Ouch! It hurts!
By Harish Bijoor
Psyche! Nice sounding word. Dictionary definition: The human soul! The intellect! A subjectively perceived functional entity based ultimately upon physical processes but with complex processes of its own!
Fragile stuff! Un-understood stuff! Misunderstood stuff as well!
Contemporary brands of the day are suddenly scurrying around the riddle of the consumer psyche they reside in. Brands are ready to invest in understanding the consumer psyche that much more all of a sudden. The consumer psyche is important all over again. Brands that aspire to remain strong entities in consumer mind-space are constantly in the quest to understand their base of residence better. Remember, the brand is an entity that resides in a consumer mind…..and not in a vault in the brand manager’s bank locker!
Psyche is a buzzword all over again in the brand manager’s lexicon as he grapples to tackle very hurt ones. Damaged ones. Mauled psyches!
Think Pepsi and Coke. Think damaged consumer psyche. Think Cadbury’s. Think hurt psyche! Think Air Deccan! Think bruised consumer psyche! Think Amitabh Bachchan! Think hurt psyche! Think hurt brand equity!
Brands of every type will go through a phase in their lives where the equity they build otherwise with a great deal of care, stands bruised. On many an occasion, this equity-hurt is caused by factors external, and on some, this jostling of consumer psyche will be caused by brand accident!
A Pepsi-Coke combination and indeed the entire category of carbonated soft drinks got pulled into the terrain of controversy over the issue of pesticide residue. This was as external as it could get. An independent testing of sludge and samples of the drink itself dragged these otherwise status symbols of young India into the sludge of hurt psyche brands.
A Cadbury brand accident by reasons that could be as distant to the manufacturing process as the way chocolates are stored by the retail trade, could worm its way rather insidiously into consumer psyche that is damaged and hurt with every story breaking the event of more worms in more chocolates! At the end of the day, the brand carries the burden of a bruised psyche!
A more direct accident then! An Air Deccan inaugural flight catches fire in full view of the assembled guests and media! An engine trouble a couple of flights later! Enough to hurt consumer sentiment. Fragile consumer sentiment! Enough to cause a consumer to associate the otherwise USP of advantage (low fares) to low quality and therefore high risk to life and limb!
Consumer psyche is therefore fragile stuff. This realm of the yet-to-be-understood terrain is difficult to manage. Difficult to insulate from hurt. Difficult to keep shielded away from factors both external and internal that can cause harm.
Fragile consumer psyche needs to be therefore managed by processes nifty and sensitive in their own right. This aspect of sensitive branding is emerging to be an art all of its own. Scientific it will get, but not as yet. As of now, as brand managers grapple hurt psyches, this is high art. It is only as scientific as the process of the human mind is. Little!
What will an Air Deccan do? How does it rise above imagery that is dominant in its consumer profile of it being an aircraft that has fire in its tail?
Profiling the consumer and understanding every individual in the target segment of brand imagery is the first imperative. Remember, the psyche is a not a collective thing. The psyche is an individual thing. It is all about an individual mind. There are just no aggregates here!
The old ways of understanding consumers as clusters will not work here. The techniques of consumer understanding that depended on the extrapolatative nature of research will not work as well. If there can be 1:1 marketing, let there be 1:1 Market Research as well! Holistic market research that understands the consumer as a human being with a mind of her own, rather than a cluster of brains that operate on average thoughts and aggregated decision making structures. Get real! The consumer is for real!
Having understood the consumer mind, mood and psyche in relation to the hurt that the brand accident has caused it, time to get going on sorting each and every ladder of hurt. Remember, if I see the picture of an aircraft tail on fire and associate a brand name to it, it is going to be pretty difficult for the salesperson of the concerned airline to sell me a ticket on its flight now….and for a long time to come.
What’s more, when my seven-year-old son grows up and wants to fly the airline concerned, I will tell him to watch out and narrate an incident that happened twenty years ago, which he never saw or witnessed. Never mind how long ago, hurt-psyches remain! Hurt minds remain! Hurt takes a long while to remove! Hurt minds cascade the hurt on to those they wish well. Hurt psyche is contagious! Hurt spreads fast! Virally!
As you cleanse every ladder of hurt, every image that hurts need to be replaced by a multiple of images that cause delight. One image of a fire in the tail can be cleansed not with one image of a smiling airhostess on board holding a welcome drink! One needs several such images. One negative thought is possibly equal to eleven positive thoughts in some minds, and possibly forty positive thoughts in a more stubborn mind. Assess it right and sort it all out!
Brand managers who handle hurt-psyche brands need to demonstrate a different set of core-competence altogether! These are really crisis managers who are empowered to cleanse the mind. Very patient folks who might have their roles cut out for a whole generation ahead after the event that has caused hurt.
The approaches to sorting the hurt psyche will be as progressive, as overt or as covert as necessary. While a Pepsi might want to take on a stance that is head-on collision, with a cheeky line that says that Pepsi is not safe, other brands such as that of Amitabh Bachchan have taken very cloistered and safe stances, very different to a head-on approach.
