AskHarishBijoor

Pop-up Stores and More!

2012-02-03T19:07:00.000-08:00

Heroes without Honda

By Harish Bijoor

Q: What is a pop-up store? And why the buzz about them?
-Kruthika Krishna, Vijayawada

A: Kruthika, a pop-up store is a store that pops up all of a sudden, fulfills its short-term purpose of creating awareness for the brand it represents, and then pops out of your life as quickly as it came as well.
The buzz is all about he fact that Pop-up stores work in the current clutter-market situation one witnesses. These pop-up stores are amoebic and have the ability to pop up and close down at will for short durations. In these short-durations they have a huge degree of quick viewership in terms of new eyeballs. They help in building a quick awareness on a new product and then they vanish. They move on to capture more eyeballs elsewhere. These in many ways are Caravan-stores that cover a large area in a shorter time.

These stores come up from nowhere and vanish fast. Permanent stores actually get boring as they become part of the mall they are located in and become part of the furniture around. Pop-up stores add zing to such a dead and static retail environment.

These stores work beautifully for a category that has a new product, a new piece of technology, or even a new model to showcase and demonstrate.

The joy of such stores is that it may not be restricted to a mall. Even a large Mom and Pop store ('kirana' store) can accommodate a pop-up store counter. In many ways, at the Mom and Pop stores, this is nothing too different from the space they used to let out on a weekly basis to products and services that wanted to demonstrate the product to new customers in the old days.
Q: What’s the status of the Direct Selling industry in India? We do see small little noises being made time and again, but nothing big at all.
-Som Mullick, Kolkata

A: Som, the noises are small, but the Direct Selling industry is fast emerging to be the choice-industry of the small town. Small-town markets are growing in terms of the aspiration to eat more brands and buy more brands. However, there is a loophole in terms of availability and the supply-chain that caters to the small town. Direct selling therefore becomes the one single answer.

Direct selling will grow exponentially in the small towns, just as it will shrink exponentially in the big 8 Metros. The industry is slated to grow briskly in two terrains: health and wellness and so also in the terrain of cosmetic care where the range available in small towns is not so vast as in the big cities. The Direct selling business offers dis-intermediation in the selling chain and offers the best of International products at the doorstep of the Indian in the small town.

As affordability, the yen to want to possess and use, and more importantly the craving increases for such products in small towns, the first answer will be offered by the Direct Selling industry. Bottlenecks however remain.

The biggest bottleneck is the non-use of credit cards in purchase, and the return-factor on the Cash-on-delivery scene in India. Returns of cash on delivery packages range at 30% levels as of today. And that is a disaster.

Q: Hero splits from Honda. What’s the impact “break ke baad”?

-Rohini Chadda, New Delhi

A: Rohini, a break is a break. From the consumer point of view, it is a break-up of a brand.

In many ways consumers equate the brand and its delivery capability to the fact that two mighty corporate organizations have gotten together to get a powerful motorcycle brand going. The user of this product still does believe that technology that comes in from outside India is superior to technology that is available in India. This rather strong viewpoint helps brands such as Hero Honda as the Japanese connection is its one big draw. There are really two bits of equity at play in this brand. The first is that of the Honda equity in terms of technology and durability on offer. The second piece of equity is the Hero equity. This is all about a local player who has a face that is Indian and a face that is recognized to be one that has wide reach and has the capability of offering good after-sales service.

The sum equity of the Hero Honda brand is therefore an amalgam of the Honda technology and durability marrying the domestic service and sales capability of Hero.

Just plain old Hero is really nothing but a bicycle maker of repute. Therefore the future option with Hero would be one where just plain Hero is just not enough. My view. So take that with a pinch of salt.

Q: I want to brand an educational institution of repute. How do I go about it? What do I avoid?
-Saleem A Kishti, Mumbai

A: Saleem-ji, education is a credible output. It is an inner-sanctum subject, very close to religion.

I have a theory that there are outer-sanctum products and Inner sanctum products. Outer sanctum products are things like food, clothing, shelter, accessories, telecom, etc.

Inner sanctum products are Medicare and education, to name just two.

The innermost sanctum product is religion.

One must take greater and greater care as one steps into more and more inner sanctum subjects. Branding needs to be sensitive, relevant, original and innovative. You can't brand it like you would brand toothpaste.

Some management Institutes however have tried to do that...much to the peril of their credibility ratings! And they have started looking like plain old toothpaste as well!

Q: When does mystery marketing work? When do teaser campaigns deliver? Any touchstone issues?

-Preiti Mullick, Raipur

A: Preiti, mystery marketing works in advertising environments where there is too much of clutter in terms of overt branding.

Therefore, the first ad that does not use its brand name, but leaves back small little clues of what it could be, and finally reveals it all, works.

Once a few have done this, the aura of such advertising and marketing ceases as well.

The point is simple, in a market when everyone is shouting the loudest, the one who is whispering the least is heard the most. Most mystery marketing campaigns aim for this.

The core big idea of such advertising is to tell it all later. Reveal the brand the last, rather than in the first few seconds, as most brands do.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Urban, rural and more....

2010-12-26T00:37:00.001-08:00

The Urban-Rural Chasm

By Harish Bijoor

Q: The urban-rural debate is a forever debate. Do you see this changing as we work towards Inclusive marketing as the basic ethos of all marketing?

-Raghu Y Reddy, Mumbai

A: Raghu, inclusive marketing is a far way dream as of now. Today is the day and age when exclusive marketing has hijacked all semblance of inclusiveness altogether.

Ever since independence, India has witnessed a creeping and crawling phase where masses of people have morphed from mindsets and consumption sets that were rural to mindsets, which are more aggressively urban. The marketer at large has been responsible for this. The movement that was a crawl became a literal gallop in the early and mid-eighties when Television knitted the nation as one, pumping urban imageries of the modern marketing man in India to rural audiences. Television and all the advertising it carried threw up and pushed down rural throats and stomachs and bladders the urban way of life. In more ways than one, India became an Instant urban society.

This I do believe is an un-doing. An un-doing that needs to be corrected. In many ways marketing is a hegemony in India. The urban-educated and privileged marketer markets to the rural person. Never mind that rural is three times bigger than urban. The imagery that consumers emote with in India today is the urban imagery.

Turn turtle this and emote with real India. Emote with the imagery that is rural. Put a program that is rural in your marketing mix. Go one step further and show your archetypical brand hero in your TV commercials to be the rural person. See what it does. I do believe India is ready to turn-turtle its marketing imagery. The BOP market will admire this. And will certainly reward this effort. With market share. And money. And more than that, consumer affection.

The road ahead for the Inclusive India agenda is an exciting one. Tread it with strategy. But start treading it for sure. The marketer as of today is just talking about it as of now. Nothing meaty to report from here.
Q: Do family controlled companies believe in brands at all? I ask this with a latent frustration in my heart. I work for one.
-Name withheld on request, Delhi

Dear NWOHR, Most family controlled brands in India have typically depended on family names, surnames, pre-fixes, suffixes and acronyms that represent the family in some way or the other. Therefore there has always been the Tatas, the Firodias, the Birlas, the Bajajs, the Murugappas and more.

In the beginning the family name was used as an identification device of origin. Therefore if a business was started by a Bajaj, so be it, the family name would stick. Later, as the days went by, and as these very quality oriented Indian businesses built up empires from scratch, these family names came to be viewed as reputations in themselves. To that extent, the brand is defined as a reputation as well. These family brand names created, nurtured, protected and consolidated upon those reputations. Therefore, in many ways family brands in India understood the value of a brand much before the science of brand management as postulated by the Gurus of the west came into India in a formal manner even.

Over a period of time, the effort of all these groups has been to dissociate the family moorings of the brand name and distance many of their enterprises from the narrow trap of family. However, it is pertinent to understand that despite very effort to make the consumer forget the moorings of family, these names evoke family and the values represented by these families in terms of manufacturing ethos, quality standards, reliability, trust and more.

Family controlled companies in India are certainly warming up to the idea of the brand. The brand is seen to be something enduring, durable and something that is perpetually adding value to the enterprise. There is therefore a big effort to carefully re-define what these brands stand for and deliver. Companies are putting energy and enthusiasm behind this effort. The brand name is no longer a cost-center side of business. It IS the profit center!

Make the family-controlled enterprise understand this, and you and your company are in for good surprises ahead.

Q: I am a jeweler in a buoyant market. What does one look forward to ahead?
- Jai Seth, Mumbai

A: Jai, these are good days and bad. Together. Good days as there is prosperity around. Prosperity is back and we are out of the clutch of the cautionary recession consumers had gotten into during the last two festive seasons. The bad news form the consumer end is that the commodity price of gold is up. Metals seem to be at a different level of pricing today. And consumers will be cautious.

A jeweler needs to keep the mood gung-ho. The need is for exciting design. The market is very fast morphing from a functional gold oriented market to a design oriented one. Our consumers are still weight-oriented, but the eye for design is become more broad-spectrum oriented. Western designs are being welcomed for the first time, albeit in heavier models. Gold is still 70 per cent investment and 30 per cent cosmetic in India. A design besotted marketing plan will work. Jewelers need to sort out the inherent issues of integrity and credibility as well. Weight and quality guarantees still work in the market and a Carat-meter led strategy will always work in this era of high gold prices!
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Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: askharishbijoor@gmail.com

On Water-wars, Cola-wars and Brand Logos

2010-06-05T21:15:00.000-07:00

The War of the Waters

By Harish Bijoor

Q: This summer I am missing the Cola wars on television. Why are these guys not fighting this year?
-JP Sinha, Delhi

A: Sinha-saab, I am missing it as well. The Cola wars are normally the fun part of summer. It is also that part of summer when the two Cola majors slug it out and spend a lot of money on television and more, much to the delight of everyone who benefits form such advertising, advertising agencies not excluded.
I think the Cola wars are always in the minds of consumers. Marketing companies that pack the colored, bottled, sugared fizzy waters have just exploited that need and want sentiment in the minds of consumers every summer.

Typically Colas are high-spend oriented brands. Since the very basic cost of the product is far far away from the end consumer price of what is on offer, and since Cola at large is a commodity of sorts as well with little differentiating between one and another, branding initiatives are focused upon with gusto. Add to it the seasonality factor of the Indian summer being a very hot one; one invariably tends to expect battles and wars to happen in the summer months between the two big majors.

The Cola wars are actually wars made to look like wars by the major cola marketers. The idea is to excite interest in the category collectively. The idea is equally to raise an otherwise dull and drab category into a very high-appeal category that has the entire nation of consumers chattering about the television battles. Cola companies also depend on community media such as television, print and radio and the Internet and now social networking sites to chatter more and take the Cola war twitter ahead.

These battles have been waged season after season. To an extent the creativity in these battles are worn-thin. Every nook and cranny battle-USP has been exhausted. If one does the same thing all over again, things are going to get boring. Therefore I do believe a lull is necessary. In any case other categories such as the detergents category have taken over now with their own avatars of 'in-the-eye' and 'in-the-face' fights.

I do believe Colas will remain a big category forever. The action cannot shift to any other terrain for now. Tamilnadu is an orange drink market of sorts. Except for this one state, India is a lowest common denominator cola market. The action will remain here for a while. The only larger drink is water. We could possibly have a water-wars next. The war of the waters.

Q: A quick one. What is the logic of brand names? What’s good and what’s bad?
-Sapna Malik, Kolkata
A: Sapna, a quick one from my end as well.
A brand is an amalgam of many things. It is a name, a symbol, a color, a jingle, a persona, a personality, a position and much else. Amongst all these, cosmetically, a name is an important adjunct.

Marketers are typically careful with the name selection process. It is quite like naming a baby. A baby that will represent the lineage it comes from, and a baby that will flaunt the name well into adulthood and days of prosperity.

It is therefore a careful process. The first step is arriving at a name that is right in terms of fit to the product or service, and one that is easily memorable. Shorter names are that much more memorable than longer ones. There is indeed a science in the naming process that markers follow, most of the time.

At times of course, it is the whim and fancy of the Marketing Director or the owner of the company or their respective wives. But then, accidents such as these happen, and are more exceptions than the rule.

Q: In jewellery marketing, are there good days and what are these in terms of sales?
-Pankaj Parikh, Mumbai

A: Pankaj, there sure are good days for jewellery sales in India. Just as there are bad days. In my assessment of having worked in the category, the following days are big turnover days for jewellery marketers:
1. Dhanteras: The one big gold-buy occasion. And jewellery is synonymous with gold in India, with other metals just about being niches that don't justify exploration.

2. Weddings: We have so many of them. This is the season to both buy new jewellery as well as get new jewellery made from old gold.

3. Diwali and Dussehra: Somehow the festival of lights and Dussehra drives people to park their moneys in jewellery

4. The 5th of every month except 'Ashada' in the South: salaried homes tend to splurge on this date. Mysterious but true.

5. Day one of the New Year: This could be of different calendar notations, but is considered a significant day to buy gold!

Q: A lot of companies with traditional logos are going in for new logos. Is this a good move at all?

-Soha Sanyal, Bangalore

A: Soha, I know where you are coming from on this. I personally believe that old logos must remain. They could be modernized a wee bit, but must allow to remain for what they are and what they stand for.
I do believe there could be a need for an up-date and an up-grade, but not necessarily a dramatic change.

Logos are precious properties of brands. The existing logo is a precious property of old brands at large. They have been there for decades and have been a part of heritage identity that many old brands tend to enjoy. To an extent a logo is like a scar. A positive scar that is left behind in the minds of peoples. The scar becomes an indelible part of memory and becomes a meta-tag that gets recalled instantaneously by people. Positive scars such as these logos may look outdated, but one needs to understand and be sensitive enough to appreciate the fact that changing the existing is the easiest thing to do. Preserving the existing is the most difficult thing to attempt. Therefore, I do believe there is a cosmetic up-grade possibility, but nothing much else must be done on old brands.

Take for instance the logo of LIC. I would not touch it at all. It packs heritage. It packs trust. Modernizing the logo and font of LIC would be the worst thing to do. It would be joining the race that other Insurance companies are embarking upon with modern fonts and modern logos (even cute little comic dogs to boot). Being different and old and being rooted to heritage helps some brand categories. Insurance in particular is one such.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

The Top-10 Brands of 2010

2010-04-20T00:21:00.000-07:00

The Top Ten as we enter 2010

By Harish Bijoor

Q: With the dawn of 2010 everyone everywhere is focusing on the number 10. Let me also ask my “10” oriented question. Which would you rate as the ten big hits of the year gone by in terms of marketing and branding success?
-Jacintha P Viegas, Mumbai

A: Jacintha, my top ten for the year 2009 at this point of time:

1. Twitter: The brand came to the fore in the Indian mindset with millions jumping onto the Twitter bandwagon. Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor was the un-witting brand ambassador for Twitter in India. One tweet of his made Twitter a buzz-word among large number of Indians, both urban and rural. Politicians from across the range of political formations and parties seized the opportunity. In the bargain, Twitter gained. At no cost. No price. Zero-cost marketing buzz. All due to a faux pas!

2. Rakhi Sawant: Rakhi continued to manage her brand visibility at peak levels. 'Rakhi ka Swayamvar' had the entire nation watching. Rakhi emerged a winner in the sweepstakes for star affection. An unlikely candidate and a dark-horse for sure. Millions across small-town India emote with her. Surprisingly, women-folk from the small towns of India emote with her equally. Many live their lives vicariously through the grit and bravado of a Rakhi Sawant in small-town India.

3. IPL: Decimated five day cricket. Decimated interest from one day cricket even. Morphed audience love overnight literally. Grabbed eye-balls, and with it marketing bucks of the best in the business.

4. Facebook: For grabbing a total of 14 million accounts in India in a very short period of time. And that number is as big as the population of Sikhs in India. Made people go virtual. Real relationships have now morphed into electronic ones. People live very active social lives....on the Internet. Thanks to Facebook.

5. The Congress Party: For upping the political ante on every issue and sweeping into power. In the bargain, it decimated and broke the BJP into factions.

6. News 9: A small English television News channel from Bangalore. The channel grabbed the imagination of the English speaking and English-listening audience of Bangalore. It brought zing into local News and has brought the immediacy-buzz into people's lives.

7. Tata Nano: For re-defining value altogether. As the car hit the streets, editorial buzz led the way for the brand with full order-books that will run into the next several years. What Bajaj Chetak did to the scooter market many decades ago, Nano has done to the small-car craving market.

8. Tata Tea: With its "Jaago re" campaign the company captured the soft-high-ground. It captured the imagination of a country when it was going to vote. A campaign run well to the benefit of the brand. Did not convert into actual votes, but did a great job in plugging the brand. Subliminally.

9. Nokia: Emerged with a whopping 65% of the market-share in India. Morphed to become as Indian as any company can be. Made offerings that were true-blue Indian. Handled every crisis that came up (battery flare-ups included) with panache and transparency. Talked the language of green and re-cycling as well.

10. Nescafe: Has quietly emerged as a super-brand. Consistent advertising and a very consistent brand-strategy has kept he brand single-mindedly ahead in the brand stakes. If there is one fmcg brand that can aspire for true blue super-brand status (and I am not talking of the super-brand tag being doled out by organizations to all who require it), it is Nescafe!

Q: What is Brand India? What does it really mean?
JP Guha, Kolkata

A: Guha-da, Brand India has two facets. The intrinsic one to India and the Indian in particular and the extrinsic one which is relevant to the non-Indian.

To me Brand India is about patriotism. It is about the tricolor. It is about the nation, its freedom and the environment that facilitates democratic life, democratic living and propitiates democratic institutions. To me brand India is freedom. This is intrinsic to the Indian.

To the International audience Brand India is an emerging opportunity. An opportunity that is free-market oriented. It is also about the mystique of India. A nation that is all about its tigers and snakes and snake-charmers and elephants alike.

Q: E-commerce is small in India. Sad?
-Gaurav K Mishra, Delhi

A: Gaurav, sad indeed. India is strange in many ways. We actually produce a lot of the back-end for IT, and we help create seamless end-to-end e-commerce enterprises for the world. We however are producers and manufacturers. We do not consume enough of it. That is the tragedy.

E-commerce is very small in the country as of date. First of all, Internet penetration itself is not as robust as a country with a population of one billion plus must have. Secondly, those who use the Internet at large use it largely for that one killer-app: email. A small percentage of those who use the Internet actually surf the web for buys. And those who surf the web for buys, end up using it as a reliable medium to compare products, quality and their prices. Most end up doing the research on the Web and buying in the physical market-place.

The e-commerce environment in India therefore remains small. Nano.

The author is a brand-strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Brand Re-calls and Brand-endorsements

2010-03-22T03:13:00.001-07:00

Rahman and Brand Recalls

By Harish Bijoor

Q: With Music maestro AR Rahman winning many awards worldwide for his music, is it not time for brands to use him in their advertsing as a super-star?
-SK Raman, Chennai

A: Raman-sir, I agree with you. AR Rahman has arrived on the firmament of music excellence with a big bang. The recognitions are just pouring in, quarter after quarter.
There is really a state of under-use in the persona of AR Rahman as a brand endorser as of now. The most visible one has been the one in which the now-defunct Worldspace Radio used him to optimal benefit and visibility norms.
AR Rahman's Grammy is an acknowledgement of musical genius and hard work. I do believe it is all about the new fact that brilliance will find recognition, does not matter which geography it resides in. India is a happening story as of now. It is about IT, ITES, Bollywood, Music and more. And Rahman is the latest icon.

AR Rahman as a brand-endorser is something that is to be considered seriously now. Rahman is a brand in himself. It is important for this brand to associate with brands that actually add value to the Rahman brand rather than to run in the pursuit of money and wide-spectrum endorsements. To that extent, Rahman's work with the now defunct Worldspace was an excellent fit. It added value to brand Rahman, and in return Rahman gave a positive rub-off to brand Worldspace. Intelligent use of brand Rahman needs to be one of symbiotic use.

Categories reasonably umblical to the genius in terms of music, or with categories that are all about excellence, rigor and perfection. A bit like the fit we saw with Tiger Woods and what Accenture wanted to say, until the recent mishap of events that rolled out.

Keep one thing in mind though. Rahman is actually a difficult endorser. As a persona he comes through as one that shuns it all. Bringing such a persona into the forefront of advertising and branding glare, at times could prove counter-productive.

Whichever brand uses Rahman needs to build a completely organic story of involvement. Nothing must appear forced. And that is a tough one.

I do therefore believe that Rahman as a brand-endorser will have limited queues and limited appeal altogether And this in many ways is very good for Rahman. His image will remain intact, without being eaten into by the canker of brand-endorsement that on many an occasion hurts and eats into the persona of the endorser.

As far as price is concerned, I do believe he needs to demand a big price now. He needs to endorse very few brands, but he needs to milk the maximum value from those few brands.

Q: We are living in a year of brand recalls it seems. Auto-makers world-wide are recalling millions of vehicles. Nokia did it in India on a battery problem. Mattel did it in toys . And many more.
How does a recall affect the ‘brand’? And what are the steps one takes?
-Jyothi Saklecha, Mumbai

A: Jyothi, strangely and quite contrary to popular feeling and sentiment, a brand-recall works very well for the brand in the long run in image terms.

Brand re-call is a step that only bold and upright brands take. When it happens in categories which people do not ingest into their bodies, such as automotive, telecom, consumer durables and clothing, consumer reaction is very different than when it happens to brands that you ingest such as food and beverages. In the case of automotive, for instance, it helps build credibility and guarantee-value into the brand DNA.

In reverse sentiment, when such an issue occurs with food and beverages, it totally damages the brand in question forever. A brand recall therefore affects brands differently, depending upon which category they belong to, ingestibles or not.

Nokia is the first one that comes to mind here. The Nokia defective battery issue in India was handled very well. I do believe this issue actually catapulted Nokia's brand image in the Indian market into the stratosphere of good consumer-practice and reliable behaviour. A brand is a reputation. Nokia managed this brand reputation for itself very well.

