Branding 'desi' Politics

This brand of 'Desi' Politics!

By Harish Bijoor

As election fever touches a 'typhoidic’level, I keep wondering whether the Politician on the ground needs to learn from the brand manager or the Brand Manager in his air-conditioned cubicle needs to learn from the Politician in turn.

I do believe Brand Management can learn many a lesson from the politician at large on the ground. Many valuable lessons that will tell Brand Management that all it knows today is not necessarily from the market for soap and sanitary napkin alone, but from the market for votes as well!

The Politician, in many ways, is the quintessential Brand Manager. A designation that got invented well nigh nearly with the coinage of the word Politics itself! Look keenly at the politician, and let’s see who can teach whom. And who has taught whom, over all these years!

The brand is a thought. The politician is the brand. If Laloo Prasad Yadav is the politician we want to discuss in this piece, Laloo is the brand. The brand Laloo is nothing but a thought. A thought that lives in consumer heads. The brand Laloo is not what Laloo thinks he is, but what the consumer thinks Laloo is all about!

Laloo the brand then!

Mr.LP Yadav, if you please, began in the rustic world of Bihar politics as a rustic man with rustic thoughts! Laloo got it right first time round. The gent went to town reveling in his rusticity. He did everything right from day one. He kept his cows in his front yard, glamorized the 'Bihari Baniyan’ to the extent that you had ramp models in Bangalore walking in them, he milked his own cows, made the “Laaltein”(lantern) his symbol, chewed on endless ‘Banarasi Meetha” paans, spat blood-red paan-juice at every street corner and made “Thook-daans”(spitoons, to the uninitiated) regulation fixtures in government offices and the Secretariat at large!

The cognoscenti in India, that micro-percentage of folks who represent little of this country, laughed at Laloo. Felt embarrassed. And kept wondering why folk of this kind existed in Indian politics at all!

Laloo went through the process of the poll. He won. And when he could not remain a Chief Minister, he made his wife one! Laloo the brand wins!

Laloo read his market right. Bihar is one of the rare Indian states where 90 per cent of the populace is still rural. As the rest of the country passes through a creeping-growth phase of urbanization, Bihar remains a rural oasis of kinds. Laloo the politician reads his market right. He knows what a market of this kind needs. And he gives it all that it needs, with gusto!

To be fair to all the politicians who have gone by and all those who are pushing up precious diaisies, Laloo is not the first one who has read his market right and delivered what it wants. Every one of them has! VV Giri did it in his own ways with the Labour vote in mind! George Fernandez did it in his hey days with worker-rebellion as a sentiment to read, synthesize, package and re-deliver to the market.

Mrs.Gandhi! Oops! I need to clarify which one! Mrs.Indira Gandhi was the shrewdest reader of the market of them all! She read the feminine vote right first time round. She read dynasty and its merits right. She read every nitty gritty of the branding process rather keenly in her own shrewd way.

Mrs.Gandhi was so good at it that she know when to dye her hair, how much of it to dye and indeed what to wear for what occasion and to create what impact with even what she wore!

Are our modern day politicians clued on to all this? Yes, they are. Some of them are being coached by Brand spin-doctors. Is Pramod Mahajan one? Of course he is! Possibly the best Brand Manager in the country today. Managing the BJP brand at large! Putting together strategy. Putting together events that talk of “carpet-bombing the market” even! Oops! At times there is a slip in the jargon and terminology! At the end of the day, the electorate is a vast market. A market that discerns. A market that watches it all carefully before making that vital decision to cast that really valuable vote!

And some are being groomed by PR agencies. What to wear, what to say, what not to say, when to say. With what “passion” to say! This is high art! If any of you mistake the utterances of the politician at large on your television screens to be spontaneous reactions and outbursts, you are being naïve! There is a coach behind it all. There is a script behind it all. There is a purpose as well!

Branding and its many tools are being found useful aids by the politician today, as there are not too many large issues that capture the imagination of the masses at large! We don’t have a war! We don’t have issues that are so overbearing that the entire mass of people sit up and listen. Time to therefore create those issues, and depend on the impact these small issues can really cause. In comes PR! In comes Branding! And in comes Drama as well!

Every Party name commands an equity that is distinct. The Congress is about Independence heritage, the Bharatiya Janata Party is all about Hindutva, the Janata Party is all about the farmer and the list goes on!

Every party symbol is a powerful articulation of the brand and its values. Even suave Mr.Vijay Mallya is capable of getting the rub-off from the powerful party symbol of a farmer with a plough! Never mind that he has never ever ploughed a field himself!

