First-Hand Insights for managing Brands
By Harish Bijoor
The consumer is a rather important link in the world of brands. A link none of us can do without. The brand exists, thrives and dies because of the consumer. While the Brand Manager is quite a Brahma (Creator) in the link, the consumer remains the Vishnu (Preserver) and Maheshwara (Destroyer) for sure!
There are two simple truths in managing consumers in the quest to create successful brands. The first is that consumer understanding, something that we fashionably call “Consumer Insight” in the world of Marketing, is very critical to process.
The second and more important one. The consumer changes every day of his life. Every new experience, and indeed every new input of the political, religious, economic and social variety, cascaded by media of every variety to boot, has an impact on the consumer. The consumer morphs. Ever so slowly, but very, very surely!
As the consumer morphs, it is indeed critical to process to understand the changing consumer. Keeping “finger on pulse” of consumer on a continuous basis is therefore critical!
Managing brands is therefore a very dynamic process. Consumer insight gathering is a process that is dynamic as well.
Traditional brand managers collect consumer insight in traditional ways. The time worn techniques have been processes that relate themselves closely to market research techniques that are quantitative and qualitative. Techniques that believe in grouping numbers and grouping comments. Techniques that believe in the power of the diagnostics form a consumer frozen in time. A consumer forced to articulate his wants, needs and desires through the artificial and intrusive process of consumer market research. In an artificial environment as well. A Focus Group discussion room, if you may! Something that has over the years morphed into a social occasion where target segment women dress up, and represent their vocal capabilities to impress their depth and width of knowledge to all those sitting in the room of repute. Never mind if what they is just plain talk and not true-blue “insight”!
Traditional ways work. Traditional ways work for a while. Till they stop working altogether.
Traditional ways have one other disadvantage. Every savvy marketer of the day has access to similar data. The techniques at play are limited. A Procter and Gamble is just as capable of latching onto data from its third-party providers of market research technique and tool, just as much as a Hindustan Lever . A Coke and a Pepsi have equal access and ability to tap into the consumer mind and mood, using the very same ways each of them invariably do!
Remember, the Marketing head of a Coke and the marketing head of a Pepsi were batch-mates at the very same IIM-B donkeys’ years ago. They studied the same ways. They practiced the same ways. They ate the same canteen rice and read largely the same books they had to!
Time to add that wee bit of a dose of differentiation-savvy to the process of consumer insight gathering. Time to look at the number-gathering process differently as well. Time to walk down memory lane and check out all the things we did in our old marketing lives.
Down memory lane then….
1) The Dustbins of
I arrived in the dusty town of
I needed to get a quick idea of the popular brands in the market place. I tried everything there was to try. I checked out the retail outlets for diagnostics. I visited every re-distribution stockist there was in the area for competing brands of every kind. I peeked into voluminous reports from reputed MR organizations (which was good for trend but horrible on volume estimations), and in short did everything a normal Tom, Dick and Harish would do in a normal market as ASM!
I had gathered data of every kind. I had to correlate it with consumption. Three of my young salesmen and I had the pleasure and privilege of doing something interesting in our lives. Something we will all remember and tell our grandchildren about.
We went visiting every dustbin in the area. I remember covering sixty-three of them myself! Between the three salesmen and I, we had scoured as many as 175 dustbins in the area with prodding sticks we used to rustle through the junk. At the end of those three stinking days, we were rich in our findings. We knew every pack size of consumption of the teas we sold in the market. We knew the market leaders in terms of actual consumption versus that of market leads in terms of stocking on the shelves! The results were dramatic! Eye-popping even!
2) The Huts of consumption in Mandya:
Three months on a project to revive the fortune of Super Dust tea! The dusty town of
First visits do not give diagnostics rich enough to make decisions upon. Most brand people think they are vested with the unique prowess of superior observation skills that will get them to do a quick understanding of the consumer by just a peek at markets. Not true. It takes a lot to actually observe usage, attitude and living pattern of your consumers. You need to live there. Live with them. Live like them, to understand them better.
And so it was to be. I spent a fortnight across three homes in Saggere village in Mandya district. What I came out with was diagnostics rich in content. Very fine and minute observations that told me the language to use, the tone to depend on and the tenor of any communication that was to hit a rural home and market. It gave me such an earthy feel of the rural home! An insight that made for sensitive communication, and a lifetime’s sensitivity to rural markets.
3. Watching women in
Nine days at a stretch, I camped in three different outlets. The objective was simple. Watch consumers as they shop.
The first three days was spent at a Kirana outlet of small size. Three lazy days, sitting still in a dark and dingy outlet. Woken up by the shrill voice of shoppers who would come in and ask for anything from 'garam masala' to Gillete shaving blades.
The next three days was spent watching men and women shop at a departmental store. And the next three watching women shop for groceries at a super-market in town!
Nine rich days of what I now call “Shop Watch”! Nine days of soaking in consumer behavior at the shop level. Nine days of understanding what a consumer does. What she does? Where she does? How she does? With what attitude?
Nine days of soaking in consumer jargon. Nine days of de-mystifying the process that rests in the mind of the brand manager. Nine days of sanitising many a brand management head with diagnostics of his consumer. Nine days of de-constructing the consumer as he is. As he really is! First hand!
4) And Lots more!
There has been a lot of excitement in life. Like the wardrobe checks we ran recently, walking into homes on surprise permission-led visits to check on wardrobes and the skeletons in the cupboards of Indian women! The shocking tale of age of garment and the shocking tale of the “unlucky” garment that hangs forever in the cupboard of many a man and woman!
Playing gully cricket with kids on the street just to check out on the jargon they use! Precious bits of jargon that could form the core of the advertising execution of the next generation Cola film!
Watching movies in the vernacular of the area to check out on the social mores that are exciting to the consumer. Sitting through the movie in a theatre and recording their expression of glee and disgust across the scenes that come up! Just to capture possibilities for the future of advertising!
The list can be really endless. Creativity is your domain, dear brand manager!
There is a lot to be done, if one really wants to do it right. The brand manager can actually lead a hectic and interesting life if he wants to. On the contrary, if he wants a nine-to-five role in organization, spoon-fed by market researchers who research for all and sundry, so be it!
Life goes on!
The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com