A company really decides on a brand recall when it is very sure that its brand can actually harm a set of consumers. Never mind how small a set of consumers with the potential of damage, responsible companies decide to recall quickly.

The first step is one of creating widespread awareness of the issue and fault at hand. This is to ensure that the public is fore-warned to be careful. The second step is setting up a standard operating procedure for recall. Here, the entire mechanics of recall is laid out. The third step is PR. Managing the issue at hand responsibly and with the least damage to the reputation of the company and brand.

The fourth step is actual recall. The fifth step is more important than any: instilling credibility into the company, the brand concerned and the collective selling and using environment at large.
Q: With number-portability round the corner, how is the telecom market going to get affected?
Number-portability will work in many ways for different players. Here are some scenarios I paint:

1. Users of major networks who are sitting on the wall of dissatisfaction due to poor network coverage, poor customer service and poor much else, are going to use this opportunity to jump. This will bite the biggest players such as Airtel and Reliance the most. The biggest player loses the most. Though in percentage terms this could mean a small percentage altogether, in sheer number terms the loss could be substantial. This loss-kitty is something all small players will be salivating about to gain from.

2.Large players will have yet another effect biting into them. This is one of revenue loss due to schemes that will need to be unleashed to keep high ARPU users from jumping out. Every large player will therefore play the price game and drive prices down further. This will be particularly applicable to deep-ARPU customers.

3. Newer players will be looking for positive churn. There is a big kitty of Gen 1 user of the mobile, whose ARPU is deep. This customer is going to be up for grabs now. Newer players will offer seamless service and seamless customer service norms as differentiators to attract this custom. So expect a lot of action in this space.

The author is a brand-strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

What's ahead in Marketing 2010

2010-03-03T21:32:00.000-08:00

‘Satyamave Jayate’

By Harish Bijoor

Q: As 2010 emerges, I thought it pertinent to ask you to paint the way ahead. What are the various business routes to market that are going to make it big in the future?
-Jayanthi Arya, Mumbai
A: Jayanthi, the years ahead in this decade are going to be very different in the kind of business routes to market that are going to be appreciated. Routes to market that embrace the long-term good of the people at large will be a big hit. Inclusive practices instead of the exclusive ones business-folk have followed in the last 65 years will work better.

Here are a few routes to market that will find appreciation:

1. The Birla practice of schools that take care of both the rich and poor alike.
2. The green car movement and the green-vehicle movement at large that does not pollute, de-grade and destroy.

3. Practices that replace valuable resources all the time. Green paper for instance, that is made not out of trees, but something else altogether.
4. Practices that afford the good of life to all and democratize marketing allure. E.g. The Tata Nano.

5. Advertising practices that embrace common causes: Tata Tea's "Jaago Re" for instance
6. The health-food movement, which is a practice on its own. This discourages many a commercial category being used as much as it is being done today. Such as oils, sugars, etc.

7. The clean-air practice that envisages moves in the realm of anti-pollution across air, water, sound, etc.

8. Practices that reap and harvest labor such as the Govt. Of India's NREGA scheme.
9. Clean corporate governance practices that discourage company promoters from going berserk a la Satyam Computers.

10. The practice of integrity back in branding, advertising, marketing, and indeed in every realm of business. A seamless adoption of ‘Satyamave Jayate’ by businesses!

Q: Is there a scope to look at Brand Planning from the “zero-base” perspective
and let the customers "proactively" discover the brand by
initiating some questions about the brand?
-Neha Arya, Indore.

A: Neha, brand planning as an exercise that can look at many creative and innovative formats. The formats can get as exciting as the brand manger and brand planner is.

Zero-base brand planning is a good and positive approach for the future and the present in many brand contexts. Some categories are ripe for it and others are not.

Within the Indian context, brands, which are in the luxury category, are totally ripe for this approach. Designer garments, footwear, diamond-jewelry, premium cars, premium-leather goods and many such adjunct categories.

Here, consumers are reasonably tired of being told things top-down. It has gone on for far too long in their lives. These consumers also believe that they are advanced versions of the just-new consumer. They are Version 6.5 in a consumer market that is still in Version 2.1.

Zero-base is a good approach as it allows brand-consumers, potential and existing, to discover different facets of the brand in their own contexts and formats. It allows consumers to discover brand s in their own time as per their social, economic, cultural, religious and political up bringing as base context.

It is important to understand here that consumers are becoming more and more a-clonal in the luxury segment. There is a yen for differentiation and this is shown in the rebel statement of consumers in this category to avoid the famous brand names that everyone wears and franchises. Such consumers enjoy the power of zero-base branding as it provides a format for a self-discovery of a brand, basis some small bits of engineered but random-looking brand stimuli.

As the future unfolds, and as consumers climb from Version 2.1 to Version 6.5 in every category, zero-base branding will gain ground.

Q: In 1999 there was this craze about using the word millennium in every
ad that got released. And sure it was a very big hit with people too, especially in the run up to the world cup that year. But now we see the craze for the letter 'i'. Ipod, Iphone i10 and i20 etc etc. Is this a fad?

Is it necessary to ape something, which sells in order to sell?

-Arun Nair, Chennai.
A: Arun, you have got the trend right. Marketers typically look at the biggest hit all around their lives, and then ape the brand-format, sometimes in the brand name, sometimes in the choice of color and sometimes dangerously in the choice of core brand propositions even.

The I-fad is the current rage around for sure. ‘I” is really very me-centric. It is also about the digital world all around us, as typified by the Internet. In India, you could even obliquely claim that it is all about India.

The one brand that gains the most from this rather free-use of the buzz-letter is the brand that started it all. Therefore the brand does not complain at all. In many ways, every “I”-brand benefits the I-Pod.

What next then? I do believe it is about “You”! It is about brand co-creation. You doing it all. Yahoo! Has used it, as has Lays and as has Dell for a long, long time now.

Expect more of “u” brand ahead then.
The author is a brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: ceo@harishbijoorconsults.com

BINGO!

2010-02-07T05:24:00.000-08:00

SALE: A Four-letter word?

By Harish Bijoor

Q: The 4-letter word SALE is suddenly all over in the market. Why? What is the rationale of the sale and what does it do to brands?

-Ron Jeffereson, Mumbai

A: Ron, you obviously belong to the tribe of the marketer, and that’s why SALE is a 4-letter word to you. To the consumer at the other end of the buying spectrum, this is the season of a windfall. A good time to shop.

Reebok offers a flat 40% off on most of its range. Except cleverly the latest styles. My friendly neighborhood Nilgiri’s departmental store offers two days of shopping where if I buy goods worth Rs.1000, I get freebies that I can eat and drink and use in my home worth Rs. 460. Puma offered two days of 50% flat discounting, except of course on my favorite Red Ferrari shoes.

Every retailer in the market seems to have gone berserk. Some have even gone out of the way to tell consumers to loot the store. Others have branded it well. On the whole there is a yen to get those big sales happening. It is raining discounts in the market.

The logic of the sale is a simple one. Money supply in the market is getting tight. The stock markets have been on the slump mode. Inflation numbers have hit double digit numbers over the last several successive weeks. Interest rates have gone up. And everything is being traced back to the price of a barrel of oil which has hit a record high, and which reigns currently at 129 USD per barrel at this point of writing.

Retailers are sitting on deep inventories. The SALE is a great way of liquidating stock. A great way of pushing out money which lies in clots in their godowns and warehouses and stockist points as stock. The SALE is a great device to move out such slow moving stock. A great way of creating that appetite appeal in the customer heart to spend and buy. Maybe even buy things he or she does not need.

A case in point. A friend bought 11 pairs of slippers for all of Rs.10, 000. And guess what, this meant that she can buy more slippers for Rs.10, 000 more! That would make it a possible 22 pairs! Possibly she just needs two.

The retail marketer understands the psyche of the consumer in the Indian marketplace. Time to flog the stock with the appeal of a store on SALE.

To the retailer this undercuts his profit line, but frees up stock. It frees up money stuck in stock, some of which is old style stuff. In tough times such as these, it is prudent enough to make these discounts happen and free up the blood clots of stock and convert it into free flowing blood. And blood here is good old cash.

What does a SALE do to brands?

Firstly it exposes the profit numbers that retailers make to consumers. Consumers suddenly start wondering why retailers keep such big margins. At times, this imagination of margin goes berserk in consumer minds and they do believe brands don’t necessarily make sense on the price side.

Secondly, sales devalue brands. It brings into brand consumption sets of consumers who would have otherwise not come in through their own volition. Such customers are really not positive influences for the brand in question.

Thirdly, it habituates customers to the SALE syndrome. Particularly in items such as shoes, fashion garments, durables and items of the kind, it makes customers wait for the annual sale to buy. This is bad for the brand, as the brand is not a brand at all in many ways. It is a brand for most part of the year, but assumes the avatar of a cheap commodity once a year, when it is bought.

There are several other downsides of a SALE, but let me leave them aside for the moment for want of space.

Q: ITC Foods’ Bingo is a success. If that is the case then what went wrong with ITCs’ apparel division “Wills Lifestyle”? Why is it not amongst the top 5 apparel brands in India?
-Manish Laddha, Mumbai

A: Manish, success in one realm surely does not ensure success in another realm. Further, the kind of work that has gone into by ITC Foods on the snack-food business is a far cry from the kind of consumer understanding that has been used in the Will’s Lifestyle business. The results are apparent, and this is not to say that Will’s is not a happening brand on its own.

Complexity of the fashion-wear business is very different and of a different magnitude than the branded snack-food terrain. The rag trade is a complex business terrain. Its size is huge, is fickle in its appeal, is totally fashion and design centric and there are far too many players attempting to cobble success.

I do believe Will’s Lifestyle is gradually attaining the status of a brand that is getting there. The moment you touch 150 Crore INR in turnover in this market, it means you are there and in the reckoning. From there to the next 850 Crore INR addition, is a long and uphill task for most brands. Fashion shirts such as Louise Phillipe, Arrow and Allen Solly have understood how tough it is to get there and are still on their journey. Will’s Lifestyle to that extent is a relative new-comer. Give it time Manish.

Q: In India (now having a freedom of choice in many sectors) can advertising make people buy something which they don't need?

J.Venkadesh, Chennai
A: Venkadesh, good question. I do believe this is just about to happen, if it is not happening already in the Indian market.

I would like to quote Scott Adams here and throw a Dilbertism at you which explains it all:
“In the future, the science of advertising will improve to the point where buying what you see in an advertisement is no longer optional”

-Scott Adams
Sad, but true.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Celebrity Endorsement and Real Estate

2010-02-07T05:20:00.000-08:00

Rotten Celebrity Eggs

By Harish Bijoor

Q: Cities are pushing themselves to the fore in India by building themselves as brands that attract investments. What gets invested in building the brand image of a city?

-BP Gururaj, Hyderabad

A: Guru, the brand is an amorphous entity. The brand is a thought. A thought that lives in people's minds.

A city's brand image is therefore the collective set of thoughts that a city enjoys in the minds of people. These minds include the minds of the people who live in the city, and equally the minds of people who do not live in it.

The brand image of a city has therefore an intrinsic aspect, which is all about the image enjoyed within the city, and an extrinsic aspect which is the image enjoyed outside the city.

A city's image is created by a whole set of disparate elements altogether. It is about the weather, the culture, the politics, the society, the people, religion, language, attitude, tolerance and a whole set of 48 other factors included. To that extent, the brand image of a city is really not an engineered one. It is an accident. A literal small part of the chaos theory that abounds in much of our lives altogether.

In a technical manner of speaking, brand-engineering is a new science, art and philosophy on its own. Creating the brand image of a city is not about creating it from scratch on a drawing board. Instead, it is all about using its positives, its history and its heritage to advantage as one builds on the basic foundations that abound.

To that extent, Brand Hyderabad is all about leveraging on the image of its hoary past, its politics, its food, and everything that is old and super-imposing onto it the modern icons from IT. ITES, Real Estate, Retail and Biotech included.

Q: The Real-estate industry is getting onto the branding format. What are the fundamentals in branding the real-estate developer?
-Rohit Bhargava, Mumbai
A: Rohit, branding is very critical to the Real Estate industry. Particularly in times when there is so much clutter all around. And most certainly in times of uncertainty such as the ones we live in today with the big names of Wall Street having crumbled over the last week itself in the US, sending tremors of uncertain economic times the world over.

Cities and their Real Estate offerings need to re-invent themselves on the path of credibility for a start. Take Bangalore for instance. The city has been home for decades to builders, developers and the entire real-estate fraternity at large. We started with a high repute developer by the name of SI . Chennai and Bangalore saw developments which were unique. This builder promised the earth and delivered the sky. The builder promised delivery on a date and did it by that date.

Today, even as I answer your question, builders in Bangalore are getting a negative image on delivery, quality and at times consistency of what is promised being delivered. There are builders who have promised delivery and have defaulted on this count by more than two years. The stories abound. This is bad for the brand image of Bangalore and the builder at large. No amount of branding input will help correct a credibility issue.

While the real-estate industry benefits a lot from Brand Bangalore, it is time for the industry to start contributing back. The first step would be to follow the basic rule of transparency, credibility and honest delivery. The image of a city is the responsibility of all its stake-holders. The Real Estate fraternity is one such key stake-holder.
Branding helps only when the offering is honest. The brand is an honest consumer statement.

Q: There is so much being written on the use of celebrities and its impact on brands. What’s your view on this? Should we use? Should we not?
-Shefali Luthra, New Delhi

A: Shefali, celebrity use in advertising has fast emerged as a lowest common denominator item in Indian advertising. When there is nothing else that is working, just pick a celebrity, use his/her awareness scores to bump up your brand awareness scores as well.

Celebrity use works. But works at one level only. And that is at the level of building awareness for the brand in question. This works when you are launching a new brand, or when you are re-launching an old one that needs to get back into the awareness mindset of consumers again.

At awareness creation it works 8.2/10. At Interest development in the brand, it works 2.2/10; at desire development it works 1.6/10, on creating the action of purchase and buy-in: 1.6/10. At creating positive cues post-purchase (and in the process of reducing post-purchase dissonance) it works 4.1/10. This is as per a very recent study of ours across categories involving 81 advertised works over the last two years.

Celebrity use therefore works best at the stage of awareness creation, and a wee bit at the stage of managing post-purchase dissonance. But that's it.

This is the reason why you see celebrities being used for categories where they have no brand fit even. The brand-manager knows this, but is desperate to bump up his awareness scores, never mind if he is using Anupam Kher to advertise a new housing project. Brand fit goes for a toss. The immediate objective is celeb-linked awareness building.

The overuse of celebrities is causing the killing of the golden goose that used to lay silver eggs at least. Now, it is rotten eggs only!

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Digital Branding

2009-10-28T22:54:00.000-07:00

Digital Interactivity

By Harish Bijoor

Q: Why is digital media in such good focus today? And what is new here?
-Jyothi Virwani, Mumbai
A: Jyothi, the visual appeal of digital mediums cannot be matched by any other medium. Immediacy is hot. In the sense that the medium is closest to the point of purchase, or on way to purchase. It is an excellent reminder medium as well.

Further, it is also a medium that can build two-way interactivity.

What’s new?
Today, we have technology available where a digital signage can actually not only transmit lovely visuals and offers, but can also read who is watching it at a moment of time and dish out specific advertising. For instance if the sensor detects a woman in the mid fifties watching the medium, the product that can be shown to her digitally will be something relevant to her rather than items of irrelevance.

The medium can be used to research out consumers and consumer reactions even. Therefore the applications are many. Privacy issues remain though, and therefore such interactive digital signages need to have up-front communication aimed at viewers that is totally transparent.

The most recent and the most exciting development in the digital signage media is this. I have indicated the true-blue value-add possibility of interactive signages. Here, as you watch the signage, the signage watches you as well. Its complex algorithm will assess your sex, your age, your social class by way of dressing, your attitudinal stance by way of how you sport your hair, etc. In turn, it will dish out advertising that is specific to you and not umbrella advertising that is more often than not irrelevant, irritating and myopic.

Q: When a crisis hits a company, what is the process of communication that needs to fall into place? What if I had an Enron or a Satyam happening in my company?

-Vasanth Panigrahi, Hyderabad
A: Vasanth, God forbid! Let’s just hope we don’t have too many of these happening.
Just in case, it does though, the process needs to be quick. It needs to involve those who are close to the top. Close to the real center of information. Once quickness has been established as a norm here, it is important to use every neutral tool and vehicle to advantage. A neutral tool would be capturing everything that is written on the crisis and presenting it on a common platform for all to see. This will swathe the entire effort with credibility, and will not be seen to be a Goebbelian method of PR activity.
Once this credibility has been achieved, communication needs to get interactive. It needs to answer every question that is raised. Such questions can come from Opinion leaders, the media, employees, and the lay public even. Every constituent needs to be respected and given an answer that is right, and an answer that could be cruel in its impact even. People want the truth. Never hide it. Say it the way it is. Once said, truth has a way of settling down in the psyche of the individual. Do not molly-coddle hard fact. Do not clothe hard fact. Just give it out naked!
Set up an independent Ombudsman to assess the role of this crisis communication team even. Listen to the Ombudsman. And let this crisis-communication auditor come from a neutral source. This will be a rich process then.

Q: Indian retail has just about matured. What do you see to be the important factors that will contribute to its success further?
-Joseph H Hoover, Trichy
A: Joe, I am not sure I agree with you. Indian retail is not yet mature. It is at its most immature adolescence as of now.
Immediately however, Indian retail needs to adjust its mentality for Indian conditions. We need to be multiple-formatted. Every chain needs to have multiple formats and must not rely on niche formats such as the mega super-marts. In the early days, such a focus on single-formats will work, as the low hanging fruit of the ready-made consumer in urban markets is plucked. But things will dry up soon. Smaller format outfits need to be a reality for every chain sooner or later. Non air-conditioned retail is something that cannot be missed.
A partnership of big retail with small must not be missed as an opportunity. Imagine if an Aditya Birla Retail contracted 2, 00,000 existing small kiranas to partner in their retail spread. Every one of these small kiranas would get the benefit of an organized front-face in terms of branding and of course the benefits of mass sourcing. For the retail brand, this would mean a quick 2, 00, 000 outlets that sport the brand name of the company. Also, this would mean 2, 00,000 business people in small retail continue their livelihoods. They would bring passion and a deep understanding of the local market for the big retailer. Every outlet could be co-branded. More-Ghanshyam Stores and a More-Shetty Stores!
Indian retail inroad can be made by the big player only on a win-win format of big and small. And not to the exclusive benefit of the big alone!
My prediction is that in the next six years, the face of Indian retail will look very different from what we see today. Today's big ones might just vanish altogether. Bubbles burst, you see!
Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Recession-time Marketing

2009-10-28T22:52:00.000-07:00

Learning from the Down-turn

By Harish Bijoor

Q: India is just going through an economic down-turn. What are the learnings from this? How do we educate ourselves from this experience?
-Pallav Gopal, Mumbai.

A: Pallav, the economic downturn is really a slow-down. A correction in the earning, stocking, spending and celebrating mindset of the Indian consumer at large.

While at the macro level, our GDP growth rates were at a more sobered down 5.3% overall, this signified a down-fall from the gung-ho years of successive 8.3% growth.

One fine point on this macro number is the fact that rural markets grew faster than urban markets. In the case of several categories such as auto, durables and cosmetic care items, urban markets saw a de-growth at large and rural markets showed growth. At the end of the day, when we aggregate volumes from both, there was some semblance of small growth overall.

In real terms, even though there has been no real recession in macro terms in the country as a whole, in urban markets there has been a real recession, which I call a cautionary recession. This simply means that people had money in hand, but postponed the decision to buy, not knowing how the future would pan out in terms of holding on to jobs, securing increments, securing bonuses, and in many cases even retaining the same salary as last year. Being laid-off was a big worry as well.

In rural markets, growth remained and spending remained at the level it was.

Brands learnt many things from this down-turn. The top 10 learnings from my perspective:

1. It is important to have a strong rural foot-print in the country. It is important not to depend too heavily on the urban sales skew. Rural-sales is a good hedge when the chips are down in urban.

2. Re-define value. Don't get carried away by value that is defined by slick advertising and even slicker retail appeal. Get to the basics and focus on basic brand appeal. Brand appeal needs to go in sync with value-pricing.

3. Reduce obscene margins that are typically made and taken for granted in categories. Brands must not distance themselves from consumers by building walls of unfair prices. Mass consumer appeal is important. Don't sacrifice width of appeal and use for depth of margins.

4. Being in contact with consumers is important. Marketers need to get off the pedestal of television advertising and walk into markets and feel the alien sweat of the sadly alien consumer.

5. Demand-generation is a task that cannot be forgotten and taken for granted. Even older categories of consumer goods and services need to indulge in demand creation games at the ground level. Demand generation is always fashionable.

6. Dependence on Above the line (ATL) needs to be questioned. There is plenty to be done Below the line (BTL) if markets are to be made.

7. God is in the details of branding. Mass branding does not necessarily work. The answer lies in 1:1 branding formats.

8. Small retail cannot be ignored. It needs to be nurtured if brands have to succeed in India.

9. The point-of-purchase is a point of advertising. A point of branding. A point of selling. A point of consumer activation. A point of market-research. Indeed it is the point of everything!

10. Intermediation in the selling and marketing process needs to be re-visited. Distributors do not do enough in the market. One needs to get into the act as a company on its own as well to stay in touch. To stay relevant, original and innovative. Outsourcing of distribution has gone a bit too far.

