Kiran Khalap, May 3rd, 2010

I don’t know what is happening in your markets, but here, in India, ‘brand’ and ‘branding’ have become the new diseases of the uninitiated in marketing (I must admit that the so-called initiated are to blame too!).

The first symptom of this viral infection is blurred vision: it causes the afflicted person to mistake a brand name for a brand.

The blurred vision then spreads to the brain, causing fogginess on the one hand and extreme obstinacy on the other. This marketing head now insists that every single product or activity or service offering have a new brand name.

There is a bank here in India (Syndicate Bank) that has over thirty different sub-brand names for its loan products! Some are in English, some in Sanksrit, some in Hindi; some have a prefix (Synd), others don’t.

When I saw this, I asked myself: what does this achieve? Does this strengthen brand recall or weaken it?

Does it reduce the now-truncated brand name to a pedestrian prefix…and by implication, reduce a rich concept called the brand to the same prefix?

On the HSBC Bank site on the other hand, there are three sub-brands but the brand name is always HSBC.

There are other symptoms of this viral infection…but more on them later.

For the moment, let me know if ‘overbranding’ can indeed kill a brand…and your suggestions on how not to spread the infection:-)

By Kiran Khalap, February 22, 2010

Semantically speaking, there is no such thing as a sunrise. That would happen if the we lived in a geocentric instead of a heliocentric universe. (On June 22, 1633, a Vatican Inquisition passed down judgment on Galileo Galilei for suggesting that the earth rotated around the sun;-))

It’s a word that merely confirms that human habits die hard: the logically correct word for sunrise word could be sunsight. (If you have more options, please do mail them to me!)

But why worry about the Vatican and humanity in general when professional communicators make the same errors? Today, let’s look at India, the nation that adopted English as its language of commerce in the 18th century and its uneasy co-existence with 22 other languages recognised by the government. It’s an accepted fact that languages that survive are the one that are most plastic and inclusive.  The observations below are not about inclusiveness but about habits and hangovers.

1. Professional Indian English writers are the only ones in the world to use ‘up to’ as one word. You will find the error from the lowest-brow ads of both multinational as well as local brands, right up to the high-brow headlines of the Times of India and the Hindustan Times.

2. Indian advertising copywriters are the only ones in the world to use a slash and a dash after a figure that refers to a price, as if they are writing a bank cheque…even at the cost of the figure being misread. Eg: You could easily mistake Rs 111/- for Rs 1117, right?

3. Professional communicators in India always ‘cope up’ rather than just cope. So they cope up with stress…but merely cope with incorrect prepositions;-)

4. Indian advertising copywriters working for the Petroleum Conservation  Research Association have spent millions of rupees educating the general public about the virtues of saving ‘oil’ (rather than petrol or diesel).  As far as the general public is concerned that word refers to cooking oil.  What a waste!

5. Most of the regions in India experience riots and violence over the over-usage of English and the non-usage of the local language. So you would expect no spelling errors of common words in local languages: yet all the State Government milk booths under the brand name Aarey in Mumbai refer to milk as ‘dudh’ instead of the correct ‘doodh’. (Imagine spelling ‘seen’ as ‘sin’!).
The same government has distributed stencils for slogans about saving electricity, where the Marathi word for electricity is spelt ‘vij’ as against the grammatically correct ‘veej’. Again, thankfully, no ‘riotous indignation’ by the self-professed guardians of the language.

Do you have your own favourite list of ‘hangover’ words? Do pass them on!

By Yashesh Shethia

I have loved cars ever since I can remember. Maybe even before I started school. Way before I started working to earn a living. Decades before I joined chlorophyll (a brand consultancy in India).

I did all the things one should do, collect posters, models, die-cast models from Matchbox and followed some of the brands that made the fastest cars, even dreaming that one day I’d have one in my garage. (you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one!)

Naturally, Porsche made the list. Particularly the 911 (it is a favorite even today) (and you always say nine eleven not nine one one

And I remember loving the Porsche TV ad…when a kid walks in to a showroom to check out the new 911, which he is then allowed to sit in, even recall his eyes sneaking up behind the steering! There was that glee and excitement in his eyes!

It’s an iconic ad of sorts, I am sure most of you would have seen it, but here it is anyways.