What’s more, despite the very acute shortage of colours prominent national parties seem to swim with for their party hues, every party is able to create a distinct equity for itself with the colours it sports. Look keenly at the saffron white and green of the Congress versus the saffron and green of the BJP and the saffron and deeper-still green of the Janata Party! Or at the colours of the DMK and the AIADMK! How much can a black and red give you? Plenty, it seems!

Every concept in contemporary and modern branding is something that you can learn out of the efforts of the politician at large in India. The politician is possibly the best teacher of marketing of them all. Let’s learn form they. They are the best barometers of public sentiment we have today. They are the best direct marketers. The best door-to-door canvassers. The best specialists in one-to-one marketing and the best practitioners of mass marketing as well!

May their tribe flourish!

The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Brand power shifts

Brand Melt-down is here

By Harish Bijoor

Brand Power is the one elixir that has made many of us brand folk heady in the past. It is this very power of the brand that has gotten many of us to occupy the positions we do. The reputations we command.

Does not matter whether you are brand-owner, professional CEO, brand-manager or any other entity of modern organization who manages a brand, the very power we took for granted is under siege.

This elixir of power is however under threat. Under the threat of a possible shift of power from the brand of yore to the demand of organized retail for the non-brand of the future. This threat is a one that many of us will not see. Many of us who have spent decades in the marketplace, decades in consumer space and decades still in the midst of the folks we work for, will deny it all the way. The younger you are, the more will you believe in the direction I point at in this article.

Let’s begin with the oldest marketed categories of them all in India. FMCG. There is a brand melt-down at our doorsteps. The challenge is typical. The power of the brand is under question. This begins first in the categories consumers are used to for a while. Let’s say all of two generations?

The brand melt-down in our lives is all about top-line volumes being under stress in most categories that have been around for a while. Categories that are pretty 'parri passu' in their offerings even. Categories which have over the years seen a host of clones in the same territory of consumer space. The fight is a journey-cycle to journey-cycle fight. Top-line volumes just refuse to budge in the right direction. Growth rates are at best static numbers. Numbers that even define a new nadir to the standard Hindu rate of growth at hand.

Every working day is therefore a story of volumes under stress then. This has gone on for a while now. What’s the solution?

A brilliant gent in the marketing department gives way to the repeatedly articulated demand of the sales team. The sales team has been under the stress and stick to perform by top management at corporate office. The sales-team in turn is all about asking for those price-cuts which seem to promise those magic numbers of growth in volume.

One excited top management therefore yields. If you take a price cut, it must be dramatic enough to yield enough of a volume chunk. No point in twiddling the marketing thumb with price cuts of 10 per cent anymore. Takes a dramatic price cut of 35 per cent. Wow! The market is stunned. The lead competitor in the market is stunned as well. Everyone is.

The lead competitor cannot sit quiet on this. He needs to respond. He does. He cuts his price a whole 35 per cent as well. All in ten days flat. Wow! The consumer is stunned now.

The situation in the market place in terms of price, and most certainly in terms of product and all the other dimensions of a marketed item, is back to 'parri passu' status then. The price cuts have happened. The consumer has gained.

The consumer is quizzical as well. Did these guys enjoy that kind of a big margin all these years? Or worse still, there is yet another question in the air. How can they cut their prices this way? Have they tampered with the quality they offer today at these low prices? The image of the brands in question is sullied in more ways than one.

Quite likely as well that the marketing organizations in question have diluted their spends on the brand in terms of advertising and below the line promotion. How can they afford to cut price and do all of advertising and promotion as well in any case? Has this hurt the brand?

The brands in question have largely regained top-line volumes at the levels they have been for a long-long while now. Despite the price cuts.

These very brands have however lost a very deep chunk of their profit margins on the brands. The slash is as deep as 35 per cent at the minimum.

One of the most classical definitions of the brand is the simple line: the brand is a premium. Where is the premium now? What did you do with it?

Is a brand without a premium a brand at all? The brand melt-down is here.

Brand melt-down is a reality in our lives. This melt-down has struck a bit like the much threatened Bird-flu at the oldest marketed category of them all for a start. It will then follow into every other category there is, age-wise in terms of presence in market. This is therefore a reality to grapple. This is the pain of not the FMCG marketer alone. Ask the question who’s next, and if the finger points at you right away, start planning the demise of the brand. Or think different.

The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

The Brand Endorser as a Brand!

Brand Endorser Promiscuity!

By Harish Bijoor

I am confused. All of a sudden there is a Big B Blur on my idiot-screen plasma panel. Mr.Big B is out there plugging Parker pens. An intermission then, when there is yet another advertisement shouting its unique selling proposition from the rooftops! And in comes Mr.Bachchan again! This time round it is hands dipped in paint, passing the Nerolac Paints message all across! A couple of seconds later, it is Mr.Amitabh Bachchan in a natty suit. Reid & Taylor it is!

