Brand and the Psyche!

Ouch! It hurts!



By Harish Bijoor


Psyche! Nice sounding word. Dictionary definition: The human soul! The intellect! A subjectively perceived functional entity based ultimately upon physical processes but with complex processes of its own!

Fragile stuff! Un-understood stuff! Misunderstood stuff as well!

Contemporary brands of the day are suddenly scurrying around the riddle of the consumer psyche they reside in. Brands are ready to invest in understanding the consumer psyche that much more all of a sudden. The consumer psyche is important all over again. Brands that aspire to remain strong entities in consumer mind-space are constantly in the quest to understand their base of residence better. Remember, the brand is an entity that resides in a consumer mind…..and not in a vault in the brand manager’s bank locker!

Psyche is a buzzword all over again in the brand manager’s lexicon as he grapples to tackle very hurt ones. Damaged ones. Mauled psyches!

Think Pepsi and Coke. Think damaged consumer psyche. Think Cadbury’s. Think hurt psyche! Think Air Deccan! Think bruised consumer psyche! Think Amitabh Bachchan! Think hurt psyche! Think hurt brand equity!

Brands of every type will go through a phase in their lives where the equity they build otherwise with a great deal of care, stands bruised. On many an occasion, this equity-hurt is caused by factors external, and on some, this jostling of consumer psyche will be caused by brand accident!

A Pepsi-Coke combination and indeed the entire category of carbonated soft drinks got pulled into the terrain of controversy over the issue of pesticide residue. This was as external as it could get. An independent testing of sludge and samples of the drink itself dragged these otherwise status symbols of young India into the sludge of hurt psyche brands.

A Cadbury brand accident by reasons that could be as distant to the manufacturing process as the way chocolates are stored by the retail trade, could worm its way rather insidiously into consumer psyche that is damaged and hurt with every story breaking the event of more worms in more chocolates! At the end of the day, the brand carries the burden of a bruised psyche!

A more direct accident then! An Air Deccan inaugural flight catches fire in full view of the assembled guests and media! An engine trouble a couple of flights later! Enough to hurt consumer sentiment. Fragile consumer sentiment! Enough to cause a consumer to associate the otherwise USP of advantage (low fares) to low quality and therefore high risk to life and limb!

Consumer psyche is therefore fragile stuff. This realm of the yet-to-be-understood terrain is difficult to manage. Difficult to insulate from hurt. Difficult to keep shielded away from factors both external and internal that can cause harm.

Fragile consumer psyche needs to be therefore managed by processes nifty and sensitive in their own right. This aspect of sensitive branding is emerging to be an art all of its own. Scientific it will get, but not as yet. As of now, as brand managers grapple hurt psyches, this is high art. It is only as scientific as the process of the human mind is. Little!

What will an Air Deccan do? How does it rise above imagery that is dominant in its consumer profile of it being an aircraft that has fire in its tail?

Profiling the consumer and understanding every individual in the target segment of brand imagery is the first imperative. Remember, the psyche is a not a collective thing. The psyche is an individual thing. It is all about an individual mind. There are just no aggregates here!

The old ways of understanding consumers as clusters will not work here. The techniques of consumer understanding that depended on the extrapolatative nature of research will not work as well. If there can be 1:1 marketing, let there be 1:1 Market Research as well! Holistic market research that understands the consumer as a human being with a mind of her own, rather than a cluster of brains that operate on average thoughts and aggregated decision making structures. Get real! The consumer is for real!

Having understood the consumer mind, mood and psyche in relation to the hurt that the brand accident has caused it, time to get going on sorting each and every ladder of hurt. Remember, if I see the picture of an aircraft tail on fire and associate a brand name to it, it is going to be pretty difficult for the salesperson of the concerned airline to sell me a ticket on its flight now….and for a long time to come.

What’s more, when my seven-year-old son grows up and wants to fly the airline concerned, I will tell him to watch out and narrate an incident that happened twenty years ago, which he never saw or witnessed. Never mind how long ago, hurt-psyches remain! Hurt minds remain! Hurt takes a long while to remove! Hurt minds cascade the hurt on to those they wish well. Hurt psyche is contagious! Hurt spreads fast! Virally!

As you cleanse every ladder of hurt, every image that hurts need to be replaced by a multiple of images that cause delight. One image of a fire in the tail can be cleansed not with one image of a smiling airhostess on board holding a welcome drink! One needs several such images. One negative thought is possibly equal to eleven positive thoughts in some minds, and possibly forty positive thoughts in a more stubborn mind. Assess it right and sort it all out!

Brand managers who handle hurt-psyche brands need to demonstrate a different set of core-competence altogether! These are really crisis managers who are empowered to cleanse the mind. Very patient folks who might have their roles cut out for a whole generation ahead after the event that has caused hurt.

The approaches to sorting the hurt psyche will be as progressive, as overt or as covert as necessary. While a Pepsi might want to take on a stance that is head-on collision, with a cheeky line that says that Pepsi is not safe, other brands such as that of Amitabh Bachchan have taken very cloistered and safe stances, very different to a head-on approach.

The approaches are many. The challenges are equally many. Let’s remember, mending a hurt psyche is long-term task. A Pepsi might want to stop showing Sachin drinking a Pepsi and might want to show Sachin forcing his little son to drink the stuff, with tender loving care, instead! And follow it up with 39 other positive strokes the brand deserves.
The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com