Brands & Branding
A collection of marketing articles inspired by news, events and happenings. A view of the world through a marketers lens, drawing branding lessons from everyday occurrences and observations.
In the Line Of Fire: Dealing with Adversity
They say that adversity is the true test of character. It is a fact that everyone be it individuals, communities, countries, teams, businesses at some point or the other shall face times that are tough. We as marketers have always looked for examples in war, sports, celluloid, politics, simply put life for understanding and propounding theories with regard to brands and their behaviour.In the tough times do emerge interesting characters who deal (or don’t deal) with adversity in their own unique way and more often than not brands that we use, buy and deal with fall into one of these. For the purpose of this post I have chosen to label these characters and shall explain the traits of each citing examples from politics, sport, film etc. as applicable.
The Crusaders: These are people/brands that believe and live for a larger cause and continue to do so even in the times of adversity. Regardless of the tide being in their favour or against the cause remains front and centre to everything including their response. The focus on the larger good often may even come at a high price but are well worth the sacrifice. There are two examples that instantly strike my mind one from the world of business, the other from politics. In both these cases there was a higher price to pay and the brands/people in question did pay.
Case 1: Nokia Battery Recall
An isolated incident of a battery exploding became a PR nightmare for brand Nokia, rumour mills working overtime did not help the cause either. The brands response however did not go through the traditional cycle (at least to the outside world) of denial, acceptance, risk assessment and corrective action. The brand behaved in an extremely responsible manner. The risk, probability and reasons were explained to the consumer, a robust mechanism was first put into place and the brand then recalled the batteries in question. Not only did the brand gain consumer confidence it shot up to the #1 position in the Most Trusted Brands survey in the same year!
Case 2: AAP
The jury is still out on this one. The Aam Aadmi Party almost swept the Delhi assembly polls nudging out a formidable Bhartiya Janata Party to form the government in Delhi. The party under severe pressure to deliver on its tall promises in its blink and you miss stint resigned from power on their rai·son d’être; their version of the Jan Lokpal Bill.
The Fighters: The label is self-explanatory. These are brands or individuals that bring about changes in themselves, work-out hard and train to come back better and stronger. They are extremely competitive in their fabric and hate losing to anyone or anything. They always believe that their best shot is the next one. What shouldn’t be undermined here is the emotion is complemented in full measure by blood, sweat and toil. Here are examples of 3 individuals to build my argument.
Case 1: Rocky Balboa
Yes its clichéd and has been over-used but the success of the Rocky franchise over twenty years, if nothing else has taught us one lesson; a fall, a failure, a defeat is not the end, it is the beginning of your climb back to the top. We love it when our heroes have their backs against the wall. We love it when they scratch for every inch and fight with every ounce of strength in their bodies. Somewhere perhaps we all identify with failure and success has always been aspirational. Here is a brand that ruled got written off, yet came out a winner!
Case 2: Yuvraj Singh
It purely is a question of individual assessment, but then blogs are just that aren’t they? Here is a guy who was perhaps at the peak of his prowess. The quintessential watch out for this guy from the start he delivered big time and was the hero of India’s 2011 ICC World Cup triumph. Then followed the fight with cancer and his amazing return to health and fitness in the span of a year. His performance have been debated and arguably have been patchy and nowhere near his best. As much as we love making heroes we seem to love pulling them down even more. Yuvraj as I write this piece has his back to the ropes and carries the burden of India’s loss in the ICC World Cup T20 finals. A 100 bucks say that the story ain’t over.
Case 3: Steve Jobs
This I use as an example from the world of business. A man who was kicked out from the very company he founded. Did his time and came back with a bang! The brand Steve Jobs was as much about not giving up as it was about innovation. Whether in life dealing with his ill-health or in business the approach and resolve remained consistent.
All the of the above had perseverance and preparation in common apart from a come-back.
The Rabble-rousers: These are the wise guys the smart Alec’s or the sly foxes of the world. Their method of dealing with trouble is to create diversions or smoke-screens. They are also the brands/people that pick, point to and amplify flaws in their competition when themselves in trouble. Yes as much as we would like to disbelieve the Dirty Tricks Department does exist and the if I am bad he’s badder game has been played in sports, politics and business alike. To avoid controversy I will not cite examples or names but would point out to a two political outfits in a prosperous western state of India. They are by no means the only examples of fighting adversity with diversion.
The Faders: These are the kind that never stood up and fought. For reasons best known to them they never responded to the situation or put up a fight. They laid down their weapons and turned their backs to the situation.
