvaChauth. The romanticization of the festival by the Johars and Chopras has made it pan-Indian, pan-gender (it is practiced by my Muslim friend and his half-Bengali, half-British wife) which allows for it to be leveraged as the Indian Valentine’s Day. The motifs of KarvaChauth are the crescent moon, a mesh, a reflection in water. What can be more romantic? This could be the day symbolically marked by exchanged gifts.

Given our Hinglish lives, with wedding sangeet and reception with cocktails or hors d’oeuvres that include chicken tikka, both festivals can become a part of our lives. As marketers, we can ‘brand’ these with symbols and rituals, myths and stories. Valentine’s Day has a clear visual language. The color red and the symbol of hearts are easily recognizable. What is the color of KarvaChauth? The symbols are not universal designs that are iconized in our consciousness. This needs to be done in a concerted manner by branding agencies, retailers and industry bodies such as CII.

Festivals are economic engines and both the western and the Indian Valentine’s Days are rife with growth potential.

AlpanaParida is President of DY Works , a leading brand strategy and design firm.

The Branding Opportunity With Festivals

America has successfully turned each festival into a business opportunity. This Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, retail and online sales crossed USD 1 billion.  Total holiday sales in 2012 crossed USD 580 billion. The definition of holiday season according to the National Retail Federation is from November and December—61 days total. Holidays during this period include Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa.The period generates additional 600,000 jobs. The holiday season accounts for 20-40% of sales across categories.

While India sees a significant spurt in sales during Diwali and other festivals, even without comparable data, it would be safe to say that the marketing opportunity for festival specific shopping behavior is under-leveraged compared to the US.

Decoding Christmas, we can see that the market has evolved around the encoded rituals of the festival. The ubiquitous Christmas carols are warm and cheerful and are playing in every store and street corner. The stores are warm and cozy havens with the smell of pine and cinnamon, adorned in colour coded Christmas festivities pull shoppers in. The very act of shopping is celebrated as an important ritual of the festival. Christmas has its own colours, sounds, smells and tastes. There is a strong sensorial cohesion in how it is marketed across the country – and increasingly across the world. The colours of Christmas alone create a huge set of merchandise – from decorations to apparel. The myth of Santa becomes larger than life with Santas at stores and street corners, ringing their bells and going Ho! Ho! Ho! Hollywood complies, with at least one Christmas film every year.
The spirit of Christmas is encapsulated in phrases such as “spreading goodwill and cheer” or it being "the season to be jolly" are all uplifting manifestations of Christmas. The Christmas tree, the chimney and stockings and the plate of cookies and a glass of milk for the weary Santa are all significant rituals in homes.The many motifs of Christmas such as the mistletoe, the snowflakes, the tree cutouts, the candy canes and the stars – result in a clear delineation of the codes and rituals of Christmas.

Apart from the design codes of Christmas that create a wealth of Christmas specific merchandize, the gifting ritual creates a huge market. The idea of gifting for Christmas is strengthened in popular culture – cinema and TV, and supported by retailers through a host of initiatives. The gift merchandise is made available at all price points. It is possible for kids to gift every classmate or teacher with decent options available at $1 upwards. At the most common gift price points of $20 and $50, there is significant merchandise that is in store windows, catalogues and online mailers. Gifting is made easier with gift receipts – that do not reflect the value but facilitate exchange if required. Stores like Bloomingdales also create a catalog of gifts for those who have everything – selling experiences such as space travel or luxury yachts.

When I look at Diwali, I am struck by the paucity of marketable assets. What are the colours of Diwali? We do have the motifs of Diyas, Ganesh and Laxmi - but where is the fun in all of this? The material is dated and does not have a contemporary appeal. The idea of Diwali is not captured in a clear understandable phrase as the “spirit of Christmas”. Welcoming prosperity, dispelling darkness are individual interpretations but there seems to be little myth making around it, through advertising themes or popular culture content.

There is an opportunity to ‘brand’ Diwali. Capture its spirit, define its rituals, design its motifs and create a rich trove of assets – that can be used to propel behavior and create merchandize. Embedded in the Diwali story – is the story of homecoming, of reuniting with the family. This could become the day of Indian homecoming. Families could travel far and wide to be together. There could be a ritual designed to take care of the fact that their home will have Laxmi walk in – even if they have closed their doors and are at their family homes. This flow of Laxmi – as is evinced by the gambling tradition in some states – can become epitomized by gifting (Genuine gifting and not the Indian recycling of gifts). 

The motifs of Diwali could lend themselves to specific holiday merchandise – and could galvanize category after category. Likewise, other festivals

Thanks to the Chopras, Johars, and even the Bhansalis, KarvaChauth is already enshrined as the ultimate ‘Valentine’s day’ of India. We need to find the colours and motifs for it, and make gifting a strong tradition for the day. The seeds for this are already in the ritual. What other way to thank the wife for her devotion to the husband’s well being than giving her a special and priceless gift? This kind of delineation of the festival codes would build a strong brand with defined rituals.

Every festival has its own codes, the need is simply to find its essence, create its brand assets that have a pan Indian / pan demographic appeal and then create a collaborative brand. AkshayTrittiya was ‘built’ into a pan-Indian festival through the intervention of the World Gold Council and a few jewellery retailers.

 Industry bodies such as CII or FICCI can take the lead on this – in bringing manufacturers, retailers, branding firms, the hospitality industry and entertainment firms together in order to create our own brands of festivals. 
Branding of festivals could become a significant growth engine for the nation.

AlpanaParida is President of DY Works , a leading brand strategy and design firm. She can be reached at Alpana@dyworks.in