Porsche 911 clip

Porsche 911 clip

A few weeks back, VW launched an aggressive campaign to support their India launch. One of the TV commercials has a similar theme, a kid walks in, is shown all the models and when they will fit in to his life, ending with his father finding him at the showroom (all the characters seem soooo artificial). Have a look at the TVC here.

There is no doubt once you see both these ads, that they share the same lineage (more so with VW and Porsche now being part of the same group).

But riddle me this.

Why would Porsche (or VW) allow another VW ad to take this route?

Being inspired by the original is one thing, but how do you justify this?!

To me its like the killing of a cult. 

by Anand Halve

Application without much attention to appropriateness is one of the indications that an idea has become a meme.

 For example, the ‘bottom of the pyramid’. There was a context in which Dr. Prahalad used the term, but now it is applied quite cheerfully, wherever the poor gather. Or ‘subprime crisis’. A phrase that is used without knowing the difference between a collateralised debt obligation and an earthworm. Marketing gurus have contributed their bit too. Some terms that have come up for much use and abuse recently are ‘customer engagement’ and ‘involvement’.

 And marketers of all stripes ponder how to get people to ‘engage’ and ‘interact’ with their brand.

 Now, I love my ketchups and sauces as much as the next punter but truth be told, I have no desire to ‘interact’ with a bottle of tabasco, beyond pouring the stuff onto french fries. Similarly many people will carefully choose the iron they buy, but do they want to ‘engage’ meaningfully with their Morphy Richards?

 I suspect that we have happily adopted terms that were invented for the click world, and tried to resettle them in alien, brick soil. A critical difference that is forgotten is that for a MySpace or a Hulu, the website is itself the consumer offering. Whereas for a snack you eat or a shampoo you use, the website is at best an accompaniment or surrogate for the product.

 Let us not forget also, that the online world grew on the back of a ‘business model’, that in the absence of stratospheric valuations, could have been called asinine. The principle was simple: “we will give away everything in the store free, and make money from advertising on the shop sign”.

 Obviously then, if the numbers of eyeballs were what you were offering to the advertiser, you had to figure out ways to get them to ‘engage’ and ‘interact’ in a sticky manner with whatever was happening on your site. Because no audience, no advertisers.

 In this ‘charitable’ scenario interactivity and engagement became critical differentiators, since for every Yahoo! there emerged a Google and for every MySpace, a Facebook, fighting for the same optic spheroids.

The power of the buzz around the terms is high, and all marketers want them. Regardless of the fact that there are fundamental differences between product categories, the roles they play in the lives of customers, and therefore, the degree to which customers want to be involved with specific products.

 Motorbikes as a category for example is hugely personal and motorbikes are a lot more than a transportation utility. Thus the degree of ‘engagement’ that a serious biker wants with the world of biking is high. Likewise travel. So it makes sense for Lonely Planet to create the ‘Thorn Tree’.

 On the other hand, no matter how hard you try, it is unlikely that vast numbers of prospects (other than deviants who we shall not discuss here) wish to ‘engage’ with a bottle of carbonated beverage. So it is worth asking what was achieved by Coke in India thanks to the online enjoyment zone created by the brand.

 Similarly, giving people an opportunity to participate in an online poll may give them something to pass time, but how many of them changed to your mobile service thanks to this polling?

 Or whether the Lipton Yellow Label jigsaw puzzle participants have now become devotees of the beverage.

 One more dimension that I think gets lost in the hoopla is the likelihood that ‘free participation’ will appeal most to a juvenile mindset, and you are less likely to find a 35-year old spending time jiggling a jigsaw. It therefore seems to me that we need is to be a little less ‘engaged’ with this idea of providing diversion and entertainment to people blindly, and focus on what is really being achieving for the brand, given its target group.

 And perhaps most importantly, to ask, as an agency head once asked his worldwide client Chairman, “advertising and communication is very good, but how about making better products?”

 That is the most effective way to get ‘stickiness’. A feature that is otherwise, most commendable only if one is selling an adhesive.

by Anand Halve

Most of us have seen that regions shown as part of India in maps published by the Government of India, are shown as parts of Pakistan, or China or merely ‘disputed’, in other maps.
Clearly, both sets of maps cannot be correct… and the map is not necessarily the territory. In fact often, one knows that the map does NOT reflect the territory.
The problem however, is that often the lack of congruence is forgotten and decision makers focus on the map, not the territory.