The approaches are many. The challenges are equally many. Let’s remember, mending a hurt psyche is long-term task. A Pepsi might want to stop showing Sachin drinking a Pepsi and might want to show Sachin forcing his little son to drink the stuff, with tender loving care, instead! And follow it up with 39 other positive strokes the brand deserves.
The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
On Motherbranding
Mother-branding The Future
By Harish Bijoor
The future of brands will lie in the powerful mother brands you will build assiduously today.
Amul built it many years ago. Amul the mother brand is advertised and all other brands that shelter under this umbrella are at best driven by local promotions, tactical pieces of advertising and activities very much below-the-line. Amul is therefore a butter as equally a Pizza and a 'Shrikhand'. It could be anything else as well!
Nescafe is taking those wee baby steps towards mother-brand status with its not such an old hat decision of bringing the Nescafe label onto the hitherto aggressively and single-mindedly advertised South-India centric brand of coffee-chicory soluble mix, Sunrise! It happened in slow motion, but the moves are distinct and noticeable. In the beginning came the Nescafe brand name on the top label of
Britannia is a classic example as well. Britannia means Jacob's Thin as much as a Milkman. It could even mean the mother of a Tiger or a mother of a 50:50!
And then we have the latest moves of the latest mother-brander of them all! HLL! Peek keenly at the strategy that lies underneath the division of the tea portfolio of brands within the Lever pack! From a brand-doctor's point of view, the HLL beverages strategy seems well honed. The idea is simple. There will be two sets of mother brands. Lipton and Brooke Bond! Two hitherto very strong brand names that conjure up the very basic image of quality tea in the Indian market. Two big mother brands that represented two different competing companies in the tea market in the Indian context. These two giant tea companies at one point of time literally occupied the entire share that was available for the Packet tea industry in the country. Till one day both companies came under the common Unilever umbrella!
And then began a process of consolidation of these two sets of disparate brands with distinct identity sets in the minds of the consumers. Many a consolidation effort took many a step that wanted a complete rationalization of the brand offering in the common Indian market, hitherto attempted to be cracked open by the two big mother brands as two separate companies. Individual brands under the banner of each of the two companies in question were pushed pretty aggressively.
Years went by, and the Power Brands happened. The Power brand movement across markets is a keen focus on those singular brands that enter large number of homes and hearts. Brands that possibly contribute bulk of the revenues and brands that possibly occupy dominant mind-shares. Dominant brands that hold the potential of bringing in the profits of the future.
In many ways, the Power Brand movement swims quite against the tide of the mother-branding norm. Power brands are pretty individualistic in their quest for mind-share and slice of market. Mother-brands on the other hand are benign umbrellas that shade many a power brand of today and, Brand Manager and God (in that order) willing, many a power brand of the future! The Mother Brand movement is all about providing equity rub-off to all kid, cousin, sister and even aunt brands one might find in the existing portfolio of the company in question.
The HLL effort is distinct. Has come a full circle after exploring the gamut of whatever was possible. Commendable for sure! Brooke Bond will want to regain for itself the last remaining vestiges of positive equity that consumers still feel for the one generic term that represented good quality tea in the country. Brooke Bond the mother-brand will then take on under its wing granduncle A-1, sister Taj Mahal, cousin 3 Roses, father Red-Label and a host of others.
The Unilever movement in the domain of tea is very likely a big experiment in the realm of Mother-branding. Possibly the biggest we will see in any industry sector within the country. Remember, these packs of teas have a significant amount of consumer interfaces daily! If it works, who knows, the entire detergent category might be a Surf and the entire Toothpaste category a Close-Up!!!
As HLL experiments with mother-branding, paving the way for a whole big way of looking at brands in this country and indeed the region, it will be interesting to watch the trajectory individual brand propositions will take.
One route to adopt: Forget all those confusing little propositions different sub-brands normally take and assume the consumer understands the subtle differences and nuances between one Brand Positioning Statement and another. Worse still, remember, a BPS gets into the trickier arena of the APS (Advertising Positioning Statement) that in the current day and age of high-tension-creativity is even more mind-boggling. Keep it simple. The mother-brand will advertise and no one individual brand will. Over the next several years, even decades, the individual brand propositions built with such great passion will be soon forgotten. What will remain is what the mother brand will say!
The other route then: Above the line communication will be occupied by the mother-brand. Remember, segmenting the audience in mass media is getting that much more difficult than before! And below-the-line communication will focus on the individual brand propositions. The strategy is mother branding. The tactical inputs into the brand will focus on the sub-brand! This is a well-hedged route for the brand to take. The best of both worlds-route really!
Look out then for more mother-branders in the future! The benefits are clear. As advertising gets more and more expensive a proposition to handle, as clutter in mediums get akin to visual and aural garbage, as segmentation of audience becomes a great big challenge in the mass media of the day there seems just one prudent way to go. Mother brand!
Remember, if I advertise Ford, I build a durable future for my mother brand. If I advertise the Ikon alone, the Ikon will come and go as a fashion statement. Generations will come and go and with it will go all the money I spent on Ikon advertising. If I advertise on Ford and keep strengthening equity, it is a property I build forever. Build for the ever-stretched out future!
Brand-kids, watch-out! The mother-brand movement is here!