Q: Is Digital marketing the next new thing really? Why?
-Sampath KK, Chennai
A: Sampath, I do believe digital is next. Digital is really broad-based. It manifests itself through every electronic medium there is to use. It is all about a nation morphing to be a nation of screen-besotted individuals. And the biggest of them is the smallest screen of them all: the mobile phone.
Even as I write this reply, we have a total telecom connectivity of 490 million phones. Growth per month stands at an average of 14 million phones. This is a dramatic shift in medium-access.
The mobile phone is going to be the biggest digital device there is ever to be. It is ubiquitous in every hand. In some hands there are two. It is on 24 X 7. It is kept closest to the heart and it is a device around which a lot of lives revolve.
Add to this digital device of ubiquity, every screen there is. The laptop, the desktop, the Outdoor LCDs and more. Digital is personal, very intrusive and is visual oriented in its messaging possibility. This is big stuff. A revolution to watch out for.

Q: How do brands work in rural markets? What is the brand rationale at play?
-Shalini Patra, Bhubaneswar

A: Shalini, rural folk are very brand conscious. Rural folk trust brands as friends. Most purchases in their purchase basket tend to be un-branded. But when they actually buy brands, they buy with gusto. The brand is seen as a reliable mate. An entity that promises and delivers. The higher price is considered a safety net that assures longevity and performance.

Brands are trusted friends. Brands in many ways are a guarantee of quality.

Rural folk do not necessarily have "limited " monies in their hands. Rural folk are really folk with a higher disposal income portion in whatever they have in hand. Rural incomes, largely, are crop incomes. These crop incomes are tax free.

A person in Urban India in the salaried class could fork out as much as Rs.22 out of a Rs. 100 income as tax. The rural person has this additional Rs.22 in hand that moves into disposable income. Brands are therefore entities that attract the interest of rural folk.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Tryvertising and more....

2009-10-28T22:50:00.000-07:00

Chicken Brand & Egg Advertising

By Harish Bijoor

Q: What is branding and what is advertising? Is there a difference between the two?

S Venkat, Trichy

A: Venkat, the key big paradigm of Marketing has been the confusion between branding and advertising. This is a perennial issue that bogs down marketing understanding. Branding has been linked a bit too close with the function of advertising. What needs to be remembered is that branding is about strategy and advertising is about the physical execution of that strategy through the use of the tools and devices and allure of advertising.

It is important to understand that branding comes first and advertising later. Branding is insight-led and advertising is all about taking that brand-insight and getting the creative-throw that is necessary for that base brand thought.

I do believe that this distinction needs to be in public limelight.

Q: Is India back on the tracks of fast growth? Do we get to see prosperity and progress now? Does advertising as an industry gain from it?
Swapnil Mehta, Mumbai
A: Swapnil, not yet. But give it another 18 months and we will be back on track. My personal estimate of the advertising pie for the year 2010 is INR 17,200 Crores. This is disappointing.
Corporates are tightening their belts even now and Consultants are busy advising caution even today. Media at large will underplay the down-turn, but the reality is that there is urban down-turn in India.
In India the silver lining is the fact that 60% of the economy is reasonably insulated due to the rural consumption being intact. Rural contributes to 60% of the GDP today. Urban centers have seen shrinkages in contribution to buying and consuming. This signifies a real recession in urban buying.
At a larger level, when 60% of the economy is booming and 40% of the urban economy is on a slump, overall, the picture is still a positive one. One that justifies the prognosis of a 5.3% GDP growth rate overall.

We will see prosperity around in marketing terms. But be patient.

Q: What are the dynamics of the luxury market? How does it work in India?
-Sachin Mandre, Mumbai

A: Sachin, luxury is essentially a mindset. Every segment of society, whether it is the Upper Income Group, the Middle Income Group, or the Lower Income Group, has its own definition of luxury. To someone who is in the UIG, Luxury is all about the experiential dinner at the on a yacht moored out in the Arabian Sea with 7-star service. To someone in the middle income group, it might as well be a gourmet dinner at a Taj or an Oberoi. To someone in the lower income group, luxury is all about a family dinner at a local restaurant or even a fast-food joint like McDonald’s where the prices are low but the ambience is electric!
Luxury is therefore a mindset. To each their own. As many consumers as there are in the market, that many different ‘avatars’ of what is luxury and what is not.
The current market perception of typical luxury therefore varies across the HIG, MIG and LIG.
Luxury is really anything that is out of reach, relatively expensive, high on image and high on cost affordability as well. Luxury is also about the image-driven value that one derives in the usage of the luxury product or service.

Q: How does the new concept of ‘tryvertising’ work? Is this just a Western fad?
Sabeena Khan, New Delhi
A: Sabeena, ‘Tryvertising’ is very simply the new and aggressive mode of using the trial of a product or a service as the ultimate form of persuasive advertising.

The fact is simple. If people try a product or a service, they are more likely to be persuaded to buy and use rather than depending on advertising alone, which is considered remote and distant and on the television. Far away. Out of reach.

India is yet to adopt it with vigor.

In many ways however, the lowest common denominator use of ‘tryvertising’ is when a brand places itself for a free-pick up at a super-market, or through in-home free samples or even through magazines which send subscriber lists whole big cakes of soap and shampoo alike. Free sampling is the lowest common denominator avatar of ‘tryvertising’.

Higher end forms are yet to hit India in a big way.

Hotels offering a free stay, resorts offering 2 nights free altogether to a select mailing list, car companies offering free drives with a "keep the car" for a week and try kind of offer are all possibilities.

The concept is really economical for brands which have a high price tag.

What is important to understand is the number of days of trial or occasions of trial that is necessary for the product or service to be just right for adoption by the consumer. Once that is understood, the economy of the activity can be worked out.

For instance, for a coffee brand to be adopted in home, a total of a minimum 3 months of trail daily is necessary. This means that a competing brand should be able to work this right only if it is able to provide that deep a placement of its free stock. A simple Rs.5 sachet free does not work.

This space of ‘tryvertising’ is reasonably empirical in its offering. Different categories of products and services have a differing degree of ‘tryvertising’ need.

This is not a fad. Can be a good new marketing property to use.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

The Real Estate Bubble

2009-01-27T20:29:00.000-08:00

The Bubble Breaks

By Harish Bijoor

Q: Developers of Real Estate properties are in a bit of a fix now, with rentals going down and sale prices coming down. How is this panning out? And what are the reasons for this?
-Parag Mehta, Mumbai
A: Parag-bhai, yes, retail rentals are taking a dip. Real end sale prices of both residential and commercial properties is on the down-swing. The reasons are all in the commercial and financial environment all around us.
What has happened is simply this. The prosperity indices of the last three years, led by the robust growth rates in the Services segment of the Indian economy, new wealth in the hands of young people with incomes from segments such as the IT, ITES, Biotech, Banking and Retail, the young demographics of the country itself (54% of the population below the age of 25 and 72% below the age of 35) and a yen to spend which was hot, created a forever-prosperity bubble all around.

This bubble has been responsible for a lot. Overt spending, overt consumption, rise of the branded product and branded retail, investing ahead of the curve as a mentality and much more. This caused for the realty market to go on a boom mode.

In return, the realtor saw this trend and invested ahead of the curve. Invested in both residential and commercial properties in a big manner. Without necessarily looking at the plans of others in similar space as well.
A kind of herd mentality prevailed. Mall developments are a sign of this. There are a total of 423 projects in full steam adding millions of sq feet of Mall space. There has been a 'mallification' of India and the Indian at large.

Now, reality bites realty. International financial institutions have collapsed. The US is in a 700 B USD recovery plan mode. Jobs are at risk. There is plenty of uncertainty around. In such times, Singh is not King, but cash is!

Everyone divests. Plans get stuck. In such a market, ready spaces have no takers. Time to cut rentals for sure. The trend is down. And will continue to be so over the next 12-18 months.
Rentals are already down 15-18% in the big 8 cities. Flat sale rates are down by as much as 25% if you are able to show the cash.
There certainly is a glut in the markets. Commercial office spaces, Mall spaces, residential spaces and micro-office spaces are all glut territories.

The no-glut areas are theme resorts and theme destination malls. Not enough investments here. This is a niche growth area over the next decade.
Q: If there is a niche in Tourism that is yet un-exploited, what is it? I am interested in investing in this space.
-Raghuram Raja, Hyderabad
A: Raghu, there are many niches yet to be exploited. On of it is Commodity-tourism. It figures prominently as a sub-vertical of potential in India, along with other profitable verticals such as Medical and Sports tourism.

Commodity tourism is all about un-locking the true-blue potential of our coffee, tea and rubber estates alike.

Plantation owners and managements are sitting on a powder keg of opportunity. Our plantations are variegated plantations. It is not only about coffee, tea, rubber or the primary cash crop in question. It is about Teak and Silver-oak and pepper and rivers and animals of every kind. It is equally about paddy and vanilla.

These estates of ours are located in varied terrains, spanning from the North East of the country to the verdant South.

Commodity tourism is about unlocking our captive estates to tourists from all over the world who find it most unique and different
Home-stays in particular are and can be a big hit with foreign tourists, who are fed up of staying in man-made hotels with manicured lawns that look as artificial as they can!
Q: Sales volumes across categories are down, particularly durables. Why? And how long will this last?
-Shanthi E, Chennai

A: Shanthi, these are tough times. Different companies that operate in different verticals of commerce will find differing degrees of impact on their sales volumes.

Advertising elasticity is being tested thoroughly in these tough times. The first ones to be hit by a postponement-of-purchase syndrome is the durables category. Relatively mass use, but postpone-able decision categories such as refrigerators, kitchen gadgets, air-conditions, etc. will face the brunt of it.

The replacement market will also slow down due to the down-turn in the mother of all economies, the United States!

This is the primary reason for the slow pace of volume growth.

Companies will however have to continue to invest on advertising to remain in the popular mindset. Those that don’t will be myopic in their approach and will hurt their brands in the long term. Recession comes and goes. Brands have to live forever through times good and bad.

Q: What's the best way to make a brand stick in a person's mind today?
-Ravi SS, Trichy

A: Ravi, simply by merit of its product and service offer. By dint of its emotive content. By dint of its perennial utility and by dint of its repeat value to a consumer that is real and not frugal.

Q: What does 'Brand Mumbai' do for the city's economy?

-Shalini Goel, Mumbai

A: Shalini, Brand Mumbai is the defining palate of the city's economy. Every aspect of the city's economy is a sub-set of the brand template and image the city enjoys. Corporates park moneys in the city basis this. Builders invest in promoting new ventures, be it commercial or residential, basis this. People at large decide to settle in the city basis this. The brand is a bias factor in economic decision making on a city. In the case of some cities, it turns out to be a positive bias factor, and in the case of some cities it turns out to be a negative bias factor. Kolkata in the eighties and early nineties suffered from this negative factor. Mumbai today enjoys its prominence due to a positive bias. As of now. Despite all the chaos of last week.

To a large extent, the image of Brand Mumbai helps run the city smoothly on its positive all-round economic impact.

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Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@HOTMAIL.COM

Boring Indian Newspapers and more

2009-01-09T19:28:00.000-08:00

String Advertising

By Harish Bijoor

Q: If you are to identify one big trend in modern Indian advertising as of today, what is it?

-AB Joshipura, Indore

A: Joshipura-ji, many would point their trend-pointing fingers at the use of humour in Indian advertising as being something trendy. Many would talk of irreverent advertising that pokes fun at consumers and marketers alike. I will however point my trend-painting finger at serial-advertising.

Look at this new and happy trend in modern Indian advertising where the advertisements are boring no longer. Remember the times when within a cricket match telecast you had to see the same creative execution of Sehwag and his mother (“Sehwag ki Ma”) some twenty times over? How boring!

Not anymore though. Look at the series of advertising creatives that Telecom Service Providers are playing around in India today. Look at Airtel and the Madhavan-Vidya Balan series. Look at the Idea Telecom series. Excellent sets of creatives. Each one carrying the theme forward with a story line literally.

Very little boredom, a lot of method-acting, a lot of fine-tuned niceties that make you watch them again and again. All creative executions that carry the theme through very well with finesse.

This is a nice new trend. Expect lots more to jump in.

Q: The Gold-category in branding seems to be FMCG. Everyone defines branding from the perspective of FMCGs. Why?

-Revathi Balaraman, Chennai

A: Revathi, FMCG brands are essentially very hard-working brands. They are ubiquitous in their presence day in and day out. They need to be at hand, and they need to perform right every time. Their touch occasions in the average home is very very high. This makes for FMCG brands the most acid-tested brands of them all.

When brands go through the acid test of use, customer touch, satisfaction and delight, they are bound to be that much more recalled. FMCG brands are brands always at hand.

FMCG brands are quite like your husband or wife. They are that much forever compared to the acquaintances you meet now and then. The husband/wife (as the case may be) is therefore that much more admired. Albeit secretly, but nevertheless admired. This is therefore the Gold-category as you call it.

The FMCG category is seen, heard, felt and used literally every day. Your tooth-paste is used every day at least once. In many homes more than once. By every single member of the family. Therefore, it is all touch-occasion related. More the touch occasion, more the acid-test occasions as well.

Q: I have heard many definitions of a brand logo. What is it really? And why do companies change their logos so frequently?

-Bipin Moriya, Mumbai

A: Bipin, a brand logo is a visual mnemonic. A visual burr that reminds consumers and indeed non-consumers alike of the brand, its offering, its promise and its specific appeal.

A logo is a quick and crisp reminder of the brand.

While in the beginning of a brand’s journey the logo may look cumbersome and ugly at times, over time, consumers associate closely with a brand logo. Logos help build brand passion.

At times logos get old. Consumers change faster than their brands and their attendant logos. In such situations brands want to get and look contemporary. In this quest for being contemporary brands look at logo overhauls.

At other times logos tend to accumulate negative sentiment due to some brand mishap or the other. In such cases, logos are revamped due to a crisis state event.

Q: Indian newspapers have remained static and boring while Indian television has stolen the thunder and audiences with it. Would you agree with me on this?
-Anand V Sudarshan, Bangalore
A: Anand, Print in India is of a reasonably old vintage. While Television is all about 1969 onwards, Print has a very old heritage in the country. Print has always been local in the old days, and print is a medium that captured a lot of sentiment as well, particularly the sentiment that was all about the Freedom Struggle and the sentiment of being Indian. The medium has always been associated with names of doyens on the Indian public firmament.

Television on the other hand is a newer medium. It has morphed continuously with the aspirations of its viewers and their life-styles. Print on the other hand, except for a few publications in English, has remained rather static and still-born in its approach to the changing reader and her aspirations.
Particularly the vernacular Press in India has been rather static in its approach to the market, its sets of consumers and their changing needs, wants, aspirations and desires. In many ways, readers of newspapers have changed at a much more rapid pace than the newspapers they read. In this sense newspapers (vernacular ones) were left behind and saw readership numbers fall.

Readership fell first and circulation fell only much later. In many homes readership fell off and got shaved as early as eight to ten years before circulation in that home fell. In the bargain, publications did not realise the change at all, till it was too late.

Most vernacular publications suffered this. So have many English language papers that have sat atop their perch of comfort and pomposity and ignored the consumer reader. This has been the bane of many Print brands that ruled the roost once upon a time.

To that extent, Anand you are absolutely right.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

City branding and Real Estate branding

2009-01-02T22:24:00.000-08:00

India's Retail Revolution

2008-12-28T20:17:00.000-08:00

Little method, lots of madness

By Harish Bijoor

Q: With the big buzz in retail all around, how do you see the retail revolution pan out in the coming years?

-Anand Patro, Mumbai

A: Anand, as I keep saying, retail as we know it today is but only a trailer of the real full-length movie that is due to unfold on the Indian market-scape.

Today, organized retail comprises 3.6% of the total pie in terms of volume share of trade. The rest is run by small Mom and Pop stores in every category, whether it be apparel, food and grocery or whatever.

Except for Petroleum, organized retail in India is still in a nascent stage in every category. Therefore, the face of emerging retail in India is likely to be very different from the face it sports today.

For one, "New retail" in India is going to be about brand ubiquity in the future. The brand will stare back at you every 300 yards in the market you will tend to walk in. And there will be options in every category that will flummox you. So much so that reach and convenience in terms of distance will start dictating your franchise of a particular retail outlet. In many ways, it is back to the days of 'Kirana' retail when you bought groceries from the grocer closest to you.

There will also be several models at play. The Mom and Pop outlets will morph in to a retail segment of their own. Each store will reinvent itself and offer relevance, originality in merchandise stocking and innovation in the offers at hand to the customer.

In addition to the traditional Mom and pop store on the morph mode, there will be the 7-11 formats that will be of a chain origin. Add to that the larger format departmental stores a la Subhiksha. Add further still to this mélange the super-market of a Wal Mart origin. Add the hyper-market that caters to retail and the Super-store that caters only to the B2B business.

There is going to be plenty on offer. In the Indian market, each of these will co-exist with one another with little method and a lot of madness. The first couple of years will decide the winners and the losers. It is then that we will enter into a consolidation phase where the biggies will grow bigger and many will fall by the wayside of Indian retail lore.

Emerging Indian retail will also be about clonal offerings. The moment a Croma Zip store at Mumbai airport makes an impression, there will many me-too's that will want a piece of the action. At the end of the day of course, a form of retail Darwinism will prevail and the fittest will survive. The fittest in terms of offerings, deep-pockets to survive wafer thin margin environments, and the fittest in terms of the tenacity to fight
competition that is irrational in its attack.3.6% of the total retail space valued at USD 330 Billion is in the hands of organized retail. India therefore remains a nation of small shop-keepers.

Q: Organized retail is facing flak in the Indian market. The protests have just started. How far do you see this going?

-Rajat Sinha, kolkata

A: Rajat-da, as Reliance, the Aditya Birla Group, Bharti-Walmart and everyone else makes inroads into organized retail, there is bound to be resistance from small retail. This is likely to become a political movement as well, and the savvy politician of the day is sitting on the fence to rake up the issue.

I do however believe that this will be a temporary hiccup for modern retail. Things will settle down as the consumer good comes to the fore and as prices fall for the consumer at large.

The middle-man will get squeezed. In the early days the middle-man will sequel. In later days things will settle down and these middle-men will fulfill other jobs within the retail scape at large.

Net of it, peace shall prevail. As will commerce.

Q: Quite a few of the heritage brands are undergoing brand re-positioning exercises. Do you believe this is right? Is it right to contemporaize heritage brands altogether? And to spread their appeal across categories of products even?

-Rathi Ganapathi, Bangalore

A: Rathi, I am a purist in the realm of brand thinking. I do believe brands must not extend themselves too thin. A brand is like an elastic. You stretch it too
thin, it breaks. It loses its depth. All it gains is width. And width does
not necessarily build heritage. It is depth that builds heritage.

Therefore, I do believe heritage brands must not extend themselves with new
sub-brand avatars. They must stay consistent to what they are. These brands
need to withstand the pressures of their immediate bottom-line profit
seeking CEO's and Finance Directors alike.

As a purist, I do believe these brands need to treat themselves as unique as
some of our heritage monuments themselves. If the Taj Mahal were to be
replicated in every Indian city, the Taj would lose some of its sheen for
sure. Imagine a Charminar in Delhi.....or a Gol Gumbaz in Bangalore.
Stretching heritage brands is equally ridiculous an attempt. Short term and
myopic. There is no scope for short-termism in the management of heritage
brands.

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Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Of Legacy Brands and Trends in Retail

2008-11-05T21:39:00.000-08:00

Of Legacy and Brands

By Harish Bijoor

Q: How do you distinguish a legacy brand? And how is a legacy brand built?

-Rohit Mangueshi, Mumbai

A: Rohit, Legacy brands need to essentially be mass brands. Brands that are accessible to the largest numbers of people. To that extent, in the pyramid
of brands, legacy brands are brands that fall in the middle and lower end of the pyramid rather than the top end. Therefore a Hugo Boss will not be a legacy brand. Instead, it is the MTR pickle and the Liv 52 from Himalaya and the Woodward’s Gripe water that will qualify better for the status.

The Legacy brand is one that stands the test of time, generations of use, generations of utility, and a rather intrinsic relationship with consumers, never mind their age. A Cadbury Dairy Milk would figure in this list as well...on this count.

To stand the test of time, a brand needs to maintain an impeccable line of quality. The brand needs to have had no major incidents of any kind that could plant a scar on its image, must be reasonably ubiquitous in its utility, must be solution oriented and not image-oriented alone (a biscuit versus Swarovski crystals), must be a basic item and not a fad that comes and goes (like a Covo chocolate spread or the Tazo), must be wholesome in its goodness appeal, and preferably taste-driven. This taste could be real taste as that of the tongue, or otherwise.

The marketer plays a distinct role in building a legacy brand. But bulk of it is done by the consumer. The marketer plays his role ensuring consistency of product appeal, and a consistent "wellness of the consumer" in mind forever. All strategies need to be geared in building such brands on a complete "Eastern
format" as I call it.

The "Eastern format" is the brand building format that asks "What can I give
the consumer" forever. The Western format is contra in the sense that it asks "What can I get back from the consumer...and how fast"!

The advertising and brand manager alike have a joint responsibility to ensure that consistency and reliability are used as cornerstones of both product and advertising delivery.

Q: If you were to isolate trends to watch out for in the retail market in the years ahead, what would they be?

-Pankaja Desikan, Chennai

A: Pankaja, this reply comes easily, as I have been evangelizing the same around quite a bit.

Here goes my list of ten trends to look out for in the retail market evolution head.

1.Small becomes more relevant
2.The small-retailer will organize himself into retail associations
3.Purchase cartels will emerge in India
4.Price under-cutting will remain the norm
5.Retailers will incur losses to earn customer walk-ins and franchise
6.Loyalty programs of retail outlets will get commoditized and fail to
deliver
7.Location-loyalty will reign in grocery, fruit and vegetable retail
8.Retailers will morph into the eye-balls business of Point of purchase
advertising
9.Point of purchase will become the point of advertising, the point of
marketing, the point of research...in short the point of everything
10.Manufacturers’ brands will lose their sheen over a period of time. Retail
brands will rule.