Case: Dr. Manmohan Singh
Hailed as the father of India’s liberalization and economic surge the Prime Minister of India has been under the pump for close to two years and there seems to be no end in sight. The media and opposition alike have accused him of everything including being weak, inactive, indecisive etc. For a brand that he once was his “history will judge me kindly” press conference was a sad sight to watch.
The Deservers: These are the brands/people that deserved what they got. They eroded and abused one of the core components of a brand Trust. Their vehement denial of any wrongdoing and desire to retain the high pedestal dragged them into infamy, deservedly so.
Case 1: Lance Armstrong
Individuals and businesses alike would have taken inspiration from Lance Armstrong. However, the web of deceit that he spun left a bitter taste in the mouths of everyone who believed his incredible tale of will over all else! The collateral damage was the loss of reputation for the Lance Armstrong Foundation that did genuine good work for and on behalf of cancer patients. Today it exists under the name of LiveStrong and a stigma.
Are these characters exhaustive, are there more? The author believes that the characters though not exhaustive are definitive of what one gets to see.
To close I would like to draw attention to an article titled “The Inevitability of Fires” by Shekhar Swamy of RK Swamy BBDO fame in the book Brands Under Fire.
In his article Swamy talks about how crises are inevitable and on the importance of TRUST and TRUST Balance, relevant excerpts as below.
It is a truism that any crisis can confront any brand or company at any time. It’s not a question of whether any crisis will occur in a brand’s life. It is only a question of when.
At the core of all successful brands lies that big T word-TRUST. When that trust is violated, the reaction is one of hurt and suspicion that can easily turn to anger and rejection.
The only way to be ready for any crisis is to continuously build and hold a vast credit balance of TRUST vis-à-vis the consumer. Indeed this is true in any relationship. As long as there is a credit balance, one can draw on this in times of crisis.
The Crusaders and Fighters make credits on account of their actions into their TRUST Balance, the Rabble-Rouser perhaps manages to get away with neither a credit nor a debit, the Faders loose credit significantly and the Deservers are the ones who go bankrupt!
Lost In Translation: Do Unrelated Brand Extensions Erode Brand Value In The Long Term?
Its election time in India. Starting April 07, the world’s biggest democracy shall go in for a marathon round of voting that would be spread over a month. The election jamboree has several contestants and in the fray are people from different walks of life. The noteworthy ones though are the contestants who have been in the public consciousness but for totally different reasons. If celebrities be considered individuals who are brands that they are courtesy their achievements/fame in their original profession. Their foray into politics therefore, is akin to a brand extension.Now as marketers we are familiar with extensions and have seen many such examples. It is the author’s humble opinion that brand extensions into un-related categories are detrimental to the brand. Now I do not have empirical evidence to back this but more often than not, the brand attributes that made the brand successful in its space would not resonate with consumers in an un-related space. Yes there have been brave attempts at looking at a core set of values and carrying forward those elements that are relevant to the spaces related or otherwise that the brand is being carried into.
Since there is a constant back and forth amongst marketers regarding brands as people and people as brands (also the starting point of the current discussion), it would only be fair to look at things through Kapferer’s Brand Identity Prism
Just to refresh the model suggests that there are six facets to brand identity. As with individuals there is what gets projected and communicated and there is what gets received and understood.
- Physique: The brand in Its physical/tangible form eg. colour, packaging, product form etc.
- Personality: How the brand projects itself. Fun, young etc.
- Culture: A set of values that feed the brand.
- Relationship: the brand has with its consumers or stakeholders i.e. aspirational, inspiring, motivating, ostentatious etc
- Reflection: An image a brand creates regarding who its typical user would be. Example Blackberry with QWERTY phones for executives.
- Self-image: What the brand does to its consumer’s image of self. For example, ladies hand bags from fashion brands perhaps project “I can afford it” for a bulk of their consumers.
Coming back, the contestants in this election range from the “have-beens” to the “could not have beens”. Movie stars, sports persons and business icons they are all there. If one were to critically assess any one of them with respect to the brand that they have built in terms of elements 2 through 6 listed above with the assumption that physique is something they cannot easily change, most would find diminished relevance of their established identity in the new space.
Yes there have people who have translated their success in one field into success in another but the examples are few and far between.
I will defend my case with two examples one a business brand that made an extension into an unrelated field, another an individual. Both brands that attained dizzying heights forayed into an unrelated spaces and ended up eroding if not decimating brand value in the final analysis.
