Brand Narendra Modi

Modi In, Modi Out

By Harish Bijoor

My favorite brand names in the world are 4-letter word brand names. I wrote a research paper on this some eight years ago. I researched out some 2000 plus brand names from across the world, and the conclusions were simple.

If you are starting afresh in the world of branding, start with a 4-letter word brand name. 4-letter brands are crisp, quick to recall, long enough to be remembered and not short enough to be forgotten. 4-letter brands that have two syllables in it are even better. Even a baby can remember and articulate it. Tata. Bata. Pepe. Fila. And now, Modi!

Modi the brand has surely much more to it than the semantics of brand name itself that is crisp, curt and definitive. I therefore explore Brand Modi in this piece from two perspectives. Firstly an intrinsic view of Brand Modi. A view that emerges from his immediate turf of action, success and paranoia even: Gujarat. The second perspective would be one that comes from the rest of the geography outside of Gujarat. An extrinsic view of Brand Modi, if you will.

Narendra Modi the brand has therefore two avatars. An avatar that is seen, revered and respected within Gujarat (by a majority of course) and an avatar that is felt, perceived and acted upon outside of Gujarat.

The view from within is therefore a strong view. A view that is relevant today, with elections n Gujarat round the corner. A view that has been seeded, nurtured and cultivated by all the careful pieces of good work the CM of Gujarat has ensured across two successive and indeed very successful terms of governance.  Two terms that have turned the tide of sentiment in Gujarat. Brand Modi not only did good to Gujarat in real terms, he succeeded in showcasing all the good as well.  The point is simple. In the world of branding, you must not only be good, but appear to be good as well.

Narendra Modi has played the branding game well. The classical marketing bit has been played out to good advantage in Gujarat. A keen understanding of the market, its demographics, its needs and wants, and more importantly its desires and aspirations was handled first. And having understood it well in terms of both numbers as well as the soft sentiments that drive people in an electorate at large, Modi put his Business Plan for Gujarat into motion. 

He looked at the basics, and approached it all with panache. Just as good work was going on in the realm of irrigation and infrastructure development, he put together the cosmetics right a swell In came the wide roads, in came the movement towards world class sanitation, and in came all the publicity that accompanied it all. Every piece of development had the unmistakable Modi stamp to it. And gauss what, if you peek keenly at the various advertisements that the government would put out, everything was Modi-centric. The government of Gujarat meant Modi and Modi meant Gujarat. This singular focus has helped build brand Modi to what he is today. Within Gujarat. In many ways, Modi is a regional party within a national BJP. And the regional is more important than the national in this case.

Modi did it well. He researched sentiment, he made plans, got them implemented with an iron fist, show-cased everything that was done carefully and subliminally even, and finally used the tool of celebration as the icing on the cake of achievement. Modi brought  “Utsav” politics to the fore. “Vibrant Gujarat” was for a macro audience that comprised NRG’s (Non-resident Gujaratis) and people of foreign origin alike, and every “Utsav” whether it be a  “Rann Utsav” or a “Bhadrapad Ambaji Fair”, was for an audience that was of a more local hue

The idea was simple. Research, plan, implement, evaluate publically and celebrate it all with festivity and pomp. Government moneys and sponsorships alike from all over backed the plan to the hilt. Gujarat has not seen a deficit in its funding plan for a decade now for sure. Thanks to Modi.

Modi within Gujarat is a brand par excellence. A brand that is seen to be decisive, very Gujarati, and very much about development and taking Gujarat onto the path of prosperity and glory.

Modi outside of Gujarat is however an issue. What Gujarat feels about brand Modi is possibly not what those outside of Gujarat feel of the brand at hand. This is where the debate begins about the relevance of Modi on a pan-India platform. Do a dipstick around your own circles of influence. The moment you talk Brand Modi, in comes the stigma of Godhra.

Take the dipstick around to deeper markets still, further away from your own circles of comfort. Take it to your maidservants and drivers, and I am afraid the talk is of divisive politics. The talk is of a certain degree of emotional if not physical ghettoisation. What Modi lacks in brand image terms in terrains outside of Gujarat is the inclusive feel of an entity that can carry an entire nation of divided people along.