Q: What’s left of brand Kelvinator? Do you see anything there? I used to work for this brand in the old days.

-K R Seshaiah, Hyderabad

A: Shesiah-‘gaaru’, I agree. Kelvinator was a big brand once upon a time. I do believe that the brand is still alive and kicking in many a consumer mind. And surely enough, the brand is alive and kicking in many a kitchen with the ever-famous Kelvinator compressor just not willing to give up.

The Kelvinator penguin is an ubiquitous brand image. I do believe, backed by
adequate media spend pressure, the brand can be re-invoked in the mind of
the discerning Indian consumer rather quick. The Kelvinator compressor has brand equity
that is rock-solid.

Re-inventing the brand magic is a possibility.

Q: Can heritage brands re-position themselves and stretch their offerings to other categories that are new?

-John K, kochi

A: John, I am a purist in the realm of brand thinking. I do believe brands must not extend themselves too thin. A brand is like an elastic. You stretch it too thin, it breaks. It loses its depth. All it gains is width. And width does not necessarily build heritage. It is depth that builds heritage.

Therefore, I do believe heritage brands must not extend themselves with new
sub-brand avatars. They must stay consistent to what they are. These brands
need to withstand the pressures of their immediate bottom-line profit seeking CEO's and Finance Directors alike.

As a purist, I do believe these brands need to treat themselves as unique as
some of our heritage monuments themselves. If the Taj Mahal were to be
replicated in every Indian city, the Taj would lose some of its sheen for sure. Imagine a Charminar in Delhi.....or a Gol Gumbaz in Bangalore. Stretching heritage brands is equally ridiculous an attempt. Short term and
myopic. There is no scope for short-termism in the management of heritage
brands.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Of Cricket expenditure and Coffee

2008-11-04T21:02:00.000-08:00

Is Cricket Expenditure Justified?

By Harish Bijoor

Q: Can a savvy marketer’s expenditures on cricket ever be justified. This baffles me. There is so much of spend and so little of physical return in terms of sale volume. I am totally distraught by this trend.

-Rohit Datta, New Delhi

A: Dear distraught Datta, cricket expenditures are largely brand-building expenditures, unless the brand in question is a new launch altogether. For brands such as a Coke and a Pepsi, and possibly a Titan or a Tata tomorrow, cricket is all about building the brand imagery of the existing brand at large and typing up the thought-process of the game with the thought-process of the brand and its synergistic offering at large.

It works this way. If the brand is question is a Pepsi with its young and bubbly imagery, cricket is a great game. Think of cricket and think Pepsi. In reverse, think Pepsi and think cricket. This is the beneficial linkage that most brands expect to leverage with their mega sponsorship moneys.

When you convert this into sales numbers in terms of crates sold however, the linkage slips in its delivery. To that extent, if you did an ROI on such game-sponsorship gambles, the numbers don't necessarily stack up to a positive figure. Therefore, this expenditure is something you need to amortize as part of your long-term brand building process.

For a new brand launch however, things work differently. If a Yakult was to launch its offerings with a cricket season of sponsorships, things would work to its advantage in image terms. Fundamentally, the awareness scores that such a cricket association can create for an unknown brand is tremendous. The multiples in terms of image awareness and interest parameter terms would justify such expenditures for new brand launches.

This is the reason why most companies that sink moneys into such deep cricket sponsorships put together launches of variants of their drinks. Pepsi Blue was one such, and we know there are many such offerings up the sleeve for this season of discontent. Pepsi Gold is another. Never mind that the Indian cricket team is at his point of time no where near the gold!

Q: In recent times we see the active use of the word “pro” in our brand marketing statements on advertising. Wassup?

-Andrew N, Hyderabad

Andrew, "Pro' is a cute little pre-fix. All of three letters, short, crisp, and
completely positive. "Pro" is really all about being with you.

This pre-fix is therefore a potent brand semantic to use to advantage. It
is all being life-friendly. It is a semantic that fights the negative.
Pro-biotic would therefore mean something that actually fights many a
downside to the human body and its bio processes.

This is terminology that crept into the advanced brand markets of the West
and East alike in the early nineties. Since then, they have established a
potent position in consumer minds. Something every successive generation of
brands have reaped from over the years. It is now the time of the Indian
market and its brands to use and reap the "pro" word.

Pro is all about "professional" as well. Therefore in sport, you have the
use of "Pro-Am" championship, etc. Golf, Badminton and literally every other
sport uses it. This gives the word a positive cue as well.

Pro is used in advertising stances as well. Such as Pro-Life, Pro-diabetic,
etc.

I think this prefix is coming of age. The Indian market is two generations away form the American in terms of marketing usage. And one generation in marketing terms today is
all of 4 years. We are therefore around 8 years behind the US market.

Take for instance the market for Vitamin-enriched waters. We are nearly 8
years away from where it started in the US. The Vitamin-enriched waters
revolution has not yet hit India. It will.

Any prefix that has the positive terminological use will always help. Pro is all
about positivism and this lingo is bound to appeal to the Indian at large
who is getting very health conscious. India is emerging as the capital of
the life-style disease. On diabetes we are already there. Heart disease,
Hypertension, BP-negatives and Cholesterol related causes are not far way
in the great Indian marketplace, where our food habits are largely
unhealthy.

As the awareness surges, consumers will start investing gin preventive
health-care more rather than only the curative. As this happens, the pro
word is going to gain in further significance.

I would bet my best marketing buck on the pro word for success. It is
certainly the next "Free" of the modern consumer world.

Gone then are the days of “Ultra” as in “Ultra-rich”. There will be no “ultra-rich” ice-creams in the future. Instead, it will all be about “Pro-life” ice-creams! “Super” is dead as a prefix as well. Words will come and words will go in the world of marketing.

Q: What is a value chain in marketing terms, and how long is it?

V Paneerselvan, Madurai

A: Paneer, the value-chain is a concept that is all about adding value to the basic offering of a commodity or a brand. The value-chain is a ladder you climb in terms of value-realization as you brand a commodity for instance.

Here is an example form a category close to my heart. Coffee. The value chain in coffee is simple but long. At the bottom rung of the chain is the green bean. We have been exporting this for long number of years. Value-add is the lowest here. A player involved in green bean export is essentially a player in the volatile international market for the commodity. International commodity price movements give us big hiccups or pangs of small joy. We are completely at the mercy of the commodity market price, which is often controlled by tangible factors, and at times by the intangibles, such as the fancy of International funds that may park money in coffee as a commodity. In that sense, coffee is a scrip that is traded on two bourses, the New York and London terminals.

Just above the green bean, in terms of better value is the specialty green bean. Here, beans are segregated and there is quasi-branding. People run behind these grades and are willing to pay a price.

Just above this is the roasted bean. This can go in packaged tin forms into consumer markets of the West and East alike. And above this is the Roast and Ground category, where coffee moves in powder form in functionally oriented packaging forms that keep freshness intact.

Higher still is the soluble coffee format. This is really instant coffee. Then just above this in value terms is liquid coffee. This can go to direct consumption businesses like small Café-chains, through vending machines, to homes in small dispensation bottles, and of course through company owned Cafes as well.

Higher still, there are many routes, but let’s stop here, as we are entering sensitive space.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Tata, Jaguar and Brown skin

2008-09-14T02:51:00.000-07:00

Brands and Color of skin

By Harish Bijoor

Q: Talk of the Tate’s take-over of Jaguar have had Western minds questioning the ability of the Tate’s as an Indian company altogether to handle a brand such as this. Do you agree?

-RP Sastry, Hyderabad

A: Sastry-‘gaaru’, not at all. And that’s a very firm answer.

India is a happening destination today. The image of India in the world market is not what it was in the decade that has passed by. Today, India is seen to be a hot bed of commerce and indeed a hot bed of mergers and acquisitions activity.

Brand value is a function of what consumers think of the brand at large. An ownership shift seldom has a negative impact on brands, particularly when they pass on into the hands of organizations that have a pedigree in the same space. Tata Motors has that pedigree, as has Mahindra & Mahindra, another of the suitors.

This mindset that India and Indian predators in the Western markets face is the same thing that Japanese companies once faced in the US. It is a perception that typically gets gobbled into the limbo of chauvinistic brand history once actual acquisitions happen and the acquiring organization shows professionalism in the management of the same.

Just pure old racism as far as I am concerned. If I am to be more polite on this count, I would say just pure old ignorance of a country that is shortly designed to be an active participant in a tri-polar world of economics and commerce.

India is demographically blessed. Further still, our GDP growth rates can take us only one way. Forward....and into the space of more and more acquisitions of both the white, yellow, black and brown kinds.

Brands know no color of the skin.

Q: There is a lot of talk of branding education and the Institutions that purvey it. How different must the branding exercise be while handling education brands?

-Swati Mishra, Delhi

A: Swati, education is a credible output. It is an inner-sanctum subject, very close to religion.

I have a theory that there are outer-sanctum products and Inner sanctum products. outer sanctum products are things like food, clothing, shelter, accessories, telecom, etc.

Inner sanctum products are Medicare and education, to name just two.

The innermost sanctum product is religion.

One must take greeter and greater care as one steps into more and more inner sanctum subjects. Branding needs to be sensitive, relevant, original and innovative. You can't brand it like you would brand toothpaste.

Some management Institutes however have tried to do that...much to the peril of their credibility ratings! And they have started looking like plain old tooth-paste as well!

Q: When two brands get together to promote themselves, their category and at times joint products, what must they keep in mind?

-V S Saravanan, Trichy

A: Saravanan, the key criteria ıs that of managing the mass of existing consumers of each and of course vısıbılıty quotients for both brands. Brands want to hıtch up wıth other brands that are vısıble and command similar ımage cascades ın consumer minds.

At tımes the multiplier effect on such hıtch-ups is a bıg multiple of the obvious 1 plus 1 ın several cases. Co-branding helps bring ın new customers who were hitherto not with either of the brands. Aırlıne and credıt card company tie-ups are classıc examples of thıs.

The future in this space of brand tie-ups will be an interesting space to watch.

The perspective of tomorrow wıll be hıtch-ups not 1:1 but 1 wıth more than one party. A Credıt card company hıtchıng up wıth an aırlıne and a retaıl player lıke Relıance Retaıl...all together. Thıs wıll network needs. Data-mıned and shared requirement group profiles will integrate customers and their cross-buying requirements and wıll delver additional customers to all concerned.

The ıntellıgent credıt card wıll be the evolution of the future.

Q: If you are to brand the trend of using social marketing issues by brands of tea and toilet soap, what would you call it?

-Rohini Venkatesh, Mumbai

A: Rohini, only a brand with a mass appeal can take this kind of an approach.

I call it “Motherhood branding”!

Q:How do you see the business of cricket branding emerge in 2008?

-Jay Arora, New Delhi

A: Jay, I do believe audiences are getting less and less patient. This trend is big. As audiences get tired, the game will get crisper and crisper in its offering.

Cricket administrators will read the consumer sentiment that is loud and clear. The audience is getting younger and younger. India is a land of the young now. 54% of India is below the age of 25 and 72% below the age of 35.

India is getting to be a nation of working people who have little time to stare and dawdle at a 5-day game.

The variants of the game will keep morphing. From 5-day to one-day to 20 overs to possibly even triangular contests where three teams will battle it out on the pitch is an exciting variation of the game, for 10 overs each! The possibility is endless.

Cricket will become a game of eye-balls. Cricket will get more fast-paced and less fuddy duddy a game. If football can happen in 90 minutes flat, the adrenalin rush harvested over ninety minutes is big money. Cricket will need to compete with football. I do believe football will be the new cricket for sure!

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Branding Business Management education

2008-08-14T02:05:00.000-07:00

The Business of Business education

By Harish Bijoor

Q: What do you believe is more important and cutting edge? Branding or distribution? The obvious answer seems to be branding.

-Rana Tripathi, New Delhi

A: Rana-ji, there is nothing obvious about it. What looks obvious is a wee bit deceptive.

I do believe aspects of running a business such as product quality, new product development and brand building skills can be bought. At times these can be outsourced as well. What is difficult to manage and buy and monitor day in and day out is a good distribution system.

Let’s take the example of the two big players in FMCG space today. One an existent major player: HLL. And another a wannabe of serious intent: ITC Foods.

In relation to HUL, ITC is a laggard in distribution strengths. But let’s credit the company for having set up what it has in such a short time of being in existence as a biscuit player for a start.

Distribution essentially requires three parameters to be governed carefully. One is the width of distribution. How far and wide you reach. Are you able to cover the 16.2 million retail outlets in this country altogether? Remember, India is a nation of shop-keepers. A nation of Mom and pop stores. The density of retail outlet to population is the deepest here in the world. The distribution task is therefore tougher here than in the US, where a marketer just has to cobble together a total of 23 chain stores to reach out of 92 per cent of the country’s masses.

The second parameter of significance is the depth of distribution. It is not enough to be present across outlets. It is important to be present in each of the outlets with a depth of stocking of your product as per need. Every outlet need is different. This needs to be assessed and catered to carefully without a stock out situation.

The third parameter to monitor is consistency of distribution. The need to touch every outlet with the distribution call every week is paramount today. Retailers do not like to hold inventory of stock that lasts more than a week. Distribution companies must therefore be able to touch every outlet every week. Companies such as HUL are now touching a whole host of outlets twice a week even! That is efficiency!

HUL has over the decade’s mastered efficiency in this realm. ITC needs to clone that process. ITC needs to tackle the issues of width of distribution, optimal depth across all outlets and indeed the consistency of distribution it will offer. Give it time. It will.

God is indeed in the details of good distribution. This is a process that demands a sheer labor of love. It cannot be bought overnight and put into place. Distribution is a mindset. A mindset that requires a focus on labor and continued excellence. Distribution is a culture.

You can have a great product, very good R&D, excellent advertising and branding inputs, but if you don't have a good enough distribution system, you can mess up your brand on offer.

Distribution is therefore the cutting-edge of it all. Touché!

Q: What is Retail branding? How is it different form what we already know of retail and branding?

-J.S.Saroj, Mimbai

A; Saroj, Retail branding is a different subject altogether. I have been evangelizing this for the past three years.

Retail is one competence. Branding is
another. Retail is a competence that the modern format retailer is good at.
Branding as we know it in India is best known by the FMCG and durable
marketer in this country. Retail branding is a cusp subject. Something that
is not yet mastered by the retailer. Further still, the traditional brand guy
in the FMCG and durable space finds increasingly that what he has learnt in
traditional space cannot be implemented here. Retail branding is therefore
a new science altogether. Something we need to invest in to master and use
to advantage. Markets of the US, Germany and indeed Japan are rich in this
experience. We need to learn retail branding shedding our pomposity as brand
people and retail people alike.

This is new space. Master it differently.

Globally, there are bench-marked practices we can learn from. Ikea is a
classic example. So is Harrod's. And a host of others for sure.

Q: There seems to be a lot of action in the space of Business Management education in recent years. Where is the opportunity and how is it panning out?

-Dr. BL Khera, New Delhi

A: Dr.Khera, I do see two big realms of opportunity ahead. One is in the space of Business education and another in assisted Medicare and Medical services. Both these terrains are demand-terrains of the present and the future.

At the macro level, I see both these opportunities that can earn the rupee and the Dollar, the Euro and whatever equally.

There is an inherent internal demand for business education in the country, just as there is an opportunity to leverage on the possibility of Education-tourism, as I would call it. A whole host of prospective students who look forward to quality business education at non-Amercian prices can actually gravitate to India.

Business education is a high value education enterprise. What's more, this business is a complete experiential business that earns its repeat custom from word of mouth of satisfied and well-placed individuals in Corporate and Business enterprises.

India already witnesses a layered Management and business education industry. Right at the top sit the A Grade Management Institutes such as the IIMs and the ISB. Just below this is a layer of the B grade Management Institutes. And just under it is a layer of C grade Institutes.

Each of these have a role to play. Each of these segments has possibilities.

As of now we have a total of 2816 Management Institutes of all these kinds. I see this going into a mode of over-drive with newer and newer Institutions emerging.

I also see new verticals emerging which are specialized and niche. Schools of Retail management, Telecom Management, Petro Management et al!

I do also believe there is a huge opportunity for Rural management education. Out here we need enterprises that will offer rural students the best of management inputs to build business enterprises of significance in the rural environments that dominate Indian space today. Remember, three fourths of our people live in the villages of this country.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Branding Education

2008-08-02T00:20:00.000-07:00

Branding Education and Educational Institutions

By Harish Bijoor

Q: What is the one big trend you see in the branding of educational institutions? And what are the mantras one must never forget in the branding of education?

- P Vasuki, Chennai

A: Vasuki, the one big trend I see is the verticalisation of what’s on offer. Take management education for instance.

There are programs that focus on Medical Management, Engineering Management, Construction Management, Petroleum Management, Technology Management and a whole lot of such stuff.

If I am to put down my mantras while branding the education segment, they would be the following seven sutras:

1. Integrity branding: say only what is true
2. Lack of hype: don't build your education brand as if it is a panty hose!
3. Do not advertise: When you do, it means you are touting. Don't tout
4. Follow Bottom up branding and not top-down: Let your work speak for itself
5. Invest heavily into the pedagogics...never mind the returns.
6. Patience: it takes all of 6-9 years to build education brands in India
7. Focus at two ends. The first must be the end of the Recruiter who will absorb your students. The second: the student population.

Q: There is a young and empowered segment of the population in ‘New India’ that is young, different and buying all the time. How would you typify them?

-JS Singh, New Delhi

A: Singh-'saab', typifying anyone and anything is a mistake we must never do in Marketing.

However, the segment you are talking about is really the cusp-generation between the 30 plus Gen and the Teenage generation of today. I call it the cusp-age group.

This group is essentially one that has not seen hardship at all. It is a group that was born into a reasonably comfortable era. This group is all about having seen a self-sustaining economy at large all around it. This group did not have to wait for their home phones to be connected after six years and their father's scooter being bought after a wait of 8 years in the queue.

I also call this generation the “Commode generation”. Particularly the young gen. in the twenties and below, in most urban areas is one that has never used the squatting type of Indian toilet at all. This gen. starts its morning sitting on the commode...without the strain and pressure that one has to take while sitting on the haunches.

This generation's world view is therefore of the Commode Generation, which is shaped by little or no discomfort at all!

This gen. of 21-30 is therefore a very hungry for achievement generation. Whether it be in urban areas or rural, there is a hunger to get going fast. Everything is also expected in a jiffy. Therefore, in my book, I call this gen. the "Scratch-card" generation as well. A generation of young people who want everything fast...even at the scratch of a card. Increments need to happen every quarter, and incentives must be on the spot. They do not know the joy of delayed gratification at all!

Some realms that distinguish them then:

1. Politics: This gen is politically insensitive. The key issues that haunted India, which actually engineered a high degree of political awareness in the past, have literally vanished here. This gen is not a gen that loves to vote even!

2. Spending pattern: Very hedonistic in spends. Still value-seeking. This gen will buy their crystals from a Swarovski store...and then drive into a Big Bazaar to do the family's grocery shopping. It will splurge in some arenas and will not in some.

3. Consumptiveness: Highly consumptive. Eat more brands, drink more brands and wear more brands. Labels mean a lot to this generation. It has convinced itself that the brand means high quality even. Never mind the price!

3. Films: Realism is in. Relationship spectrums are non-limiting in behavior patterns of this young gen.

This gen. operates on a reasonably quick swing on what I call the” love-hate pendulum” for brands and relationships equally. They will like a brand for a short while and then move to hating the same brand even. Much quicker in this movement than the generation before them. More mercurial.

There is very little patience. This young gen., by the time they have reached the age of 30 have an experience profile that is exciting in a multi-tasking life. They have been through thousands of emails, thousands of sms messages, many hundred hours of gaming and Internet experience on the whole.
This gen. wants to move fast. Things it likes, it refreshes. Things it does not, it deletes!

This is how much I will typify. No more. And no less.

Q: The new Tata tea commercial is different. It is a take on social issues. Why?

- Rachna Sood, Mumbai

A: Rachna, tea is a fundamental and old category of beverage in India. The category of tea is quite like detergent, soap and sundry other old categories that have seen advertising inputs for decades.

Any category that has gone through the wringer of advertising for as long as these categories have, boredom sets in.

Tea is a mother category today which has tried advertising executions related to USP's that are functional, emotional and even surreal. Now, when everything is exhausted, it is time to try something new.

The "new" I am talking about is socially relevant macro advertising that has little or sometimes even nothing with the product at hand. In the case of Tata Tea, this macro stance is the heightened awareness of the Indian and his necessary involvement in how the land is governed.

The insight to understand is the fact that a people in society are largely concerned about themselves initially. As society grows in terms of economic upheavals of the positive kind, people get involved in issues that are of a larger consequence, such as socially conscious issues.

Surf tried this a couple of years ago with the "Do bucket paani bachana hai" campaign and later did an execution with Lifebuoy soap as well.

The advertising hopes to stir up a discussion...and the discussion is hoped to get a recall of the brand.

Such advertising is good for recall, but not too good in terms of anything much else.

Brands such as Tata Tea are essentially looking at maintaining their market shares with such advertising, and not necessarily increasing shares.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

IIM's and Poor students

2008-07-26T04:00:00.000-07:00

The Sky and the Marketplace

By Harish Bijoor

Q: There are brands that have a good recall but low purchase by consumers. For instance, Amul Chocolate is well know and well recalled brand of chocolates but that recall is not being converted into purchase even though AMUL has launched several chocolate variants like ChocoZoo & SugerFree chocolate. Similar situation is seen with Britannia's MilkMan Dairy Whitener, Anchor Tooth Paste etc.

How do you explain this strange phenomenon?

Muralidhar, Chennai

A: Murali, at the outset, there are two aspects in the realm of selling and marketing. One is the realm of brand image. The other is the realm of sales. The two are twains that meet sometime. And sometime they do not. Or apparently not.