Exhibit#1 The individual: Amitabh Bachchan arguably India’s biggest movie star and an icon for millions of Indians across generations. The Big B as he is popularly referred to made according to him one of the biggest mistakes in life when he chose to enter politics. A super-star he contested elections from Allahabad, UP, India and dislodged a stalwart. What followed were years of turmoil as he got embroiled in allegations of corruption that tarnished his image. It took Amitabh Bachchan the brand over a decade to rise from the ashes, a deed that not all can perform.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jj7z7rt_9E
Exhibit#2 Kingfisher: Originally a beer brand it was extended to an airlines. The brand attempted to translate “the good times” value to the service industry. From offering a low-fares to the concept of premium economy the brand threw everything including the kitchen sink at the customers. Perhaps one of the better executed transitions only from a process standpoint. The change in logo from a perched Kingfisher to a flying one, the launch and the initial follow through were commendable. However, the ambitions were all consuming. The brand and the business were unable to reduce the revenues vs expenses gap and finally the airline operations that commenced sometime in 2004-05 came to a grinding halt in 2012-13. There is sure to have been damage of the episode on Kingfisher the beer brand, pretty sure some enthusiasts would be out there collecting the before and after data for Kingfisher.
The Sound of Music: KaChing!!
Rare would be the people who’d say they dislike music. That being said how many of this majority that loves music would be willing to make an “effort” either monetary or physical to acquire music. We have been living in the age of digital music for almost a generation now. The era of vinyl discs (gramophones), audio cassettes and compact discs is long gone. With that has also gone the tangible aspect of music. Piracy has afflicted music industry for a while now. Somehow when it comes to copying, sharing and transferring music it is not a question of scruples. There were days we’d get the music dubbed from one cassette to the other today we just transfer it from one memory stick to the other. One of the leading record labels in India started off distributing pirated content and illegal covers. The readers of this post may belong to different generations but almost all would be guilty of acquiring music in, to mildly put it, not a legal way. For most of us therefore music is “Free”. Chris Anderson in his book by the same name goes on to define and describe various kinds of free. Piracy he says is an imposed form of free.With this as a background, creating a music service and offering it to consumers is rather a brave effort especially in a country like India where ahem…scruples are a non-issue. So have brands not made the effort to monetize music? Sure they have, snack sized music in terms of ringtones and CRBT (Call Ring Back Tunes) which has metamorphosed into a multi-crore industry. What about pure play music then? Yes there have been brands that have carried the torch for that as well. With that have emerged different business models for monetizing music as a service. The Apple iTunes store did not launch in India perhaps for these very reasons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urfAKVjqn4I
Nokia altered its concept and delivery of music radically when it launched its music store and comes with music. There was an evolution in the way “free” music was delivered. Initially, select devices that were positioned as music devices started coming pre-loaded generic content, then exclusive content etc. Eventually, the devices came with buffet style free unlimited music from the store. The model was simple the brand paid and built it into the price of the tangible product i.e. the mobile phone. The consumer was happy since they technically weren’t paying for the music and all you can eat was the smokescreen. Of course charges for data were applicable, which meant data packs therefore a win-win for both the device manufacturers and the telecom service providers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPKp4gIy8Yc
Then again there was the desi jugaad that had emerged with the proliferation of SD card enabled mobile phones. Retail stores would sell memory cards and a service that was inbuilt was loading of content music, porn etc. In this model though no one paid for the content, except perhaps the consumer when he desired to refresh the content.
Over the past seven to eight years though the landscape has changed as far as the devices and the telecom services are concerned. There are new players and new leaders today. Music however has continued to rule roost as far as showcased services are concerned. Yes today in India music much like the west also has a visual connotation. Bollywood has seized the opportunity that exists in mobile music rights are sold specifically and separately for mobile today. Airplays on radio and television are invariably accompanied by short-codes for ringtones and CRBT.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urHlRHg8CE0
So if people are actually making money out of it and the consumer seems to think it’s free then some good has come out of it.
Truth is the concept of value is changing, money is not the single determinant of value anymore. Record sales might not be the indicator of success today but YouTube views, ringtone downloads and store downloads sure are.
To close a modification on the law of conservation of energy but with a simple twist based on the TANSTAFL (There ain’t no such thing as free lunch) concept. At the end of the day I am an Engineer with a Marketing degree!
“Value can be created but not destroyed, it can only be transformed from one form to another.”
Whose line is it anyway? Are taglines the changing face of brands?
Taglines have been around for as long as brands have been, forever! Just like brands there are all kinds of taglines good ones, bad ones and also the what are they trying to says. They have and shall continue to form a part of Brand quizzes the world over. Brand taglines when and where use are an integral part of the brand identity and more often than not define the brand character.There are brands that have stuck to the same line over years of their existence while some have had their taglines evolve. No wrongs or rights here. Just knowing what works for you best. Wait a minute! Did I just say what works for you? Damn right I did. That is precisely the trip most brand heads are on! Often we forget that as brands establish themselves the consumers become stakeholders, at the end of the day aren’t they the ones giving the equity?