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The author is a Brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com
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Sunday, June 22, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
The six senses of branding!
Sixth-Sense Branding
By Harish Bijoor
The brand is an intangible. Managing this intangible has been made into a fine science by practitioners of the science of brand management over the years. Years of painstaking research in categories as diverse as FMCG and durables, services and products, have led us believe in the make-believe world of the rational brand.
If only the brand was a tangible, all this would have worked beautifully. Sadly the brand isn’t tangible at all! The brand is as intangible an asset as any can get. A piece of intangible asset that occupies virtual space in the concept that is a consumer mind! Quite like a mystery wrapped in an enigma encased in suspense! The brand is a difficult proposition in itself.
Firstly there is the intangible asset. The consumer buy-in needs to be got for the concept of the brand itself. The marketer’s challenge is one to get the consumer to pay firstly for water in a bottle. And the second challenge is to get her to pay that much more as a premium for the brand Bisleri with all its allure and appeal. This is tough task number one!
Tough task number two is to operate in virtual space. All of us know that the consumer mind and mood is vital. None of us however do know with accuracy as to how all this works. The mind is an amorphous concept. A concept that finds the seat of thinking embedded in it. And the seat of thinking is normally embedded in the brain. An organ that is yet to be understood! And guess what! Just as the seat of love is romanticized to be in the heart (represented by the shape of the heart slapped and immortalized in the Playing Cards of our lives), we just might be wrong about the seat of thinking as well!
The brain and indeed the entire spinal cord, ending right up at the Coccyx could be at play for all we know! For all we know, we sit on the seat of thinking most of the time!
Add the entire nervous system to this process of brand understanding and response, and we have an intricate network to manage! A huge network that we just don’t understand as yet!
Tougher task number three still is the fact that the marketer has to manage the concept of virtual space! This is a concept as pure as it can get. It is a concept as wild and maverick as free will itself! The consumer is quite diverse and unpredictable in the exercise of his will and in the articulation of choice as triggered by the marketing stimuli marketers believe they send accurately to their customer base!
Add the big one to all this! The marketer needs to understand not one, but all his target customers. The new day and age has proved it to the marketer decisively that there lies a lot of deceptiveness in the aggregation of the consumer as a homogenous mass. Understanding needs to be in clusters. Distinct and dominant consumer clusters that may run into hundreds of groups, depending on the category of product you represent!
The marketer is boggled by the size of task at hand. The best thing to do in this situation of chaos is to attempt the simplification process. Brand folks have done this very well over the years. And it worked! Worked in a day and age when the offerings in the market were limited and choice was governed by limited availability. Not anymore though! Not for today and not for the brand new Brand age ahead of us!
Management of brands in the present and the future will be a complete art, science and philosophy on its own. The immediate imperative for the savvy brand manager to understand is the imperative of understanding consumer clusters that make the choice for his brand of peanut or pumpkin. This understanding needs to be a holistic understanding. Something that defies the concept of the brain and rational thinking. Something that goes right into the nether depths of the spinal chord and further into every tiny nerve-end that stretches miles and miles within our physical bodies.
Savvy brand management of the years ahead will be about depending on senses beyond the ones we already know and understand. The sense of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch are reasonably well understood and acknowledged by us. We need to now go beyond these basics. Branding will need to tread into the territory of the not-yet-understood realms. Soft-realms that represent a cluster of what we could call the Sixth Sense!
Sixth sense branding will need to depend on consumer intuition. A whole lot of dependence on the gut-feel mechanics of consumer movement will need to be brought in as studied science. The market Psychologist and Sociologist alike will have a role to play in this process at hand! The endangered species of social Anthropologist will need to be pulled out of the back room and given her place in the sun!
Brands dominate every part of our lives today. If we are to make branding relevant in a society that is emerging as Generation Infinity, branding needs to re-invent itself and make it relevant to the consumer of tomorrow. A discerning, maverick consumer, who in his consumer-evolution index is many, many notches ahead of the consumer traditional marketers have been comfortable dealing with in the past!
If branding needs to maintain its edge and relevance, it needs to get complex. More complex in its approach than it is today. The consumer is a complex entity. Branding needs to match this complex animal in its cue and response dynamics. Very simply put, we need to invest a great deal of time, money and effort in research and development. R&D that focuses on the complexity marketers deal with. The simplification process has gone too far! Far enough to stop yielding results!
The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Branding the Hype and Hoopla!
Hype and Hoopla Branding
By Harish Bijoor
In the current advertising era of hype and hoopla, precipitated to the fore by brands screaming absurdities into your brand de-sensitized ears, the big question in my mind: What next?
How is the future of branding to shape up? What would be an excellent trend-line to follow and implement for the future? What would really distinguish brands and catapult them to the fore of consumer acceptance in the future? What must all this hype and hoopla lead to? More of it? Less of it? Or completely no hype at all?
Last week, at Indore, I met the Mayor of Indore. The first citizen of Indore, and indeed the current "first brand of Indore" (as I referred to him much to his delight) is an interesting guy. Mr.Vijayavargi had an interesting tale to narrate to me.