Brand image and recall is one subject. Sales volume and the strategies that fall into place to get that going, is another. In many ways, branding and brand image is not about sales really.

And whenever I say this, the quick question that comes back is a simple one. If branding has little to do with the subject of selling, what’s the use of branding at all?

The answer is a simple one as well. Branding is all about the short-term, medium-term and long-term image of the brand in question. Sales is really the short-term approach to garner market volume. And short-term could mean the sale volume of the monthly cycle even. And sometimes it could mean sales strategy, which could cover a relatively longer period of time.

Brand image therefore does not ensure and assure sale volume. Your brand image could be very positive, and your sales volume could be very, very negative.

Conversion of brand-image into sale volume and value is a very slow process. It is so slow a process that at times it is not visible at all. At times it takes decades for it to happen.

Brand image in many ways is like the sky above us. Everyone knows it is there. Everyone is happy about the way it looks. Everybody looks at it in awe at times. Everyone is comfortable with its presence. Everyone will talk of it in awe. Write poetry on it even.

But no one wants a piece of it. No one wants to own a piece of it. It is just there.

Brand image is therefore not about sales. It is the facilitating environment that creates the positive image that in turn drives interest in the product and its offering. This interest could get converted into an avid desire to own the product or service.

It is there that sales with its allure comes in. Sales tactics offered by clever sellers will help swing the sale in.

Therefore, don’t worry if an Amul chocolate is yet to take off or Britannia image is yet to create that robust sale in the marketplace. Remember, if the sky didn’t exist, the marketplace wouldn’t be there at all.

Q: With the recent fee hikes at IIMs there seems to be a shake-up with students having to cough up more moneys. Is there equity here? The fee seems to come first. What about the poor students around?

-Sheela Ramani, Hyderabad

A: Sheela, I do believe the fee comes last.

The fee structure at an IIM is the last of the issues at hand. The first issue is merit. The first issue is the ability of a student to study for the CAT and get through the CAT. Some students spend a whole year on this and some spend a crash-course of three months and others spend no time at all and get through it.

The preparation process for the CAT costs money. This is the first hurdle that weeds out the economically empowered from those not empowered. I do believe this is wrong. Not the fee structure at all. The first unfair hurdle to achievement is here. Intelligent students who wish to go through a thorough coaching process at times are unable to afford the same, and hence fall out of the race. This is unfair. And not the eventual fee structure of an IIM.

Once a student has made it through the CAT, comes the issue of the fee. At this stage the ROI works very favorably towards the student. Banks are willing to extend those loans and there are enough number of angel investors willing to seed-fund a student who has merit on his admission list.

The brand value of an IIM is undeniable. Particularly the IIM's of the A, B and C kind! This brand value has been built assiduously by these Institutes of Management education excellence. Every batch has helped this image. Every professor has helped in this process, as has every high value recruitment with a big price tag!

This brand value helps extract the fee for the brand from the prospective student. The IIM brand is a rainbow with a pot of gold at one end of the rainbow. This is the allure of the brand.

The positive aspect of this brand however is the fact that this brand value has been cobbled with hard work of several decades. Bricks of hard fact have built this brand. The brand has been built bottom up through hard work. The brand is not one which has been built with full page advertisements claiming merit. Instead, it is a quiet brand that has been built bottom up. This is why the brand value is that much more alluring. This unlocks purses and value.

Youngsters are therefore more than willing to cough up big moneys to be part of this allure brand called IIM.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Financial sector Brand Overhaul

2008-07-07T23:43:00.000-07:00

Shock And Awe Ubiquity

By Harish Bijoor

Q: There is a lot of brand over-haul action in the Financial Services sector in recent times. Why?
-J.S.Gill, New Delhi

A: Gill-‘saab’, the Financial Services sector is just at the take-off stage in India. Gone are the days when this sector operated at the realm of lowest common denominator products such as necessity based bank loans, basic broad spectrum Insurance and products of the kind.

Today, India is on the boom mode. The market is definitely much younger than it was ever before. The demand for financial products and solutions is very different. In this era, the young investor is looking at brands he can trust. These brands could be brand offerings that come from the traditional banking sector, the traditional insurance sector or even from the new and emerging entrants coming in from overseas markets after enjoying deep equity there.

The brand is very important here. I define the brand as a thought. A thought that lives in people's minds. This "thought" is what is being re-jigged and leveraged today by most players in financial space.

Older players such as LIC of India, RBI, Canara Bank, Syndicate Bank and indeed a plethora of old banks are all looking at re-jigging image to ensure that they stay contemporary for the young investor. At the same time, they have plenty to leverage from their heritage which is a crucial factor to count.

These brands surely want to stand out from the clutter all around. Also, when you have a Bank of Baroda re-branded, all other banks of the same vintage will start looking older and more fuddy- duddy than BOB if they don't quickly do something.

I do believe all banks will go in for an overhaul. Later than sooner.

Q: ITC Foods is getting into everything all at once. Do you think it is a good idea to enter into so many segments such as foods, personal care, snack foods and household products all together?

-Dhriti Kapoor, Mumbai

A: Dhriti, good question.

A company can typically enter different verticals over a period of time, or all of a sudden, all together. One is the traditional approach and the other new.

I think the ITC foods idea is a great idea. This piece of marketing strategy from the house of ITC is all about "Shock and Awe". Shock the market with your bluster. Shock the market with your range. Shock it with wide distribution. Shock it with a status that speaks not of a new launch, but of an aggressive player with deep pockets who can outdo the best guy in the market.

The market is shocked first. So is the market leader. The consumer is put into a state of awe. Every piece of advertising and market promotion makes the ITC product look larger than life. This helps.

The bottom line for ITC will bleed in the short run for sure. Brand break-even cycles will be very elongated, but short term consumer interest will be high. Converting these early customers and early adopters of the brand into loyal customers is yet another task. A task that requires a different set of inputs.

More the segments the company enters, more mega the feel. More the ubiquity of its brands in the kitchens, bedrooms, drawing rooms and bathrooms of consumers.

Q: What is the true value of the tag fo a heritage brand? Does it count?
-Rohit Surana, Bangalore

A: Rohit, the tag of heritage brand is a valuable one to possess. This tag is time-centric. The more time that passes, the richer the heritage strokes.

The heritage tag becomes part of the brand identity kit. And like Amul, it can be used in macro advertising stances such as Amul's "The taste of India" campaign and Red Label Tea's "Desh ka pyaala"!

One more valuable point is the fact that we must remember that the world will come round to retro thinking sooner or later. It is already happening in the realm of cars. People want to own cars that look different and old. This movement is going to spread. People will want to be seen eating and drinking and using brands that have a retro feel in the future. At this point of time, the heritage brand tag is a valuable one to monetize. Either right now, or sometime in the near to medium term future.

Q: What is the difference between business ethics and philosophy of business?
-Pankaja D, Trichy

A: Pankaja, philosophy of business is the macro. Business ethics are a sub-set of this.

Business philosophy is the vision of the organization at large. Business ethics are part of the mission. Both seamlessly fit into one another.
Both play a role in defining an organization, its culture and its consumer-articulation processes.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

PR and Brands

2008-07-05T21:41:00.000-07:00

Little Drops of Profit

By Harish Bijoor

Q: Coca Cola is now “Little drops of Joy”! What’s this all about? Does it have to do anything with all the pesticide controversy the brand has been through in India?

-Rohit P Gupta, Mumbai

A: Rohit, let’s look at it positively and away from the 'pesticidal' past. “Little drops of joy’ has the seed of making a lovely campaign. A big idea. A very campaignable macro idea at large as well.

This is a nice tweak of “little drops of water make a mighty ocean”. In Coke’s ocean, this is but yet another mega campaign that seeks to involve the Indian consumer and emote with him and her and it (I don’t know if dogs and cats drink Coke as well).

I do believe this campaign is about connect. Consumer connect.

Consumers are simple people. Simple and uncomplicated statements make us that much more happy. "Little drops of joy" is that kind of a phrase. As it gets set to music and mood, expect a lot of action on the front of building a platform that is truly big for Coke in India.

"Little drops of joy" is also about mother-branding the offering from the house of Coke. In many ways the campaign is a company campaign. I will not call it a corporate campaign, but it certainly is about all the brands that Coke has to offer in India. In some ways, it subliminally establishes a wee bit of distance from being painted into the corner of a Cola image alone. There is more to Coca Cola than Coke alone. Or is there?

Coca Cola sure wants that.

In many ways, the little drops of joy could be a Kinley mineral water today and a vitamin-enriched offering in water tomorrow. It is certainly about all the other drinks in its portfolio of the carbonated kind, orange, lime and everything else included. It is about its latest offering Minute Maid, just as it is about any other beverage it will offer in the future. Coffee is but one. There could be others.

The campaign is therefore pregnant with possibilities. Watch it unwind closely as it knits its consumer profile tightly together. Slowly but surely.

Q: With the rise in commercial property prices, what is the impact on modern retail?

John Kuruvilla, New Delhi

A: John, a lot of action is slated in this space. Retail and realty is a relationship that will impact one another all the while. The retail-realty nexus is a formula on its own. In many ways Darwin said it all. Only the fittest will survive. And the one metric of fitness in the retail business is profitability at the end of it all. Therefore, only the most profitable survive.

The bigger and more profitable retailers will be able to survive on the High streets of our cities and towns. The smaller and possibly less profitable retailers will be pushed into the by-lanes. At times into the by-lanes of residential areas.

Similarly, the more profitable retailers will find themselves within Malls. The lesser profitable ones will have to sweat it out on the streets.

Watch out then for a continuous state of flux in the face of your High streets and certainly the profile of shops within a brand new Mall. As the months pass, it is profits that will define durability of these modern retail formats and names.

Let me exemplify. On Bangalore's Brigade Road, in the beginning, you had grocers as well. The grocer shop gave way to the Wine shop (more profitable retail). The wine shop gave way to the unbranded shoe shop. The un-branded shoe shop then gave way to a Nike showroom. Who knows, tomorrow the Nike shop may give way to a 'Swarovksi' showroom instead!

This is retail-Darwinism (as I call it) at play!

The economy and its state of flux will govern the state of flux of the retail space on offer. This very metric of modern retail that involves realty prices, will make businesses more efficient. There will be corrections of course as we move on and the economy of retail moves from a boom in purchase habit to a recessionary mode at times.

Q: What is the role and scope of PR in brand-building?

-P R Shylaja, Trichy

A: Shylaja, I do believe PR has a potent role to play in the process of building
brands. The point is simply this; advertising is getting trusted less and
less. The advertising medium is a medium that is accepted with some degree
of cynicism, even in new-gen. advertising markets such as India.

Advertising is therefore working best at the level of creating awareness
among consumers. Other marketing roles such as the need to get consumers
interested in the offering, desirous of possessing the offering, the actual
physical action of sale and indeed managing post-sales dissonance, often
requires other tools to help out with. PR is one such useful tool to date.
Till of course it is overdone, just as advertising got overdone!

PR done with subliminal respect for the consumer at large always works. PR
needs to however take care not to repeat the mistakes of mass advertising at
large. This is golden goose that must not be squeezed dry with insensitive
use.

Q: Consumers emote with “Apparel” brands differently than the way they relate to FMCG Brands. What is the reason

-Jyothi R Prasad, Bangalore

A: Jyothi, FMCG brands are largely of a functional orientation. Apparel brands are both functional and cosmetic. Apparel brands are fashion-oriented. And fashions are fickle and change more often than not.

Branding for the apparel market is challenging for this one sake that the component of fashion is rather large here. This is a space where branding needs to be sensitive to change in a big way. Static-state branding will not do here. Dynamic rapid-change branding is the need in the apparel segment.

Apparel branding is an exciting space to be in.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Brand Recalls

2008-07-03T02:41:00.000-07:00

Of Calls and re-calls

By Harish Bijoor

Q: The recent Nokia battery recall exercise has hurt brand Nokia. Am I right?

-Vinay Prasad, Chennai

A: Vinay, there are product advisories and then there are product recalls. Product advisories are softer options marketers use to pull out erring products from the market. At times they use the product advisory as a cautionary mechanism in markets. The Product recall exercise on the other hand is a more serious issue.

The recent issue with the Nokia battery (I wonder whether we should call it the Matsushita battery issue, as the manufacturer is Matsushita) has had several opinions floating around.

Let’s take this case point by point.

Firstly, I do believe the company has done right. Nokia has acted in the best traditions of responsible corporate behavior. When in doubt, go ahead and clear the entire issue. Clear out every battery of the default batch and purge the headache, or even the potential of a headache in the future.

Having done that, do I believe that brand Nokia has taken a bit of a beating in the Indian market because of this exercise?

Well, while from the manufacturers point of view, while everyone is going to town saying that brand Nokia is not hurt at all, particularly as customers respect responsible behavior in markets, I personally do not subscribe to this view.

Let me explain. The brand is a thought. Brand Nokia is a thought. A thought that at once brings forth images of a good product, an efficient product and a truly world-class offering. A market-leader in its space. This thought, I am afraid, is sullied. Soiled if not sullied. Shaken if not stirred.

Consumers in the developed markets of the world sure do appreciate responsible corporate behavior from marketers. I am however not sure if the same prevails in less developed consumer markets such as India.

Let’s remember that in the Indian market there are disctinct layers. The top creamy layer comprises of consumers who are as connected to the world as any. They are consumers who are self-actualizing consumers who appreciate the Nokia pull out and appreciate preventive actions that could cost the company lots in terms of money(an estimated Rs.8 Crore in this case for Nokia). All in the interest of public safety. And company liability of course.

The next layer is the middle layer of consumers. This layer is functionality oriented, and is happy that the battery is getting replaced. This layer will harbor a bit of a doubt on the brand name Nokia in future. This segment will want to investigate more than the phone alone in future. Dealerships where these people buy phones from will be inundated with queries regarding battery safety in the near future for sure.

The third layer is the bottom end of the market. This is a more suspicious layer of the market. This is not such a well-informed segment as well. It is here that rumors will abound. It is here that competitors will make hay of the issue at hand. Acts of responsible corporate behavior will not get the kind of appreciation in this segment of the market as they do get in the other two layers. Out here, if you have done wrong, you will be punished. Punished unfairly even.

Brand Nokia sells to each of these segments. Brand Nokia needs to manage its image at each of these layers with a different and segmented approach. The task has just begun. The residue of discontent will remain for a while, I am afraid.

Q: How does a heritage brand happen? What are the qualities that a brand requires to be a heritage brand?

-Vani Shottam, Coimbatore

Vani, heritage brands need to essentially be mass brands. Brands that are accessible to the largest numbers of people. To that extent, in the pyramid of brands, heritage brands are brands that fall in the middle and lower end of the pyramid rather than the top end. Therefore a Hugo Boss will not be a heritage brand. Instead, it is the MTR pickle and the Liv 52 from Himalaya and the Woodward's Gripe water that will qualify better for the status.

The heritage brand is one that stands the test of time, generations of use, generations of utility, and a rather intrinsic relationship with consumers, never mind their age. A Cadbury Dairy Milk would figure in this list as well...on this count.

To stand the test of time, a brand needs to maintain an impeccable line of quality. The brand needs to have had no major incidents of any kind that could plant a scar on its image, must be reasonably ubiquitous in its utility, must be solution oriented and not image-oriented alone (a biscuit versus Swarovski crystals), must be a basic item and not a fad that comes and goes (like a Covo chocolate spread or the Tazo), must be wholesome in its goodness appeal, and preferably taste-driven. This taste could be real taste as that of the tongue, or otherwise.

Q: How important is the physical shopping experience at a store to increase sales volume? Or is this a myth of organized retail?

-J J Pinto, Mumbai

A: Dear Pinto-ji, shopping is a hugely sensorial experience at large. The sensorial experience happens at the level of the visual, the audio, the sense of smell, and more.

Offering a sensorial shopping experience provides the space and environment for the consumer to relax and let loose his/her shopping-lust.

There is data that we have on hand that says that the actual shopping experience that is positive helps push up top line revenue at the outlet by as much as 65%. And that’s big!

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Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Of Butter and Underwear..........

2008-06-30T22:43:00.000-07:00

Why Ban Amul?

By Harish Bijoor

Q: Lux Cozy and Amul Macho ads. Have been banned by the I&B Ministry. What does this mean for the freedom of expression? And what does it mean to the creative man at large? Why all this hullabaloo?

-Jayesh Mehta, Mumbai

A: 'Jayesh-bhai', Lux, once upon a time was a cake of soap and Amul a butter I layered my toast with. Today, they seem something else altogether.

First of all these brands of inner-wear have benefited immensely from being raised in parliament. The best of brands promoted with the best of creative input and the best of media exposure seldom enter into the hallowed portals of the parliament of India. These two have.

In the bargain, Lux Cozy and Amul Macho have hogged the lime-light of editorial coverage in both print and television mediums for sure. They have got a bigger bang for their advertising buck than what any media-planner can afford to get and give. In the years gone by, MR Coffee got the same time of attention with Arbaaz Khan and more importantly Malaika Arora coming to the fore on the brand with a piping hot set of sequences of sex, stimulus, steam and coffee of course, as an incidental.

Having said all of this, I personally do believe these pieces of creatives are not fit for being telecast on a mass medium at large. Don’t get me wrong. I am as liberal as you and everyone else in the big cities of India largely is. I am just a little more sensitive on this issue. Sensitive to the fact that India does not live in its metros. India is much more. Three fourths of this country lives in its villages. Another three-fifths of the balance 25% of the urban population lives in the Tier 2 towns of this country. Let’s get sensitive to social needs, wants, desires, aspirations and mores of these viewers and consumers who live in Real India.

Why the hullabaloo? Just for this one reason. Real India hates the sexual innuendo thrown at them and their children from the popular and mass mediums of the day. There is an innocent child-audience out there asking questions out there. There is a bigger child-audience as well out there which is not asking questions of their parents, but is nevertheless getting their answers.

I do believe these brands have understood the market wrong, and have gotten carried away by “creative excellence” as a route to the heart and soul of the consumer. The creatives are exciting, and maybe even excellent. But they lack insight.

The key insight to bother about is this. Most of India is not too excited about the Dada Kondke genre of double entendre advertising. The women of Real India are particularly not excited about this, as they have to deal with the ruffians on the roads who get a bit too carried away by advertising and its exciting creatives.

One more insight to care about. In intimate apparel and under-garment advertising/marketing, it is important to ensure that product endorsement is handled by the same-sex entity. A panty must be endorsed by a woman and a man’s jock by a man. The moment the product is endorsed by the opposite sex entity, as in the case of Amul Macho, one treads into the realm of controversy. Crass appeal is a matter of worry then.

Q: What is the biggest change in the Indian consumer at large? Is it overt consumptiveness? And how is the marketer approaching this change?

-Roopa Mehrotra, Kolkata

A: Roopa, the Indian consumer has changed dramatically. She has become very out-door oriented for a start. In addition to this, she has become spend-oriented from the old savings-oriented Indian. Eating out and the market for narcissism is big. Spending on brands has perked up from the spending on commodity. The skew of spends between brands and commodity is shifting with the scales tilting in favor of brand-spends. Overt consumptiveness is surely here, but only across a small segment of the haves.

Brand marketers have largely geared themselves to this new consumer and everything is targeted accordingly. Some more trends then. The increasing number of double income no kids (Dinks) households is adding to the eating-out mania in the country. This is significant considering that this eating-out pattern is not led only by gastronomic-greed or gastronomic-variety-seeking behavior. Instead, it is all about eating out because one has to. It is eating out by compulsion.

As this spreads, the market for RTE foods and RTD beverages is bound to increase. The RTE market is directly related to the fatigue of eating out.

The process is cyclical. In the beginning you eat good old home food. Then you move on to outside food that is wholesome. And then on to junk food. Tired of it all, one wants to then try RTE foods which can be either heated in a microwave or cooled in a cooler. RTE is the last development in the cycle. Therefore this happens when society is highly evolved in its eating out pattern. Evolved to a point of fatigue.

Statistics available in the eating-out market indicate that we are just about climbing this hierarchy. In Delhi a person eats out 6.2 times and in Mumbai the number stands at 7 times a month. This number is still small. If you take numbers pertaining to the young and single population however, it is much more robust. The eating out habit in the age-group of the 21-30 year old groups in Mumbai stands at 23 and in Bangalore at 27, as per a recent study of ours titled "Retail Eatouts Probe 2007"

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

The Internet Divide

2008-06-26T02:41:00.000-07:00

The North South Internet Divide

By Harish Bijoor

Q: Where does India stand in terms of utilization of Outdoor mediums of publicity in relation to other countries? Are brands using this medium adequately?

-Chanda Pathak Mumbai

A: Chanda, very simply put, we are an under-developed Outdoor economy. We are the “Third”, if not the “Fourth world” in Outdoor usage as of now.

Australia makes good use of Outdoor. In Australia you even have human bodies
moving about as an Outdoor cluster. Walking Posters, if you may! Hungary is good at Outdoor use as is all of Europe. So is Japan.

Utilization efficacy of the medium goes n step with the lifestyle of the people of the country. More ‘Outdoorsy’ our life, the more Outdoor evolves. As we wander
out of doors more, the more is the eye-balls in this business. India is just about entering that phase with more and more people of the house spending more and more time out of home and on-the-go.

Today however, the medium is yet to mature. The medium is at best left as an adjunct and co-incidental medium which gobbles up a wee bit of expenditure of what’s left over from the mainline mediums of television and print. Brands are yet to wake up to the true-blue potential of Outdoor.

Q: Why is Internet advertising in India still so sluggish? So is the mobile phone advertising market. I have been promoting this medium for 8 years now, and yet there are not enough takers?

-Name with-held on request

A: Dear ‘Be-naam’, Internet advertising is still a pretty nascent thought. As you wallow in frustration, please note that other evangelists of mediums such as Point-of-purchase, Outdoor, Mobile advertising, and sundry such mediums have waited more than three decades to see light at the end of the advertising tunnel.