An intermission again. This time, a longer one. There is some intrusive content amidst all this advertising. A daily soap with its daily dose of “rona and dhona”(“crying and washing”, to those uninitiated to the Hindi language)! In comes Big B again. This time a benign presence for Sahara City homes! And then it is Dabur Chywanaprash! Give a wee bit of a gap, and Amitabh is back again! Once again! This time extolling the latest virtue of the latest in packaging from the house of Cadbury’s!

Amitabh Bachchan is all about on TV! Amitabh the brand-endorser plugs in as many as thirteen different appeals. Every one of these brands seem to depend on the mass pull and mega appeal this star of yester-years has commanded! The quintessential Brand Ambassador is here! Amitabh the mega star of yesterday is today’s brand hero. A brand-endorser you can depend on to create the pull. Somebody who is the sure-shot formula for brand awareness scores to go through the roof. We are not too sure of the buy-scores, but then, who cares? Awareness is it!

Add the total duration of appearances that Amitabh makes on the 'telly' every day. Add the number of exposure minutes up right through the week, and it might just as well rival the best of what a Sridevi gets with her all new tele-serial Malini Iyer!

The brand ambassador is not a new phenomenon for sure. Brands of every category have used it in their quest for mind and market-space. Brands have used the tool of the brand icon and brand ambassador in their quest for success over the years.

What started with a Leela Chitnis for Lux went on to categories that took on brand ambassadors real and animated. A Gattu for Asian Paints became as good a brand ambassador and an icon as any person alive or dead!

The brand ambassador in many ways is meant to do different things for brands at different times in their brand life cycles. While Lux uses endorsers who are reigning actresses of the day, every endorser gives the brand back its key proposition of the beauty soap of the film stars (“filmi sitaron ke soundarya sabun”) position a plug and a boost! There is indeed a queue among film starlets of every kind to be featured in a Lux ad. It is a kind of a sign that they have arrived in Bollywood!

Sachin Tendulkar for every Tom, Dick and Harish category of branded item, our ex-health minister Mr.Shatrugan Sinha for Bagpiper whatever (playing cards, soda or Mineral water?) and every start-up cricketer, macho film-star, a rare ex-election commissioner, a rarer still animal rights activist, and even Mr. N R Narayana Murthy, is a brand ambassador par excellence!

Brand endorsement is a way to go! A way to get your brand noticed amidst all the clutter that brands create in the marketplace. Amidst all the noise and hype that brands indulge in so very freely. Brand endorsement is possibly the best way to get the awareness rating of your brand up there in the stratosphere of a clutter-free terrain, otherwise unattainable with the me-too strategies of the marketer at large.

The key question then? Are brands built by brand ambassadors?

The answer is a yes and no. It is a big yes if the brand ambassador you choose and nurture is one that is solus for your category of ‘dhoop stick’ or ‘doodh’ alike. And a big and vehement “No” if the ambassador you choose is a promiscuous one, focusing not only your brand but also three others! Brand ambassadors must not moonshine! Brand ambassadors who focus on one brand can achieve great results. Focused results that will form part of the brand building strategy of the marketer in question.

Brands that use the promiscuous brand endorser who will endorse a car just now, carburetor oil in the next and a panty hose in yet another piece of advertising blitz, do not contribute much in the brand-building process. At best, these endorsements yank up the brand awareness for the duration of the use of endorser-at-large! Few brand-folks realize this!

The brand ambassador therefore works in categories where the focus is solus. Look at the use of Ustaad Zakir Hussain by Taj Mahal tea. Zakir is today an in-built proposition of Taj Mahal tea! Wah Taj! Wah! Brand endorsement works here in the case of Taj Mahal tea as a brick that is helping build a mega brand in the mind of the consumer.

Peek keenly then at a Pepsi, a Parker, a Palio! Brand endorsement in these categories at best helps spur the awareness ratings of the brand.

The use of brand icons such as a Gattu, Goody the tiger and Choco the bear, on the contrary, is use of good strategy to use the icon as part of the brand on tout!

Contemporary use of brand endorsers forgets to use the endorser as part of the core brand building strategy at hand. Endorser-promiscuity is a disease today! Time to sit up and take notice!

What’s the trend then? What’s out there in the future?

Wait with bated breath for the re-invention of the brand icon. Wait for the re-invention of the brand mascot that will be owned 100 per cent by the brand-marketer at large! Wait for the 3D Brand mascot who will look real. Who will have life breathed into it! So much so that you the consumer will call it a “him” or a “her”! You will fall in love with “her”! You will worship “her”! You will recognize your favorite brand by the personality your 3D Brand Mascot will display and embellish all the way!