It is a typical Indian village story. There had been a spate of robberies in an innocent village that did not believe in locks on the doors. This went on for a while, terrorizing the villagers , till the robber in question was ultimately caught. The village Panchayat then went into the details of how to punish the errant robber.
A bright idea dawned on the bright guys around the Peepul tree. It was decided that the robber's nose would be chopped off! This would identify the perpetrator of the crime and would warn all concerned. Further, it would be an excellent deterrent for any other entity of the village with such criminal intent in mind!
The robber's nose was chopped off. The poor chap spent a couple of days in the village, and then fed up with the taunts he had to face day in and day out, the robber fled to the nearby forest and lived there a lonely life.
Many years went by. One fine day, a group of village women were picking twigs in the forest and came across a Sadhu sitting in a posture that was truly meditative. The Sadhu had tattered clothes on him, had a gaunt look about him, had a flowing beard and long hair. The women-folk immediately prostrated before the Sadhu and sought his blessings. As 'dakshina', the women-folk left all the food and water they had.
What distinguished the Sadhu was the fact that he had cut off his nose. The legend spread that this was indeed a supreme sacrifice to appease the gods. The story spread far and wide and village-folk from far and near came to worship the Sadhu Maharaj they called Moni Baba by now! The Sadhu without a nose!
The robber of yore and Sadhu of the current rage did not complain for sure. The 'dakshina' kept mounting. In the beginning it had been food and water. Now it was more of clothes and gold and money to boot. The Sadhu Maharaj became more and more prosperous and lived a happy life!
Success always breeds imitation. Many a young man with aspirations to make an easy buck watched the growing appeal of the Sadhu. What distinguished this Sadhu from all of them worshippers out there was his nose-less form. Inspired by the charm of wealth, many a young-man cut off his nose and opened up territories in the nearby forests, attracting the attention of the pious. This was indeed a business model that seemed to work.
Till one day, when there were too many nose-less Sadhus in the market! And then presumably began a process of further distinction. In came the Sadhu without a nose and a right arm for one! A Sadhu without a nose and an ear to boot, maybe! Till Sadhu-dom became a terrain of the have-nots in terms of body parts altogether!
How far could one go in this game of distinction? How long then till a wholesome body with all parts intact could once again aspire to be called a Sadhu? When really will all the hype and hoopla of current day branding and advertising lead to the day and age of the real brand with real advertising and real branding emerge?
The quest is indeed for the real! A movement that will distinguish the imaginary and the incredulous from the real. A movement that seeks to move branding, which has traveled a trajectory that started with the sublime and has well night ended up in the ridiculous appeal that smacks of hyperbole!
If one peeks at a universal truth that speaks of everything in life being cyclical, it is time then for the ridiculous to give way to the sublime once again! I forecast the re-entry of the real appeal in our branding and advertising lives in the medium-term future.
Look out then, and hopefully be the first of these pioneer-marketers who will do one or all of the following.
1.Junk all those models that look so unreal in the real context of the brand and the market it swims in. Check out the real market and its needs for once. Bring in that realism in it all. Candid-cam advertising, real-life cameo branding, establishing consumer touch occasions that cause for a real-interface of the brand with the real consumer in the marketplace…….are all movements not to ignore. Remember, the first ones to do it will really stand out with their appeal and will indeed reap the best benefits of this new, improved, real branding!
2.Who will then be the first marketer to occupy the high ground of Integrity? Who will do this first piece of advertising that will speak about the positives of the brand appeal at hand for a start……to be followed by a comparative evaluation of the other players in the market?
Who will make this piece of advertising that will highlight the company brand with all the hype and hoopla? Everyone will! But who will be the first guy who will add on a ten second billboard that will highlight the pros and cons of competing brands as well……with a tagline at the end that says, "Dear Consumer, there is choice in the market. These are the choices.The choice is yours to make!"
Let's remember that if none of the above are attempted in the medium-term, a day will surely dawn when forced legislation might want to make an appearance. Consumer-friendly legislation that will allow advertisers to use all the hype and hoopla, but will demand that all brand advertising pass through a certification board that will give a credibility and integrity certification.
Imagine the plight of the savvy marketer of the day, forced to add a certificate-flash at the beginning of every ad that declares: "This advertisement contains 11 per cent fact and 89 per cent hype"!
Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!
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The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. with a presence in London, Hong Kong and Bangalore.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com
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By Harish Bijoor
In the current advertising era of hype and hoopla, precipitated to the fore by brands screaming absurdities into your brand de-sensitized ears, the big question in my mind: What next?
How is the future of branding to shape up? What would be an excellent trend-line to follow and implement for the future? What would really distinguish brands and catapult them to the fore of consumer acceptance in the future? What must all this hype and hoopla lead to? More of it? Less of it? Or completely no hype at all?
Last week, at Indore, I met the Mayor of Indore. The first citizen of Indore, and indeed the current "first brand of Indore" (as I referred to him much to his delight) is an interesting guy. Mr.Vijayavargi had an interesting tale to narrate to me.
It is a typical Indian village story. There had been a spate of robberies in an innocent village that did not believe in locks on the doors. This went on for a while, terrorizing the villagers , till the robber in question was ultimately caught. The village Panchayat then went into the details of how to punish the errant robber.
