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 his proverbial office-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 India altogether. And the marketer in question was not too scared of alienating his traditional segment of consumers. But this was still within the home!
Brands in contemporary India are fast understanding the new consumer who is more outdoors than indoor. Brands are treading cautiously out of home for a change. A good way to begin is by looking at what is offered as dominant imagery in the advertising of the day. Time to shake up the in-home scenes with zing from a life spent outdoors! Many a brand is today attempting what Nestle first attempted in India with their brand that did not click. Dolca soluble coffee! Nescafe took this ahead with its complete outdoors imagery through its flagship brand Nescafe! It was not only outdoors with an aspirational (but never fulfilled) lifestyle of river-rafting and pole-vaulting, but it was International as well! It was all about Paris, Milan and blonde-heads on the go!
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 well 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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Friday, January 9, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
Brand Knowledge Management
Brand Knowledge Management…from the market!
By Harish Bijoor
I stepped into the world of brands very early in life. At age 21, I was a Group Management Trainee at large with a company that boasted of the largest direct-distribution network in the country, with 2450 salesmen running as many company depots selling tea, coffee, spices and condoms to the remotest nooks and crannies of this country that is India.
One thing I picked up from day one in the markets was this nugget of wisdom that said that nothing could replace market knowledge. Not even an MBA degree from the best of Institutes in the country or outside! Everything there was to learn about markets and consumers had to be learnt from the great Indian marketplace. There was no definitive book that would teach it, nor was there a ‘gyan-guru’ who could tell it all the way it was.
As I grew up from being a novice Group Management Trainee to be a slightly less-novice Deputy Sales Manager, another bit of Nirvana dawned on me pretty early in life. At age 23, I was convinced there was no permanent way of learning about the consumer. The consumer was an ever-changing entity. Heraclitus was right. The only permanent thing in life is change! If I had to understand the consumer and stay with her wants, needs, desires and aspirations as my cue to success in the world of marketing, I had to hold her hand right through. I had to keep my finger on her pulse right through. And held her hand, I did! To the chagrin of many!
To my utter delight, my early years of hard and detailed market-working to understand markets in the early days, and my subsequent many years of continuous “finger on the pulse of consumer” orientation, had me running fast and running ahead of many a marketing man, woman and child in corporate organization.
Living on frugal market-lunches that comprised green chillies and “Jolada Rotti” in Bidar and Rice Conjee and lime pickle in Behrampore had paid off. Two seminal pieces of truth became a part of my marketing psyche.
1.There is no better way of knowing a market than being in it. Living in it like a consumer out there, the way he does, every day of his life.
2.Keeping your finger on the pulse of the consumer is important. The consumer changes. As she does, you need to be the first to spot the change and take advantage of it…….in sheer marketing terms, of course!
The brand and its future depend on just two basics. The first is the market. The second is the disposition of the consumer it aims to attract into its consumption and continued patronage. Knowing both, and knowing it well and right through is the way to cutting edge leadership in the domain of branding.
There are essentially two tools to use to get where the action in branding lies. Active market working on a continuous basis was a tool to use to get right there at the cutting edge brand leadership precipice. And Market Research as a tool to keep a continuous feel of the pulse of the consumer was the second tool to use.
Market working was a way to research the market first-hand. Market Research through intermediaries was a way to research the consumer, albeit second hand!
Let me take a peek at Market working for brands, the way an organization must attempt in these tough and tumultuous days of parri-passu branding and lack of distinctive appeals that shake the market and the consumer to cascade revenue and traffic into your brand at hand.
.
The One Big One: Turning turtle the knowledge management process!
Knowledge management within brand organizations is pretty hierarchical. The selling system, which is possibly the richest repository of market and consumer knowledge, is the least respected of them all. The system of compartmentalizing selling in one silo and branding in another is a paradigm to destroy.
