The role Insight in Managing brands

First-Hand Insights for managing Brands

By Harish Bijoor

The consumer is a rather important link in the world of brands. A link none of us can do without. The brand exists, thrives and dies because of the consumer. While the Brand Manager is quite a Brahma (Creator) in the link, the consumer remains the Vishnu (Preserver) and Maheshwara (Destroyer) for sure!

There are two simple truths in managing consumers in the quest to create successful brands. The first is that consumer understanding, something that we fashionably call “Consumer Insight” in the world of Marketing, is very critical to process.

The second and more important one. The consumer changes every day of his life. Every new experience, and indeed every new input of the political, religious, economic and social variety, cascaded by media of every variety to boot, has an impact on the consumer. The consumer morphs. Ever so slowly, but very, very surely!

As the consumer morphs, it is indeed critical to process to understand the changing consumer. Keeping “finger on pulse” of consumer on a continuous basis is therefore critical!

Managing brands is therefore a very dynamic process. Consumer insight gathering is a process that is dynamic as well.

Traditional brand managers collect consumer insight in traditional ways. The time worn techniques have been processes that relate themselves closely to market research techniques that are quantitative and qualitative. Techniques that believe in grouping numbers and grouping comments. Techniques that believe in the power of the diagnostics form a consumer frozen in time. A consumer forced to articulate his wants, needs and desires through the artificial and intrusive process of consumer market research. In an artificial environment as well. A Focus Group discussion room, if you may! Something that has over the years morphed into a social occasion where target segment women dress up, and represent their vocal capabilities to impress their depth and width of knowledge to all those sitting in the room of repute. Never mind if what they is just plain talk and not true-blue “insight”!

Traditional ways work. Traditional ways work for a while. Till they stop working altogether.

Traditional ways have one other disadvantage. Every savvy marketer of the day has access to similar data. The techniques at play are limited. A Procter and Gamble is just as capable of latching onto data from its third-party providers of market research technique and tool, just as much as a Hindustan Lever . A Coke and a Pepsi have equal access and ability to tap into the consumer mind and mood, using the very same ways each of them invariably do!

Remember, the Marketing head of a Coke and the marketing head of a Pepsi were batch-mates at the very same IIM-B donkeys’ years ago. They studied the same ways. They practiced the same ways. They ate the same canteen rice and read largely the same books they had to!

Time to add that wee bit of a dose of differentiation-savvy to the process of consumer insight gathering. Time to look at the number-gathering process differently as well. Time to walk down memory lane and check out all the things we did in our old marketing lives.

Down memory lane then….

1) The Dustbins of Rajahmundry:

I arrived in the dusty town of Rajahmundry, one summer morning many years ago. I was the newly appointed Area Sales Manager for a freshly carved out region in Andhra Pradesh. My headquarters would be Rajahmundry, and I was the master of all that I surveyed all around me. Coastal Andhra!

I needed to get a quick idea of the popular brands in the market place. I tried everything there was to try. I checked out the retail outlets for diagnostics. I visited every re-distribution stockist there was in the area for competing brands of every kind. I peeked into voluminous reports from reputed MR organizations (which was good for trend but horrible on volume estimations), and in short did everything a normal Tom, Dick and Harish would do in a normal market as ASM!

I had gathered data of every kind. I had to correlate it with consumption. Three of my young salesmen and I had the pleasure and privilege of doing something interesting in our lives. Something we will all remember and tell our grandchildren about.

We went visiting every dustbin in the area. I remember covering sixty-three of them myself! Between the three salesmen and I, we had scoured as many as 175 dustbins in the area with prodding sticks we used to rustle through the junk. At the end of those three stinking days, we were rich in our findings. We knew every pack size of consumption of the teas we sold in the market. We knew the market leaders in terms of actual consumption versus that of market leads in terms of stocking on the shelves! The results were dramatic! Eye-popping even!

2) The Huts of consumption in Mandya:

Three months on a project to revive the fortune of Super Dust tea! The dusty town of Mandya. If one was to get any diagnostic of this town, the only way to do it was to visit the various types of homes there were to visit.

First visits do not give diagnostics rich enough to make decisions upon. Most brand people think they are vested with the unique prowess of superior observation skills that will get them to do a quick understanding of the consumer by just a peek at markets. Not true. It takes a lot to actually observe usage, attitude and living pattern of your consumers. You need to live there. Live with them. Live like them, to understand them better.

