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.
The WIN-SEE Code: Cracking Audiences with Laughter
Laughter they say is the best medicine. Certainly so, as far as the GEC space is concerned. Indian television over the years has invariably found success in its flirtations with comedy as a genre. Again with no specific research to back my claim would like to move forward on the basic premise that light-hearted (at times meaningless as well) comedy has a cut through across age and demographics.
From the Doordarshan days of Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi and Ulta Pulta or the Sajid Khans and Shekhar Sumans of the world as cable television started out or more recently, the stand-up comedy phenomenon. Comedy has delivered well in the fiction and non-fiction/reality formats.
The inaugural season of Comedy Nights with Kapil a weekend show launched mid-2013 on Colors (An Indian GEC part of Viacom) has been seeing phenomenal success.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuDOpQC3N2U&feature=c4-overview&list=UUyfkoMQeJOoEt3ZhY3PI6Uw]
Recently released numbers for Wk3 2014 indicate that the show rated at 11 TVM in terms of viewership. By all means a staggering achievement given the fact that India has approximately 145Mn households that have Cable & Satellite out of which this programming would appeal to households that speak and understand Hindi. Couple that with a following of just under 6Mn on Facebook and 14Mn page-views on YouTube and we are talking of a brand that would stand tall amongst the best!
So here’s my theory of what the underlying factors of this success are, the WIN-SEE code (if you indulge me)
· Witty: One of the key traits of the shows anchor is his earthy wit. Repartee is perhaps the best representation of the kind of humor that works in a family or a friend’s kind of an environment. The show is purported to have brought back television viewing as a family activity. The show is conversation currency.
· Irreverent: The content of the show is constantly pushing further the envelope with regard to its treatment of established institutions and norms. Even the audiences are not spared when it comes to comments on their profession, physical appearance etc.
· Naughty: Humour across the world has always been ridden with innuendos. The characters of the show are overtly flirtatious and suggestive. Strangely enough they have been able to get away and redefine what acceptable conversation in Indian households is. Perhaps, the over the top approach softens the crude content. Albeit the writers of the show thus far have been able to walk that fine line.
Star Quotient: Celebrities have invariably formed a part of successful shows. The difference in approach of this show has been that the host does not spare the guests. The show has given access to the witty, irreverent and naughty side of its guests, a clear differentiator. Celebs and ratings of course form a self-propagating virtuous cycle and the show’s success has made it the choice destination for PR.· Egalitarian: The show has no pretensions. The humor is basic bordering slap-stick. While the intellectuals get their high with the quick repartee and satire the masses are served a dollop of “nautanki” with men dressed as women, buffoonery etc. Every gets a fair dose of what they need and everyone is happy. The show cuts across ages as well. My yet to turn 2 year old who has just about started speaking knows the show and even its characters by name!
· Empathetically engaging: The basic construct of the show is the clichéd North Indian household. The lazy flirtatious male and his aspirations monetary and romantic. The oppressed wife, the bossy granny and the interfering aunt and irritating neighbours. There are constant references to the challenges of running a household such as inflation, corruption etc.
All of the above make it one neat entertainment package that has hit a home-run as far as the 4 R’s of media are concerned Relevance, Reach, Ratings and Revenues.Success they say is its own enemy and has begun to take its toll on the show with key characters deciding to chart their own course.
What remains to be seen is how effectively they crack the WIN-SEE code!
Jai Ho! Re-cycling Brand India
There’s something about nation and pride. You just need to light the spark and the forest fire will follow. There have been dozens of campaigns across the globe that have relied on stirring patriotism as an emotion. With no numbers to back me up at all I would venture out and say that Hollywood as an entity panders to it the most. I am pretty sure that I am not the only one who has wondered why a certain country is the choicest destination regardless of whether it’s an alien attack or a natural calamity. Just to set the context this is not a review of the Bollywood release either.Coming back, this post is more to talk about two specific campaigns. 2014 is the year of general elections in India. Media, paid and earned has been flush for little over a year with a government sponsored campaign. Bold, considering the fact that a similar campaign in 2004 allegedly alienated the larger populace from a government that according to the poll pundits was all set to comeback.
The campaigns in question “Bharat Uday” or the India Shining campaign as it was called and the current “Bharat Nirman”. There were several films that were made for both campaigns I am showcasing two that will help make my point.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voXU8f3ZUhc]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-x41Fubq-I]
Have lessons been learnt from the past? Well the answer is yes if you think about whether communication pegs have been changed. The earlier 2004 campaign was considered “urban/middle class” in its approach, the current one attempts to be more inclusive (the politically correct word for populist).