A bright idea dawned on the bright guys around the Peepul tree. It was decided that the robber's nose would be chopped off! This would identify the perpetrator of the crime and would warn all concerned. Further, it would be an excellent deterrent for any other entity of the village with such criminal intent in mind!
The robber's nose was chopped off. The poor chap spent a couple of days in the village, and then fed up with the taunts he had to face day in and day out, the robber fled to the nearby forest and lived there a lonely life.
Many years went by. One fine day, a group of village women were picking twigs in the forest and came across a Sadhu sitting in a posture that was truly meditative. The Sadhu had tattered clothes on him, had a gaunt look about him, had a flowing beard and long hair. The women-folk immediately prostrated before the Sadhu and sought his blessings. As 'dakshina', the women-folk left all the food and water they had.
What distinguished the Sadhu was the fact that he had cut off his nose. The legend spread that this was indeed a supreme sacrifice to appease the gods. The story spread far and wide and village-folk from far and near came to worship the Sadhu Maharaj they called Moni Baba by now! The Sadhu without a nose!
The robber of yore and Sadhu of the current rage did not complain for sure. The 'dakshina' kept mounting. In the beginning it had been food and water. Now it was more of clothes and gold and money to boot. The Sadhu Maharaj became more and more prosperous and lived a happy life!
Success always breeds imitation. Many a young man with aspirations to make an easy buck watched the growing appeal of the Sadhu. What distinguished this Sadhu from all of them worshippers out there was his nose-less form. Inspired by the charm of wealth, many a young-man cut off his nose and opened up territories in the nearby forests, attracting the attention of the pious. This was indeed a business model that seemed to work.
Till one day, when there were too many nose-less Sadhus in the market! And then presumably began a process of further distinction. In came the Sadhu without a nose and a right arm for one! A Sadhu without a nose and an ear to boot, maybe! Till Sadhu-dom became a terrain of the have-nots in terms of body parts altogether!
How far could one go in this game of distinction? How long then till a wholesome body with all parts intact could once again aspire to be called a Sadhu? When really will all the hype and hoopla of current day branding and advertising lead to the day and age of the real brand with real advertising and real branding emerge?
The quest is indeed for the real! A movement that will distinguish the imaginary and the incredulous from the real. A movement that seeks to move branding, which has traveled a trajectory that started with the sublime and has well night ended up in the ridiculous appeal that smacks of hyperbole!
If one peeks at a universal truth that speaks of everything in life being cyclical, it is time then for the ridiculous to give way to the sublime once again! I forecast the re-entry of the real appeal in our branding and advertising lives in the medium-term future.
Look out then, and hopefully be the first of these pioneer-marketers who will do one or all of the following.
1.Junk all those models that look so unreal in the real context of the brand and the market it swims in. Check out the real market and its needs for once. Bring in that realism in it all. Candid-cam advertising, real-life cameo branding, establishing consumer touch occasions that cause for a real-interface of the brand with the real consumer in the marketplace…….are all movements not to ignore. Remember, the first ones to do it will really stand out with their appeal and will indeed reap the best benefits of this new, improved, real branding!
2.Who will then be the first marketer to occupy the high ground of Integrity? Who will do this first piece of advertising that will speak about the positives of the brand appeal at hand for a start……to be followed by a comparative evaluation of the other players in the market?
Who will make this piece of advertising that will highlight the company brand with all the hype and hoopla? Everyone will! But who will be the first guy who will add on a ten second billboard that will highlight the pros and cons of competing brands as well……with a tagline at the end that says, "Dear Consumer, there is choice in the market. These are the choices.The choice is yours to make!"
Let's remember that if none of the above are attempted in the medium-term, a day will surely dawn when forced legislation might want to make an appearance. Consumer-friendly legislation that will allow advertisers to use all the hype and hoopla, but will demand that all brand advertising pass through a certification board that will give a credibility and integrity certification.
Imagine the plight of the savvy marketer of the day, forced to add a certificate-flash at the beginning of every ad that declares: "This advertisement contains 11 per cent fact and 89 per cent hype"!
Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!
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The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. with a presence in London, Hong Kong and Bangalore.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com
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Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Brands and teh Outdoors
Brands Run Out-of-Home
By Harish Bijoor
Have you caught the tail of a new trend in town? Have you as yet spotted the best of brands running into the terrain of out-of-home consumption? Running for cover from the melt-down in the in-home segment of consumption!
Lipton Yellow Label has painted many a town and city yellow! A whole corner of the stretch of territory near Mumbai's Juhu beach is all but he colour yellow! Many a restaurant, many a bus stop, and many a signage potential is today all yellow! Lipton seems to run out of home and focus on consumption that is outdoor while sister Brooke Bond seems to focus on what is happening inside the home!
Peek keenly at the new Horlicks commercial! Peek keenly at the development of the Café(including the Nescafe Café) of every hue in the great Indian marketplace. Brands, hitherto pretty content with in-home consumption seem to want to be out there in the great outdoors! Amidst the happening people of a happening Indian marketplace!
