“Happy Diwali.” Vermajee pushed a box of soan papdi toward me.
I looked at the box, then at him. “Soan Papdi?”
“Circulating and forwarding sweets with best wishes,” he said, straight-faced.
I accepted it. Not because I particularly wanted Soan Papdi, but because refusing a box of sweets from Vermajee during Diwali requires an explanation. Especially when whisky is waiting, and the evening could slowly turn into a Teen Patti night.
Before my hands even reached the box, my mind had already started searching for the answer to the next question: Who could I safely forward this to?
“Exactly,” Vermajee smiled. “I know what you are thinking.”
“Poor Soan Papdi,” I said. “A perfectly decent sweet made of ghee and gram flour. Somehow, nobody seems particularly excited to receive it anymore.”
“That is the interesting part,” he said. “The sweet did not necessarily change. Its meaning did.”
Soan Papdi was once simply a sweet, with its flaky layers and respectable place in the Indian mithai universe. Then festive gifting turned it into a travelling object. One person bought it, another received it, a third accepted it politely, and a fourth discovered three identical boxes already occupying the cupboard. It circulated widely without creating an equivalent emotional attachment.
Then the internet amplified the behaviour. The forwarding ritual became content, and people began openly acknowledging the joke: I received it, I don’t particularly want it, and I know exactly what I am going to do with it. This is the beginning of what could be called the Soan Papdi Effect: a product remains familiar and visible, but its emotional appeal begins to fade.”
Vermajee leaned forward. “Now tell me, what happens when a brand becomes the Soan Papdi of its category?”
The question is more uncomfortable than it sounds because it does not mean the product is bad or that nobody buys it. A Soan Papdi brand may have excellent distribution, high awareness and respectable sales. The danger is that it gradually loses its appeal. Consumers recognise it, see it everywhere, and may even buy it, but it becomes the safe, obvious, and available option rather than something they actively seek or feel good about recommending.
“That sounds like a sales problem,” Vermajee said.
“Not necessarily,” I replied. “The sales dashboard may not reveal the first signs of trouble.”
The warning may appear in a meme, a sarcastic reel or a consumer comment that gets repeated often enough to stop being random. When the advertising promise becomes a punchline, the marketing team may proudly report higher engagement. The more important question is whether the brand is participating in the joke or has quietly become the joke. “The Soan Papdi Effect becomes dangerous when the joke starts defining the brand.”
Repeated humour is not automatically dangerous. Brands can build intimacy by laughing with consumers. The warning comes when the humour repeatedly reinforces the same negative meaning. When a brand name becomes shorthand for something consumers dislike, avoid, or reluctantly accept, the issue moves beyond communication and into brand meaning.
Vermajee nodded. “And how does a brand manager know when the joke has gone too far?”
“One warning sign is when consumers stop pulling, and the company starts pushing. More discounts, schemes, bundles, channel incentives and media weight can keep a brand moving. But if it increasingly needs a promotional reason to be chosen, distribution may be hiding a desirability problem.”
Soan Papdi moves. That is not the problem. The question is why it moves so easily from one person to another without creating a strong desire to keep it. A brand can face the same fate: everywhere without being anyone’s first choice, familiar without being distinctive, purchased without being particularly valued. “That is the Soan Papdi Effect at work: distribution keeping the brand moving while desire quietly weakens.”
“The better test,” Vermajee said, “is simple. If your brand were given as a gift, would the receiver feel lucky, or immediately wonder whom to give it to next?”
It is a question that tests something awareness and distribution numbers cannot: emotional value and social currency.
Vermajee picked up the box again. “Enough philosophy. Who are you giving this to?”
“I haven’t decided.”
He laughed. “See? You are already behaving like a marketer.”
I looked at the box again and felt a little sorry for Soan Papdi. It was necessarily a bad sweet; it had become a cultural shorthand for something familiar, available, and easy to pass on, but not necessarily something people felt compelled to keep.
That is the warning for brands. Don’t wait until consumers start forwarding your brand to understand that they have stopped holding on to it. And when the memes begin, don’t immediately ask the agency for a clever response.
Ask the harder question: What has our brand come to mean?
Because that is where the real brand strategy begins.
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