Such confusion is also common in the marketing and branding landscape.

Testing advertising
Consider pre-tests for commercials. The industry has created various models of how advertising works. The models assume that consumers receive, process and respond to advertising in a certain way. This ‘map’ becomes the basis of creating pre-testing methods for ads.
The key thing is that the pre-tests measure the performance of an ad with reference to these metrics.
Over a period of time, the metrics gain a life of their own, become the bell that triggers the salivary glands of the Pavlovian ad-creator. And unfortunately, the people who write the scripts start writing for the test.
The ‘map’ that was initially created as a surrogate for the territory, becomes an end in itself, and eclipses the territory.

You do the math
The same problem gets multiplied (if one may use a mathematical pun) in exercises using spreadsheets.
Take the drive towards ‘aggressive targets’. I remember a marketer involved in the launch of an international beverage brand telling me a story about how this can make things go awry. The international marketing head of the company was not happy with the sales targets worked out by the Indian JV, and wanted them to be “more ambitious”. He suggested increasing the targeted per capita consumption target from ‘n’ to ‘n plus 1’.
My friend said, “I don’t think the guy realized that with a casual change in one cell of the spreadsheet, he was adding a billion bottles for us to sell each year!”
But on the ‘map’ it must have looked so simple and logical – unhampered as it was with the heat and dust of the marketplace.

Differentiation on paper
The other big danger of confusing the paper reality with the real article is that we see differences –and differentiation – magnified manifold.
When concepts are tested, they often are couched in language that is consciously and one-sidedly complimentary to the concept. For instance let’s look at a concept for a new product to a consumer, say about “a new shampoo with the goodness of natural herbs that will stop hair fall and keep your hair looking great”.
Now, this is a no-brainer in its obvious appeal. So the research will show a high “willingness to try” this product. Ignoring the territorial truth that there are perhaps a few dozen products offering exactly the same cocktail! And while the concept may get high scores, it really doesn’t have much of a chance in the real world.

Valuation
The paper-mirage is of course at its finest in the valuation game. The facts of the case, if one only were to step back for a moment, would clearly show that several business ideas have NO hope of ever making money. (One good test of this, which often seems to be ignored, is this simple question: Will anyone ever pay anything for this thingybob?)
And yet the businesses attract high valuations. One can only see this as a Ponzi scheme where hope lies in the expectation that one can pass this hot potato into someone else’s hands.

Provability and Truth
There is a truth articulated by the renowned mathematician Kurt Godel that offers a way to see things more clearly.
Godel’s first Incompleteness Theorem states that, “for any consistent… formal theory… there is an (arithmetical) statement that is true but not provable in the theory”.
In short that there are truths that are obvious, but are not ‘provable’.
But you know that in your gut, right? Now if only we didn’t let the ‘maps’ guide us into the valley of death.

by Anand Halve

The skeletons tumbling out of the Satyam cupboard attracted a flock of self-righteous vultures, if one may mix metaphors.
However, this context raised questions about other acts of willful default including by those in the marketing and communication business.

Turning a blind eye
That the senior managers, PwC, bankers etc. were ‘asleep at the wheel’ at Satyam has now been repeated ad nauseum.
Sucheta Dalal (MoneyLIFE Issue of 15/01/09), points out facts that have not been as widely noted:

“Its (Satyam’s) FY2001 results were flashed on two websites 15 minutes before the board meeting was scheduled to start.

In August 2002, the Department of Company Affairs questioned its accounting methods, but that investigation was buried.

Analysts, who tracked Satyam in the mid-1990s… say that a private company of the Raju family had built all its software campuses. Although no wrongdoing was alleged, there was suspicion that Satyam’s construction cost was somehow higher than those of Infosys or Wipro.”

About the Satyam-Maytas palindromic imbroglio, she writes:
“Strangely, the aspect of money being transferred to the family does not seem to have come up at all. Were the directors, earning fat sitting fees, too polite to ask? … After all, Dr Palepu earned Rs.92 lakh from Satyam and other directors earned as much as Rs.13 lakh, plus perks.”
In 2005-06, Business Today and AT Kearney ranked Satyam in the Top 13 Best-Managed Companies in India. In 2007, E&Y gave Ramalinga Raju its Entrepreneur of The Year award.
Did the truth escape the attention of all these worthy organizations, and that of the TV cowboys, who lean forward with such intensity that one fears for the cartilage of their elbows?