And so it was to be. I spent a fortnight across three homes in Saggere village in Mandya district. What I came out with was diagnostics rich in content. Very fine and minute observations that told me the language to use, the tone to depend on and the tenor of any communication that was to hit a rural home and market. It gave me such an earthy feel of the rural home! An insight that made for sensitive communication, and a lifetime’s sensitivity to rural markets.

3. Watching women in Warangal:

Warangal has been a tough market for us for long many years. As the young Deputy ASM in-charge of the market, one had to depend on rustic ways of rustic observation skills in the market place.

Nine days at a stretch, I camped in three different outlets. The objective was simple. Watch consumers as they shop.

The first three days was spent at a Kirana outlet of small size. Three lazy days, sitting still in a dark and dingy outlet. Woken up by the shrill voice of shoppers who would come in and ask for anything from 'garam masala' to Gillete shaving blades.

The next three days was spent watching men and women shop at a departmental store. And the next three watching women shop for groceries at a super-market in town!

Nine rich days of what I now call “Shop Watch”! Nine days of soaking in consumer behavior at the shop level. Nine days of understanding what a consumer does. What she does? Where she does? How she does? With what attitude?

Nine days of soaking in consumer jargon. Nine days of de-mystifying the process that rests in the mind of the brand manager. Nine days of sanitising many a brand management head with diagnostics of his consumer. Nine days of de-constructing the consumer as he is. As he really is! First hand!

4) And Lots more!

There has been a lot of excitement in life. Like the wardrobe checks we ran recently, walking into homes on surprise permission-led visits to check on wardrobes and the skeletons in the cupboards of Indian women! The shocking tale of age of garment and the shocking tale of the “unlucky” garment that hangs forever in the cupboard of many a man and woman!

Playing gully cricket with kids on the street just to check out on the jargon they use! Precious bits of jargon that could form the core of the advertising execution of the next generation Cola film!

Watching movies in the vernacular of the area to check out on the social mores that are exciting to the consumer. Sitting through the movie in a theatre and recording their expression of glee and disgust across the scenes that come up! Just to capture possibilities for the future of advertising!

The list can be really endless. Creativity is your domain, dear brand manager!

There is a lot to be done, if one really wants to do it right. The brand manager can actually lead a hectic and interesting life if he wants to. On the contrary, if he wants a nine-to-five role in organization, spoon-fed by market researchers who research for all and sundry, so be it!

Life goes on!

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

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

What is a super-brand?

My Mom is a Super-brand

By Harish Bijoor

What is a Super-brand?

The word is being bandied around in our commercial lives by every Tom, Dick and Harish. Everyone out there in the great marketplace for brands seems to have his or her own version of a definition to offer. Time to sit up and take stock.

A super-brand is a brand that has made it big. A brand that has been around for a long number of years and has survived the upheavals of a tumultuous marketplace. A brand that has very-very large volumes that makes it to the top-of-the-pops chart in every consumer home. A brand that is very profitable. One that rakes in the 'moolah' without much of advertising and marketing spends even. A brand that has arrived. A brand that is a consumer favourite. A brand that causes for goose flesh in you when you hear the name uttered. A brand that is a rage. A brand that causes for cult following. A brand that is a product no more.

All of this and much more for sure. At the same time, none of these on their own as a point of precise definition!

The super-brand is a complicated entity really. More complicated than the concept of a simple brand. The super-brand in reality is a passion. A brand that has scaled the highest peak in the passion-scale of brands and their respective consumers.

Let us also establish what a super-brand is not. Let us categorically say that a super-brand is not what is proclaimed in a broad-spectrum list of 100 brand names in a country across categories. It is not what an organization rates. It is most certainly not what is awarded the Super-brand logo by a poll of executive opinion!

A super-brand is then a very different entity. An entity that deserves some attention. Some respect.

Let me start at the level of the commodity. A commodity is that much less of a brand than a quasi-brand is. The quasi-brand is a more recognizable form of the commodity but a wee peg lower in the hierarchy of the brand. And the brand is a thought. A thought that resides in a consumer mind.

The super-brand is right at the top of the pecking order of brands. The super-brand status is indeed that status which a brand enjoys as its sets of consumers self-actualize in the joy of the brand. To understand this statement, one needs to visualize Mr.Abrahame Maslowe’s hierarchy of needs.

Right at the bottom of the pyramid is the broadest segment of them all. This is the segment that lies in the food, clothing and shelter domain of utility. Largely utilitarian in nature. This is indeed the mass of space where the commodity sits.