Not so long ago, at one of the organisations I worked with, we were on the hunt for a new creative agency. So started my journey of identifying, short-listing and inviting agencies to pitch for our creative account. The invite was as is the custom accompanied by a brief. A week or more of clarification and discussions happened for the agencies to build their understanding and appreciate the brief. Without exception each of the six agencies that had confirmed participation asked us the same question.
“How amenable are you to changing the tag line?”
The tag line was to all of them and rightly so, the articulation of the brand intent/philosophy. Coming back, our response was of course “Open to discussion for the purpose of the pitch.” We had given the agencies the part that they loved best, a license for a creative tangent.
When they came back all of them, basis the homework they had done gave us their understanding of our understanding, the understanding of our customers and consumers and finally a prescription for where the brand should head. Different yet interesting perspectives all.
Point is, here were a set of people who were actually seeking to receive the messages that we were sending out into space and this was their interpretation of what we were trying to say. Imagine the number of interpretations that would exist in the real world where people are not seeking you out.
How many actually register these one, two or probably five words that we as brand creators and custodians plaster all over the place with our other identity marks? Assuming they are registering it, how unambiguous is our articulation?
Wordsmiths and brand creators within the organisation and the agencies perhaps spend hours and days crafting those magic words to perfection. These words that form the tag line are the brands way of telling the world at large either or all of these things, obviously just an indicative list
- What is our philosophy
- What we are
- What we do
- How we like to do things
- What do we want you to feel
- Where are we headed etc.
We also put frameworks in place with regard to the context, conditions and placement of the tagline on our communication and signage. One other thing that we should as brand custodians review is how often those very words are used as filter for our everyday actions and communication.
For example, what really is Nike’s interpretation of “Just do it” how do they live and execute it in their organisation. Most probably there is a thought through answer for this. However, who really is ensuring or checking to see whether that is the understanding of every employee or bulk of the consumers? Does it matter and if yes, what steps are taken to improve the understanding?
There are brands that use their tagline to communicate their journey or evolution. Thus changing it along the way. Moving it a step closer or a notch higher in terms of its relevance to its consumers. Some even move from the rational to the emotional space during the course of their journey.
For example Domino’s Pizza in India started off with their process and capability based “Nobody delivers better” to “Hungry Kya” trying to own food as a category on to “Khushiyon ki Home delivery” to its present tagline “Yeh hai rishton ka time”. Four taglines in a little under twenty years of history in India.
Another example would be that of Lenovo that went from the more cerebral “New World, New Thinking” to “For Those Who Do”.
There is also an increasing incidence of a local articulation of the global thought. Taglines that used to be sacrosanct and uniform across the globe some years ago now come in a local flavour almost like campaign lines. This perhaps is not just true for taglines alone, some brands are allow multiple versions of their logo to co-exist, transition is not really that high on the agenda.
Some brands like Nokia on the other hand have pretty much dropped their tagline “Connecting People” from its pride of place just below the name for regular use, bringing it out only on occasion.
The rules of the game, perhaps the game itself is changing. Brand identities of today exist in multiple spaces and forms. The role of the tagline just might be changing from registering impact to grabbing attention!
Bringing me to the starting premise what is the line for anyway? For you (the consumer) to understand me or for me (the brand) to tell you what I want to. Is there really any purpose the taglines serve or is it just a ball of wool thrown at the curious cats in the business schools to discuss, debate and write about.
Fellow marketers your opinions please.
Sleeping with the Enemy: When Partners Kill Your Brand Experience
This is an observation that stems from a personal experience, you could consider it a rant if you please.I had accumulated quite a few reward points on my credit card. I am the type of customer the credit card industry would call a deadbeat. With our anniversary and wifey’s birthday falling in the same week, I decided to use some of these points and order something nice.
I set off on my journey through the credit card provider’s website hoping to come across a catalogue from which I could choose and order. I discovered soon enough that things have changed on the rewards program side of the credit card industry too. I did mention I have “accumulated” these points over time. The last I had ordered was exactly like I mentioned, a catalogue of items from which you simply picked up stuff and ordered.
The newly organized (at least for me) rewards program offered dozens of vouchers that you could procure and subsequently shop with. For lazy folk such as yours truly (I am sure the women folk out there would have labelled me that the moment I said I wanted to get something for my anniversary and wife’s birthday from a reward point catalogue!) going to malls and shopping is not a preferred option.