Keep taking this dip-stick deeper and deeper into the gut of the Indian nation, or for that matter take it to overseas markets where the Modi brand is known, and you will find the response typical. The response sticks with one dominant memory alone. People outside of Gujarat, sadly do not remember the development that Modi has contributed to within Gujarat. That geography is far way, and so are the positive strokes.  People sadly want to happily remember the negative more than the positive. Particularly people, who do not partake of the positive touch directly, are in the habit of sticking on to the negative. And that is Brand Modi’s undoing when it comes to his ambition in national politics.

In many ways this is totally unfair. Narendra Modi is a CM who has delivered on all his promises and more to the State of Gujarat. He has tried hard to undo every negative aspect to his imagery post the Godhra-riots. While he has succeeded internally in the immediate geography of his immediate influence, externally, the challenge remains.

But, and that is a big but, brand Modi’s imagery outside of Gujarat is totally different from what it is in Gujarat. If Narendra Modi has plans to dominate national politics, there is a need to demonstrate to the rest of India what the can do in terms of inclusive politics that does not depend on divisive language, tone, tenor and decibel.

Unfair. But true. Sadly, the brand is a perception. And perception is more important than the truth in this space.

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

Twitter.com @harishbijoor

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Coca Cola and CSR Branding

 

Good work Branding

By Harish Bijoor

Coca Cola has got its act right. The guys behind the scenes, Muhtar Kent downwards, are a force to contend with in the world of CSR Marketing. CSR Marketing is today a new sub-science of the world of marketing at large.

CSR Marketing is not an Oxymoron anymore. In fact it is the best thing to do when you are a big brand with a big footprint of consumption all across the world. Brands such as Coca Cola, Marlboro, Dettol, and indeed every other mega brand that touches billions across the world can and do use a bit of CSR in their marketing approach.

Take the history of CSR in the world. It began in many ways when marketing companies looked around themselves into the environment. They looked first at their Corporate bottom-lines and discovered profit. And having discovered profit, and having invested that profit and splurged it around into everything that was possible, from the realms of personnel training, corporate junkets, corporate jets and more, profit had to find its way into society.

In many ways, if you view the evolution of CSR in any country, you will see that it is the last thing that a corporate enterprise does. When profit oozes from every orifice of the organization, that’s when CSR bounces and bounds.

Visualize  a large vat. Imagine moneys that go into CSR as moneys that go out of a small little pipe vent right at the top of the Vat, much beyond and after the Plimsoll line of profits has been breached. In many ways visualize this Vat with a small little vent opening right near the top brim. If you visualize it this way, you will also realize that if these profits did not find their way out (into society), the vat would itself be in danger. Danger of bursting as well. Therefore, CSR expenditures typically have been “safety valve expenditures”. When profits have been obscene, they find the way out. Ouch!

That hurts for sure, but then that has been the history at large of most corporations and the CSR movement. With a few exceptions.

Let me trace this further. In the beginning corporate organizations look after their immediate physical environment. If you had a factory in Jamshedpur, you looked after the people in the eco-system around. Then the mindset to CSR changed. You started thinking beyond geography. You picked causes. And when you picked causes, you picked adjunct causes to the industry you belonged to. If you were a tobacco player, you looked at health. If you were a marketer to kids, you looked after under-privileged kids. Subliminally, if not overtly, the connect always existed.

And then came the era of obscene CSR marketing. I have been witness to CSR efforts during the recent Tsunami that hit Indian shores. I have personally seen large trucks carrying water and supplies. Many of them chose to emblazon themselves with the brand names and logos, literally telling the people all around the source of where the help came from. One savvy corporate organization even had ‘savvy marketing-think’ where they had the top of the trucks emblazoned with their brand logo. This was ostensibly for the media helicopters to catch when they hovered around the area under distress. How far can one go! How far must one go!

And then there is the latest evolution of it all. The Coca Cola India ‘Support My school’ campaign with NDTV is a classic example of it all.

I like this campaign as it picks a cause that is universal and big. It is about kids and their right and need to education. It picks rural and small town schools. It takes valuable resources to points of need. It is not shy and does not use subterfuge as well. It talks to its audience without resorting to the ‘in-the-face’ tools of advertising. It helps build future customers.  In that way, it gives and takes. It gives resources today to get a nation of school-children going. It takes subliminally. It takes when it impinges its brand name all across, and plants a soft thought of an otherwise hard brand in the minds of impressionable kids.