The salesman occupies the lowest rung in organization. He is incidentally the richest in terms of market understanding. He is the front-face, the foot soldier of organization who has been there and done that. He is the least empowered one to act as well. The most knowledgeable entity in organization is the one that contributes least to the branding process.
The market knowledge management process in organization is run in a filtered upward cascade manner. The 100 per cent knowledgeable salesman reports into a Supervisor who is about 70 per cent as knowledgeable as the salesman. The 70 per cent knowledgeable supervisor reports into a Manager who is possibly 40 per cent market-knowledge linked. He in turn reports to a General Manager who has long forgotten markets and is possibly a 20 per cent knowledge-link. And over to the Vice-president of organization then. A 10 or even a 5 per cent entity at hand! And finally to the CEO! The decision maker! The final decision maker is the least connected with the market! A worry to tackle!
One more disease in this hierarchy then! The most knowledgeable of them all, the salesman reports in a trend and an idea to his boss the supervisor. The supervisor adds his filter to the idea and cascades it upwards to his boss, selectively, based on his “judgment and old market knowledge”. His boss the Manager does a similar thing. Every level cascades the trend and idea upwards, applying judgmental filters that are often too wrong. Often too old as well!
By the time the trend and the idea reach the top man of organization, it is not alive at all. It is but a thought that has been ruined by the successive archaic filters that leave nothing that is original in thought. Nothing to act upon at all as well!
There is indeed no substitute to active market working in the brand building process. There is a need to turn turtle the knowledge harvesting process. Time to get the CEO of organization to work those seven days a month in the market the way a salesman does. Time to get the “decision-maker” and “knowledge-holder” to fuse into one entity rather than splintered across different folks at different levels.
If the friendly decision-besotted CEO of organization is worried about these seven days in the market with 'Mirchi-bajjis' and Rice Conjee for company, time to cascade the brand decision making prowess to the salesperson of organization! The choice is yours! But do bit the bullet, dear CEO!
The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com
By Harish Bijoor
I stepped into the world of brands very early in life. At age 21, I was a Group Management Trainee at large with a company that boasted of the largest direct-distribution network in the country, with 2450 salesmen running as many company depots selling tea, coffee, spices and condoms to the remotest nooks and crannies of this country that is India.
One thing I picked up from day one in the markets was this nugget of wisdom that said that nothing could replace market knowledge. Not even an MBA degree from the best of Institutes in the country or outside! Everything there was to learn about markets and consumers had to be learnt from the great Indian marketplace. There was no definitive book that would teach it, nor was there a ‘gyan-guru’ who could tell it all the way it was.
As I grew up from being a novice Group Management Trainee to be a slightly less-novice Deputy Sales Manager, another bit of Nirvana dawned on me pretty early in life. At age 23, I was convinced there was no permanent way of learning about the consumer. The consumer was an ever-changing entity. Heraclitus was right. The only permanent thing in life is change! If I had to understand the consumer and stay with her wants, needs, desires and aspirations as my cue to success in the world of marketing, I had to hold her hand right through. I had to keep my finger on her pulse right through. And held her hand, I did! To the chagrin of many!
To my utter delight, my early years of hard and detailed market-working to understand markets in the early days, and my subsequent many years of continuous “finger on the pulse of consumer” orientation, had me running fast and running ahead of many a marketing man, woman and child in corporate organization.
Living on frugal market-lunches that comprised green chillies and “Jolada Rotti” in Bidar and Rice Conjee and lime pickle in Behrampore had paid off. Two seminal pieces of truth became a part of my marketing psyche.
1.There is no better way of knowing a market than being in it. Living in it like a consumer out there, the way he does, every day of his life.
2.Keeping your finger on the pulse of the consumer is important. The consumer changes. As she does, you need to be the first to spot the change and take advantage of it…….in sheer marketing terms, of course!
The brand and its future depend on just two basics. The first is the market. The second is the disposition of the consumer it aims to attract into its consumption and continued patronage. Knowing both, and knowing it well and right through is the way to cutting edge leadership in the domain of branding.