The other option of course was to do online shopping using the reward points accumulated. This could be done at a “partner online site” which I did. I picked a couple of items and checked out having paid with my reward points. I promptly received an email promising delivery within 10 days. Reasonable I thought since I had 12 days to go for the anniversary.
All leader sites at least the ones that I have shopped with progress your order through various stages from receipt to order being placed to vendor to staging to shipping and ultimately deliver. What’s more they send e-mails and SMS informing you of progress.
None of that happened in this case. Anxious whether the gift would indeed reach in time for the birthday if not the anniversary I placed a call to the customer care who had no new information to offer save the standard “Your order is being processed Sir”. I specifically asked whether they’d able to ship at all and was willing to change my order to some other product that could be. Assurances were given and accepted. Cutting to the chase, despite repeated calls to the customer care centre, emails and tweets no information was shared and one fine day after 30 days of placing the order I got a quiet message on twitter saying they couldn’t execute my order.
The tale of woe doesn’t end, now I am forced to utilize the considerable amount of money again with the same online shopping portal, since they (as stated) do not have a process to refund cash against the points nor can they reverse/re-instate my points to the credit card provider.
Phew!
Now for the brand angle. Here’s a service provider who is supposedly treating me “nice” by rewarding my use of their service. By logical extension of the premise the reward experience is owned by the primary brand which is the credit card provider. The role of executing/making tangible the reward experience is performed by the secondary brand i.e. the online shopping site. Since the primary brand has pre-chosen with whom I get to shop, the responsibility of the experience is theirs.
A bad service rendered by the secondary brand as is a reflection on the primary brand. This is no different from the normal course where brands chose partners for delivering their services either through retailers, franchisees etc. The brand is responsible.
Outsourcing is good but brands, more importantly the people running them should be aware that outsourcing a process does not transfer the accountability of the process. Regardless of which part of the operations the outsourced process lies in there is no absolution!
A brand that does not or cannot provide top notch products and services to its direct consumers will invariably falter, more so with indirect consumers/customers. Therefore killing your brand!
A simple mantra so that you don’t end up sleeping with your enemy is being accountable. NO ESCAPE!
Need: Before entering into partnerships, one must be absolutely certain that the service or component of your service that is being outsourced to a partner brand is not a core capability. The value add of another brand is significantly higher than what you could achieve alone.
Objective: It is necessary to have a clear idea of what we are going to achieve by virtue of entering such a partnership. Common sense? Yes. Do we all think this through? Doubtful.
Evaluate: The worst mistake one can make is hop on to the first train that comes in. Age old wisdom requires us to compare the offering and relative strengths of the suitors. Again something that tends to be overlooked.
Select: We tend to go for the familiar. Give the job to someone who already works with us. They are looking to expand, have some competence and a great relationship already exists so why not continue it. Strategic partnering is about the strategy and not the partnering per se. The basis of selection should be basis congruence and competence only. Relationship at best can have a weight but cannot be the guiding factor.
Communicate expectations: We know what we need, what we need to achieve. Now communicating it in a clear, unambiguous and unequivocal manner is necessary.
Agreed deliverables: It is important for the partner to see it from your perspective. Agreement should be the outcome of having shared and communicated rather than just a contractual obligation.
Processes: Having done all the hard work, processes and their metrics should be defined and measured. As they say you cannot analyse what you don’t measure.
Evaluate periodically: Corollary to the above you cannot improve unless you have analysed.
The above is applicable regardless of you choosing a vendor, an agency or a strategic partner. Better safe than sorry!
Another Brick in the Wall: The Branding of Education
There have been brands and then there have been BRANDS. There are those about which books are written, around which theories are propounded and then there are those that people just desire. The brands that are meant for few. Their very distance is what increases their appeal. The harder to own the more desirable they are.These brands span industries and product/service categories. From diamond to a perfume, clothing to cars categories have a brand that is to die for. What all of them bring with them is a pride of association.
The business of education is no different. There are universities, colleges and schools that are brands. We must have, as students, parents, employees, entrepreneurs, friends we have always looked up to, been in awe of, given better treatment to people because of their alma mater.
If you step back, these are brands that have been built on performance. Over time as more and more alumnus of these institutions succeed the higher they climb. The other parameter also has been how easy or difficult it has been to become a part of these brands. More than any other thing the respect for these institutions emerges from the knowledge that only the capable are deemed deserving. This perhaps is the fundamental premise on which the promise of delivery rests.
A recent conversation with friends over dinner brought to the fore how the parameters of assessment have changed. The reference of course was to schools in and around the capital city. If you are a parent trying to get your child admitted into school or have undergone the process (read trauma) in recent years you will have your strong views about it too.
The opposing arguments in the debate rested on performance on one side and promise on the other. Now perceptions can be founded on either. This is where branding comes in I suppose.