Just above this segment, a little higher in the pyramid sits the quasi-brand. This is a smaller segment. Consumers sit at higher-end needs in this category. The consumer has had his basic needs met. It is time to now look for the finer things in day-to-day life. Time to look for that bit of differentiation that sets apart the commodity from the quasi-brand.

And just above this segment of brand-wannabes, is the brand itself. This is an arena of distinct thought. This is higher up in the hierarchy. The brand is a distinction. A distinction that sets apart standards of craving and want. The brand is a craving. A desire even.

Climb higher then. Right at the peak sits the super-brand. If the brand is a craving and a desire, the super-brand is a madness! It is a passion of passions!

The super-brand is that status which a brand acquires when the product offering is irrelevant even! The Harley Davidson is not a motorcycle at all! It is a cult-statement! Nescafe is not a coffee at all! It is a lifestyle!

Imagine and assess the passion that a super-brand can command in its set of most loyal consumers, and you have the answer whether what you behold is a super-brand in reality or a fake bestowed with a label for commercial purpose.

What would you do to get the last available Harley Davidson in the world? Would you lie for it? Would you rob for it? Would you kill others for it? Would you take a 'supari' on Osama Bin Laden or our own Veerappan for it?

Quantify and evaluate the passion that a brand evokes in its sets of consumers, and you might have the tinge of an answer that tells you what a super brand really is. It is indeed quite possible to build what I would call a Brand Passion Scale, which tells you where the brand in question sits on its evolution scale, from commodity to super-brand status.

The super-brand has normally a cult following that will not sway too easily from the format of the brand on offer. Many a time, the entire brand offering is controlled by sets of these cults. The Harley Davidson is a movement. A movement that is spurred on by specific free-form Harley Owner groups (HOGS). They will meet. They will debate. They will spread the Harley movement around, much as a cult would spread its tentacles all across potential sets of consumers.

The question again then. What is a super-brand?

In many ways, the answer is a difficult one. A super-brand in many ways is a very specific offering that has distanced itself from its product utility to emerge as a passion and a craving. A brand that has for it a cult following that will even kill for the brand if the need arises. The brand in question is in many ways a part of the life of the consumer. Any hurt or slur on the brand is quite taken as a hurt on the consumer in question herself!

As I close this piece on the quintessential question, there is a point to note. A point I make with passion. Just as a brand is a thought that is owned in the consumer mind, so is the super-brand a property in the mind of a consumer. Every consumer is likely to have a different super-brand of his or her own. In the case of comely Sumati Raman of Mylapore. Rajanikanth is a super-brand. Her neighbor believes Mr. Honest Raj is a super-brand. And her neighbor believes Cuticura talcum powder is! And her neighbor will kill for a copy of The Hindu! One day without her favorite super brand is enough to set off withdrawal symptoms!

In short, to each their own. Each of us has our very own super-brand. There are just too many of these around. At the other end of the specific domain of the super-brand that is recognized by one and all, there are too few. There might just be eight super-brands in the world that are real and are able to stick to the tight definition of the super-brand I believe we must weave!

Therefore, let’s respect the super-brand for what it is. It is an exclusive club. Not too many members in this league. Let us not clutter it with the confusion of our lack of understanding. There are only 8 super-brands in the world at one end of the spectrum. And at the other, your mom and mine are all super-brands for each of us!

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

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Brand Endorsers on the move

Brand Endorser Promiscuity!

By Harish Bijoor

I am confused. All of a sudden there is a Big B Blur on my idiot-screen plasma panel. Mr.Big B is out there plugging Parker pens. An intermission then, when there is yet another advertisement shouting its unique selling proposition from the rooftops! And in comes Mr.Bachchan again! This time round it is hands dipped in paint, passing the Nerolac Paints message all across! A couple of seconds later, it is Mr.Amitabh Bachchan in a natty suit. Reid & Taylor it is!

An intermission again. This time, a longer one. There is some intrusive content amidst all this advertising. A daily soap with its daily dose of “rona and dhona”(“crying and washing”, to those uninitiated to the Hindi language)! In comes Big B again. This time a benign presence for Sahara City homes! And then it is Dabur Chywanaprash! Give a wee bit of a gap, and Amitabh is back again! Once again! This time extolling the latest virtue of the latest in packaging from the house of Cadbury’s!

Amitabh Bachchan is all about on TV! Amitabh the brand-endorser plugs in as many as thirteen different appeals. Every one of these brands seem to depend on the mass pull and mega appeal this star of yester-years has commanded! The quintessential Brand Ambassador is here! Amitabh the mega star of yesterday is today’s brand hero. A brand-endorser you can depend on to create the pull. Somebody who is the sure-shot formula for brand awareness scores to go through the roof. We are not too sure of the buy-scores, but then, who cares? Awareness is it!