The emperor’s new clothes
But there are other acts of willful default too. Among them is not pointing out that the Emperor may be “reveling in nudity. “I have known people who said that ideas which many people considered crazy were nonetheless executed, because ‘nobody wanted to ruffle any feathers’.
Consider a consumer durables maker who introduced a “Talking washing machine.” Did anyone involved believe the Indian housewife was so lonely she wanted to converse with a tumble-dry mechanism? What next… a microwave with which she can have a meaningful relationship?
A couple of years ago, everything you looked at was infected or injected with aloe vera. Now, it’s the strawberry season. Wherever one turns, there are nubile actresses slathering their body and pre-pubescent kids lathering their hair with strawberries. “What next?” wonders the terrified consumer.

Guilt by concealment
Marketing Research reports are sugar-coated at the behest of a Marketing Manager – or often, even without any such push – and make statements such as, “There seems to be some resistance to this new product concept among consumers”. In honest-speak that would read, “Everyone is convinced this idea stinks”.
Similarly, marketers happily introducing products with “claim level” statements such as, ‘contains the goodness of XYZ’, while hiding the fact this goodness comes from non-XYZ sources.

Gulliblity @ the speed of light
Sometimes, the situation involves naivete of unbelievable proportions.
But it is said that for every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.
Many of you have received absurd email forwards. One said that the chap who created Orkut platform received money every time someone signed up, or posted a scrap on it, etc. It would have taken only a couple of minutes to figure out that if that were true, the guy would have become the world’s richest man in less than two weeks. You may say that’s only an email, but knowledgeable-sounding ‘experts’ talk equally wildly of ‘monetising eyeballs’ (and possibly other body parts) and nobody says, “Hello, but in this business idea will anyone ever actually pay for anything …or is FREE the business model?”

James Grant said after the Enron episode: “People are not intrinsically greedy. They are only cyclically greedy.” Perhaps they are also “only periodically guilty”. But it is for each one of us to decide if default is a fault.

by Anand Halve

There is an oft-repeated story, possibly apocryphal, about the commitment to customer satisfaction at Nordstrom, the famous US retailer. The story goes that the brand is so strongly committed to its ‘No questions asked’ returns policy, that when a person brought in a product that had not  even been bought at Nordstrom, they refunded the purchase amount to him. No questions asked.
Now, that is commitment to customer satisfaction.
And indeed, as we are avail of more and more services (retailing, hospitality, airlines, etc), we realise that what matters is what a brand does, not what it says.
Here are just a few recent examples of the gap between words and action that show the real intent of the players.

On the ground
I was at a multiplex last week. When I came out, I saw a car parked next to a bus stop, with some shopping bags in the front passenger seat, and no sign of a driver. Given these times of terror threats, I asked the guard standing nearby (wearing a blue uniform, with an American-cop-style baton tucked into his waistband), why he had allowed this and wasn’t he going to call the police or have it towed away, since it could be dangerous.
“No”, said the worthy. His impeccable logic for inaction being that, “the parking has been done on the road, and that is the BMC’s area”.
The embroidery on his uniform said “XYZ Security Services”, but his behaviour clearly demonstrated that XYZ was not providing any ‘security service’. Their man unflappably brain-dead and unable to understand that shrapnel does not care where it is parked.

In the air
Cabin crew on airlines, an otherwise noble species, is of course trained to deliver their spiel in incomprehensible language.
Beginning with “Deviyon aur Sajjanon”, they proceed to ask us to tie our “kursi ki peti” (can’t they just call it a belt?) going on to tell us that “mobile phones should be kept in the power off mode”. Verbosity being the soul of the half-wit, they reject the simpler option of asking you to “switch off mobile phones”. They do say though, that you should not switch it on, until the “seat belt sign is switched off”.
Of course, most passengers switch on their mobiles and vocal cords as soon the plane lands, while the crew stands around smiling beatifically.
Now, either the phones in their ‘power on’ mode are actually a safety hazard, in which case the airline must enforce the rule, or they are not, in which case they should stop the needless announcements.

