Branding 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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Brand Modi

Brand 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.

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

Twitter.com @harishbijoor

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