What is required is patience for the moment. The fifth ‘P’ of Marketing is really a very big ‘P’. Patience!

The reaction to the Internet is tardy at the moment. There is a dichotomy here.
India is at the nerve centre of the technological changes hitting the electronic world. At the same time, there is a North-South divide of sorts in Internet space.

We in the South are the producers. The consumers essentially sit in the
North. Our response to the internet and mobile industries is still nascent.

In the arena of telecom, we are adding on 6 million connections every month.
We are indeed one of the fastest growing markets in the world. Our internet
base is however small as yet, with 23 million surfers from India (we have grown at 33 per cent over last year). However, the depth of surfing time is weak as yet; despite India boasting one of the world's lowest broad-band connect rates!

Mobile entertainment delivery is yet to take off as an arena of work here.
We seem to be developing base platforms for the US and Europe, but we are
not too focused on India as yet here.

Bide your time. Your time shall surely come.

Q: Advertising agencies seem to be opening media schools. From the brand perspective, does this make sense? If so, what?

-Jacintha Pereira, Pune

Jacintha, there sure is a method in this madness. A full-play communications agency operating a media school offers several advantages to brand.

For one, it affords a seamless back-ward integration for the agency in terms
of academic input, and a ready school of people who are definitely
positively-coated by the magic of the mother brand.

And in terms of image, it offers the mother brand the positive cues that accrue from being involved not only in commerce, but in education and academics as well
Add one more positive to that. An ad-agency that is deep into education is
certainly not a fly-by-night operator. The image that accrues out of
academic involvement is benign. More benign than all effort at CSR activity
as well.

Remember, in India we worship two primary Goddesses. One is Saraswati and the
other is Lakshmi, among others. Saraswati comes first and then Lakshmi. We
have always revered education ahead of wealth creation.

An agency that makes Lakshmi and takes care of Saraswati as well, is indeed
a benign one.

And there is plenty of method in this madness for sure.

It offers the group a feel that is macro and more involved than another
agency involved just in commerce would have. Overtly it is this, and
covertly, it is creating for itself evangelists as alumni. Never mind
where they will work in the future, they will always remember their alma
mater with pride.

This positive equity is pretty immeasurable.

Q: Can you tell me one good example of a Tourism brand in India? And what are the challenges in building such a brand?

-Gopi Santhanam, Chennai

-I take Kerala Tourism as a classic inbound travel program and Singapore
Tourism Promotion Board and its efforts in India for outbound travel.

If you view the entire brand promotion kit of Kerala Tourism, you will see
all the fine details that are contextually correct for the inbound audience.
Not only has this been done, but efforts have been made to educate every cog
in the tourism game, from taxi-driver at airport to restaurant waiter and
bell boy. The effort has been a seamless one, and does not depend on
advertising alone.

And this is the mistake most tourism brands make. They make lovely pieces of
advertising that promise the sky and deliver the boondocks. No effort is
made to correct the ground level realities of infrastructure, soft issues of
tourist handling, courtesy and convenience and a host of 47 issues that need
to be looked into to provide a seamless brand offering.

Tourism is tough business, as there are a host of deliverables that need to
go right. Satisfaction in this space is a cascade of positive experiences.
This cascade of experiences needs to be seamlessly right. One wrong
experience is likely to nullify the effort of all else.

God is therefore in the details of the delivery. Therefore, Kerala needs to
be not only God's own country in its advertising promise, but in its
physical delivery terms as well. Consistently.

The challenges are many for sure.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

The animal link in Consumers

2008-06-25T03:39:00.000-07:00

Did you smell your Nalli saree right?

By Harish Bijoor

Q: How evolved is the Indian consumer? And are all consumers in India equally evolved?

-Pritham Bhasin, New Delhi

A: Pritham, there are two views on this. From a pure Darwinian perspective, all consumers who call themselves human beings are reasonably evolved. Yet again, if you peek into consumer lives keenly, you will see chinks in this process of evolution altogether. Let me focus on one to give you a peek at the answer to your question.

I will dip into a recent study we under-took for a specific client, whose name I will not mention. The question: Is the consumer an evolved animal? And if so, how evolved? Here it is. The results at a glance.

What we find in the gut of the Indian market is very interesting. We find consumers in India as animalistic as consumers in Bali and most certainly as those living in the markets of the Dak Lak province of Vietnam. We are therefore very connected to the world at large. All consumers in a sense, across the globe, are similar.

The consumer ethos is similar in these markets. The consumer is essentially a human being. And all human beings are animals. Social animals if you please!

All animals behave similarly. Some animals do it openly. Others do it closeted. But all do it.

Do what? Many things. Pritham, think of yourself and place your hand on your heart and see a bit of yourself in some of these diagnostics. Answer one question first.

Do you smell some body part or the other at some point of time of day or night?

You actually do. You might do it in the confines of privacy of your making, but you do. Now list out the body part you smell.

Some do the innocent stuff. The fingers after biting off a piece of nail? 82 per cent do.

The arm pit? 91.2 per cent do.

I have a list of seven body spaces that you indulge in, but let me not go that path, lest I embarrass you and your sensibility. Not to speak of the sensibility of the rest of the readers of this column.

Worse still, do you like eating some bit of a body part or the other on some days of the month?

You do. Do you remember biting your nails off and chewing on the skin around? And let me not traverse this direction more, lest I paint you as a mini-cannibal of your own making.

Is the consumer an animal? I think she is. He is.

We have evidence from markets in India where consumers pick up and smell the saree before buying it. Consumers pick up denim jeans and smell it before buying.

Smelling coffee powder before buying it is a normal aromatic chore. Is smelling a pair of jeans similar? It is.

Man is essentially very sensorial in his purchase behavior. When you buy something you like to see it. You like to touch it. The consumer is a tactile entity. You like to smell it. At times openly, and at times without anyone seeing what you are doing. You like to taste it, if that’s possible.

We are all animals.

Q: Some of us run smaller companies than others do. The number of small companies must surely outnumber larger companies in India. Is there a difference between branding and advertising? And if there is, what is it?

-RC Chari, Hyderabad

A: Chari-gaaru, branding is the core strategy and the core component. Advertising is the execution. There is a misplaced sense of importance that ignorant clients place on advertising. There is equally some confusion that the two are the same. While both complement one another, they are just not the same. One leads to the other. One is more visible than the other as well. Both are equally important to the purpose of marketing at large.

It is important to realize that in today’s context, the ad agency brings in the creative and executional excellence of a thought. The thought itself, which is the key part of branding, comes out of a different process altogether. This process is branding-centric. And this is what differs from advertising.

Branding is consumer-insight centric, and is the foundation on which all of advertising is and will be built.

Q: We see a lot of In-movie advertising today? Does this work?

-KS Sampath, Chennai

A: Sampath, ‘In-movie’ branding can be overt at one end and covert at another. Overt in-movie branding is all about the huge Videocon glow-sign that keeps popping up at every dance sequence and the rather larger than life cut-outs of a Bournvita peeking out now and then.

Covert in-film branding is all about using the brand within the script in a rather non-intrusive manner. In a manner where it seems accidental even.

I do believe covert branding works better in films than overt. When brands are woven into scripts subliminally, and when the script itself speaks the language of the brand, efficiency is at its highest.

Cinema is a popular medium of the masses. Mass brands can utilize cinema with efficiency to promote their line, tone and tenor.

Q: Some studies indicate that rural women make decisions in rural markets and men buy. How do you target men and women differently in your advertising and marketing?

-Jayashree Ruparel, Mumbai

A: Jayashree, this is true.

For this, there is need for two kinds of media inputs. For the women, you need in-home inputs. Television and 1:1 contact is an ideal way. Television is easier, but there is clutter. 1:1 is difficult and expensive, but is very efficient.

For the men we need inputs at the shop level. I therefore plug heavily for rural POP (point of purchase) material heavily, to create that impulse reminder.

Use this mix to advantage, and you are home! In the rural home!

Q: How does the common farmer insulate himself in the wake of organized retail stepping into the fruit and vegetable markets as well? I grow tomatoes for the export market.

-JS Gill, Hoshiarpur

A: Gill-ji, the farmer has two options. Either go direct or become in a pawn-supplier in the big game of organized retail that is hitting Indian shores.

Imagine a situation where the farmer is a pawn-supplier. Imagine Reliance Retail. Reliance Retail will need to source fresh fruits and vegetables. It will tie up a farmer for this effort. The farmer gets a fixed price right through the year. This is one way to do things.

I do believe this is the way supply-chain monopoly will emerge in the farming sector in India in the future. You can’t beat them, join them. Ouch!

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Clustmaps

2008-06-22T07:31:00.000-07:00

Colors and Brands

2008-06-19T04:17:00.000-07:00

Organized Retail’s Organized Challenge

By Harish Bijoor

Q: How important is colour in the game of branding? Can brands really own colours in the minds of consumers?

-Rohit Hemmady, Bangalore

A: Rohit, first of all we are talking of a very serious game. Branding, if a game at all, is a very, very serious one. One which can actually make and break fortunes. No wonder then that there is so much of corporate investment in the process of branding at large.

Having cleared that sensitive semantic hurdle, let’s come to the issue of colour and its importance.

Colour is essentially a basic differentiator. And brands by themselves are differentiators that occupy higher hierarchical status in the differentiation stakes. Colour is one of the first things that helps set brands apart. Therefore, if you are a Cola and a red has been usurped by a Coke and a Blue by a Pepsi, go for a green or a yellow. Never mind that they would look corny on a brand of Cola for the moment. People will get used to it. But for heaven’s sake, don’t make the mistake of being another red or a blue. Or worse still being a mix of both. You would die on the count of differentiation ability.

Colours can be owned by brands. In fact these colours for specific brands are owned in consumer minds. A prominent brand cannot play about too much in this colour-coded consumer’s mind most of the time.

Colour can be used strategically too. Take the case of organized fruit and vegetable retail in India today. The sector is essentially one dominated by the small vegetable seller with his cart and the small vegetable shop alike. Organized retail in this segment till now meant the Co-operative society, the Horticultural department with its stores and the like.

Today is however different. In comes a Reliance Retail with an all-India format of fruit and vegetable retail. The colour chosen is a dominant red and bright green. Red is for the fruit and green is for the vegetable, I presume.

Look around at everyone else in this space. Heritage Foods is the same. Subhiksha is the same. Most new-comers will follow the same colour logic. This is the strategic use of colour. Maybe accidental in this case. The moment you think fruit and vegetable retail, you will think these two colours.

For the brands that swim in this segment of the market, things pan out differently. For a Reliance juggernaut, their colour use is not unique and will therefore become part of the commodity space of organized fruit and vegetable retail. At least in colour terms.

For the smaller players in this space, this is good. Reliance will do all the advertising for the category with the colour and all its appeal. In-store branding experience eiwll add to this. The spillover effect of colour sharing will surely come along the way of a Subhiksha and a Heritage. This is surely the positive fall out for the smaller brand, where sharing the same colour as the market leader can only give it more and more advantage as a point of consumer choice, and indeed consumer confusion even.

Q: What do you see to be organized retail’s biggest challenge in India today?

-Yogendra Pathak, Bhubaneswar

A: Dear Yogi, the biggest challenge being faced by organized retail in the country is that of people.

While largely, most players have bought the best of systems, the best of bench-marked practices, the best of real estate and indeed the best of everything else, the biggest challenge is retaining the best of people to work for them. While all other items inanimate can be managed with ease of consistence and surety, people are the biggest variable in this business.

If you are in this business, every quarter is a challenge in terms of people. If the best of your people have stayed on with you in the last quarter, stay happy. Celebrate.

The people challenge is across all levels. The most critical levels are right at the top and right at the bottom. The CXO of every description and the front-ended store hand who interacts with consumers are the two most valuable resources that face the crunch.

Everyone in retail wants the high-on-performance and high-on- image CEO. And equally everyone in modern retail wants the true-blue performers who manage consumers at the front end in their stores. These are the true-blue store warriors who ensure repeat custom at the store of choice.

Managing people is therefore today a science that demands multiple variables to interact with one another and multiple disciplines to interact to make it a model of success.

There is research evidence that 76% of people in retail, ITES and the media and entertainment industry in India leave their jobs because of one big reason. Their immediate boss. Rectifying this immediate-boss situation is the one to seize in hand now and create a positive cascade that helps keep people back.

Sadly Indian retail is a long, long way away from being automated. Till such a time then, people will rule. People will therefore continue to pose the biggest challenge for most retailers.

Q: Why is advertising getting more and more stupid? The advertiser is scraping the bottom of the drum as he brings appeals that don’t exist into the market.

-Sushma Selvaraj, Chennai

A: Sushma, Shhhhhhhhh! That’s called creative excellence. The advertiser’s goal is simple. Get the eye-balls to happen in a clutter-dominated market. If your piece of advertising can stand out of the clutter, never mind how, so be it. Awareness scores are important. One way of getting it is the inane appeal and the stupid appeal even!

More importantly, do remember, a society gets the advertising it deserves. Touche!

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

The Pricing dilemma on brands

2008-06-14T06:17:00.000-07:00

Price. Exciting Price!

Q: Pricing has always boggled me. How do marketers price their products? What’s the logic at play?

-Jayanth Reddy, Hyderabad

A: Jayanth, pricing decisions are largely as personal as the product or service is. There is really no one formula most marketers use, but it is useful to look at some ways that most dabble with.

The typical and traditional brand will toy around first with the Cost-based pricing system of yore. This simply means price your brand of tooth-pick based on what it costs to make it. If your tooth-pick is a simple balsa-sliced output, work out the stable-state cost of Balsa wood in the market, work out all input costs that would include processing, curing, slicing and sharpening of wedge. Add packaging costs. Add the cost of selling and distribution and most certainly the cost of advertising. The cost of capital to finance the entire operation as well. Add labour. Add transportation cost to that. Add the cost of wastage as well. Add literally every cost there is to think of.

This would then be the cost-based method. Add a margin to it, and the price of your end pack of branded tooth-pick is ready.

And then there are market price-based systems which most marketers use. You are just about to launch this exciting range of lingerie. You look around in the market excitingly, peek at the competition and check out the prevailing prices marketers are realizing. You then bench-mark your product quality somewhere out there on the scale of availability of competing products. You arrive at a price. You hold the price.

What-the-market-can-bear systems abound as well. These add premiums. The cost of the product may be all of twenty two rupees, and competing market offerings may be at the level of fifty five rupees. You decide to price your brand of packaged, branded Neem sticks (for daily morning dental hygiene use) at all of a hundred rupees.

There is no cost-based rationale here at work. No market-price based logic as well. The product is unique, has no competitors in the same category, is looking for an up-grade from the category of plain old and boring tooth-paste to Neem twigs, and the category is a buzz-category of the future, where it will be politically and fashionably correct to be seen brushing teeth with Neem sticks. You then price at a peg that you wish to. You price at a level of what the market can bear.

You could be an exciting predator as well. Predatory pricing would mean you pricing your brand of Gingley Oil 10 per cent below the cost price. In terms of prevailing market-price of competitors, it could as well be all of 40 per cent cheaper.

A predator will price his product below the cost of production even. This is a short term measure though. The predator will aspire to vanquish competition swiftly with his better product at a cheaper price formula. He will go on for all of 18 months, by which time the prevailing competitor has collapsed. He will then slowly raise the bar of his prices, till he reaches not only a break-even, but a whopping profit as well.

Watch out though! Most countries have very stringent predatory pricing laws.

Scarcity pricing. Out here, you will price based on degree of scarcity of the product. Your branded Onion will become more and more expensive as the commodity gets scarce. Milk powder brands will become more expensive when there is scarcity of liquid milk in a market and cheaper when there is plenty of availability.

Input based pricing. This is an exciting one. The theory is simple. Base the price of your product basis the quantum of inputs that went into its making.

Take coffee beans for instance. Calculate keenly how much of water went into its making. Calculate similarly how much of water goes into the growing of sugar-cane. Calculate the same for tomatoes, potatoes and Yam. If tough old yam takes the least bit of water and sugarcane takes the most, the price of sugarcane per comparable unit, will be the highest and Yam will be the cheapest.

This in many ways is the best way of pricing anything. Remember, water is a scarce resource. How was that resource managed to achieve the end output of potato or coffee or Yam? This in many ways is a very socially-equitable method of pricing as well. Remember, water is but one input you consider. You will need to take every other input there is as well.

Jayanth, there are twenty-nine other methods of contemporary pricing, but we will leave that for another day. This column can take only so much.

Q: Who, what or which is the most important change agent in Indian markets today?

-Shobha Rajaratnam, Mumbai

A: Shobha, you are either a lawyer, teacher or counter-intelligence agent. Your question-language tells it all!

Very simply put, the most important entity in Indian marketing today is the consumer. Nothing and nobody is more important in markets than consumers. Everything else is predictable. The consumer is not.

Q: Do mascots play a crucial role in the existence of the brand? In today's
context, was it sensible to pare off Gattu's association with Asian Paints or
does Air India need a Maharaja to address new millennium India?

Joby Matthew, Kottayam

A: Joby, I believe a mascot can be forever. There is just no need to phase out a
mascot provided you have nurtured the mascot over the years, keeping up with
the requirements of the Joneses of the years in question.

Only when you don't do this assiduously do you suddenly realize that your
mascot is outdated and might just have to be killed and buried.

In reality, brand mascots can live as long as a brand can and does. Care in the management of the mascot is the key issue at hand. Mascot management is a science and art in itself.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Regional Brands and Rural Profits

2008-06-12T01:49:00.000-07:00

Is the Cafe Culture for real?

By Harish Bijoor

Q: Is the much-hyped Café culture for real? How do you see it moving over the years?

-Raksha Gupte, Mumbai

A: Raksha, this one is close to my heart. In many ways coffee remains my first love. Let me trace some of this Café culture for you.

The first Cafe in organized space happened in 1996 with Cafe Coffee Day opening its first outlet on Brigade Road in Bangalore. The seeds of the revolution in Cafe space in a manner of speaking was sowed by this early development.

In a generic fashion however, the Cafe in a different avatar as we know it, has been around for a hundred years and more. This is the Udipi restaurant of the sit-down variety and the stand-up avatars of Darshinis as we call it in South India. The country has all of 63,850 such outlets offering great coffee to all those who desire it.

The future is all about a rapid expansion for the first stage. I typify three stages in this revolution. The "early phase" of establishing the plain-vanilla concept of the Cafe. This started in 1996 and is all of 11 years old as of now. This has resulted in all of 831 Cafes dotting this country.

The "mid phase" is the one we are just about entering. This is the phase where Indian entrepreneurs like VG Siddartha of CCD and Amit Judge of Turner Morrison (who started up Barista) have done the start-up work. The category has been developed by the early entrepreneurs. The category has developed and has attracted the attention of the biggies in this space across the world. In will come the biggies now, either on their own, or through a process of mergers and acquisitions. Or through special purpose vehicles specially create. A Starbucks entry is the classic example. But there will be more.

In this mid-phase development, the numbers will boom. This is the time when the traditional players like CCD and Barista will expand on their own numbers to keep pace and even out-pace competition such as from Starbucks. There will be a complete sprucing up of offerings across the existing chains. New competition will spur on better quality offerings in terms of hygiene, array, service and delight. The consumer is the gainer.

The lowest-common denominator Cafe will morph as well in this phase. The Café will offer more and more of both variation in form and variety on offer in terms of food, beverage and ambience.

The third phase is one we will enter some three years from now. Cafe 2010 lets call it! This is the phase when the numbers would have touched all of 2000 plus Cafes in the country. Now the Cafes will become reasonably 'parri passu' in their offerings and the lowest common denominator Café will morph further. Cafes will splinter in their positioning stances. Some will be plain vanilla; some will be for teeny boppers. Some for the thirties. Some for the oldies. And then there will be Rock Cafes just as there will be
Cafes for those who enjoy Trance. Cafes for same-sex couples, Cafes for politics, and Cafes for culture. The options are many.

The Cafe culture is bound to survive and thrive. What is important is that Cafe chains need to have their fingers on the pulse of their customers. This will help them morph in the right direction to profits.

Q: Rural markets are difficult to access due to the issue of profitability. Am I right? How are the trends here as of now?

-RB Joshipura, Pune

A: Joshipura-ji, with the growth of average bill share from rural outlets, servicing of these markets direct is today a possibility. Rural marketing, which hitherto was a long-term market seeding operation in the past, is today a break-even possibility as well in most markets, a profitable proposition in a small percentage, and of course remains a profit-nightmare in many markets as well.

The rural market is suddenly not such a slow-burn process anymore. Marketers are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. In some villages the tunnel is longer than the other. In some villages, there is no tunnel at all, to the delight of the modern marketer on his rural marketing hunt.

Newer distribution channels that depend not only on what I derogatorily call the Alimentary canal system of distribution we have known for 80 years plus in India (viz. the one dominant distribution system that moves stock from the factory of the producer to the C&F agent, to the Distributor, to the wholesaler and then to the retailer, to whom consumers come to) seem to help in this profit search as well.

Hindustan Lever’s experiment with rural entrepreneurs who do something similar to a peer-to-peer selling exercise is one such. ITC’s e-chaupal is another model as well. These examples are becoming old now, with newer and niftier models from across a spectrum of durables, household-products and services have emerged successful. Small entrepreneurs in this space have the biggest success stories to tell. Listen to them.

Q: Do you see a future for small regional brands that have survived in niche markets over the decades? Or do you see them being trampled over by the big MNC players? How does one approach the future here?

-Sanjay Agarwal, New Delhi

A: Sanjay, in a world that is getting increasingly clonal in its offerings, regional brands offer differentiation abilities that have a USP of their own.

Look at it this way. The whole world of brands is becoming a ration shop of sorts. The global brand dream is clear. Everyone in the world must one day use a Lux to wash their bodies and a Surf to do their clothes. Your teeth must touch a Colgate. As this dream becomes more and more of a reality, smaller regional brands will emerge to be clutter-breakers in categories that have largely got clonalised.

