Brand Knowledge Management

Brand Knowledge Management…from the market!


By Harish Bijoor





I stepped into the world of brands very early in life. At age 21, I was a Group Management Trainee at large with a company that boasted of the largest direct-distribution network in the country, with 2450 salesmen running as many company depots selling tea, coffee, spices and condoms to the remotest nooks and crannies of this country that is India.

One thing I picked up from day one in the markets was this nugget of wisdom that said that nothing could replace market knowledge. Not even an MBA degree from the best of Institutes in the country or outside! Everything there was to learn about markets and consumers had to be learnt from the great Indian marketplace. There was no definitive book that would teach it, nor was there a ‘gyan-guru’ who could tell it all the way it was.

As I grew up from being a novice Group Management Trainee to be a slightly less-novice Deputy Sales Manager, another bit of Nirvana dawned on me pretty early in life. At age 23, I was convinced there was no permanent way of learning about the consumer. The consumer was an ever-changing entity. Heraclitus was right. The only permanent thing in life is change! If I had to understand the consumer and stay with her wants, needs, desires and aspirations as my cue to success in the world of marketing, I had to hold her hand right through. I had to keep my finger on her pulse right through. And held her hand, I did! To the chagrin of many!






To my utter delight, my early years of hard and detailed market-working to understand markets in the early days, and my subsequent many years of continuous “finger on the pulse of consumer” orientation, had me running fast and running ahead of many a marketing man, woman and child in corporate organization.

Living on frugal market-lunches that comprised green chillies and “Jolada Rotti” in Bidar and Rice Conjee and lime pickle in Behrampore had paid off. Two seminal pieces of truth became a part of my marketing psyche.

1.There is no better way of knowing a market than being in it. Living in it like a consumer out there, the way he does, every day of his life.

2.Keeping your finger on the pulse of the consumer is important. The consumer changes. As she does, you need to be the first to spot the change and take advantage of it…….in sheer marketing terms, of course!



The brand and its future depend on just two basics. The first is the market. The second is the disposition of the consumer it aims to attract into its consumption and continued patronage. Knowing both, and knowing it well and right through is the way to cutting edge leadership in the domain of branding.

There are essentially two tools to use to get where the action in branding lies. Active market working on a continuous basis was a tool to use to get right there at the cutting edge brand leadership precipice. And Market Research as a tool to keep a continuous feel of the pulse of the consumer was the second tool to use.

Market working was a way to research the market first-hand. Market Research through intermediaries was a way to research the consumer, albeit second hand!

Let me take a peek at Market working for brands, the way an organization must attempt in these tough and tumultuous days of parri-passu branding and lack of distinctive appeals that shake the market and the consumer to cascade revenue and traffic into your brand at hand.

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The One Big One: Turning turtle the knowledge management process!

Knowledge management within brand organizations is pretty hierarchical. The selling system, which is possibly the richest repository of market and consumer knowledge, is the least respected of them all. The system of compartmentalizing selling in one silo and branding in another is a paradigm to destroy.

The salesman occupies the lowest rung in organization. He is incidentally the richest in terms of market understanding. He is the front-face, the foot soldier of organization who has been there and done that. He is the least empowered one to act as well. The most knowledgeable entity in organization is the one that contributes least to the branding process.

The market knowledge management process in organization is run in a filtered upward cascade manner. The 100 per cent knowledgeable salesman reports into a Supervisor who is about 70 per cent as knowledgeable as the salesman. The 70 per cent knowledgeable supervisor reports into a Manager who is possibly 40 per cent market-knowledge linked. He in turn reports to a General Manager who has long forgotten markets and is possibly a 20 per cent knowledge-link. And over to the Vice-president of organization then. A 10 or even a 5 per cent entity at hand! And finally to the CEO! The decision maker! The final decision maker is the least connected with the market! A worry to tackle!

One more disease in this hierarchy then! The most knowledgeable of them all, the salesman reports in a trend and an idea to his boss the supervisor. The supervisor adds his filter to the idea and cascades it upwards to his boss, selectively, based on his “judgment and old market knowledge”. His boss the Manager does a similar thing. Every level cascades the trend and idea upwards, applying judgmental filters that are often too wrong. Often too old as well!

By the time the trend and the idea reach the top man of organization, it is not alive at all. It is but a thought that has been ruined by the successive archaic filters that leave nothing that is original in thought. Nothing to act upon at all as well!

There is indeed no substitute to active market working in the brand building process. There is a need to turn turtle the knowledge harvesting process. Time to get the CEO of organization to work those seven days a month in the market the way a salesman does. Time to get the “decision-maker” and “knowledge-holder” to fuse into one entity rather than splintered across different folks at different levels.

If the friendly decision-besotted CEO of organization is worried about these seven days in the market with 'Mirchi-bajjis' and Rice Conjee for company, time to cascade the brand decision making prowess to the salesperson of organization! The choice is yours! But do bit the bullet, dear CEO!
The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com