And in politics
To begin with, Vilasrao Deshmukh and R.R.Patil tried to talk their way out of their failure in protecting Mumbai during the terror attacks last November. And then began the blame game, and the question of who would take the rap.
But even before the embers of the funeral pyres turned cold, the greed for power was visible in the unholy haste and glee with which the supporters of Maharashtra’s new CM began ‘celebrating’ his selection even before any official announcement.
Again, words versus action. And the twain seldom seem to meet.

Actions speak louder
The above is not just a cliché, it is a signal that in the 21st century, what will matter is what you do, not what you say.
And if you do say something, then of course, the customer will expect you to act accordingly. So, a brand may use boundless hyperbole in its communication, but the customer will then demand that the brand demonstrate its words in actions.
On a lighter note, a Sahara Airlines may thus say, “Emotionally yours”, but the demanding customer will then expect the pilot to have a lump in his throat as he informs you about a flight delay, and certainly would feel disappointed if the air hostess did not weep inconsolably and clutch him to her bosom, as she said goodbye when he disembarked.

But more seriously, we have to start recognizing that in a world where twitter, social networks and sms spread facts at the speed of a thumb, brands can no longer hide behind words.

by Anand Halve

It is assumed to be a truism of marketing that when there is greater competition, quality improves, and the consumer gets a better product.
Evidently the minds that developed this hypothesis had not reckoned with 24-hour News and Business channels on TV.
And while there are a few notable exceptions, by and large, greater competition in this market – far from improving quality - has led to a dumbing down to an extraordinary level. What might be described, like the financial scenario, as a mess of “historic proportions”.

The death of depth
The fundamental problem of course is that the poor things have to keep churning out stuff all the time. There is no respite for either the channel programmers or the viewers. And therefore, to give some semblance of meaning and substance to the telecast, various ‘analysts’ and ‘experts’ are invited. Or invented. Often, all it takes is the addition of the term ‘guru’, as a nomenclatural addendum to the tail of his or her kite flying.
Not that they have to do much. In the age of the sound-byte, a couple of statements are sufficient, no matter how complex the subject being discussed. As in, “…and now can you tell us in 15-seconds…how do we solve the liquidity crisis gripping the markets?”

The intensity of intent
To enhance the appearance of depth, there is the “lean on your elbow” technique. Where the anchor dons an intense expression and pummels the audience with rhetoric.
The intense questioner, after say, a body found in a car, might ask:
“Why was she there at night?”
“Who was with her?”
“Was she wearing green shoes?”
“Has she seen Dostana?”
“Why am I asking ridiculous questions?”
“NO ONE HAS ANY ANSWERS!!!”
Becoming so animated by this time that you fear he is likely to have a fit.

The eternal smile
To relieve the state of anxiety created by the Intense One, there is relief in the form of pulchritudinous ectoplasm. Smart, pretty reporters who wear permanent, possibly botox-enriched smiles, even as they inform you that “today, markets across the world lost 35% of their value” or that “XYZ Ltd laid off 300 more people at their plant”.
These same ones, are actually ‘fans’ in the guise of reporters: Gushing all over the CEOs and Entrepreneurs or Young Achievers they meet. These interactions are conducted outside the studio, and afford them the opportunity to get out of their more formal attire and slip into something more comfortable as they walk across golf courses, and meander through corporate campuses gazing worshipfully at the deity of the day.

One size DOES fit all
To simplify life, the reporters are equipped with a more-or-less standard set of questions: “What does your company see as the way forward in the near-term?” or “Has the increase in global competition brought about changes in your strategy?” or “Were there challenges that you faced when you started out?”
Thus equipped, they are ready to sally forth to interview Narayan Murthy, Sunil Mittal, Venugopal Dhoot, Ratan Tata, Rahul Bajaj, Warren Buffet, Indra Nooyi, Bill Gates. You name the person.

Mind(less) games
And although this last one is not from a News or Business channel, one could not have discussed the dumbing down of TV without mention of a program called ‘Bigg Boss’.
This is a contest without any need for skill or ability. Where participation in the ‘game’ has no purpose beyond participation itself. Where ‘victory’ is achieved without any achievement and the reward is given for a vegetative existence.
It is the epitome of viewer-ship as mindless voyeurism, in which last week, a talent less, zero-personality, non-entity who demonstrated nothing beyond carrying out a pointless existence for several months, was declared the victor.
Many years ago, Carl Sagan launched an ambitious program SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence), to explore if there is intelligent life in the Universe. So far, no conclusive evidence has been found.
But perhaps a more immediate question needs to be asked: “Is there intelligent life on TV?”.