There are essentially two tools to use to get where the action in branding lies. Active market working on a continuous basis was a tool to use to get right there at the cutting edge brand leadership precipice. And Market Research as a tool to keep a continuous feel of the pulse of the consumer was the second tool to use.
Market working was a way to research the market first-hand. Market Research through intermediaries was a way to research the consumer, albeit second hand!
Let me take a peek at Market working for brands, the way an organization must attempt in these tough and tumultuous days of parri-passu branding and lack of distinctive appeals that shake the market and the consumer to cascade revenue and traffic into your brand at hand.
.
The One Big One: Turning turtle the knowledge management process!
Knowledge management within brand organizations is pretty hierarchical. The selling system, which is possibly the richest repository of market and consumer knowledge, is the least respected of them all. The system of compartmentalizing selling in one silo and branding in another is a paradigm to destroy.
The salesman occupies the lowest rung in organization. He is incidentally the richest in terms of market understanding. He is the front-face, the foot soldier of organization who has been there and done that. He is the least empowered one to act as well. The most knowledgeable entity in organization is the one that contributes least to the branding process.
The market knowledge management process in organization is run in a filtered upward cascade manner. The 100 per cent knowledgeable salesman reports into a Supervisor who is about 70 per cent as knowledgeable as the salesman. The 70 per cent knowledgeable supervisor reports into a Manager who is possibly 40 per cent market-knowledge linked. He in turn reports to a General Manager who has long forgotten markets and is possibly a 20 per cent knowledge-link. And over to the Vice-president of organization then. A 10 or even a 5 per cent entity at hand! And finally to the CEO! The decision maker! The final decision maker is the least connected with the market! A worry to tackle!
One more disease in this hierarchy then! The most knowledgeable of them all, the salesman reports in a trend and an idea to his boss the supervisor. The supervisor adds his filter to the idea and cascades it upwards to his boss, selectively, based on his “judgment and old market knowledge”. His boss the Manager does a similar thing. Every level cascades the trend and idea upwards, applying judgmental filters that are often too wrong. Often too old as well!
By the time the trend and the idea reach the top man of organization, it is not alive at all. It is but a thought that has been ruined by the successive archaic filters that leave nothing that is original in thought. Nothing to act upon at all as well!
There is indeed no substitute to active market working in the brand building process. There is a need to turn turtle the knowledge harvesting process. Time to get the CEO of organization to work those seven days a month in the market the way a salesman does. Time to get the “decision-maker” and “knowledge-holder” to fuse into one entity rather than splintered across different folks at different levels.
If the friendly decision-besotted CEO of organization is worried about these seven days in the market with 'Mirchi-bajjis' and Rice Conjee for company, time to cascade the brand decision making prowess to the salesperson of organization! The choice is yours! But do bit the bullet, dear CEO!
The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Brandisease is here!
Brandisease is here!
By Harish Bijoor
In the beginning there was the commodity. Everything all about us was the base commodity. Rice, Lentil, Sugar, Coffee, Tea, Steel, Plastic and a host of items that were basic. They served purpose. They fulfilled the basic need. Want was a different thing altogether though!
And then there was the quasi-brand! The commodity morphing into brand status, but not yet there. This was really the transition stage. In many cases it was the creation of an altogether new category that catered to the wants of consumers. Tired consumers who had been through the base level of the commodity wanted more. This was the articulation of their individual “wants”! A phase where just plain old rice wouldn’t do. The consumer craved for differentiation. The product category was vast enough to offer this differentiation. There were a hundred types of rice. The quasi-brand happened. In came “Ponni rice”! In came “Nellore Fine” and in came “Basmati”, to be followed by “Texmati” as well!
The quasi-brand in many ways is not a brand at all. It is but a point of differentiation in the commodity hierarchy. A wee peg higher in the commodity band spectrum, but a wee peg lower in the brand band. This is cusp status. But the quasi-brand is something you just can’t ignore. Many brand-thinkers do…..at their own peril!