I do believe people will get tired of brands that look too factory made, too synthetic, too organized and too big. Look at a cake of soap. Most of them have lowest common denominator perfumes. Over a period of time, the marketer understands that most consumers like a particular smell. Therefore "the plain vanilla scent", as I call it, emerges. Regional brands will aim to break this clutter.

People at large are becoming tired of the big brand message. Big brands are seen to be premium offerings that skim the consumer purse as well. Small brands that do not advertise as much are considered to be offering more value.

Further still, it is important to understand that the region is more homogenous in its needs, wants, aspirations and desires than the nation at large. A person in Andhra Pradesh thinks and emotes in a more homogenous manner than a person in India as an averaged out cluster market. National brands offer brands for the averaged out cluster while regional brand offer specific offerings to the localized and more homogenous mass.

I therefore do believe that regional brands have a good future. As national brands find it difficult to penetrate some clusters where these regional brands are strong, and as they scent the opportunity of these local brands, acquisitions will become a norm.

Regional brand players can have one of two business revenue models. The
first could be to build, operate and continue to operate regional brands for the distant future, or the second wherein they could act like "brand planters" who will build brands with the pure purpose of a sale to a bigger entity. Once the old brand is sold off, get back to the activity of creating more. Brand harvesting was never as good as this before!

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Colas and CSR

2008-06-10T03:51:00.000-07:00

CSR By Force?

By Harish Bijoor

Q: When is a brand a brand?

-Revathi Reddy, Hyderabad

A: Revathi, this is a philosophical question at large. Let me answer it with as little philosophy in the answer as possible.

I believe a brand is a brand when it is perennially in your dominant psyche. It need not be a purchase, but it very definitely needs to be a dominant thought. This will irritate the sales guy in the forefront of the marketplace. And so also your top-line sales seeking CEO. But this is true. Branding in reality, has very little to do with sales. Very little to do with buying and selling. The day you as a brand manager understand this, despite the bullying influence of your CEO from above and the sales team from below, you have arrived.

The brand is a pure form. A form that does not need the sanctification of a purchase to endorse whether the brand is a brand.

I believe a brand is a brand in the real sense of the term when you buy it without a thought even. Without even a thought to linger and say that there is a competing product to buy even. A thought that cannot be shaken or stirred, come what may.

The brand is a convenience. People like you and I are always on the run. We are forever living lives that demand decisions of every kind, every now and then. You need to decide what shirt to wear in the morning and what trouser to match. You need to decide which movie to see and which to avoid. Which friend to meet and which to run away from.

In your choice of brands as well, as a consumer, you are forever deciding. I believe a brand is a brand when you stop deciding which brand to buy altogether. When the decision comes by rote, it is indeed a brand.

In many senses then, in a category where there are no choices at all, there is a brand! When Milkmaid was all alone as a condensed milk, there was just no decision to take. When in came 'Mithai Mate', you had a choice. If you continued to ignore 'Mithai Mate' despite the allure of the company Amul, despite good quality cues, despite the allure of its advertising, and most importantly despite the allure of its price even, then Milkmaid is indeed a brand.

A brand is a brand therefore when you stop deciding. A brand is a pre-made decision. An unquestionable one. Unchallenged.

Look around our lives. How many of these exist in your brand psyche? Two? Three? Out of 800 plus that are dominant in our everyday lives? None?

Q: How come the Cola companies in India are out on a spree of looking nice and sounding right? Why all this CSR advertising?

-John A Challadurai, Trichy

A: John, I do believe the Cola category in India is going to fast become what I call the "socially ostracized” category. These are categories of non-healthy foods and beverages. Sugar, Oils, Pan and Gutkha.

Liquor and cigarettes are the prime occupants of this category. The Cola is about to join this category.

This is therefore preemptive action. Good and sound.

Sadly, companies today seem to adopt CSR stances only when pushed against the wall. On very few occasions out of their own volition

Q: What’s the role of CSR in modern marketing society? What’s the theory behind it all?

-RN Singh, Delhi

A: Singh-‘saab’, there are simply three marketing formats to follow in a society as it morphs. In the early stage, society is all about “I, me, myself”! At this stage in consumer societal evolution, the marketer gets away using the language of hedonism and pleasure. The “I, me, myself” kind of product and service works well. The ‘Axe’ effect works here!

And then there is the stage when the consumer has gone beyond that basic stage. He is now concerned about the people around him. His loved ones. His family of four. His extended family of four more, mother, father, father-in-law and mother-in-law, last to be included!

This kind of man likes brands to be inclusive in their language, tone and tenor. This kind of man wants products that are good for the entire family! Never mind the rest of society, just as long his close-knitted family is taken care of, he is fine! The 'Annapurna' atta story works here!

And then there is man who is more conscious of more people around him. This is the kind of guy who is bothered about the good of his immediate neighborhood and society! He wants his entire neighborhood to be happy! The ‘Lifebuoy’ “clean the neighborhood” story works here!

There is macro-man then. This is the kind of person who wants the good of his immediate society and his entire planet. This is the kind of guy who wants to use bio-based detergents that don’t hurt the eco-system! The ‘Surf Excel’ “Do bucket paani bachana hai” theme works here!

And finally there is Cosmos man! Concerned about the cosmos, much of which he does not know even! We are yet to get there!

CSR works at every level. CSR is an inclusive process! A process that embraces the good of society in a very inclusive manner. This inclusiveness could start at the level of the immediate family and morph on to embrace the entire Cosmos.

CSR plays a vital role in taking commercial brands out into the commercial marketplace with a theme that is appealing to the sense and sensibility of the modern consumer. CSR is therefore a valuable tool that marketers can use to market their brand of soap, detergent, sugar and tea with equal panache and commercial effectiveness.

CSR is not at all about running public hospitals and schools alone. CSR is not about sending Tsunami relief material to the trouble spots of the world. That is old hat! It is much more! The modern consumer understands CSR that much more intimately when you touch his life, with a wee bit of CSR in your soap. A wee bit in your shampoo! In your kids diapers and feminine hygiene products as well!

The future of marketing is full of CSR! Of a different kind!

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

The Promiscuous Indian Consumer

2008-03-08T22:51:00.000-08:00

Of Bellies and bladders

Q: What are the major changes that you have seen in the rural markets in the last decade in terms of size of market?

-Pobbathi Rajshekar, Hyderabad

A: Dear Raj, the rural market has always been a big one for India. Three-fourths of all consumption lies here in sheer population terms. Only less than a quarter of the population lives in urban areas.

The population numbers occupying rural spaces have however shrunk over the last several decades. This is what I call “Creeping urbanization” affecting rural masses in a state of market and habit transition. The rural population, over the decades, has shown a trend wanting to move into a state of gradual urbanization in terms of exposure, habits, life-styles and lastly consumption patterns of goods and services.

In rural areas, we have key issues with the populations that live on and off the land. As the generations go by, land holdings are splintering, with successive generations getting less and less land to farm upon and live off. This is causing for a gradual urge for better life-styles, as seen happening in urban centers. This movement and aspiration is further accentuated by mass media, which today penetrates 98.9% of all areas Urban and rural. This media is not segregated media for urban and rural. This media’s dominant visual, tone and tenor is the urban lifestyle. This is actually making for a salivating generation in rural India that wants to migrate physically, emotionally and aspirationally for sure to the urban mode of living.

Back to the size of the market then. The market size has always been large. The largest numbers of bellies and bladders and indeed every organ part that requires marketing satiation lies in rural India. The size of this market is well over 700 million! All these individuals have needs, wants, desires and aspirations that anyone in Urban India has. The fulfillment of these needs hitherto was on an un-branded commodity format thus far. Today however, there is a rampant craving for the brand offering for a host of needs. This craving is suddenly giving the market a boost as brands find takers in markets that hitherto frowned on the branded produce that lacked value differentiation in their minds.

The size of the market for branded goods and services therefore looks suddenly big.

In sheer comparative terms, the rural market size is exciting by a factor of 1:3 for sure. For every color television set that is demanded in Urban India, three will be demanded in rural India.

The market is a very involved market as well. Not as cynical a market as most modern urban economies where brands are suddenly being seen as entities that do not necessarily pack value. Brands in these urban markets are seen to pack premium, and not necessarily value. Not so in the nascent emerging rural markets of India. Therefore the market size is large, involved and has the potential of packing great marketer premiums for a while to come.

Q: in the recent past, there have been a lot of logo changes. Why do companies change their logos?

-Rajeev Sikka, New Delhi

Rajeev, many, many reasons really. Here are five for a start.

1) One is certainly the need felt to re-define corporate culture within and
without the organization. In such a case, companies suddenly find their
existing logo to be a burden it is carrying. A part of the old heritage of
organization. Something that was thrust on it by a very old founding
management that believed in a different credo altogether.

In such cases, the company believes it must change tack and move away from
the definitions of organizational purpose and reinvent itself. As it
reinvents, it wants to shed the old logo and adopt a new one.

2) Yet another reason is when a company finds a logo too frivolous for the
intent of organization. We must realize that when most old logos were
created (ones that have been around for more than 50 years), the fonts
available were basic and so were the colors. Half tones were not
encouraged, leave alone quarter tones. In the bargain most logos did not
look solid enough and some even had a basic frivolity around them. Companies
therefore want change.

3) And then there are companies which want logos changed when there is a
split of business. This happens mostly in family run businesses. Take
Reliance for instance. The Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group versus the Mukesh
Dhirubhai Ambani Group. Both need different logos. One inherits it, and
another creates it anew.

4) Companies further want to look contemporary. The Wolf Olins re-creation
for the Tata group was one such effort.

5) Name changes of companies necessitate logo changes as well. A company
that goes for a drastic name change, where it moves away from a generic
sounding name, might call for a logo change as well. Take for instance the
rather hot InfoTech Enterprises based out of Hyderabad. Despite its very
varied and prosperous lines of business, it remains in generic name space
and hence gets reasonably lost in recognition space. If it changes its name
in the near future, it will undergo a logo change as well.

Q: Would you agree that the Indian consumer is more
promiscuous today than ever before?

-JS Manian, Chennai

A: Manian, I think the Indian consumer is certainly more promiscuous than ever before.

In any society promiscuity is essentially polarized between the two
ends. The higher income group at one end, which can afford the best of
brands, and at the other end to the lower income group, which quite doesn't
care as much about brands. The middle income group (the large middle class)
is the most loyal of the lot.

The reason for this promiscuity is the fact that the Indian at large is more
and more exposed to media of every kind that offers the best of range and
variety. The Indian is getting very range-conscious and is getting rather
impatient with brands. The brand experience one wants to secure from brands
is also getting broad-spectrum in appeal. Brands that offer narrow solutions
are getting the raw end of the consumer action that results in dumping of
the said brand.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email your questions to: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Vicarious Corporate Social Responsibility Activity

2008-03-07T23:06:00.000-08:00

Vicarious CSR Activity?

By Harish Bijoor

Q: Corporate Social Responsibility activity seems to be emerging as the new marketing tool. What’s with it?

-Rohit Balakumar, Delhi

A: Rohit, CSR is a strategic marketing tool for sure.

Let’s take the highly visible soft-drink category as an example. It works this way. In the early days of marketing, the USP is essentially physical. It is all about the taste, the color, the clarity of the liquid, the refreshing ability, the fizz and such other sundry product features.

In mid-marketing years, the functional USPs are over-done. Every marketer in the space has used some or all of it, at different points of time. The consumer at large has tired of it all as well. There is a degree of consumer cynicism that sets in on these functional USPs. The USP has got commoditized.

Therefore in comes the emotional USP. Here, the Marketing USP of the product is all about focusing on the arena of product benefit. What the consumption of the product leads to. These benefits could again be functional or emotional. For instance in a tooth-paste, it could be whiter teeth and in a Cola it could be the ability to quench thirst. Further still, the emotional USP could be about the tooth-paste getting people in Close-up situations and in the Cola category the ability of the brand to actually help people make friends. "Food, friends and Thums Up" for instance!

The emotional USPs can climb from the sublime to the ridiculous. In such situations brands advertise crazy situations even! Quite like the toothpaste with Oxygen in it attempted!

When consumers tire of the emotional USP as well, we enter the later marketing era. Here, the consumer is rather cynical of the functional and emotional USPs altogether. The marketer notices this. In a bid to capture mind-share for his brand, he does some degree of self-criticism of the category and its advertising on the whole as well. Quite like what Sprite did with its "Baaki sab Bakwas, sirf Sprite bujhaye pyaas” campaign with shots of bathing in soft-drink even at play as the dominant visual.

In the later marketing years, in comes the role of the CSR USP. Here, consumers of the category have climbed Maslowe's hierarchy of needs and are cynical about basic product and emotional USPs of every kind. Even tired of the device of ridicule as USP.

In comes CSR as USP. CSR appeals to consumers sitting atop Maslowe's hierarchy of needs. These are the self-actualizing consumers who like to think that the product they drink is politically correct and that their contributions to the brand actually help contribute at large to the society they live in. This is vicarious Individual Social Responsibility (what I call ISR activity).

Indirect social responsibility activity even! This is quite like indirect taxation. When you buy a product you actually fork out a sales tax which is a form of indirect tax. This is in addition to the direct taxes you pay.

This is indirect CSR. Makes you feel happy, provided you are at that state of self-actualization. Vicarious CSR.

A good tool to use in tired market categories such as Cola and Tea. Therefore you see a Pepsi with its campaign and Coke with its "Little drops of joy" and Tata Tea with "Jaago re" versus plain old "Utho"!

Q: College youth festivals seem to be attracting mega-bucks. Why? What is the rationale here?

-Monica P Tiwari, New Delhi

A: Monica, college cultural and sports festivals are seen to be low-cost marketing options by some sets of Corporate houses. Festivals are occasions of on-campus frenzy. Further still, apart from the actual students attending the festival, there is some degree of media coverage that helps brands in the overall context.

Brands are willing to invest money for one other reason. Youngsters on campus are at a reasonably impressionable age. Catch them young is certainly the buzz slogan here.

One other reason as well: The alma mater influence.

Most moneys that come in as sponsorship come in from senior managers and CEOs within brand organizations who are alumni as well. There is a benign contribution angle here as well.

Festivals are on the whole positive occasions when a lot of positive consumer sentiment can be harvested to the benefit of the brand. Irrationality rules high during festivals, and the marketer loves to harvest irrationality.

A lot of money moves into festival marketing of the Ganesh Utsav and Puja kind in the country. Dandiya as well attracts a sizeable amount of money. The college festival is another such festive avenue.

Q: Do the logos of Private sector banks stand out more than those of Private sector banks? If so why?

-Pavithra Ramana, Chennai

A: Pavithra, not always true.

This is true largely in the bigger cities of India. In the smaller towns, and we have plenty of these in our country, the traditional old logos of Public sector banks still hold water. Public sector banks are still respected in the bulk of the country. The keyhole of an SBI, and the Icon of Vijaya Bank, and the memory of the Pigmy collector of Syndicate Bank are still fresh in the minds of people who stay in what I call "Real India". Virtual India lives in the bigger cities. This part of India is more besotted with the big names like a Citi and a Stanchart.

And even in the big cities, there are a host of people who read the fine print of the banking sector carefully and still appreciate the Value-for-money services afforded by the Public sector banks in the country.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Brand and Product Chess

2008-03-06T22:34:00.000-08:00

Edgy-buzzy Gender Stuff

By Harish Bijoor

Q: What is this trend of segmenting products for women and men differently? I am referring to the recent launch of Women’s Horlicks by GSK.

-Mrs. PK Ganapathy, Mumbai

A: Mrs. G, this is just the beginning of a trend. Segmenting products and services by gender is a new trend in the Indian market for now. It is however a trend that signifies that India as a discerning consumer market is just about happening.

The demographics of the Indian market is a supportive fact to this.

Slightly less than half the population is female. Look into the data churned out from the bigger metros of India. The share of working populace between the sexes in the big metros has shifted dramatically over the years. Today, as much as 19 per cent of the women in the big cities work out of home. Of these, 11 per cent find themselves in blue collar jobs.

The out of home culture is hot among women in the big cities in particular. This helps products such as these skewed to the woman on the move.

In many ways these products are a wee bit before their time. Those pushing these early-state products are doing it to appear at the cutting edge of consumer understanding. The ones who do it first will be remembered the most.

At least for a while.

Volumes are absolutely niche. Nevertheless, the image shares these brands enjoy is good. This is differentiation at play. This is edgy buzzy stuff. And women love it! Never mind they may not buy it. They love the fact that some companies are out to pamper them. GSK is one such with its Horlicks offering, as is Kellog’s with its own variant of breakfast cereal.

The marketing idea of gender segmentation of products is all about the differential and differentiated needs of nourishment for different body types as embodied by the two sexes. Women fulfill many roles that men do not. So, create a new solution! Horlicks for women is one such. There will many more that will follow.

Q: If you were to point at one big opportunity area for the marketer of the future, what would it be?

-S K Tripathi, Jaipur

A: Tripathi-ji, when I look at potential categories of relevance for the future, the first thing I pick is the lowest common denominator category of food and beverage. My rationale here is the universal truth that people have bodies. These bodies need sustenance in terms of food and beverage. These are what I call "staple sustenance" categories. They will never go out of fashion.

Further still, when you look at India, we boast of the second largest numbers of bellies and bladders in the world, after China. Our 1.039 Billion population number is a number that craves for these "staple sustenance" categories.

There are opportunities in the realm of food and beverage both at the product and service end. I do believe the opportunity is bigger in the food and beverage service end though.

What’s the key insight here?

Insight: while food is important, the consumption habit of food itself comes a full-circle.

In the beginning, the best food is good old home food. People either tire of eating home food, or alternately find it cumbersome to make. Then, in a progressive society people start eating out. For instance, in Bangkok, the average person eats out 47 times a month versus the 7 times a Mumbaikar eats out a month! This means that the home-kitchen is out of fashion in Bangkok altogether.

And then, when the aspect of health concerns emerge, people tend to want to eat healthier options, such as home food. The ability to procure home food however is the issue here. There are two routes. One is a dabbawalla who will bring your food to work, or the other is a Tiffin service coming to your workplace or even bachelor home from someone else's home. This is the potential of the two streams of the dabbawalla as a service and the Tiffin provider as another service altogether.

The category of the Tiffin provider and the dabba-service is ripe for such a brand play tomorrow. In such a market play, the value of the food is but notional, as it is made at home. The value of the service is a tangible, and a value that can be captured big by the small entrepreneur in this space as well as the corporate valet service which might want to get into this space.

I do believe our society is going to morph faster than Western societies onto the bandwagon of health. The craving for home-food will be big. There will therefore be opportunities in this space. There will be further opportunities to segment the Tiffin offering on the scale of Organic Tiffin’s, Vegetarian Tiffin’s, Eggetarian ones, Hindu Tiffin’s (non-beef), Health Tiffin’s (non sugar and non oil heavy), and a host of such options.

This is going to be big business opportunity for sure.

Q: As more and more foreign origin brands enter the Indian market, what’s the one big reality that Indian brands need to face and battle?

-Josy Paul, Trivandrum

A: Josy, the big reality to face is the game of product chess.

The threat of the MNC product line up in every vertical that your ‘desi’ brand has is a reality today. . This is a game of product chess. Every one of your product has a match out there. You are a black Bishop and his is a White Bishop!

You need to play better chess than he does.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Packaging Right

2007-12-01T06:11:00.000-08:00

The Marketing Pipe-dream?

By Harish Bijoor

What is an audio logo? And how/where is it used?

-Leanne P, New Delhi

A: Leanne, logos can be of many kinds. First of all there is the visual logo. This is the logo we are most used to. We see every brand worth its iodized salt using it. The Nike logo and so also the logo of Mercedes Benz are known the world over through a visual identification cue. Does not matter if you are literate or not, you still understand the logo, just as long as you have with you the ability and wherewithal to see.

And then there is the audio-visual logo, which all of us are familiar with. If you grew up with Doordarshan, as I did, in the old days, the Doordarshan audio-visual logo with the ‘Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram’ persona and the sonorous tone of music was something which you would recognize from a mile.

And now comes the day and age of the audio logo in focus. The audio-logo is essentially that piece of audio track (could be all of 3 seconds long or 30) that reminds you the listener, of the brand in question. With the spurt of FM radio stations in our modern lives today, the audio-logo is becoming important again.

Audio radio channels need to invest a substantial amount of creativity and effort in creating for themselves these distinct audio signatures that will remind the listener that he is listening to a brand and not a commoditized radio category and channel.

The audio logo attempts to achieve a distinct status in the mind of the consumer and aspires to become the audio-buzz that will create brand recall for the radio channel in question. Audio-logos are nothing new; they have been around in our lives. It is only now that they are once again attaining importance as the radio environment has opened up with every city ending up with more than 4 radio channels to surf about and listen to.

Q: Packaging in India is largely an ignored realm. I have just returned from Germany where this is an exciting category. Why is this so?

-Raghava BS, Bangalore

A: Raghava, you are right. We are yet to bring in zing into our packaging. This is one part of the branding exercise that is still antediluvian in its approach. If at all Indian brands falter in the International market, it is certainly on this one count.

You ask why. My quick answer to that would lie in the ethos we practice out here in this part of the world where we are very much more concerned about what is inside us, rather than what is outside. The point is philosophical, and is all about a cultural mooring that is tight. In many ways, this is the way to be. This however puts us on the back-foot when it comes to International marketing.

Packaging today has progressed leaps and bounds. Both aspects of packaging, the functional and the cosmetic have gone places, and it surely is time to focus on this arena with vigor.

New investments need to be made into the packaging landscape in the country to contemporize the industry at large. Functional packaging innovations need to be brought in to the market at a faster pace. Today, the Tetra Pak remains the most recent example of functionally right and mass replicated innovation entering into the market. But then, this is old hat already.