Every Vending machine out there in the great Indian marketplace, every new Mall that is breeding a whole new "Mall-dude" who just about hangs out, moving from mall to mall, and indeed every new range of Pret wear seems to brand the out-of-home category with pretty much focus!
Out of home is in! Out of home branding is the new buzzword sweeping Indian shores. Brands that stubbornly remain indoors through their positioning and segmentation strategies are in for a jolt!
Consider the facts. The Indian population is a young population. Life expectation is longer than before. Income standards are up. Except for a year of aberration, the Indian monsoon has largely behaved! Good monsoons mean a good crop. Large parts of the rural economy is a non tax-paying economy. Good rains spell good crops and good crops in turn spell a good amount of disposable income!
The metro is a happening place. We have 5 big ones and a whole host of 29 one million plus population towns that are buzzing with activity. The man works. The woman works as well. Double income is a norm in many a home of these 34 big urban agglomerations. People work hard. They party hard as well. Entertainment is big business. Eating out is a bigger fad still! Time is at a premium and anything that saves time and adds to the joys of daily living is a big hit!
The average Indian is spending a lot more time out of home than before. 8 hours at work, 2 hours on travel and 2 hours of outdoor entertainment and eating out, gobbles up half his day. And that's a lot of time spent out of home! The brand in his life has to appeal to his senses more out-of-home than when in home. In any case he is sleeping most of the time when in home alongwith a two-hour tryst with the television! The Indian in the metro is largely on the go. Man, woman and child alike!
The brand of today and tomorrow has to spend a great bit of quality and quantity time with the consumer in his avatar as an entity 'on-the-go'! The brand that will make an impact on the consumer of the new day and age we find ourselves living in, will be the brand that adopts a lifestyle that is as clonal as its consumer's! The successful brand of the future is therefore going to be the brand that will jump off the idiot box and jump right into the lives of the consumer on the prowl in the great Indian marketplace.
The buzz: Out of home! Out of home in every realm that marketing impinges on the consumer. Out of home advertising, branding and distribution included! Does not matter if your commercial brand offering is that of a hand-phone or a hairdressing solution! Out of home is chic! Out of home is the latest brand Pret wear!
Take a peek at the positioning stances brands are adopting, and will progressively embrace more and more as the on-the-go generation establishes its credentials in Marketing India. Brands will want to shake up their hitherto traditional imagery which confined them to a lifestyle that was largely indoors. A coffee was all about being served indoors by the neatly decked-up wife to the hard-working husband on return. The imagery was all about the wife who worked and moped at home and a husband who did the same in a crummy office situation.
How long can you keep beating this imagery to death and beyond? The innovative brands of the day tweaked this image on norms that were psychographic and represented a small reality but a big aspiration. The very same brand had the woman of the house coming in from work as well, and the hubby of house rolling up his sleeves to bring her a cup of tea or coffee or whatever! This was fun. This was different. This gave the woman of the house many a positive cue. The marketer was waking up and recognising a new woman. A new
Brands in contemporary
Look keenly at the dominant visuals of a Lipton Yellow Label imagery. Look with focus at what GSK's Horlicks aims to achieve with its all new zingy commercial that offers nutrition on the go! The rendition is outdoors, young, with-it, peppy and all about health and vitality that is fun! Nutrition is fun! And bulk of it is outdoors!
Brands will progressively step outdoors in their positioning imagery requirements. And this will morph into the market segmentation exercise as well! If the average Indian is spending that much more time out-of-home, might as ell segment him and his requirements by doing a time-slot analysis that take us through a branding time and motion study!
Positioning, for a change, will therefore lead and segmentation exercises will follow. And following all this will be the physical distribution requirements brands will want to explore! This is a big one!
If the Indian consumer is that much more outdoors than indoors, there is certainly a whole big requirement to offer him the brand at every one of his locations outdoor. Time to whip the brand out of the somnolence of its traditional distribution system. The alimentary canal system of distribution (from company to C&F to redistribution stockist, to wholesaler/retailer to final consumer) is not enough then! Time to offer the brand in question at arms length and desire's length distance in every one of those out of home locations he will spend more and more of his time.
If your brand is that zingy brand of water, this is the way you would go! In the beginning it came out of taps. In came the brand and bottled it for the consumer. The bottle reached the consumer through the alimentary canal which occupies 98 per cent plus of all Indian distribution. The consumer is now on the go. You need to reach the bottle to him wherever he desires to take a swig of water. It could be on a bus, it could be at a mall through a vending machine. It could be in a cinema theatre through paper-cup options, it could be in an office through a bulk decantation method. It could be in a Café through a branded initiative, it cold be in a hotel through the mini-bar service. And this list is not as exhaustive as it can be!
Very simply put, explore very move your target consumer makes in a day outdoors. Do not expect him to carry his favourite brand of water with him on the go. Give him what he wants through every distribution possibility there is. Track his every move and let it be available whenever he just might desire it!
In this new era of outdoor life, the brand and the product need to be ubiquitous. If you can't jolt yourself to do it, your competitor will! The future is tense!
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The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com
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Thursday, March 6, 2008
Branding India
Alisha, Time to sing two new songs!
By Harish Bijoor
Everything all around us is a brand. You are. I am. India is.