And then comes the brand. The entity we know so well. The brand as an entity that I define simplistically. “The brand is a thought! A thought that resides in the head of a consumer!” A thought that excites. A thought that creates much of the passion that moves a consumer into the orbit of the brand.
The brand is therefore the first of the entity in the Commodity-Brand hierarchy that caters to the “aspiration” of the consumer at large. Something that satisfies and something that calms desire. An entity that tames aspiration.
Consumers by definition have needs, wants and desires. While the commodity caters to “needs”, the quasi-brand serves “wants” and the brand tames “desires”!
The consumer articulates more than all this though. The consumer who is truly sitting right at the top of Maslowe’s hierarchy of needs is in a state of self-actualization. When you sit at this peak, your brand needs are many pegs higher than those that sit at the sundry other ladders of the pyramid. While the ones in the “Food, clothing, shelter” sector crave for the commodity at large, those in the segments higher look keenly at the quasi-brand. Those that sit even higher up are the early adopters of brands. Folks who are pretty keen on brands in every sector of their lives.
The brand in many ways is a disease. A disease that spreads slowly. At the onset of ‘brandisease’ adoption of brands happens in categories that are higher end. The first brands to be adopted will be in the categories that cost a lot and in categories that are high-end manufacturing oriented. The car you buy and the refrigerator that will stock the stale food in your house will always be a brand! Brands signify reliability and acute differentiation in these categories. Brands are therefore expensive buys in the very beginning.
As ‘Brandisease’ spreads, it spreads its tentacles to categories that are less expensive. 'Brandisease' is therefore a top-down spread. After satiating brand need at the top-end category, the consumer understands the significance of value in brand-buys. The price-quality equation at play, convenience, reliability, image, status appeal and all the sundry other attributes of a brand-buy spread to other categories as well. This is a cascade!
The next expensive shirt you buy will be a brand. The daily wear work-wear shirts will still be tailored outfits. The eveningwear category will be the first brand of rag you will buy. Not to worry though. This will spread to the office-wear category as well, and move on to casual wear of every kind, and right into the terrain of the nightdress you will wear to bed! Doesn’t matter if it is only your wife of 13 years that will see you in it! The brand has arrived!
'Brandisease' will keep spreading. From outerwear which is seen by one and all, to innerwear which will be seen by few….hopefully! The top will be an “Allen Solly”, the trouser a “Pantaloon” and the brassiere a “Vanity Fair” and the panty a “Feelings”! 'Brandisease' has surely spread! And how!
The brand is therefore a disease. A disease that affects every consumer in the market. It starts small, but engulfs one and all in its stretch. Nascent brand markets will learn from the advanced markets that have had this disease rampant on their shores for many generations now. Nascent brand markets such as India would do well to learn what to do and what not to do as this disease spreads in the vast hinterland that is India.
The brand is a compelling entity. The key is to manage it with sensitivity. Important to stay sensitive to what must be done and what must not. Let’s not go overboard. At this point to time, this is still a benign disease. Let’s keep it that way.
The day the brand is considered to be a lesion in the mind of a consumer and a canker to be cured, the day of the disease at spread is over! Managing this balance of keeping the disease benign and away from malignancy is the collective responsibility of all the brand-folks who evangelize the disease in more ways than one!
The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com
By Harish Bijoor
In the beginning there was the commodity. Everything all about us was the base commodity. Rice, Lentil, Sugar, Coffee, Tea, Steel, Plastic and a host of items that were basic. They served purpose. They fulfilled the basic need. Want was a different thing altogether though!