You have 15 seconds to answer.

by Anand Halve

Advertising is often out of touch with reality.
Of course this is partially intrinsic to the profession. After all, it is the job of the ‘Dream merchants’ to suggest to prospects that Brand X tablets will give them Bipasha Basu’s figure or that a pair of shoes is the road to success.
Indeed, the prospect shares this suspension of disbelief, as he imagines how a particular deo-spray or shirts from a certain store will turn women into helpless victims of passion who will hurl themselves at him.
In normal times one takes these exaggerations as acceptable, but recent events in the financial arena – when words like ‘tsunami’ and ‘meltdown’ have become commonplace - compel us to take another look at this phenomenon of exaggeration. And see that financial services make advertising professionals look like amateurs in the game of ‘hyper-reality’!

Caveat emptor v/s relentless urging
It is a cliché that customers must be watchful and take well-considered, rational decisions. But we know that humans are not rational in the face of the relentless combined actions of marketers and media. What else can explain how anorexic, emaciated women with dissipated expressions are considered the definition of ‘beauty’!
Similarly, is rationality at work when people acquire dozens of credit cards or go to foolhardy lengths including taking loans, to play the stock market game?
But then people are being urged not to be reasonable.
This doesn’t cause too much harm, if it’s only a DTH service saying “thoda aur wish karo”, but it takes on a different dimension when a financial service urges you to continually seek more and indeed that it is not a worthwhile life if one doesn’t follow the principle of “karo zyaada ka iraada”.

The fine print
Mutual Funds (MF) and IPOs not only fan the flame of greed, they turn disclosure into a farce. The unreadable manner in which caveats at the end of MF or IPO ads are presented show clearly there is no intention of following the spirit of the law.
And of course there’s the escape clause in the fine print at the bottom of ads saying: ‘Past performance is no assurance of future performance’ (never mind that the bold headline proclaims the advertiser’s track record!)
The reality shows up when you discover that a brand that promised you “Kal par control”, had no control over its own NAV tanking.

Unfortunate timing
For some brands though, it’s just unfortunate timing.
For instance, it’s strange to see TV commercials and print ads from a new player in the financial services area, saying “Make it happen”, when there are enough news items in national and international media informing you that what this company has been forced to ‘make happen’ is a massive bailout, and the part-sale of ownership to the Government.
Meanwhile, intense newscasters gaze out penetratingly from TV screens, discussing financial markets in incomprehensible terms, making it necessary to help the layman understand the meaning of the verbal confetti being tossed around.

So here are some frequently used terms and what they really mean.

Going forward: A meaningless term, used to suggest that they also considered the options of going sideways, backwards or off at a tangent but chose, after deep thought, to ‘go forward’.

Market sentiment: The actual reason why share prices move. To be used only when the prices drop. The term to use when the prices are going up is “strong fundamentals”.

Highly leveraged: Fancy term for “took on commitments way beyond what we had any hope of fulfilling, but we thought there were even more greedy people around, which would allow us to get away with it”

Profits under pressure: We are getting whipped, and we will not make the obscene profits we (and breathless reporters) thought we’d continue to make forever.

Consumer confidence is low: People don’t seem to be spending like drunken sailors.

Integration /Uncoupled from the world economy: To be used on the day the Indian share prices DO or do NOT mirror the fall in international stockmarkets respectively.

Risk management: An oxymoron

And now, may I request you to observe two minutes of silence for all the stock options that have died in the not so recent past?

Thank you

This rumination on Brand India appeared in the newspaper DNA in Mumbai on the occasion of India’s Independence Day on August 15.

What about brand India? If we accept that a brand is an unchanging idea, then is India’s idea the one that stems from the 62-year-old nation or the 5,000-year-old unbroken civilisation? None of the Top Ten inventions of mankind — gunpowder, magnetic compass, printing press, calculus, steam engines, airplanes, electrification, photography, computing and oral contraceptives (list is by The Economist magazine) — is associated with India. As things stand, if you think of what India is associated with, it is mainly ideas: yoga, zero, non-violence. It is also the first and only civilisation that placed liberation (moksha, the idea of reaching the next level of human evolution) bang in the middle of human life, rather than in the life after.