I do believe this is fair. I do believe no corporate organization must invest its money into CSR without  purpose. Do remember, corporate organizations are run by stake-holders of share-holders and employees among others. The purpose of a corporate organization is profit. The organization must aim at profit in all their ventures, whether commercial or CSR oriented. In however making this profit happen, nothing wrong if good money can chase good causes such as this one. I do be believe Coca Cola has cracked this code with this and other initiatives in South Africa where the company is aiming at getting water-positive. After all they consume so much of it. Only right that they focus on the biggest issue that faces the planet: water!

The point is a simple one. CSR makes eminent marketing sense. Companies make their moneys from people. When you focus your profits back into the very same people who help you make money, the marketing cycle is complete. CSR is really the new advertising of the future. As people tire of inane advertising that aims at awareness and trial, people will give positive brand blessings to those companies that invest in good work that leads to trial and use of product or service.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Twitter @harishbijoor

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Brand Tihar Jail

Brand Tihar Jail

By Harish Bijoor

Now you are going to laugh about this.

We run a monthly monitor of brands  and brand names that make a mark.  Across seven geographies. India included. We do it every month on the 7th, rain, shine, hailstone or Tsunami.

And guess what? This month’s biggest brand in the bag as far as India is concerned is not Bata which went into a revamp mode, not the generic sounding “2G”, which beat “3G” hollow, thanks to all the negative publicity the scam brought home. Not “IPL” which just about concluded on a high, and not “Wild Stone” and every other deodorant brand that went berserk spending money establishing the status of a girl-magnet brand, and not twenty other brands that you and I have been watching on television tell us what to buy and what to use.

Instead, what has floated up in the top 5, along with everything else I have just referred to, is an institution brand. Not the IIM, Ahmedabad. Not any of our IITs. Instead, the top brand in the minds and psyches of Indians at large in the month gone by: Tihar Jail!

Wow! Not bad for Tihar Jail. After all of 53 years of being around, Tihar Jail has attained the status of a mega brand. A brand with a very high recall value and a brand that floats amidst the top 5 brand names that people in India have been thinking about in the month gone by.

How does this happen?

I define the brand simply: The brand is a thought. A thought that lives in people’s minds. If you were to buy this definition of mine, every thought that lives in a consumer mind is a brand. To an extent the thought of your Dad floats along with the thought of Amul butter and possibly 800 plus brands that live top-of-mind in an average consumer’s mind.

In our minds, there are really no partitions that divide brands and keep them aside as brands of people and brands of products and brands of services and brands of institutions. And if that is so, Tihar Jail in Tihar Village in the West of Delhi, today floats top-of-mind with the best brands that live and thrive in your mind.

What does this mean then?

The Jail already has its products. Time for Tihar Jail to monetize this opportunity. With its host of celebrity guests biding time, this might just be the time to get things going. Time to get its logo right. Time to establish for itself the status of a brand with a logo, a color, a slogan and more?

This is a brand that needs no advertising for sure. Thankfully. The brand has been built bottom-up, and totally with inputs of generations. Just goes to show that brands are built with positive strokes and brands are built with negative strokes. If AIIMS is a brand built assiduously over the years, so is Tihar Jail. With different strokes!

Let’s then welcome Tihar Jail to the hall of brands.

And what’s the last bullet to bite? Or the last shovel of salt to swallow?

A merchandize store at Tihar Jail? A place one can buy Tihar branded T-shirts, mugs, shot-glasses and more? As souvenirs of a brand that has arrived?

Or better still, imagine a Pub owner who thinks up a Tihar Jail theme pub?  Wait for more. Brand Tihar Jail is here.

Touché!

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Harish Bijoor is a brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Twitter.com/harishbijoor

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Consumer-connect and Re-branding

Ensuring Consumer Connect while Re-branding

By Harish Bijoor

Re-branding is in. Every brand, at some point of time or the other, needs to look at it as a process. A process that will bring back the zing, and more importantly life.

Re-branding happens due to many reasons. A change in management, a change in the brand-manager who wants to make an impact, sagging volumes, a crisis that has gotten the old brand into a mire, a buy-out, and many more reasons indeed.

My two big reasons for a brand re-launch however:

1. Fatigue: When a brand has been in the market for a while, and when it has seen and been through successive generations of consumers, the brand looks and feels jaded. Fatigue has set in. It is this tipping point of fatigue that jolts brands to consider a re-positioning or a re-branding exercise.