There have and will always be top ten lists and rankings based pretty much anything ranging hearsay to actual surveys. We may choose to use or trash them but sure as the sun shines we seldom ignore them. Unfortunately, in the Google age they are the chosen method of settling an argument.
Several “world” schools and “international” schools have come up in and around Delhi in the past 10 years or so. There are quite a few that get counted amongst the finest and the best. Brands in their own right. Brands that are desired. Brands that signal the formation of a new order.
The founding pillars of these brands (institutions) are not past performance. Truth be spoken they have hardly been around long enough to establish a track record or to claim their share in the greatness of the alumni. Yet they are desired. What then is the formula for their success?
A professor once told me this and it stuck. Brands can be made desirable or aspirational by pressing any or all these levers that drive brand perception.
Product: Brands that become aspirational not on their steam but the virtue of the product itself. Example brands producing diamond jewelry.
Process: Brands that create products or services with the help of a unique ingredient or exclusive process. The “Nobody does it the way we do” promise. Example The Rolls Royce, A Breitling watch, Häagen-Dazs ice-cream.
Performance: Brands that deliver in the superlative space putting them at the top of the heap because not many can match the performance. The first, the fastest, the widest, the best…in short superlative. Example super luxury automobiles
Premium: Well it’s not just the price that we are talking of here it is anything extra even the wait. Typically it is an associated P and a brand that has any of the P’s mentioned above as its rai·son d’être would automatically attract a premium. However, there have been examples of brands that have relied on a premium alone to drive the perception of superior quality. The service industry has a few examples in restaurants and spas that rely on pricing themselves high to drive the perception of exclusivity.
Question is as the new world schools lay their brickwork which one of the 4P’s is driving their desirability? For now though, it doesn’t seem to be performance.
As Einstein said Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
Building Brands Brick by Brick…Literally!
I was tuned into one of the local FM stations in Delhi as I was driving this morning and I encountered a virtual traffic jam. I changed at least three FM stations trying to catch a song and ran into the radio spots of popular developers in the Delhi NCR. Which is what set me thinking.We (at least those of us living in the top eight metros) are surrounded today by communication/messages from Real Estate as an industry. Be it television, print, radio, digital or outdoor they are everywhere. According to a recent report 22% of the AdEx comes the real estate industry Given that the you and me of the world are their TG and we seem to be getting exposed to all this communication someone somewhere must be doing their job right. Or is it?
What really is getting communicated to me is that there are lots of choices if I really were to buy property in and around Delhi. The choices indeed span taste and size of pocket. Which at most basis the textbook stages of building brand equity would fall in the awareness category. Push comes to shove, one might even be able to mention the names of a few builders (some brand managers would feel happy ticking of their ToM targets) hence there is some amount of brand recognition that the communication is delivering. Now comes the tricky part. The part that deals with creating a preference for the brand and then extending it into loyalty. Textbook!
Luxury The question in my mind though is whether this cookie-cutter approach works for brands in the real estate space? What really goes into building a brand in the real estate space? What role does the brand have to play in the process/decision of purchase?
For the sake of this discussion we shall look at those who set out to buy with the intention of inhabiting it or at best are looking for a secure investment. For the middle class, buying a house is not a simple decision. Unlike most other purchase decisions brands are not competing with other brands. They are competing with the process of purchase itself. If we were to take a look at what is competition for the brands whilst vying for consumer attention, the list would be long and for anyone who has gone through it, tiring. Starting from the point of realization i.e. “Yes! I/we need to buy a house” through the journey of information seeking, comparison, evaluation etc. the brand of the product which in this case is the house comes in very late into the equation. After going through the usual Where, What, When, How Big, How Much, What else do I get rigmarole the brand often is incidental.
So is there no point building brands in real estate? No, that is neither the import nor the message. The point is brand managers and agencies involved do not seem to be creating communication that is built on a complete understanding of the role of the brand. Most communication is dimensioned on price or the location or the amenities provided etc.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3dzbW35_cM]
Brands in the real estate are in my opinion, built on one of the fundamental gauges of brand strength, trust. Here is a category where the past performance and future promise hold equal importance. The future is aspiration while the past is assurance. Every project that is completed is living testimony to how the brand fared on its time, cost and quality commitments. Every brick that gets laid is literally building the brand. Some of the better brands do talk about this but it usually is a passing mention and easy to miss.
For a sector that is the 2nd highest spender on media/advertising there was not a single real estate brand in the Top 100 of the Brand Equity Most Trusted Brands in India. In fact basis another report the first real estate brand appears at 516 in a list of Top 1200 brands! Of the ones that do appear, not all are into housing.