You, India and I are all in the marketplace seeking our place in the sun. The only reality of significance for the moment is the Buyer-Seller Dyad, made famous by Henri Tosi many, many years ago. Everybody is a buyer and a seller. And buying and selling is an image-driven issue. What starts with utility, moves on to price and what lingers on price moves on higher up in the hierarchy to the brand and its unique image. The brand is IT!
India is a brand then. And brand India is seeking to establish itself a unique identity. An identity that makes it stand apart from the rest. An identity that will create a craving among sets of consumers who will choose India over all else in the great ‘Swayamvar’ of country-brands that decides the future of many a business.
How does one put the India brand in the top rung of image-recall among sets of consumers globally? How does one leverage what is unique to India’s distinct credit?
In this discussion, we must traverse some key issues.
First of all, what is a brand? Do we really understand it? I redefine the brand altogether differently. And then, who is the consumer? What focus do we take? What really are the Unique Selling Propositions of brand India? How do we leverage that? What are the hurdles around? What is the competition? What are the India negatives? What have we done in the past? And have we been wrong? What must we do in the future? And who will do it?
Many questions to discuss. Let’s go!
What is a brand?
Many years of swimming with definitions that say this and that have tired me. I have kept moving on in my quest for a definition that embraces the real nature of the brand. I have seen every definition there is, and have felt an inadequacy and emptiness that has been plaguing my need for a truly definitive definition!
Nirvana dawns on me and my research years. The year is 2003!
My definition of the brand is simple: “The brand is a thought!”
Peel that definition further. The brand is a thought. A thought that rests in a consumer mind. The brand is not owned by the Corporate or brand manager or advertising agency or whoever the brand intermediary. The brand is owned in the mind of a consumer! One consumer!
This definition is tricky in its offering. It throws the brand as an entity that is an ephemeral thought that sits in the head of a consumer. As many consumers (and indeed non-consumers) in a market, that many thoughts…..in that many heads! A difficult proposition to manage. Brand Management is indeed the art, science and philosophy of managing brands in consumer/non-consumer heads!
Managing a brand is therefore an extrinsic concept rather than intrinsic. Brands are managed in the heads of consumers and not in the Board Rooms of Corporates or the cubicles of advertising agencies. Many thinkers of the past have gone awry in their understanding of the brand. My years of research simplify the brand and its definition. At the same time, it complicates. How in tarnation does one manage the minds of a million consumers? A million consumers who are individuals and not clones. A million consumers who go through unique family lives, social conditioning, life-experiences, economic upheavals of different kinds and political exposures which are as varied as they come!
Let’s leave the definition aside for the moment. Let’s agree to accept a simple definition. The brand is a thought in a consumer head!
Who is the Consumer for Brand India?
Everyone is. At the beginning and indeed at the end of the marketing game, everyone is a consumer in some way or the other. However, let’s add some focus to this exercise of honing in on the consumer for Brand India.
While at the macro-level, everyone who comes across the name India is a consumer (either existing or potential), at the micro-level, the market cane divided into two simple sets. The B2B (Business to business) market and the B2C (Business to consumer) market. Both are important to the India brand at large.
While the B2B interface is necessary as we build a robust India brand amongst countries, organizations that fund countries, NGOs that support country causes, corporates we supply to, intermediaries who source for markets globally, bankers who put out image reports and market diagnostics, and a whole host of others, B2C image is an equal necessity to address.
B2C is a necessary image for a country to leverage as its brands enter consumer markets. As products and services from India hit global markets with a greater degree of regularity, the India brand image is a vital necessity. India needs to have for itself a positive imagery that is socially, economically, religiously and even politically correct.
The world looks keenly at the product that emerges from a social system that is right in its eyes. When South Africa had social sanction against it, a South African product was shunned by many a country that was careful to distance the social outcast of a country that believed in apartheid! The brand must have and build positive Brand Social Equity (BSE)!
The world looks equally with keen eyes at Economic equity. Brand Economic Equity (BEE) is a key term I would coin to describe the process at play. The world seeks a basic level of quality from those that supply it. The India brand must establish and sustain these basic quality levels which have become a basic entry parameter into global markets. Brand Economic Equity is also about costs. It is about the low-cost high quality product that can compete in the global market as it adds to the bottom-lines of all those who handle the product as intermediaries. Look keenly at China. China has done to the manufacturing sector what India is attempting to do to the Services sector with its BPO and ITES sectors. Driving down costs to the bare minimum and offering the product and service of high quality!
Brand Religious Equity (BRE) is really a niche today. It is indeed a term that describes a country brand as a bigot brand or a secular freethinking brand. Every country that adopts the norms of the secular and every country that embraces with debate, dissent and much turmoil (as we saw at Cancun) the offering of the WTO is normally on safe ground here.
Brand Religious Equity is also about which part of the world you belong to. The brand from Iran is a suspect brand here! Syria is a rogue state. Both Syria and its brand-offerings in consumer space will suffer here. The India brand will need to represent itself with the cloak of secularism that will make it stand apart in a region that is a suspect-geography for the biggest global players in the Marketing game of the world!