2. Competition: Competition is the ever-changing format in which brands live and thrive. Most brands are able to remain contemporary, relevant, original and innovative enough to fight competition. However, there comes a time when the competitive framework has changed rapidly and the old brand finds it difficult to sustain itself amidst aggressively young offerings. It is then time to consider a change and re-positioning exercise.

The process can be as scientific as you want it to be. Product re-design, advertising re-design, branding re-design and positioning re-design are all metric-driven processes.  Every bit of this is basis brand strategy and long-term brand sustenance norms that are critical aspects we consider.

Every one of this is based on customer perception, expectation and aspiration. Customer profiling is a key part of this exercise. This profiling takes into consideration the existing customer, the lapsed user, today's new consumer and tomorrow's new customer as scenarios painted by specific scenario-extension tools.

The process is reasonably scientific and depends on acute sets of sociological matrices that are put together for the brand and its plan.

As one wades through all this science, it is very important to remember the one big factor you must never abandon in your re-branding initiative: Consumer connect.

Consumer connect is the most precious part of the DNA of your brand. You exist at large as a brand basis this one facet. The consumer is the most important entity in your re-branding plan. His and her connect with your brand is umbilical. It needs to be nurtured as such. It needs to be handled with the kid gloves it deserves and demands.

The consumer is essentially very visual, very aural and finally very written-word driven. In that order. In some categories such as food, beverages and even retail, the consumer is very smell-oriented as well. The fact and point to remember is that a re-branding exercise needs to take care of its brand sensorials carefully before unleashing it out on the consumer. Do also remember that this consumer of yours is status quo oriented, and she hates change. Change in the way her brand looks, feels, sounds, smells and at times tastes. You on the other hand, want this change to happen, be seen, be accepted and replaced in the consumer-connect profile of your consumer. And you want that desperately. To an extent you are swimming against the tide of what your consumer wants. And you want to obviously win.

The biggest common mistake and in fact the lowest common denominator of a mistake marketers make in a re-branding exercise is the weightage they give to the written word that communicates re-branding, and the lack of weightage they give to the rest of the brand sensorials and brand experience parameters. The classic example I can quote is the re-branding of Indian Airlines to Indian. A fair bit of money was spent on media communication, and excited, I bought a ticket with anticipation. Every experience of mine, from the point of checking in, to the point of entering an aircraft and being greeted by the airhostess on board, was just the same. In fact worse from the last time I remembered using the airline. No change. No effort to cue the new. Re-branding is certainly more than re-painting the tail of an aircraft with a nice-looking logo. Remember, you have excited the status quo oriented consumer with promises, and you have let her down at the first instance possible. With a thud. You should have let the sleeping dog lie quietly in the first place.

Consumer connect is therefore the essence of a re-branding exercise. If your media brand has undergone a name change, and you promise that nothing has changed except the dog-tag label, make sure that your promise is sustained. Make sure there is just not a whiff of change that the consumer will look for, now that you have sensitized her.

Consumer connect is a sensorial process and initiative. You take it for granted when it is there. You miss it sorely when it dissipates. Don’t let it.

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Twitter.com @harishbijoor

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Consumer-connect and re-branding

Brand Cafe Coffee Day

A lot can happen over a cup of coffee

By Harish Bijoor

The year was 1996. A shy and aggressive (and that’s not an oxymoron in the case of this guy) V G Siddhartha took his first baby steps in the world of Café retail. Into the world of what we now call the fine coffee Café chain in India.

Siddhartha, fresh from his success in the wonderland of investment, took the logical backward integration story forward into the realm of the consumer.

The idea was a simple one. Indian coffee was just not getting its due in International markets. At least in terms of price. Whatever was grown was exported at large. A miniscule 15% of output found its way into the domestic market, and the rest went out of the country as commodity exports. Blind in its identity, with most grades being used as fillers in dominant blends of the world. If you were to do a composition analysis of the world’s coffee, Indian coffee contributed just about 2.3 per cent of the world output, and this negligible quantity went out at prices that did not deliver great margins to the coffee planter at large.

India’s coffee exports were largely at the mercy of paper trading, at the mercy of volatile International price fluctuations and spoke of no brand to boast of.

Siddhartha took a look at his family’s holdings in terms of coffee estates and decided one fine day to step into the world of the Café as a business proposition for India. The idea was to house Indian coffee (for a start) into value-added cups of steaming Cappuccinos and Espressos and Lattes and more, served out of nice experience led Cafes. Café Coffee Day was born.