It is in building and communicating trust that real estate brands need to invest. Basis evidence they sure have a long way to go. Or should I say several floors to the top!
Indian Pigheaded League: When Brands become Stubborn
As I write this post, the IPL 7 auctions are underway. The PR machinery of the franchise is working overtime to get people enthused and excited. From conversations around which player in which franchise to new kids on the block the twitter universe is abuzz.There is no denying the fact that IPL perhaps has been one of the most popular leagues anywhere in the world. Cricketers of all cricket playing nations with or without test status would give an arm and leg to feature in the league and earn themselves a contract. A lot has been written about how the younger lot of cricketers yearn a chance to play the IPL over donning the national cap!
Someone once said that any publicity is good publicity. Brand IPL seems to live, breathe and propagate this credo. Seldom has a brand been so synonymous with controversies. One might opine that controversy is a design element of the product that IPL is.
What is surprising is that even aspersions on the quality of the core product viz T20 cricket have not come in the way. From match fixing to betting, physical assaults to sexual assaults the IPL seasons have witnessed a range of controversies.
Slapgate 
The Brawl 
Molestation 
Corruption 
Spot Fixing 
The Inquiry Good or bad, right or wrong. Let’s face it IPL is a commercial enterprise. A vehicle for other brands to be seen and heard. The designed for Television IPL has seen a declining trend over the past 6 seasons as far its TV ratings are concerned, they are none the less significant. The season six had almost Rs.800Crs riding on it as advertising revenues. That seems to be brand IPL’s reason for chugging along as well. It is for all practical purposes the Super Bowl equivalent of India. Brands plan for their IPL related spends and campaigns much in advance. Those who are not associated or cannot afford the IPL keep their plans ready for reaching consumers outside of the IPL juggernaut during the 45 day spectacle.
A recent report put IPLs brand value in excess of $3Bn with a combined brand valuation of the franchises at over $400Mn. With the depleting central pool and the allied sponsorship/merchandising revenues, the question mark over the franchisees making money however continues. The brand valuations of the individual franchises seems to be the redeeming factor for the investors at the moment.
IPL 6 despite the fixing controversy still beamed into a whopping 129Mn households in India. Might perhaps is right. The might of brand IPL seems to be in its popularity or the numbers. Maybe Indians are so used to the typical masala pot-boiler entertainment format that they have made an allowance for all the negatives in the IPL format.
The question that is begging to be asked is whether brands can truly benefit from an association with a “property” that is so mired in the long run? Is there such a thing as a negative rub-off? After all, media planners and agencies do sell the positive rub-off from an association with integrated properties. Does the end really justify the means?
I guess the Indian consumer is an innocent forgiving lot. More often than not, they judge you for who you are and not who you are seen or associated with. That’s our culture perhaps, our mythology treats a Karna and Vibhishana with respect despite their association with evil.
We are accepting of the multiple shades of grey.
Meanwhile, IPL the brand and the brands that ride on it march on stubbornly into Season 7.
The Sixth Sense: Appealing to Consumers with Mobile Advertising
Marketers of today have to contend with a media consumption pattern that is very different say from even 5 years ago. Where the proverbial push comes to shove, India was always expected to leap-frog technology generations.For example not conforming to the traditional diffusion of innovation cycles India aborted its pager journey and quickly jumped onto the mobile phone bandwagon.
And what a ride it has been! Almost 19 years since the first mobile call in India was made possible, India has a mobile subscriber base just shy of 900Mn and almost 176Mn subscribers accessing internet through their mobile devices and 15Mn broadband subscribers. If the service providers play their cards right and the powers that control don’t get greedy the data revolution beckons!
Just for perspective, even the current number of mobile subscribers in India is 3 times the population of the United States, there are only six countries in the world that have a population in excess of 176Mn (the reported number accessing internet through a mobile device) and finally there are 175 countries that have a population less than the broadband subscriber base in India. Having posted phenomenal growth rates as a category the recent explosion has been in the smartphone space. In the last two years alone, smartphone shipments have grown by over 225%, an estimated 12Mn smartphones shipping every quarter in India during the past 2 quarters.
Point is, numbers in an Indian context have been and are always going to be there for taking. It’s a whole different question if we start peeling the onion layers and start getting down to the real stuff which is engagement levels.
The focus on ROMI or the Return on Marketing Investment has never been higher. With marketing budgets in absolute terms pointing south for most brands a multiple X return is the constant lookout of most marketing planners. Couple that with amount of measurability digital media affords, the growth in internet consumption using mobile devices and we can start to understand demand-supply dynamics.