Any brand communication should have its bearing right as far as its relevance to the consumer and the competitive context are concerned. An ill-timed or ill-directed communication can do more damage than good that could possibly come out of a campaign.
Either way, millions of dollars get spent in conceiving, producing and airing these campaigns. Many would argue that it is money that could well be spent for several deserving causes. This brings me to the question that I want to ask as a marketer.
“Does show-casing the effect by default communicate the cause?”
This is where I believe the communication has not really shifted or changed. Both the campaigns tried to stake claim to the progress India was making as a nation. Both have tried to piggy ride Brand India.
Political brands need to be marketed akin to services and not as products. To put it at a very basic level, I could probably get away selling toothpaste showcasing shiny teeth but could I really sell a burger saying it shall rid you of hunger?
In a country where the have-nots outnumber the haves, wanting to use Brand India as a surrogate is always going to be a knife that cuts both ways.
It perhaps is not prudent to weave tales that showcase your neighbour’s prosperity. In this country it’s not my relative, it’s not my friend it’s about me. If I have not “experienced” it then it is not true. The mood and sentiment is best communicated by a song from a recent release.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UoEIPwPbm4]
So as much as you want to be seen as the “do-gooder” with every communication that you put out, there is perhaps a larger set that attributes their lack of progress to you.
Problem is in a democracy, majority continues to count!
Happy Republic Day!!
Wag the Dog: When Brands Become Victims of Their Own Image
Marketers spend their working lives creating, feeding and maintaining a Brand Image. Our products, our actions and our communication are constantly building the perception that we want our consumers and stakeholders to form.
A senior colleague of mine used to constantly say “Perception is Reality”. The perceptions we carefully cultivate and create the way the world sees us. Sometimes though we start seeing ourselves in the same way. We allow perception to become our reality. According to Edward de Bono studies show that 90% of the error in thinking is due to error in perception.
Shall take two recent examples to make my point. One that demonstrates how difficult it is to shake away the perceptions that you build and the other an example of how it consumes reality.
Case1: Tata Nano
A car that captured the minds of millions, alas that’s all that it did. It was a car several years into the making perhaps a couple of years too many. All the while that it was in the works, the communication that was being sent out was steadily building the perception that this would be the lowest cost car. The car even before its arrival was touted as a revolution that would change the way India commutes with a potential to expand the category by 65%. In a sense it was seen as a symbol of economic socialism (if there is such a term).
The car was launched in a style reminiscent of the India of the license-permit era and was overbooked a few times over. Somewhere, the product had got so trapped in the created image of being the lowest cost production that it stopped being a car. The very reasons that can be attributed to the huge build up in expectations could be assigned to the disappointment amongst the consumers. A car in India is much more than a mode of transport. It is the flag-bearer of family status and we are not talking “badge-value” here. Here was a car that was the lowest priced all right but was not what a “car” meant in India. Things like size, ability to seat a family comfortably, boot access & space etc. all came back to haunt Nano.
Ever since Nano, has been making attempts to shake-off the baggage. From being India’s key to happiness to being Awesome they have pushed the communication in a different direction. Its recent campaign #NanoTwist that intends to tout its size as a virtue. Will they be able to move the brand perception from “Low Cost” to “Stylish” Will the change revive the brand? We’ll find out as this fiscal ends.
From:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkiJVHgCrLo]
To:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icNABYGG5yQ]
Case2: AAP
I am writing this as a rejoinder to my first post AAP ka Brand: Tips for Sweeping Popularity. This one is more topical and perhaps a view brewing in many social circles. The political build-up in the national capital again begs to ask the question whether the recently successful political party has been able to transition from being an activist to an administrator. From being a poster boy the Delhi CM has become the trending joke on social media all within a span of 3 weeks.
One of the key pillars of the AAP the brand was activism. The protests and confrontations with authorities are the foundations of the success of AAP. Though AAP is the party at the helm of affairs in the state of Delhi, the activism and protests continue. Somewhere the theory seems to be what has worked in favour of the party thus shall continue to yield benefits.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd9AQeD9hxQ]
How accurate or flawed the theory is shall be reflected by Aam Aadmi Party’s ability to stay in office for the allotted term and later during this year their performance in the General Elections.
For the moment though, it seems to be a case of the tail wagging the dog.
The Thin Line