The first Café kicked off in 1996 from a nice-little location on the bustling Brigade Road of Bangalore. This was in many ways India’s first Café. The year was a Cyber year, and this was a Cyber-café to boot, with a whole host of bulky desktops offering e-mail and Internet access to those who desired. At Rs. 40 per hour, with a cup of cappuccino thrown in as well!

Café Coffee Day in many ways worked its way through the early years of coffee market liberalization. In many ways it was the first to enter the branded market operations with its signature Café brand. The first and the most enduring effort at large.

The coffee planter was free to sell his coffee the way he wished to, all of a sudden. The coffee planter had strived for this status for many long years. The terminology at large was FSQ (Free Sale Quota)! For the first time, liberalization was biting into the coffee economy, hitherto controlled by the Coffee Board of India (under the auspices of the Union Ministry of Commerce).

Siddhartha kicked off a concept in India. A concept that said that the young people of the country want a third place away from home and office or home and school or home and college. This third place was to be a healthy place to be. A no-alcohol place where parents would be ok to have their kids congregate at. A third-place where one could be who one really is! With delicious coffee and even more delicious eats to boot.

The rest is history. Café Coffee Day is today the largest chain of Cafes in the country with 1152 stores open across 178 cities with an employee strength of 7000 plus. And counting.

If you ask me to describe the brand crisply. CCD is young, robust, growing, a friendly place to be, and most importantly represents the aspirations of a young India that is progressive, hungry, thirsty and achievement oriented.

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Integrity declaration: CCD is a brand close to my heart. Consider my view with a pinch, but not a shovel of salt.

Harish Bijoor is a Brand-expert & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Follow him on Twitter.com/harishbijoor

Mail: harihsbijoor@hotmail.com

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The Indian School Of Business, Hyderabad

Brand ISB

By Harish Bijoor

Think of a business school in India. Think ISB.

In many ways, the best thing is the brand name itself. A brand name that says it all. A brand name that appropriates for itself the lexicon of business, the geography of India and the legacy of a school.

The Indian School of Business is possibly the only business school in India that grew so rapidly in a very short time to establish itself as one among the best, not only in the country, but also in the world at large.  In ten short years!

In a market dominated by the IIM’s and 2201 other AICTE approved Institutes that offered Management education, ISB kicked off right and kicked off with passion. Its history is one of a whole series of right-thinking steps that went to cater to an India just about emerging. Emerging from the old shackles of complete government control to a completely out of control India and an even more out-of-control world order, as we subsequently realized.

Let’s trace history. 1996: The ISB Board is formed. Formed with the best names from all over. From academia and industry alike. November 1997: A strong association with the Kellogg School of Management and the Wharton School. December, 1999: The foundation stone is laid at sleepy old Gachibowli in Hyderabad. That was quick. Quick and fast-paced as the aspirations of a liberalization-struck India!

What followed was an association with the London Business School. June 2001 saw Pramath Sinha assume the role of the Founding Dean of the school. And the rest followed.

Today, the ISB is a brand to reckon with. A Business school that relies on a backbone of research, high quality faculty inputs and a world-class infrastructure to deliver its goals. What started as a start point to provide world-class managers for the burgeoning Indian market has transcended it all. Today, alumni from the ISB sit all across the world, driving businesses and enterprises that go to make the world a better place to live and thrive in.

What’s with this brand then?

In many way’s it is liberalization’s child. A group of people sat together as early as 1996 and put together a dream. A dream that desired to supplement India’s liberalization track and story with managerial power commensurate to future need.  The brand is today fulfilling just that.

I define the brand simply. The brand is a thought. A thought that lives in a person’s mind.  Brand ISB is today a powerful thought in the minds of the many that matter in the world of business. Its faculty is highly respected, its infrastructure is copied and its pedagogic standards emulated by many.

Brand ISB does have the potential of emerging to be a super-brand in the realm of quality education and research out of India. What’s unique is its quick climb to the top. The Financial Times Global MBA rankings list 2011 has the ISB at No.13, rubbing shoulders with the likes of the London Business School, Wharton, Harvard, Insead and our very own IIM Ahmedabad. All in 10 years flat! And that’s something to celebrate with this ‘desi’ brand of ours.

The ISB is a power brand with potential. Plenty of potential.

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Integrity declaration: ISB is a brand close to my heart. Consider my view with a pinch, but not a shovel of salt.