Add the total duration of appearances that Amitabh makes on the 'telly' every day. Add the number of exposure minutes up right through the week, and it might just as well rival the best of what a Sridevi gets with her all new tele-serial Malini Iyer!

The brand ambassador is not a new phenomenon for sure. Brands of every category have used it in their quest for mind and market-space. Brands have used the tool of the brand icon and brand ambassador in their quest for success over the years.

What started with a Leela Chitnis for Lux went on to categories that took on brand ambassadors real and animated. A Gattu for Asian Paints became as good a brand ambassador and an icon as any person alive or dead!

The brand ambassador in many ways is meant to do different things for brands at different times in their brand life cycles. While Lux uses endorsers who are reigning actresses of the day, every endorser gives the brand back its key proposition of the beauty soap of the film stars (“filmi sitaron ke soundarya sabun”) position a plug and a boost! There is indeed a queue among film starlets of every kind to be featured in a Lux ad. It is a kind of a sign that they have arrived in Bollywood!

Sachin Tendulkar for every Tom, Dick and Harish category of branded item, our ex-health minister Mr.Shatrugan Sinha for Bagpiper whatever (playing cards, soda or Mineral water?) and every start-up cricketer, macho film-star, a rare ex-election commissioner, a rarer still animal rights activist, and even Mr. N R Narayana Murthy, is a brand ambassador par excellence!

Brand endorsement is a way to go! A way to get your brand noticed amidst all the clutter that brands create in the marketplace. Amidst all the noise and hype that brands indulge in so very freely. Brand endorsement is possibly the best way to get the awareness rating of your brand up there in the stratosphere of a clutter-free terrain, otherwise unattainable with the me-too strategies of the marketer at large.

The key question then? Are brands built by brand ambassadors?

The answer is a yes and no. It is a big yes if the brand ambassador you choose and nurture is one that is solus for your category of ‘dhoop stick’ or ‘doodh’ alike. And a big and vehement “No” if the ambassador you choose is a promiscuous one, focusing not only your brand but also three others! Brand ambassadors must not moonshine! Brand ambassadors who focus on one brand can achieve great results. Focused results that will form part of the brand building strategy of the marketer in question.

Brands that use the promiscuous brand endorser who will endorse a car just now, carburetor oil in the next and a panty hose in yet another piece of advertising blitz, do not contribute much in the brand-building process. At best, these endorsements yank up the brand awareness for the duration of the use of endorser-at-large! Few brand-folks realize this!

The brand ambassador therefore works in categories where the focus is solus. Look at the use of Ustaad Zakir Hussain by Taj Mahal tea. Zakir is today an in-built proposition of Taj Mahal tea! Wah Taj! Wah! Brand endorsement works here in the case of Taj Mahal tea as a brick that is helping build a mega brand in the mind of the consumer.

Peek keenly then at a Pepsi, a Parker, a Palio! Brand endorsement in these categories at best helps spur the awareness ratings of the brand.

The use of brand icons such as a Gattu, Goody the tiger and Choco the bear, on the contrary, is use of good strategy to use the icon as part of the brand on tout!

Contemporary use of brand endorsers forgets to use the endorser as part of the core brand building strategy at hand. Endorser-promiscuity is a disease today! Time to sit up and take notice!

What’s the trend then? What’s out there in the future?

Wait with bated breath for the re-invention of the brand icon. Wait for the re-invention of the brand mascot that will be owned 100 per cent by the brand-marketer at large! Wait for the 3D Brand mascot who will look real. Who will have life breathed into it! So much so that you the consumer will call it a “him” or a “her”! You will fall in love with “her”! You will worship “her”! You will recognize your favorite brand by the personality your 3D Brand Mascot will display and embellish all the way!

There will indeed come a time when this 3D Band Mascot of yours will give every Tom Cruise, Dick Whittington and Harry Belafonte a run for their money! The virtual will rule over the real!

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

E mail: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Branding 'desi' Politics

This brand of 'Desi' Politics!

By Harish Bijoor

As election fever touches a 'typhoidic’level, I keep wondering whether the Politician on the ground needs to learn from the brand manager or the Brand Manager in his air-conditioned cubicle needs to learn from the Politician in turn.

I do believe Brand Management can learn many a lesson from the politician at large on the ground. Many valuable lessons that will tell Brand Management that all it knows today is not necessarily from the market for soap and sanitary napkin alone, but from the market for votes as well!