There will indeed come a time when this 3D Band Mascot of yours will give every Tom Cruise, Dick Whittington and Harry Belafonte a run for their money! The virtual will rule over the real!

The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

E mail: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

The Future Brand

After the Brand what??

By Harish Bijoor

The brand is here. What next?

January is as good a month as any to do a forecast piece on where the brand movement is heading. If “What next?’ is the question, here is a clue.

Traversing down memory lane into the rough and tumble world of brands, one sees the distant past. A time when there were no brands at all! A time when the brand meant the first slap of hot iron slapping a live cow, writhing in pain! Just to distinguish one cow from another.

From the commodity world at large, emerged the brand. As commodity morphed to brand, a cusp-category was but natural as well. A category we call quasi-brands. A category where recognition and identity were two parameters just about happening!

With the first brands hitting the shores of the Western world, the brand phenomena was slated to become bigger and bigger. Till it enveloped the whole world at large! As it has now!

What next? Let me peek into the crystal ball and fathom out an answer that makes sense.

A few brands in very, very few categories will go on to become super-brands. But just as there are only four super-models in the world, and the rest of us are like what we are, there will be only a handful of brands that make it to the league of the bold and the beautiful.

Hundreds of thousands of brands will therefore remain brands. But is this brand movement forever? Does it have a lifespan at all?

Though many a mind of the past believes the brand is forever, the concept of forever itself is a wee bit different than we understand it.

The brand movement is slated to head to a finish line in the medium to long-term future. Look at the trends that stare back at us when we study brands, the minds that harbor these brands and the consumers that actually buy into these label offerings.

1.In the beginning there were a few brands. There were some categories that had no brands at all even. For instance the rice category in India. And then comes a time when every category has a brand name leader within it. Think of the category and think the brand name. Think truck and think Volvo. Think coffee and think Nescafe. Even this was fine. In fact great.

And now we come to a state of acute category clutter. There are just too many brands in every category. The toilet soap category has 62 big brands, the ‘Atta’ category has seven, and the salt category has eleven! Competition for mind-space occupation is acute and interesting.

As the years roll by, there will be more brands. More brands that will add to the confusion that will prevail. Brand owners will add to the clutter-factor by extending their cash-cow brands into categories related and un-related. An Anchor will therefore not only be a thread, but a bulb and a toothpaste as well!

Too much confusion will result in that single quest of the consumer to look for the non-confusing. To look for the one offering that does not confuse. The one offer that simplifies it all. And this is likely to be a non-brand. A generic offering even! Back to the Vedas!

2. With too many brands doing the rounds of consumer minds, creating in the mind of every consumer a virtual dustbin of brands, price and value will dominate the brand-agenda in the years to come. As price, hitherto a dirty word in the lexicon of the purist brand manager, gains importance, the price war will result in a price-led-hierarchy of brands, destroying the very ethos of branding.

Value will dominate the agenda as well. As the value-conscious consumer is further value-sensitized by the overt offerings of “more for the same price” kind of promotions brand guardians will offer, yet another nail will be struck onto the coffin of brands.

3. The brand movement started off with the initial brands in every category being high price premium offerings. The first few brands were distinguished entrants into a category. An Yves Saint Laurent, a Tommy Hilfigher and a Gucci were all offerings at the premium end of the market. The brand movement then got to be more common. Other offerings such as Arrow, Allen Solly and a Peter England to boot, have made the brand movement as democratic as it can get.

Today, the brand is something that is within the reach of the common man. To an extent the brand has become a bit too common even. This is going to get even more so. Wait for the moment when every category will have an offering that will have a label on it. A common label!

The common label movement will then drive the consumer in search of the non-label. The “No-label” offering that will offer not only value, but exclusivity as well!

4. Brand incredulity is the last of my arguments on the prognosis for the brand movement in the future.

Brands have gone a bit too far in their promises to the consumer. In the beginning brands promised the earth and delivered the moon. And then they promised the earth and delivered the earth. And now, brands promise the moon and deliver the earth!

The future will be more complicated. Brands will promise a mix of Jupiter, Uranus, the moon and the earth all bundled together. In terms of delivery, there will be a fault. A small part of the earth (and that too a wee bit of Dharavi) will be on offer.

As brands fail in their promise and as brands stretch the imaginative line a bit too far, consumers will drop out and will want the non-brand on their menu of choice.

Four arguments that point to a clear “No-brand” future! A future where the non-brand will be a fashion statement. A statement of having arrived! A choice that will distinguish the intelligent from the stupid! Oops! It hurts!

The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com