Harish Bijoor is a Brand-expert & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Follow him on Twitter.com @harishbijoor

Mail: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

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Is Brand IPL affected by negativity?

IPL: Love, Sex and ‘Dhoka’

By Harish Bijoor

I define a brand simply. My definition: the brand is a thought. A thought that lives in people’s minds. To that extent, IPL is a thought. A thought that lives in millions of people’s minds. A thought that is positive, a thought that is negative, and a thought that is even mixed-up in what it conveys.

IPL Season 5 has allegedly had it all. Love, sex and ‘dhoka’! Lots of love with the WAGS all around, lots of sex which none of us want to know about, and if one is to believe the match-fixing allegations, ‘dhoka’ was there as well!

Let’s give it to IPL then. What Lalit Modi created from scratch, is today a 5-year-old toddler that is more than toddling. IPL is today a big brand property. A property that packs significant value in the sphere of ‘cricketainment’. This is just not pure cricket for sure. The purist fan of a 5-day version will baulk when he or she sees the kind of innovation that this game is all about. This is really a cusp of cricket and entertainment. The ultimate heady cocktail of the two. While cricket is the national religion of India, Bollywood is the national way of vicarious living. In the smallest of towns and villages of India, men and women live through the lives of their Bollywood stars. No wonder then that Rakhee Sawant is an icon in Tier 2 India among middle class women, who would otherwise never ever dress the way a Rakhee Sawant does, or better still dance the way she does, or worse still talk the way she does!

IPL married the realm of cricket with Bollywood. IPL brought a Vijay Mallya and a Mukesh Ambani to cricket stadiums across the country. IPL had politicians rubbing shoulders with film stars and film stars rubbed shoulders and more with cricketers and cricketers with bookies and bookies with I don’t know who else. IPL to that extent is the heady cocktail of every mover and shaker that makes for business, cricket, politics, cinema and more. IPL is therefore an amalgam of people we have never ever seen together, all living a happy and unhappy life forever.

Never mind whether your latest film was a flop, you were there. Never mind if your business was tanking, you were there. Never mind if your government was going down the chute, you were there. IPL somehow had everyone who wanted eyeballs converging on this one little space called IPL. The brand therefore happened. And how!

The downsides of IPL have been many. We have had spats on and off the field. Names such as Luke Pomersbach came to the fore in hotel room spats, allegations of match-fixing had cricketers being grilled, after-match parties had their own bits of fracas going and one rave party got busted.

Is this all needed and necessary? Is this all part of the IPL-brand toolkit? 

I do believe it is. Let’s remember IPL is not cricket. It is ‘cricketainment’ at large. Every incident makes the game that much more memorable. That much more heady. Take a heady mix of last-ball finishes, add to it cheer-leaders who bring glamour and glitz, shake it all up with a Preity Zinta, a Vijay Mallya, a Shah Rukh Khan or a Priyanka Chopra(till recently)! Stir it with bits and pieces of controversy. And what do you have? IPL!

The point I make is a simple one. IPL is a frivolous brand. Not a serious one. Controversies and negative brand strokes are bad for serious brands. Controversies are bad for Satyam and Reebok and Adidas. Controversies and bickering and rave parties are all a part of the DNA of the frivolous brand. Frivolous brands need and seek out controversies. All this makes for IPL.

What next then in Season 6 of IPL? Obviously more of it.

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Harish Bijoor is a brand-strategy specialist  & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Twitter.com @harishbijoor

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Re-position Brand Bengal

How to re-position and build Brand Bengal?

Touch Branding Brand Bengal

By Harish Bijoor

The rise of Mamata in West Bengal is possibly the best thing that has happened to Bengal. I do not say this with jingoistic political fervour.  Instead I say it with realistic pragmatism. This pragmatism is related to one simple word: change.

Brand Bengal has been static for far too long. Brand Bengal has seen just no change for far too long. Time for change. And what better an opportunity than now? There is a change in political leadership (after eleven long years), political party (after 34 longer years) and political ideology (after the longest number of years).

Brand Bengal is crying to be re-positioned. This re-positioning needs to be all about change. Change that is radical, and change that delivers and touches the lives of people in a meaningful manner.

Let me look at colors first. From red to green. From the Marxist traffic-stop red to a Trinamool fresh and alive green. I do believe the colors themselves tell a story. A story that needs to be taken to heart and taken ahead in terms of actual ground level delivery by Mamata and team.