The Politician, in many ways, is the quintessential Brand Manager. A designation that got invented well nigh nearly with the coinage of the word Politics itself! Look keenly at the politician, and let’s see who can teach whom. And who has taught whom, over all these years!

The brand is a thought. The politician is the brand. If Laloo Prasad Yadav is the politician we want to discuss in this piece, Laloo is the brand. The brand Laloo is nothing but a thought. A thought that lives in consumer heads. The brand Laloo is not what Laloo thinks he is, but what the consumer thinks Laloo is all about!

Laloo the brand then!

Mr.LP Yadav, if you please, began in the rustic world of Bihar politics as a rustic man with rustic thoughts! Laloo got it right first time round. The gent went to town reveling in his rusticity. He did everything right from day one. He kept his cows in his front yard, glamorized the 'Bihari Baniyan’ to the extent that you had ramp models in Bangalore walking in them, he milked his own cows, made the “Laaltein”(lantern) his symbol, chewed on endless ‘Banarasi Meetha” paans, spat blood-red paan-juice at every street corner and made “Thook-daans”(spitoons, to the uninitiated) regulation fixtures in government offices and the Secretariat at large!

The cognoscenti in India, that micro-percentage of folks who represent little of this country, laughed at Laloo. Felt embarrassed. And kept wondering why folk of this kind existed in Indian politics at all!

Laloo went through the process of the poll. He won. And when he could not remain a Chief Minister, he made his wife one! Laloo the brand wins!

Laloo read his market right. Bihar is one of the rare Indian states where 90 per cent of the populace is still rural. As the rest of the country passes through a creeping-growth phase of urbanization, Bihar remains a rural oasis of kinds. Laloo the politician reads his market right. He knows what a market of this kind needs. And he gives it all that it needs, with gusto!

To be fair to all the politicians who have gone by and all those who are pushing up precious diaisies, Laloo is not the first one who has read his market right and delivered what it wants. Every one of them has! VV Giri did it in his own ways with the Labour vote in mind! George Fernandez did it in his hey days with worker-rebellion as a sentiment to read, synthesize, package and re-deliver to the market.

Mrs.Gandhi! Oops! I need to clarify which one! Mrs.Indira Gandhi was the shrewdest reader of the market of them all! She read the feminine vote right first time round. She read dynasty and its merits right. She read every nitty gritty of the branding process rather keenly in her own shrewd way.

Mrs.Gandhi was so good at it that she know when to dye her hair, how much of it to dye and indeed what to wear for what occasion and to create what impact with even what she wore!

Are our modern day politicians clued on to all this? Yes, they are. Some of them are being coached by Brand spin-doctors. Is Pramod Mahajan one? Of course he is! Possibly the best Brand Manager in the country today. Managing the BJP brand at large! Putting together strategy. Putting together events that talk of “carpet-bombing the market” even! Oops! At times there is a slip in the jargon and terminology! At the end of the day, the electorate is a vast market. A market that discerns. A market that watches it all carefully before making that vital decision to cast that really valuable vote!

And some are being groomed by PR agencies. What to wear, what to say, what not to say, when to say. With what “passion” to say! This is high art! If any of you mistake the utterances of the politician at large on your television screens to be spontaneous reactions and outbursts, you are being naïve! There is a coach behind it all. There is a script behind it all. There is a purpose as well!

Branding and its many tools are being found useful aids by the politician today, as there are not too many large issues that capture the imagination of the masses at large! We don’t have a war! We don’t have issues that are so overbearing that the entire mass of people sit up and listen. Time to therefore create those issues, and depend on the impact these small issues can really cause. In comes PR! In comes Branding! And in comes Drama as well!

Every Party name commands an equity that is distinct. The Congress is about Independence heritage, the Bharatiya Janata Party is all about Hindutva, the Janata Party is all about the farmer and the list goes on!

Every party symbol is a powerful articulation of the brand and its values. Even suave Mr.Vijay Mallya is capable of getting the rub-off from the powerful party symbol of a farmer with a plough! Never mind that he has never ever ploughed a field himself!

What’s more, despite the very acute shortage of colours prominent national parties seem to swim with for their party hues, every party is able to create a distinct equity for itself with the colours it sports. Look keenly at the saffron white and green of the Congress versus the saffron and green of the BJP and the saffron and deeper-still green of the Janata Party! Or at the colours of the DMK and the AIADMK! How much can a black and red give you? Plenty, it seems!