Apart from the functional side of packaging, the cosmetic is showing some exciting signs. Interactive packaging, where the consumer actually interacts with what is in hand has just about come in. The recent Horlicks pack is an example in hand. Watch out then for packaging that speaks back, packaging that smells as your rub on the pack and much more.

One important thing to remember is that the Indian market at large will always be a few generations behind market development in these arenas. The reason is a simple one. The Indian consumer does not want to pay for the packaging. She would rather pay for what’s inside than what’s outside.

Q: Is the consumer in the marketplace really getting more and more prosperous, or is this a marketing pipe-dream?

-Prashanth Manian, Chennai

A: Prashanth, I like that “Marketing pipe-dream” bit, but beg to differ. I cannot agree with you that this is all hype and not reality.

The Indian consumer is really getting more and more prosperous. Every urban piece of data generated on the modern consumer, his income status and propensity to spend is showing a healthy rise.

I will however not depend on all these secondary data bits to answer your question. I will refer to a piece of work we did recently in the markets of Delhi, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Chennai, Pune and Bangalore. We called it the “On-street value probe”. Very simply put, we did a check across 820 people on the streets of these cities the kind of value they carried around on them in terms of clothes, brands, gadgets and accessories on a normal working day. Remember, this is not a “wedding day”, but a normal work-day.

Researchers probed what people wore on them as brands, sprayed on them as brands and so also what they carried on them physically. They came out with brands such as Peter England, Jockey, KIBS, Dora, Lakme, IBM ThinkPad(pre-Lenovo), Nokia, Sony-Ericcson, Motorola, LG, Samsung, Binny’s , Byford, YSL, Stop, Shilpa, Nalli’s, Popat’s and names of every kind that represent various categories. The list is long and winding.

What was interesting to see is that the ‘on-street value’ of an individual is on a swift rise. Nearly a year ago when we last did this exercise, the value was different than it is today, up by all of 14% in value terms and up by 23% in terms of number of brands franchised.

I would wager a bet that this number would see a further increase both in terms of number of brands and total ‘on-street value’ in rupee terms if we repeated this a year from now.

Consumers in our big cities are essentially eating more brands, drinking more brands and wearing more brands than ever before. The ‘on-street value’ is high.

On a lighter vein, if you were to kidnap a techie off the street of Bangalore, his on-street value could be anything between 80,000-1, 35,000 on a work-day. Even if you were to remove the ubiquitous lap-top from this count, you could land up with a number that is interesting. Salivatingly interesting for the marketer at large.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

Of ointments and Brand Endorsers

2007-11-16T02:24:00.000-08:00

There’s an endorser in the Ointment

Q: The Private label business again. I am keen to know what’s the scenario in India compared to US. Does this business hold promise and potential?

-Ravi Sampathkumar, Chennai

A: Ravi, the US is a robust private label market today. Private label is seen to be
niche. And niche is considered politically correct as well. Small is
beautiful.

In the US market, politically correct appeals such as 'Organic", 'small
farmer grown', 'non-exploitation grown' and of course the 'sustainable'
stories seem to attract a whole host of private labels that seem to succeed
and thrive in the marketplace.

The US market is however also about the fatigue that surfaces with 'massified'
brands. When fatigue of the 'massified' offering sets in, in comes the niche
store brand, the dealers'-own-brands and what we call the Private label.

In the US, businesses are aggregated. Mom and Pop stores (‘kirana’ stores in our lingo) are small and rare. Even marginalized. The big chains command bulk of the volumes and you will find a whole host of categories with Private label brands. From dog biscuits to detergents to Cola to needles to buckets and mops even!

All of these come at discounts over the mass advertised product. The Private
label is seen to be a genuine and hard-working product that is high on
quality and comes at a 30 per cent discount to the mass brand in the same
category. It is widely assumed that since the mass market brands advertise
and the Private labels do not, the value difference is passed on to the
consumer.
This is appreciated.

The potential out here in India for this business is immense. The consumer is looking for quality, consistency, reliability and value for his spend. If you are able to offer this in a ‘private label’ manner, so be it.

Q: Every company is jumping onto just about any celebrity (sports or otherwise) to rope them in as a brand ambassador? What do you attribute this trend to?

-Ateeq Khan, Bangalore

A: Ateeq, the role of a celebrity in all of branding and advertising is a defined one.

The key role is endorsement. When brand endorsement as a marketing tool was
nascent and endorsers were far and few, and further still when endorsers
were loyal to just one brand, it worked.

Brand ambassadors, in the old days, performed all the vibrant roles they
were meant to perform. The brand ambassador first of all created an instant
awareness for the product category he, she or it touched! And then they went
on to create Interest in the category on tout. This interest was further
deepened by the endorser into a Flaming desire to buy or partake of the
brand. The brand endorser helped in the action of sale. Brand endorsers
further went on to give all the positive strokes necessary to the buying
consumer in the post-purchase stage as well. Some great brand endorsers
created for the brand a re-peat purchase as well.

Those were the good old days before marketers egged-dry the goose that laid
the golden eggs.

Today, brand endorsers perform just one of these roles. They just create the
initial awareness for the brand and the category. Parker pens get a
heightened degree of awareness as a tall and lanky gent of the old
silver screen from Allahabad touts the pen. Even this is under threat though,
as the very same gent is found in 16 and a half ads on the 'telly' at the same
time. It gets difficult to distinguish which brand, which ambassador.

Brand ambassadors are getting weak in performing the other allied roles of
creating interest, desire and the sale action. Leave alone their role of
managing post sale dissonance among consumers.

The very credibility of the brand endorsement process is under threat as
marketers over-do the endorsement bit.

Marketers today jump onto the endorsement band-wagon as they find it an easy
tool to get that quick bit of eye-balls and awareness bit happening. This
eye-balls game is just as hollow as the Internet eye-balls model of some
eight years ago, when websites and self-styled Internet portal Tsars got
very very excited about the eye-balls game. The bubble finally burst when
everyone realized that just eyeballs were not enough. Sales was important as
well.

Q: In a world that's ruled by advertising, how do some brands manage to survive without big investment on publicity?

-SS Sridharan, Chennai

A: Sridharan, brands are about the basic needs of a human being for a start. The brand is a potent thought. Nothing more and nothing less. This can be a
thought that has a commercial price-tag to it, or even better a thought that
has no price-tag to it at all! The priceless brand! A Swarovski crystal is
possibly a classic example of the brand with a price-tag, and each of our
Moms are classic examples of the price-less variety!

In between a Swarovski at one end and a Mom at another, lie a whole host of
brands. The ones closest to Swarovski are the brands with a price tag to it
and the ones closest to Mom are the ones that do not depend on the imagery
of advertising. Come what may, you will gravitate towards these brands. It
is these brands that do not require advertising. Do not require high-decibel
shout levels to sell.

Look at an MTR in Bangalore. It hardly does anything in terms of advertising for its restaurant. The queues are never ending though. You will give your right arm
for a butter 'masala dosa'! These brands draw consumers and keep them in their
fold by the quality offering at hand.

In a world where everyone advertises, the brands that do not advertise and
yet thrive are the ones that have truly arrived!

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email your questions to: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

How will small retailers survive the onslaught of modern retail?

2007-11-11T06:11:00.000-08:00

Nudging the Future

Q: I recently saw this ad for a light switch which just does not make sense. This lady throws a book at a switch. Everything breaks but this switch is intact. Bizarre!

What is this all about?

-Rupa Kulkarni, Mumbai

A: Rupa, I have seen this one as well, and have kept wondering.

There are two ways of looking at this. One is the intelligent way, imagining that there is method in the madness of this ad. The other is to say that this is a foolish ad.

This ad comes from the genre of drama that is heightened for effect. The story line is clear. Here is a sturdy switch. The drama that surrounds it all is meant to arrest the viewer. Arrest him enough to remember the brand name in question. I am sure this ad does the job on that score.

Sometimes, brands tend to advertise with the ridiculous. The intelligent idea is to stand out from the clutter of well-made ads. Ads which make consumers ask questions such as the ones you ask, serve a purpose as well. The brand name comes to the fore. Is this buzz advertising of a kind? Advertising that is purposely bizarre and ridiculous? Just to make you sit up and remember the brand name? Maybe yes. Maybe no.

The point to think is this. When all ads start looking alike, the one ad that looks different stands out. In this day and age of clutter, the marketer is possibly willing to use anything to stand apart from the rest and make the best of the fragmented TRPs he is getting.

Remember the PSPO Fan ad of yore? A high decibel ad that had everyone shouting from the rooftop.

Q: With the Indian market for retail opening up to foreign players, albeit slowly, how will Indian retailers cope? Are we in for trouble?

-Amit Agnihotri, New Delhi

-

A: Amit, with the domestic retail environment opening up, Indian retailers will be forced to compete with better quality, a distinctive array in terms of range of offering and more realistic prices.

In many ways, this churn will result in the traditional margins of retailers undergoing
a squeeze. The clever retailer will however reinvent himself to face the
future.

India is a nation of shop-keepers. 12.2 million shop keepers to take care of
the needs of a billion plus people. The ratio of shop to human being is
better than the ratio of doctor to human being in this country.

These shop-keepers come in an amalgam of sizes. At one end we have a
nano-percentage of stores that are large format super-markets. Just below
them we have a larger medium-sized grocer and retailer of this and that, be
it lingerie, cosmetic or fancy good. And then right at the bottom of the
proverbial pyramid are a whole host of small shop-keepers who help this
country run its business.

I do believe the small shop-keeper will largely remain unaffected by the
aggregation of business with retailers from overseas entering the Indian
market. These nifty operators are widely dispersed in terms of geography and
cater to an important need of the masses. Organized retail as
attempted in developed economies, cannot aspire to cater to this role played by the micro-outfits of the day, with efficiency. These tiny outfits will therefore not only survive, but thrive as well.

The ones who will be really hit are the medium sized stores. They will slip
between two stools. At one end they do not have the scale and the
efficiency that comes from scale. And at the other end, neither do they
fulfill a vital irreplaceable role that the smallest of small retailers
perform in this country.

These medium sized retailers will suffer a process of sudden death. As large
format retail enters the Indian market, it will take all of 2-5 years for
these medium sized retailers to collapse, reinvent other models to survive,
and migrate out of the retail business of yore altogether.

The battle of Indian retail will therefore be one between the Goliath from
overseas and the David’s of medium sized Indian retail. The Lilliputs of
retail on the other hand will survive and thrive. These are the guys who run
this nation of shop-keepers.

Q: Mars has re-branded itself as a chocolate. What is this “Belief” branding all about?

-Sajini Shetty, Bangalore

A: Sajini, first of all, nothing is sacrosanct. Even brand names must and can change.

The new branding initiatives of Mars and others at large that look at themes such as Belief and Faith and Trust are embracing a brand new inclusive branding movement.

Brands have over-done the limited brand propositions to death thus far. In the beginning, one spoke of a toothpaste that brushes your teeth well and clean. Then it went on to say that it whitens the best. And then one added colours to the toothpaste. There came red stripes and then blue and then all three red, white and blue in one toothpaste.

When consumers got tired of this, in came the gels of different colours. The colours kept changing. And in came the gel with sparkles. And then in comes toothpaste with Oxygen in it!

When one tires of all the physical product and imagery propositions and appeals that seem just too rational, the marketer explores the irrational a bit more. Here one is experimenting with concepts that talk about what a toothpaste can do to you emotionally. Even this is done to death. Toothpaste that can make you fall in love? A toothpaste that can get you a new job?

And then one taps into the final frontier. This frontier is what I call inclusive branding.

Branding is essentially an exclusive process. It is all about offering the exclusive to the exclusive.

Inclusive branding s about building brand propositions that embrace one and all and make the brand accessible to an inclusive mass of people.

Inclusive branding is all about taking the mega thought and platform. The big idea that is really, really big. So big, that it sounds ridiculous when first adopted by the brand. Faith is one such. Belief is another. Truth can be another.

These brands are trying to exploit the underlying need for these large formatted life propositions.

While doing this one needs to be careful to integrate these large-format ideas seamlessly into the brand and must leave the consumer with a credible notion and not a notion that can put the consumer off or make her laugh.

The Mars effort is one such. Nudging at the edge of the future.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

First movers and Retirement marketing

2007-11-04T02:41:00.000-08:00

The First Mover Advantage?

By Harish Bijoor

Q: What is the right time for the launch of a cool drink variant from an existing good brand like Coke or Pepsi? Should the variant be launched in peak summer, just before summer or in winter?

Muralidhar
Chennai.

A: Murali, there was a time when marketing folk operated on rules carved out on very tough stone. A brand of colored, flavored, carbonated water could be launched only in the summer months. These were to be the peak thirst months. Months in which soft-drink off-takes from shelves were meant to be very high. High enough for the new brand to be able to make an impact and gain a share of throat and bladder alike.

The days have however changed. Today, a whole new set of “non-rules” apply. The old paradigms of when to launch a soft-drink have been shattered. The answer to your question would be: launch whenever you want to.

If you launch it in peak summer, you benefit from big off-takes, but also suffer from high decibel media activity levels from all players, including your own high profile brands. It is quite likely that your carefully thought out advertising plan could get badly lost amidst the clutter.

If you launch it just before summer, you are quite likely to benefit from possibilities of good shelf placements, but you might as well get swamped by everyone else who is preparing for the summer months ahead.

A winter launch would mean exposing your brand and its appeal in months when smaller numbers of consumers swim in the market of consumption. If you expose it all in winter, it gives the competitor plenty of time to plan the summer offensive against your specific positioning stance for sure.

Murali, the choice is yours. Just as it is Hobson’s.

Q: Your 'Pan-wallah' distribution system answer some weeks ago was interesting. Can one segment this distribution system? How?

-Ranjit Sinha, New Delhi

A: Ranjit, there are indeed three types of 'pan-wallahs' in the country. Right at the top of the pyramid is the prosperous heavy foot-fall 'pan-wallah'. Every city
has a minimum of three of these. Indore of course has twenty! These
high-footfall 'pan-wallahs' will sell nothing else but pan. Consumers who walk
in are from every prosperous segment of society and the sole purpose of the
walk-in is to pick up the pan. This segment is not exciting to the marketer.

The second rung 'pan-wallah' is the guy who has a mixed foot-fall for this and
that. These are location-driven 'pan-wallahs', who by virtue of having
occupied the 10 X 10 ft location just outside the UPSC Bhavan, do a roaring
business. These guys are prime targets for every new marketer around. It is
at time tough to get an entry for the new product here.

The third rung 'pan-wallah' is the one who is not necessarily in the high
traffic density locations. These are open to enrich their businesses by
stocking new products of every kind.

Segmentation is certainly possible, and this is but the tip-of-the-iceberg kind of segmentation I have attempted. More can be done. Excitingly more.

Q: Is the advantage of the “first-mover” still working in Indian markets?

-Sheetal Pinheiro, Pune

Sheetal, the first mover advantage worked in the old days. It does not anymore. The new age marketer has to be completely amoebic in his marketing orientation.

The consumer is indeed changing much faster than the marketer is. The marketer needs to be prepared to morph. The marketing person needs to be prepared for catharsis of every kind. It is this catharsis that keeps her running and ahead of the pack, and not necessarily the fact that the first mover advantage is with the marketer.

The First mover advantage today is quite a bit of a myth. Life in the marketing fast lane is tricky today. It is a slippery totem pole you are climbing out there. No one is a leader forever, never mind if you were the first one there.

The amoebic chameleon marketer is the successful marketer. Change your shape. Change your color. Change everything that needs to be changed with consumer need, want, desire and aspiration. Nothing needs to be sacrosanct anymore.

Q: The retired-folk market seems to be a reasonably large segment with plenty of potential. How does one crack in?

-Jyoti Paluskar, Mumbai

A: Jyoti, the retired folk market of tomorrow is different from the retired-folk market of yesterday.

Those who retire ten years hence are different sets of consumers altogether.
There is a generational shift in affordability and the attendant attitude
and propensity to spend.

Look back at the tens of generations that have gone by. Every generation has
seen a morph in terms of values. Most of these value changes have been due to
the impact of media, availability of more money as disposable income,
environmental situations of peace that has spurred on the spending attitude,
and much more.

Today, with the stock market boom at hand, real estate at peak levels,
investments from Mutual Funds offering more and more solidity in terms of
the liquid assets of people, and most certainly the Insurance era which
takes care of the unforeseen events, the consumer at large is that much more
secure in his spending pattern.

Those retiring ten years hence are rather well taken care of. A pampered lot
even. Plus, there is the prosperity brought in by new wealth from the
e-economy. The electronic economy has brought prosperity that is what I
classify as new wealth. This wealth in the hands of the retiree is easier to
spend than "old wealth" as signified by the wealth transferred over the
generations in terms of land and gold and money as well.

The new retiree will therefore be an E-retiree. Or a wealthy retiree with
new attitudes to savings and spends. This new retiree ten years from now has
spent his matured days under the umbrella of the credit card culture which
encourages you to spend more than you have as well.

This new generation will believe in the power of spending. The power of Now
is a potent thought with them. Add this attitude to money in the bank, and
you have a more aggressive spending consumer at hand.

Most of these new consumers in the age group of retirement will be
empty-nesters with their kids having settled down well enough. Now, it is
husband and wife again in most cases. Time to do the entire things one missed
out on. Time to take that bit of travel, and splurge on brands and their
respective brand appeals as well.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com

People Brands marrying one another

2007-11-01T23:27:00.000-07:00

Abhi-Aish and the brand thereafter…..

By Harish Bijoor

Q: With the wedding of Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai just ahead, how do you see these two mega-brands ride into the future? What is the brand dynamics at play here?

-Anjan Parekh, Mumbai

A: Anjan, these sure are two big mega brands from tinsel town. Brands that have whole sets of consumers swooning on their respective aura.

A marriage of two such mega brands with one another is not quite like the corporate marriage of two mega brands that go to make an even bigger brand presence felt. Remember, this is 'Bollywood'. And ‘Bollywood’ survives on the whims and fancies of its viewers.

While a Tata-Corus deal might cause for a bigger Tata-Corus entity in the future, I can’t say just the same will happen to the Abhi-Aish brand of the future.

Why so? Very simply because we must remember the audience of ‘Bollywood’ that resides in our country is a chauvinistic one in many ways. If you study the history of what has happened over the last fifty years in Bollywood, the trend is all about the male brand gaining form a marriage and the feminine brand losing.

I do believe this mega brand-marriage is going to be a positive stroke to brand Abhishek and a rather negative stroke to brand Aishwarya. Why so again? Very simply because the audience at hand is a chauvinistic one.

Hindi cinema is all about chemistry. The chemistry that the lead pair is able to exude, hold, tantalize with and subliminate finally. Viewers love the chemistry that exists between two stars who are not married as yet. A marriage actually sublimates this chemistry and the audience wants something else!

When Amitabh and Jaya were yet to be married to one another, their movies did very well, as did their respective brands. When they did get married, things turned different. The Amitabh-Rekha movies were forever a hit, right up to Silsila. The chemistry was intact. I do believe it still is. Audiences love this chemistry.

A marriage of two big mega brands from ‘Bollywood’ therefore does not result in a bigger still brand post-marriage. Instead, it is a smaller brand of Aish and a slightly bigger brand of Abhishek. I just however hope I am wrong this time round.

Hollywood on the other hand is different. A Brad Pitt-Jennifer Aniston and now a Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie are indeed bigger brands as a whole than their individual parts. And ‘Bollywood’ is different.

Q: The World Cup is barely two months away and we don't see any ads
highlighting cricketers like we did even during the last world cup?
Wassup?

-Dhruv Vashisth, Delhi

A: Dhruv, cricket is still on the back-burner of the marketing company. Remember, it
still is on the burner, but the brand-cricket-policy is that much more
cautious.

Let's remember, cricket itself is a brand. A powerful brand that evokes
emotion positive and negative among large sets of consumers in this country.
As a sub-set of the big mother brand CRICKET, exist the brands of
cricketers. A Sachin, A Saurav and a Dhoni are all but sub-set brands. Both
are indeed complimentary to one another.

In the current case, cricket the mother-brand reigns supreme even today. The
lack of performance of the sub-set player brands has created the current
lack-luster cricket-advertising environment.

Cricket as such is an over-hyped game in the continent in any case. The
valuation commanded by the stars of cricket in any case make people in
discerning marketing companies sit up and think. Now even more so, as the
team does not perform to expectation. But wait and watch. Every match can make a difference.

Q: If you look at 2006, what is the biggest marketing idea of the year at large?

SK Sampath, Chennai

A: Mr. Sampath, the biggest idea of 2006 was not a single brand idea; instead it was a very big idea at large. The Idea of the Indian at large.

This was not an idea put forth by any advertising agency as such. Instead,
it was the India story at large dominating the psyche of the Indian and the
world-citizen at large.

In the old days, the dominant thought was:" India Happens!"

The year just gone by has transformed that thought to a very hip: "India
Happening".

Everyone therefore wants a piece of the action.

This Big Idea has percolated the consumer psyche at large not through a
top--down brand-building process. Instead, it is a thought that has happened
bottom-up. It is therefore that much more solid. More real, as contrasted to
thoughts built by advertising inputs of the high decibel kind!

The India brand and the India story is what I would vote as the biggest of
the big ideas.

Q: Please explain the paradox of a no-name brand with special reference to agricultural products.

-Jayant Joshipura, Pune

A: Jayant, I personally do not believe in a no-name brand. The brand is essentially a name for a start. A name that is recognition and a distinction from everything else around.

No-name brands are surely a paradox in themselves. Do remember, a brand is meant to command and elicit a premium from its consumers. A premium that sets it apart from the commodity at large. A no-name brand is never successful at this.

Agri-products must transform themselves onto the branding movement if they are to truly capitalize on true-value.

Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com