And then there was the quasi-brand! The commodity morphing into brand status, but not yet there. This was really the transition stage. In many cases it was the creation of an altogether new category that catered to the wants of consumers. Tired consumers who had been through the base level of the commodity wanted more. This was the articulation of their individual “wants”! A phase where just plain old rice wouldn’t do. The consumer craved for differentiation. The product category was vast enough to offer this differentiation. There were a hundred types of rice. The quasi-brand happened. In came “Ponni rice”! In came “Nellore Fine” and in came “Basmati”, to be followed by “Texmati” as well!
The quasi-brand in many ways is not a brand at all. It is but a point of differentiation in the commodity hierarchy. A wee peg higher in the commodity band spectrum, but a wee peg lower in the brand band. This is cusp status. But the quasi-brand is something you just can’t ignore. Many brand-thinkers do…..at their own peril!
And then comes the brand. The entity we know so well. The brand as an entity that I define simplistically. “The brand is a thought! A thought that resides in the head of a consumer!” A thought that excites. A thought that creates much of the passion that moves a consumer into the orbit of the brand.
The brand is therefore the first of the entity in the Commodity-Brand hierarchy that caters to the “aspiration” of the consumer at large. Something that satisfies and something that calms desire. An entity that tames aspiration.
Consumers by definition have needs, wants and desires. While the commodity caters to “needs”, the quasi-brand serves “wants” and the brand tames “desires”!
The consumer articulates more than all this though. The consumer who is truly sitting right at the top of Maslowe’s hierarchy of needs is in a state of self-actualization. When you sit at this peak, your brand needs are many pegs higher than those that sit at the sundry other ladders of the pyramid. While the ones in the “Food, clothing, shelter” sector crave for the commodity at large, those in the segments higher look keenly at the quasi-brand. Those that sit even higher up are the early adopters of brands. Folks who are pretty keen on brands in every sector of their lives.
The brand in many ways is a disease. A disease that spreads slowly. At the onset of ‘brandisease’ adoption of brands happens in categories that are higher end. The first brands to be adopted will be in the categories that cost a lot and in categories that are high-end manufacturing oriented. The car you buy and the refrigerator that will stock the stale food in your house will always be a brand! Brands signify reliability and acute differentiation in these categories. Brands are therefore expensive buys in the very beginning.
As ‘Brandisease’ spreads, it spreads its tentacles to categories that are less expensive. 'Brandisease' is therefore a top-down spread. After satiating brand need at the top-end category, the consumer understands the significance of value in brand-buys. The price-quality equation at play, convenience, reliability, image, status appeal and all the sundry other attributes of a brand-buy spread to other categories as well. This is a cascade!
The next expensive shirt you buy will be a brand. The daily wear work-wear shirts will still be tailored outfits. The eveningwear category will be the first brand of rag you will buy. Not to worry though. This will spread to the office-wear category as well, and move on to casual wear of every kind, and right into the terrain of the nightdress you will wear to bed! Doesn’t matter if it is only your wife of 13 years that will see you in it! The brand has arrived!
'Brandisease' will keep spreading. From outerwear which is seen by one and all, to innerwear which will be seen by few….hopefully! The top will be an “Allen Solly”, the trouser a “Pantaloon” and the brassiere a “Vanity Fair” and the panty a “Feelings”! 'Brandisease' has surely spread! And how!
The brand is therefore a disease. A disease that affects every consumer in the market. It starts small, but engulfs one and all in its stretch. Nascent brand markets will learn from the advanced markets that have had this disease rampant on their shores for many generations now. Nascent brand markets such as India would do well to learn what to do and what not to do as this disease spreads in the vast hinterland that is India.
The brand is a compelling entity. The key is to manage it with sensitivity. Important to stay sensitive to what must be done and what must not. Let’s not go overboard. At this point to time, this is still a benign disease. Let’s keep it that way.
The day the brand is considered to be a lesion in the mind of a consumer and a canker to be cured, the day of the disease at spread is over! Managing this balance of keeping the disease benign and away from malignancy is the collective responsibility of all the brand-folks who evangelize the disease in more ways than one!
The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
BrandNext!?