Every concept in contemporary and modern branding is something that you can learn out of the efforts of the politician at large in India. The politician is possibly the best teacher of marketing of them all. Let’s learn form they. They are the best barometers of public sentiment we have today. They are the best direct marketers. The best door-to-door canvassers. The best specialists in one-to-one marketing and the best practitioners of mass marketing as well!

May their tribe flourish!

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

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Brand power shifts

Brand Melt-down is here

By Harish Bijoor

Brand Power is the one elixir that has made many of us brand folk heady in the past. It is this very power of the brand that has gotten many of us to occupy the positions we do. The reputations we command.

Does not matter whether you are brand-owner, professional CEO, brand-manager or any other entity of modern organization who manages a brand, the very power we took for granted is under siege.

This elixir of power is however under threat. Under the threat of a possible shift of power from the brand of yore to the demand of organized retail for the non-brand of the future. This threat is a one that many of us will not see. Many of us who have spent decades in the marketplace, decades in consumer space and decades still in the midst of the folks we work for, will deny it all the way. The younger you are, the more will you believe in the direction I point at in this article.

Let’s begin with the oldest marketed categories of them all in India. FMCG. There is a brand melt-down at our doorsteps. The challenge is typical. The power of the brand is under question. This begins first in the categories consumers are used to for a while. Let’s say all of two generations?

The brand melt-down in our lives is all about top-line volumes being under stress in most categories that have been around for a while. Categories that are pretty 'parri passu' in their offerings even. Categories which have over the years seen a host of clones in the same territory of consumer space. The fight is a journey-cycle to journey-cycle fight. Top-line volumes just refuse to budge in the right direction. Growth rates are at best static numbers. Numbers that even define a new nadir to the standard Hindu rate of growth at hand.

Every working day is therefore a story of volumes under stress then. This has gone on for a while now. What’s the solution?

A brilliant gent in the marketing department gives way to the repeatedly articulated demand of the sales team. The sales team has been under the stress and stick to perform by top management at corporate office. The sales-team in turn is all about asking for those price-cuts which seem to promise those magic numbers of growth in volume.

One excited top management therefore yields. If you take a price cut, it must be dramatic enough to yield enough of a volume chunk. No point in twiddling the marketing thumb with price cuts of 10 per cent anymore. Takes a dramatic price cut of 35 per cent. Wow! The market is stunned. The lead competitor in the market is stunned as well. Everyone is.

The lead competitor cannot sit quiet on this. He needs to respond. He does. He cuts his price a whole 35 per cent as well. All in ten days flat. Wow! The consumer is stunned now.

The situation in the market place in terms of price, and most certainly in terms of product and all the other dimensions of a marketed item, is back to 'parri passu' status then. The price cuts have happened. The consumer has gained.

The consumer is quizzical as well. Did these guys enjoy that kind of a big margin all these years? Or worse still, there is yet another question in the air. How can they cut their prices this way? Have they tampered with the quality they offer today at these low prices? The image of the brands in question is sullied in more ways than one.

Quite likely as well that the marketing organizations in question have diluted their spends on the brand in terms of advertising and below the line promotion. How can they afford to cut price and do all of advertising and promotion as well in any case? Has this hurt the brand?

The brands in question have largely regained top-line volumes at the levels they have been for a long-long while now. Despite the price cuts.

These very brands have however lost a very deep chunk of their profit margins on the brands. The slash is as deep as 35 per cent at the minimum.

One of the most classical definitions of the brand is the simple line: the brand is a premium. Where is the premium now? What did you do with it?

Is a brand without a premium a brand at all? The brand melt-down is here.

Brand melt-down is a reality in our lives. This melt-down has struck a bit like the much threatened Bird-flu at the oldest marketed category of them all for a start. It will then follow into every other category there is, age-wise in terms of presence in market. This is therefore a reality to grapple. This is the pain of not the FMCG marketer alone. Ask the question who’s next, and if the finger points at you right away, start planning the demise of the brand. Or think different.

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

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

The Brand Endorser as a Brand!

Brand Endorser Promiscuity!

By Harish Bijoor

I am confused. All of a sudden there is a Big B Blur on my idiot-screen plasma panel. Mr.Big B is out there plugging Parker pens. An intermission then, when there is yet another advertisement shouting its unique selling proposition from the rooftops! And in comes Mr.Bachchan again! This time round it is hands dipped in paint, passing the Nerolac Paints message all across! A couple of seconds later, it is Mr.Amitabh Bachchan in a natty suit. Reid & Taylor it is!

