Marketing through spirituality or Spirituality through marketing!
In the recent years, the significance of spirituality has grown exponentially across the world. It’s connection with the consumer behaviour has also changed over the past few years. In today’s world, this new age consumer is not only looking for physical needs but also a way to ‘transform’ his/her life for the better. Things such as spiritual books, aromatherapy candles, ayurvedic health care products, etc sell like hot cakes in the market. In order to sell their product to consumers who are in constant search of making a meaning out of their lives, marketers in today’s world have realized the importance of adding a pinch of spirituality while selling their products. In some cases, spirituality gives rise to a potential market where they already have a loyal consumer base to target their brands. Spirituality can be sold as a lucrative product to these customers without much persuasion.
India is a booming market with a lot of innovative ventures that we have come across. Let us take the example of the website www.onlineprasad.com, which provides the service of ‘Prasad’ home delivery from the listed 50+ temples across the country. Its founder Goonjan Mall went ahead and launched a brand called ‘Zevotion’ which offers authentic ‘Rudraksha’ beads and other amulets. ‘Onlineprasad’ and ‘Zevotion’ are examples of how spirituality can be successfully sold in the market with a strong consumer base. Now, lets talk about an example where a product or brand is marketed through spirituality. I personally can’t think of anything better than ‘Patanjali’. It was started in 2006 by Baba Ramdev and Acharya Balkrishna. Baba Ramdev is a yoga guru who gained popularity amongst the masses in the early 2000s; he used this popularity to start his own brand ‘Patanjali’. Spiritual ‘gurus’ such as him show the ‘right path’ not only through their teachings but also through their brands/products.
Thus, there is no denying that spirituality and marketing are entwined and it is up to us as consumers to decide if we want to believe in a brand’s ideology- spiritual or not. But how do we decide? How do we figure out if it’s authentic or reliable spirituality, or just a smartly wrapped product?
Well, I don’t have answer to that. Maybe you can share your views on this.
In my next article, I will elaborate more on the success story of ‘Patanjali’, thus bringing out the key spiritual factors that made the brand what it is today.