The election euphoria will die down, grass-root level realities will bite, the economy will bite, the dissenting sets of folk in the opposition will bite, and the expecting patient masses will bite as well.

In a political democracy such as ours, the masses will give its leaders time. But this time will run out slowly but surely. As will the patience of the masses. What Mamata has to therefore do is pitch deep in with a 100-day program that delivers. Delivers stuff that can be seen, touched, felt, smelt and experienced.

My advise then, is a 4-point active touch programme for the first 365-days.

1.     Touch Kolkata. Touch Kolkata with a clean Kolkata campaign where you will involve party cadres and the community alike. The party cadres are fresh with the positive energy of the recently concluded elections. Harvest this energy right in touching and thanking every Kolkatan by cleaning up his area physically. With his help. And with the active support of the ground level cadres. Tell the Kolkatan that the end of the election is just about the beginning of governance. A clean message to convey as well.

2.     Touch the top 80 small towns of West Bengal. Touch it with a campaign that has the party cadre going all out to involve the young in the work force who are looking for work. Build a plan to link the best BPO outfits of India to go into the interiors to source manpower that is education-ready but has no actual job-opportunity to fit into. Make a model of it.

3.     Touch the top 600 villages of West Bengal as well. Again with the active party cadre. Touch the top 600 villages with a plan to educate the children who just don’t go to school. Focus on the girl child, where the problem is worse. Touch these villages with the torch of education. Marry this with a pilot mid-day meal scheme that focuses on nutrition. Make a model of it.

4.     Touch the next level of 1800 impoverished villages from the worst districts. Out here, use the cadre to actually help out with a programme that focuses on health delivery to all. Put together a robust preventive health-care programme, even as the focus remains on curative care. Bengal must boast of a zero-tolerance to sickness. Use PPP from the best Pharmaceutical companies that are waiting on the wall of such a  participation. Make a model of it.

The focus of every initiative is touching people. The touch of Mamata?

Most governments when just elected get besotted with governance that is related to what happens at the top. Mamata must be different. She must touch everyone when the iron of the elections is just very, very hot. She must be able to convey to the people that she means business. If Mamata does not run fast in the first 100 days she will find it harder to run faster thereafter.

Re-positioning Brand Bengal will happen not in one day, not in a hundred days, but possibly in all of a thousand days of positive touch and feel oriented governance.

My definition of a brand is a simple one: The brand is a thought. Brand Bengal is a thought. This thought needs to be leveraged with positive inputs that actually touch people every day and tell them loudly that there is a government that is working all the while. Working with the goal of delivery in a better life to the common man at large. A life they can see, touch, feel, smell, taste and experience.

True-blue branding is really not about image. It is really about experience. I do believe Mamata can and has the ability to deliver this experience. An experience that will rise above the rhetoric at large of positive governance.

People at large are simple people. People want action and not words. There have been enough words right up to the election. Now that the elction is done with, and now that the government is in place, people really want the experience.

Re-positioning brand Bengal will happen in the experience of governance the people of Bengal will feel for a start. Brand Bengal has two aspects to it. The first aspect is what Brand Bengal means to those who live in Bengal. The second is all about what Bengal will represent to everyone else who does not live in Bengal. The first task to attempt is Internal branding. External Branding will follow seamlessly thereafter.

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Harish Bijoor is a brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Twitter.com @harishbijoor

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Chicken and egg retail

The Chicken and Egg of Retail

By Harish Bijoor



As we get excited with every data bit and byte that hits at us on the front of the Indian economy at large, and the emergence of modern retail as the ‘manna from heaven’ solution that promises to tie up an efficient supply-chain that links the deprived back-end to the craving front end of Indian consumers on a consumption spree, we forget something basic.

Yes, India is growing. Yes, the prognosis says that India will be a USD 7 Trillion economy by 2020. Yes, we will be the third largest economy after China(which will incidentally be at the USD 16 Trillion number in 2020) and the US(at USD 21 Trillion!)
And yes, the latest census proudly tells us that we are all of 1.21 Billion people now. And yes, the spending power of the Indian is on the morph. But, as I have already said, we keep forgetting something basic.

The basic then: Indian retail is chasing the Western dream a bit too much by rote. If at all Indian retail needs to be relevant, original and innovative in terms of appeal to the Indian at large, we need to be different. Different on the one acid-test scale that every human being looks at the buying, selling and intermediation process at large. With Integrity.