Digital marketing brought in new paradigms and marketers such as us started living with the so called new rules of communicating with our customers. Mobile marketing has been a close follower of its cousin and is invariably clubbed with and is a sub-set of the “Digital strategy” of brands.
The concern that I would like to put forward is that we somehow seem to be applying same or similar framework to mobile as that of traditional internet marketing. And why should we be not? One could argue since numerous reports tell us consumers are doing the same things on mobile internet as the traditional desktop/notebook internet.
So why mobile advertising should be treated differently?
Communication sent out by brands has to appeal to the consumers senses for it to register. The mobile today is an extension of the consumers self almost an appendage. It is the consumer’s sixth sense! It connects the person to whatever is relevant at a given point in time, more importantly in space! Augmented Reality or AR as most of us have started to refer to it has been around for a while. Sadly though, marketers are yet to figure out its best use.
Keeping the above in mind, while building their mobile advertising plans brands should perhaps go back to the very basics of planning communication figuring out the Who, When and What.
Who to speak to. The quintessential Target Audience definition now with pin point precision
When to speak to them. Approach with an understanding of what they would be or have been doing. Which marketer has not built/studied a day in the life of the target consumer?
The additional dimension that mobiles have brought about is where. Brands therefore need to weave in the where into the context of the communication. Fortunately technology affords us this luxury.
With mobile advertising Time & Space are to my mind, an imperative.
Example, an 18 year old urban female mobile phone user who is a frequent YouTube or an Internet Radio user would be subjected to a certain kind of advertising because there are a certain set of brands that want to target her. Now, say if a cosmetic brand had to say different things to at different points during the course of the day they technically could and some brands are. It is common place to super-serve a certain segment and the wasted communication on rest of the audience is considered acceptable collateral damage.
Where is an extension of the logic and potentially an opportunity to give different messages. The same cosmetic brand could communicate differently depending upon whether this 18 year old girl was commuting, in her college canteen or sitting in a café in a mall? Time and space!
In the digital space brands are striving for engagement more than anything. So while we may still be buying and selling in CPM, CPC and CPV terms and busy calculating our ROMI basis the conversion rates. What is going to really bring in results is the quality of engagement that brands have with their TG.
Engagement is a function of opportunity & dispensation and the “where” has a significant impact on dispensation.
Brands, creative agencies, digital agencies, media agencies….anyone listening!
ALIENS: The Destruction of Brand Delhi (and India)
The past decade has witnessed a surge in the social networking space from a digital perspective. The by-product of this from a marketing perspective has been the renewed interest of brands in building communities. There have been brands that have been at it even before the dawn of the digital era. All of us as marketers have read and discussed about how brands stand on communities and not campaigns.This post though, attempts to look at the flip side. How communities through their actions build (or in some cases destroy) brands. In a hyper-connected world every and any incident has the potential to trigger a mass reaction. Malcom Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point has given several examples of how seemingly disparate events can be cinders that light up and cause a wildfire!
Delhi, the capital city of India has been at the centre media attention for a while now. As a city and as a brand Delhi has always been a city that evokes reactions that are on the extremes. At this very moment however, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) of Delhi would perhaps be very low.
Just under 7% of the GDP of India comes from tourism. The 12th Five Year Plan (FY2012-17) puts its bets on Tourism as a sector that can deliver above the national average growth of between 10-12% whilst creating 5.5 to 6.7Mn jobs from the impetus that it can give to allied sectors. Traditionally, the so called focus on tourism has meant multi-million rupee campaigns by State Tourism departments and crass commercialization has ensued around the “destinations”. The bare necessities such as infrastructure and hugely warranted “social conditioning” have at best been given lip-service.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVP23HJJKGs]
Delhi has been touted as the Soul & Spirit and the Gateway to India. A city where the ancient and the modern blend seamlessly.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frcJTfOHcpU&list=PLiml7Nodn9kqM5_rG_tXpv6onvGOdEUzi]
In the spotlight as far as this post is concerned are 3 recent incidents that I believe are pushing closer to the point of imminent disaster. These are incidents that depict how Delhi (Aam Aadmi and the Aam Aadmi Party) treats Tourists, Foreign Nationals and does not spare its own nationals from the other parts of the country! All of these certainly have had an impact on Brand Delhi and on Brand India. Let alone “Atithi Devo Bhav” we treat our guest worse than how Aliens get treated in cinema. Ranging from ridicule to suspicion, objectification to torture.
The Vigilante Incident 
The Tourist 
The Different Looking Guy If we have to serve our own interests as a community this is as good a wake-up call as any before we hit the tipping point. The onus therefore, is on us as a community and a society to build Brand Delhi or Brand India.
