New Delhi, April 30 -- That Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) has a network of 300,000 'influencers' at work for its marketing department, as declared in April by Unilever CEO Fernando Fernandez, has quickly become a PowerPoint talisman.

In a world where entire industries sometimes change direction through choreography rather than conviction, that's an evocative figure.

Indian marketing has always had a weakness for the large gesture. When a major FMCG company moves, others often do not study the move so much as receive it like scripture. Some of this is rational. Companies of that scale have data, muscle and consumer intimacy that few can match. But some of it is plain mimicry.

Economists call one version of this an informational cascade: ...