An intermission again. This time, a longer one. There is some intrusive content amidst all this advertising. A daily soap with its daily dose of “rona and dhona”(“crying and washing”, to those uninitiated to the Hindi language)! In comes Big B again. This time a benign presence for Sahara City homes! And then it is Dabur Chywanaprash! Give a wee bit of a gap, and Amitabh is back again! Once again! This time extolling the latest virtue of the latest in packaging from the house of Cadbury’s!

Amitabh Bachchan is all about on TV! Amitabh the brand-endorser plugs in as many as thirteen different appeals. Every one of these brands seem to depend on the mass pull and mega appeal this star of yester-years has commanded! The quintessential Brand Ambassador is here! Amitabh the mega star of yesterday is today’s brand hero. A brand-endorser you can depend on to create the pull. Somebody who is the sure-shot formula for brand awareness scores to go through the roof. We are not too sure of the buy-scores, but then, who cares? Awareness is it!

Add the total duration of appearances that Amitabh makes on the 'telly' every day. Add the number of exposure minutes up right through the week, and it might just as well rival the best of what a Sridevi gets with her all new tele-serial Malini Iyer!

The brand ambassador is not a new phenomenon for sure. Brands of every category have used it in their quest for mind and market-space. Brands have used the tool of the brand icon and brand ambassador in their quest for success over the years.

What started with a Leela Chitnis for Lux went on to categories that took on brand ambassadors real and animated. A Gattu for Asian Paints became as good a brand ambassador and an icon as any person alive or dead!

The brand ambassador in many ways is meant to do different things for brands at different times in their brand life cycles. While Lux uses endorsers who are reigning actresses of the day, every endorser gives the brand back its key proposition of the beauty soap of the film stars (“filmi sitaron ke soundarya sabun”) position a plug and a boost! There is indeed a queue among film starlets of every kind to be featured in a Lux ad. It is a kind of a sign that they have arrived in Bollywood!

Sachin Tendulkar for every Tom, Dick and Harish category of branded item, our ex-health minister Mr.Shatrugan Sinha for Bagpiper whatever (playing cards, soda or Mineral water?) and every start-up cricketer, macho film-star, a rare ex-election commissioner, a rarer still animal rights activist, and even Mr. N R Narayana Murthy, is a brand ambassador par excellence!

Brand endorsement is a way to go! A way to get your brand noticed amidst all the clutter that brands create in the marketplace. Amidst all the noise and hype that brands indulge in so very freely. Brand endorsement is possibly the best way to get the awareness rating of your brand up there in the stratosphere of a clutter-free terrain, otherwise unattainable with the me-too strategies of the marketer at large.

The key question then? Are brands built by brand ambassadors?

The answer is a yes and no. It is a big yes if the brand ambassador you choose and nurture is one that is solus for your category of ‘dhoop stick’ or ‘doodh’ alike. And a big and vehement “No” if the ambassador you choose is a promiscuous one, focusing not only your brand but also three others! Brand ambassadors must not moonshine! Brand ambassadors who focus on one brand can achieve great results. Focused results that will form part of the brand building strategy of the marketer in question.

Brands that use the promiscuous brand endorser who will endorse a car just now, carburetor oil in the next and a panty hose in yet another piece of advertising blitz, do not contribute much in the brand-building process. At best, these endorsements yank up the brand awareness for the duration of the use of endorser-at-large! Few brand-folks realize this!

The brand ambassador therefore works in categories where the focus is solus. Look at the use of Ustaad Zakir Hussain by Taj Mahal tea. Zakir is today an in-built proposition of Taj Mahal tea! Wah Taj! Wah! Brand endorsement works here in the case of Taj Mahal tea as a brick that is helping build a mega brand in the mind of the consumer.

Peek keenly then at a Pepsi, a Parker, a Palio! Brand endorsement in these categories at best helps spur the awareness ratings of the brand.

The use of brand icons such as a Gattu, Goody the tiger and Choco the bear, on the contrary, is use of good strategy to use the icon as part of the brand on tout!

Contemporary use of brand endorsers forgets to use the endorser as part of the core brand building strategy at hand. Endorser-promiscuity is a disease today! Time to sit up and take notice!

What’s the trend then? What’s out there in the future?

Wait with bated breath for the re-invention of the brand icon. Wait for the re-invention of the brand mascot that will be owned 100 per cent by the brand-marketer at large! Wait for the 3D Brand mascot who will look real. Who will have life breathed into it! So much so that you the consumer will call it a “him” or a “her”! You will fall in love with “her”! You will worship “her”! You will recognize your favorite brand by the personality your 3D Brand Mascot will display and embellish all the way!