The final frontier is that of the Brand Political Equity (BPE). This is all about the politically correct being in the market. The Indian product that adheres to the norms of hygiene, quality, hazard control and most importantly political correctness will find a place in the global sun. The Kashmiri carpet woven by kids will hurt the BPE of the India brand just as much as patent-infringed roses will affect our image on Valentine’s day all across the world.
The India brand needs to cater to each of these B2B and B2C segments offering the best of brand equity to markets and its sets of discerning consumers across the gamut of the social, the economic, the religious and political equities that are becoming more and more important in the world at large today.
India USPs!
India shining then! 18 great monsoons (with an aberration in one year) that has caused for continued rural prosperity in an economy that depends on the rain! A services sector that is growing at a robust clip! Self-sufficiency in the food sector. A young population that contrasts itself from a geriatric world at large! A burgeoning rate of tele-density that rivals the rate of population growth, which was hitherto our claim to fame in the past. Better infrastructure across the realms of need. India is shining really!
India has USPs that are distinct, some of which we will discuss as we enter the realm of what we must do to re-orient the branding of the image that is India in the mind of the global consumer. Let us for the moment focus on the Goldman Sach’s BRIC Report on the BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China!
India’s economy could be larger than all but the US and China in 30 years! India’s economy can be larger than Japan’s by 2032! India shows the potential to grow the fastest over the next 30 years! Growth rate could be more than 5 per cent over the next sustained 30 years! India is likely to raise its US dollar income per capita in 2050 to 35 times the current level! In 2050 India’s GDP per capita could be $17,366!
India is unique in many ways. A population size that is large, heterogeneous, largely English speaking, educated, and boasts of a deep culture that runs into thousands of years. India is young. India is vibrant. India is just about on the verge of shaking off the image of sloth and bundled bureaucracy that has haunted it for many decades. India is happening!
Just as India happens, we need to very quickly make an analysis of all the things we have done wrong thus far in the branding of India. Time to recap and take account of the many mistakes we have made. The image of India is what it is today because of all that we have done thus far. Done wrong!
The new Way Forward
I strongly believe that India has done wrong in projecting itself as a brand of significance in the world tapestry of understanding. India has been done injustice to.
India has touted for long many years the “Made In India’ line. A line that came into prominence during the Nehruvian era. Pandit Nehru was besotted with production and productivity. In many ways he hijacked the nation that is India onto the road of production and productivity.
Nehru’s vision encapsulated an India that would compete with the rest of the world on the same parameters that the rest of the world progressed with. The Nehruvian plan for the country was but a me-too approach paper that had us setting up manufacturing facilities all over and focusing on agricultural productivity that was higher than what was being achieved. We copied the model that was at play in the rest of the developed world in those early days of our Independence.
I think we did wrong.
The manufacturing sector which was the focus of attention produced more. The agricultural sector focused on producing more as well, from the same landmass. Inputs of agricultural pesticides and fertilizers spurred on the process even further!
Peek keenly at the agri sector of the economy. India, which was once a dominant organic producer of the vegetable and the grain alike, adopted fertilizer and pesticide in a large industrial manner of adoption. The unique proposition of an organic nature of cultivation was sacrificed at the altar of productivity and self-sufficiency! Indian agriculture thus lost its cutting edge! Blunted by aping the West and its practices in a frenzy!
And then came the “Made In India” line. The Indian product, manufactured in our factories and on our farms hit the global market with the “Made In India” line! This line was faulty. The Indian product was not able to live up to the highest standards of quality that the International customer expected. The product failed. The “Made in India” label became a liability for product recognition. Made in India meant low quality and inferior performance in many a category. And then came a time when the Indian product would hit the global shore, but the made in India label had to be removed. Walk into Harrods and you will find moiré than eighty made in India products. Not more than five of them actually have the made in India label. The rest pass-off as superior imports from a more reliable destination!
The “Made In India Label” has been flogged for far too long. Time to revisit this line. Time to focus on our other two key areas of strength.
I believe we have a strong agricultural heritage. We could get organic. Back to the old ways of doing things. We pluck our crops by hand. No machine threshing here. Our cultivation process is not mass cultivation. Our crops are the output of small farms. Our agriculture is still labour intensive, compared to many a Western nation that is highly mechanized. Our cropping is non-Corporatised!
Our crops are shade-grown. Handpicked. The output of small micro-farming effort. Indian agriculture is politically correct in many ways. Use it to advantage. Let’s focus on the “Grown In India” line!
One other USP that is uniquely Indian is in the services sector. India has a heritage of being a service-oriented culture. The guest is still God in our homes. Indian hospitality is cherished. The Indian serves well. The translation of this is seen in the many ITES and the BPO sector initiatives that have taken off! Time to use the “Served Out Of India” proposition as well! Remember, manya credit card transaction in the US and in Europe and in Japan is run out of a Koramangala in Bangalore or a Gurgaon near Delhi!
Dump the “Made In India” focus then. Focus on “Grown In India”! Focus on “Served Out Of India”!
Let’s create the new India brand! Alisha time to sing two new songs then!!!!!
The author is a Brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc., a private-label consulting outfit with a presence in the markets of London, Hong Kong and the Indian sub-continent.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com
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