BrandNext?
By Harish Bijoor
In the very beginning, it was the commodity! The commodity that held no individual status whatsoever. The commodity was as generic as it could get. Life was basic. Uncomplicated. Rice was just rice!
And then came the quasi-brand. As consumers evolved and articulated needs and wants which were multi-faceted, the basic staple evolved in its identity. Rice that came from the northern part of the country got categorized differently from the rice that came from the South. In many ways this distinction caused for a polarization of taste, want and need. The quasi-brand was here. North Indian rice that was long-grained and aromatic. South Indian rice that was shorter-grained and less aromatic!
And then came the brand. Basmati Rice! Texmati rice! And what's worse; every Basmati took on a brand name that differentiated one from the other. ‘Kohinoor’ Basmati rice competed with a 'Lal Quilla' Basmati rice! The brand had arrived!
As we swim in a market filled with brands, the key question that floats up amidst all this flotsam of brands is the one that asks "What next?"
Let me postulate a personal theory that guides my every move and every step in the tortuous world of business in general and marketing in particular.
The simple thought: Everything is cyclical! Everything happens in a cycle of want and non-want. Take the habit in foods. In the beginning the market loves good old home-food. There is freshness, there is variety and there is personalization and plenty of ability to custom-make! And guess what? It's made by mom!
As society moves through its paces, home food causes for fatigue. One is looking for an offering that is different and food that has a tang that is distinct in its offering. The brand happens! A McDonald's Big Mac is as big a hit as any offering of a factory made burger can get! This phase goes on for awhile! In most societies, this phase lingers on longer than any! This is indeed a phase that is buoyed up with plenty of money power and all the advertising the category can afford!
A society that grows through this compulsive high-decibel stage of the brand will be poised at the critical point of decision. What next?
The answer lies differently in every competing consumer market at different points in the trajectory of brand-life cycle. As the commodity morphs into a quasi-brand and then into a brand, the key question: how long will this last? What next again?
I do believe the next point in the brand continuum is that in which the appeal of the brand ceases to exist altogether. Brands that are built on the format of the generic, and brands that believe in the traditional formats of “Old Branding” will cease to exist altogether as entities. On the contrary, brands that re-invent themselves and morph into dynamic, intrusive and participative parts of consumer life will flourish.
Brands therefore, to survive, will have to step off the pedestal. Step off the pedestal of mass media television, Press and radio formats. Brands have to assume significance in peoples lives on a 1: 1 format. Direct marketing and 1:1 appeal will need to be built into every brand offering. The paradigm hitherto operated within by brands will need to be broken. Brands need to jump into peoples' lives on 1:1 formats of interaction.
1: 1 is personal and 1:1 is customized appeal delivered personally. The trend surely is towards the de-massification of the brand appeal. Massification is passé! But watch out here! As brands operate on 1:1 formats, the concept of the massified brand itself in question. The brand itself will need to morph into a non-brand mode!
As brands adapt to one-on-one formats, a whole new competence needs to emerge in the realm of brand management. This competence is all about managing brands on non-mega-media formats. It is all about a competence that speaks more of ‘below-the-line’ and less ‘above-the-line’. It is indeed a competence of physical work. A competence that will need to dictate hard physical work in the markets that make brands. Delivery standards can be easily set and delivery efficiencies can be easily tracked in this format! What a far cry from the good old days of easy advertising?!
The super-brands of the future will be made in this format of market approach. The lazy brand that will not attempt this hard task ahead will fade away. The big brands of today that actually make an honest attempt at this route will survive and walk tall into a bright new brand future.
The brands of today will all write a self-fulfilling prophesy all their own. Every script will differ. Some brands will happen with a bang and many will die out in a whimper!
The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. with a presence in Hong Kong,
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com
Sunday, September 14, 2008
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
I arrived in the dusty town of
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
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
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
Thursday, August 14, 2008
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
Saturday, August 2, 2008
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
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