There will indeed come a time when this 3D Band Mascot of yours will give every Tom Cruise, Dick Whittington and Harry Belafonte a run for their money! The virtual will rule over the real!

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

E mail: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

The Future Brand

After the Brand what??

By Harish Bijoor

The brand is here. What next?

January is as good a month as any to do a forecast piece on where the brand movement is heading. If “What next?’ is the question, here is a clue.

Traversing down memory lane into the rough and tumble world of brands, one sees the distant past. A time when there were no brands at all! A time when the brand meant the first slap of hot iron slapping a live cow, writhing in pain! Just to distinguish one cow from another.

From the commodity world at large, emerged the brand. As commodity morphed to brand, a cusp-category was but natural as well. A category we call quasi-brands. A category where recognition and identity were two parameters just about happening!

With the first brands hitting the shores of the Western world, the brand phenomena was slated to become bigger and bigger. Till it enveloped the whole world at large! As it has now!

What next? Let me peek into the crystal ball and fathom out an answer that makes sense.

A few brands in very, very few categories will go on to become super-brands. But just as there are only four super-models in the world, and the rest of us are like what we are, there will be only a handful of brands that make it to the league of the bold and the beautiful.

Hundreds of thousands of brands will therefore remain brands. But is this brand movement forever? Does it have a lifespan at all?

Though many a mind of the past believes the brand is forever, the concept of forever itself is a wee bit different than we understand it.

The brand movement is slated to head to a finish line in the medium to long-term future. Look at the trends that stare back at us when we study brands, the minds that harbor these brands and the consumers that actually buy into these label offerings.

1.In the beginning there were a few brands. There were some categories that had no brands at all even. For instance the rice category in India. And then comes a time when every category has a brand name leader within it. Think of the category and think the brand name. Think truck and think Volvo. Think coffee and think Nescafe. Even this was fine. In fact great.

And now we come to a state of acute category clutter. There are just too many brands in every category. The toilet soap category has 62 big brands, the ‘Atta’ category has seven, and the salt category has eleven! Competition for mind-space occupation is acute and interesting.

As the years roll by, there will be more brands. More brands that will add to the confusion that will prevail. Brand owners will add to the clutter-factor by extending their cash-cow brands into categories related and un-related. An Anchor will therefore not only be a thread, but a bulb and a toothpaste as well!

Too much confusion will result in that single quest of the consumer to look for the non-confusing. To look for the one offering that does not confuse. The one offer that simplifies it all. And this is likely to be a non-brand. A generic offering even! Back to the Vedas!

2. With too many brands doing the rounds of consumer minds, creating in the mind of every consumer a virtual dustbin of brands, price and value will dominate the brand-agenda in the years to come. As price, hitherto a dirty word in the lexicon of the purist brand manager, gains importance, the price war will result in a price-led-hierarchy of brands, destroying the very ethos of branding.

Value will dominate the agenda as well. As the value-conscious consumer is further value-sensitized by the overt offerings of “more for the same price” kind of promotions brand guardians will offer, yet another nail will be struck onto the coffin of brands.

3. The brand movement started off with the initial brands in every category being high price premium offerings. The first few brands were distinguished entrants into a category. An Yves Saint Laurent, a Tommy Hilfigher and a Gucci were all offerings at the premium end of the market. The brand movement then got to be more common. Other offerings such as Arrow, Allen Solly and a Peter England to boot, have made the brand movement as democratic as it can get.

Today, the brand is something that is within the reach of the common man. To an extent the brand has become a bit too common even. This is going to get even more so. Wait for the moment when every category will have an offering that will have a label on it. A common label!

The common label movement will then drive the consumer in search of the non-label. The “No-label” offering that will offer not only value, but exclusivity as well!

4. Brand incredulity is the last of my arguments on the prognosis for the brand movement in the future.

Brands have gone a bit too far in their promises to the consumer. In the beginning brands promised the earth and delivered the moon. And then they promised the earth and delivered the earth. And now, brands promise the moon and deliver the earth!

The future will be more complicated. Brands will promise a mix of Jupiter, Uranus, the moon and the earth all bundled together. In terms of delivery, there will be a fault. A small part of the earth (and that too a wee bit of Dharavi) will be on offer.

As brands fail in their promise and as brands stretch the imaginative line a bit too far, consumers will drop out and will want the non-brand on their menu of choice.

Four arguments that point to a clear “No-brand” future! A future where the non-brand will be a fashion statement. A statement of having arrived! A choice that will distinguish the intelligent from the stupid! Oops! It hurts!

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

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com