In the several marketing summers I have lived, fought, sweated and thrived, there is one insight that has held me in good stead. This is the insight of Integrity branding.

Integrity branding is all about saying the simple truths in your brand communication process. Stick to the tone and tenor of integrity and you can’t do no wrong!

Let me look at it in a manner of detailing the concept at hand. The point is simple. All consumers are essentially truth seeking animals. Yes, all of us lie in some small manner or the other. These are really the small lies that make the fabric of our modern day lives. Small lies that ward off the inconvenience of a lie-less society.

Despite all these small lies, we are essentially truth seeking as consumers. When you buy a toothpaste, you expect honesty out of the entire exercise. The consumer-brand interaction process is a relationship. A relationship quite like the many relationships we go through in our social lives.

When you get into a relationship with a member of the opposite sex, or let me be politically correct and say member of the same sex even, you expect just one primary thing out of the relationship. The truth. There is no relationship you get into expecting dishonesty and the lack of integrity.

Very simply put, consumers get into brand relationships based on the expectation of the truth. But does she get it? And how much of it? And how frequently so?

My belief is that the brand that offers the most of the truth most of the time in this continuous relationship is the one that succeeds. The brand that fails on this count is an utter failure right away, or on the path of a self-fulfilling prophesy of doom round the corner.




Let me illustrate this with an example. Let me choose my favorite gourmet table bird for this example, the chicken! Let me take three of them.

There are really three chickens in our marketing lives. And remember, all of us are marketing people, since there are only two kinds of people in the world. The “marketing person”, who markets to others. And the “marketed-to person” at the other end!

Imagine three chickens out there. Each of the chickens is a manufacturer and a marketer. Each of the chickens has done something they are very good at. Each has laid an egg. And each of the eggs looks alike.

Each of the marketer chickens takes a different path to market their respective eggs.

There is the first chicken, which I call the “Shy chicken”. This chicken looks at the egg it has laid and finds the product quality to be all of 100. It then stands up, looks at the target audience of potential consumers and whispers with a decibel of shout that is at best 2 on a scale of 100.

This chicken’s whisper is heard by very few of those in the target audience. Even those who hear of it, hear it as a faint whisper. The promise offered by the whisper is just 2 on a scale of 100. Those few who hear the whisper actually come to see the egg, lured often by the under-shout that creates quite a bit of mystery in the consumer at hand.

When the few consumers actually arrive to see the product, there is great joy. The consumer expectation of 2 is rewarded with a delivery of 100. The positive strokes offered in this purchase is +98. The negative of this approach of course is the fact that it scores very low on consumer awareness scores.

Look at the second chicken then. This is what I call the “honest chicken”. This chicken looks at the target audience and shouts out the product offer with a shout level of decibel 100. The shout quality is equal to that of product quality.

The pros of this approach is apparent. Awareness scores are good. Everyone has heard that the chicken has an egg to offer. But there is a problem here. Consumers do not necessarily respect honest chickens. When the consumer has heard the full story, he does not want to see the egg at all. There is just no mystery. Only a few arrive to see the egg, and these are the only ones who actually need an egg. And when they arrive, they expect 100 and get 100. No positive strokes and no negative. The potential of a buy is low as well.

The third chicken is waiting. This chicken finds the competition hot. This chicken gets onto the rooftop and shouts with a decibel value 400. The darned chicken has laid an egg but shouts as if it has laid an asteroid! The awareness scores are terrific. The entire town lands up to look at the phenomena. The expectation is 400. The delivery is 100. There is a negative stroke quotient of -300. And nobody buys!

All these three chickens and their respective approaches are out there for the marketer to choose from. Each of us makes this choice every living day. There are variations available in the gamut of 0-400 in terms of shout levels. Different marketers choose differently.

But guess what, the chicken that shouts with a decibel of 80 is the one that succeeds the most. Also, after 400 what? Back to a decibel of 2. In a market where everyone is shouting at 400, the one chicken which whispers the least is the one that is heard and trusted the most.

Think about it. Which chicken are you as a marketer? And which chicken are you as a working person? And which chicken are you as a person living in a family of your own?



The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc., a consulting practice with presence in the markets of Hong Kong, Dubai, UK and India.
Email:harishbijoor@hotmail.com
Follow me on Twitter.com/harishbijoor