Saturday, May 05, 2012
Akshay Kumar, Cold-drinks, hot-markets and the Hindi heartland of India
Cold Drinks
and Hot Markets
By Harish
Bijoor
Q: After years, Thums Up has changed its brand-endorser. Akshay Kumar
is out. What’s your take on this? Why the change?
-Smiju N Thomas, Kottayam
A: Smiju, every brand of a fizzy drink needs fizz in its advertising.
Just as it’s advertising needs fizz and action, its endorsers need to remain
fizzy. In many ways Akshay Kumar had completed the task on the brand, and his
personal fizz-quotient to fit the brand was albeit missing. To that extent, the
new campaign moves a step forward. After all, how long can you keep asking the
same star, "Tumne apne Thums Up ke liya, kya kya kiya hai?"
Brand endorsers age. Brand endorsers go through cycles of achievement and non-achievement. Brand endorsers have hits and misses. Brand endorsers are human beings with limited life cycles of appeal. And brand-endorsers age. Brands don't. Brands have two choices then. They can either age with their brand endorsers, or they could change their brand endorsers. Thums Up chose.
As of now, Thums Up has many brand endorsers. In many ways, having 4 brand endorsers versus one, is hedging. Each endorser appeals to a different class of consumer. Every endorser has an appeal that could even be region specific. Having 4 brand endorsers in many ways is the ultimate brand revenge on the brand endorser of yore. Brand endorsers, particularly film stars are very promiscuous in their brand endorsements. Some endorse as many as 14 brands simultaneously, changing their clothes, their hairstyles and at times even their accents, tone, tenor and decibel of talk and walk.
Cheekily speaking, the idea is a simple one: if a brand endorser can endorse so many brands simultaneously, why can't a brand take on more than one brand ambassador? After all this is the best hedge against bets that could go wrong with solus stars. This is a hedge on the popularity of stars, hits, flops, region of appeal and more.
With this change, I do believe the brand is looking peppier by the day. This piece of advertising adds zing to the brand. As Pepsi ages in the Indian market, Coke and Thums Up are looking refreshingly younger and younger in their brand profiles. “Aaj Kucch Toofani Karte hain” resonates with the young of this country and their current mood as of now. To “toofani “ then.
Q: Is the Hindi heartland of India
becoming an area of focus for the marketer today? Is this a trend? Why?
-Kiran Gaonkar, Itarsi
Kiran, absolutely yes.
The Hindi heartland is the new market that is just about emerging.
What was derogatorily called the "cow belt" and the "Bimaru
states" in the past, is a market that is coming to roost in the present
and most certainly the future. These states have become very progressive in
their development indices. These states boast of a GDP growth rate that is at
times even more robust than the national numbers. This means that these markets
will see faster consumer growth in terms of demand in terms of volumes, value
and innovation.
India is a very young nation. These states have a solid representation of the young. These states are therefore excellent markets for young-oriented products and services. The robust growth numbers in the education sector is proof enough. Add to it the entertainment market, the market for mobile phones, gadgets of every kind, clothes and accessories, cosmetics, shoes, physical exercise-oriented products, and you have a solid market of the future emerging.
The youth in these States are real, rustic and aspiring. Every one of
them wants to create a better life for themselves. The first effort is at
education. Private schools, colleges, centers of higher education such as MBA
Institutes, Professional degree institutions, and coaching centers alike, are
magnet points for the young. Then there is the aspiration to dress better, look
better and eat and drink better as well. This is spurring consumption of not
only functional products, but products of cosmetic value as well. Products that
relate to health, well-being and proactive health care rather than just
reactive care, are being craved for as well. The young in these towns have a
far bigger hunger quotient than the privileged young in the bigger cities of
India. Here again, I would segment this territory into urban, rurban and rural.
The hunger deepens as you go from urban to rurban to rural. The opportunity for
marketers therefore deepens as one penetrates down this strata.
Marketers need to be careful and cautious though. Marketers need to stay humble, talk the language of the people, and offer solutions that are relevant, original and innovative. Marketers need to tailor-make themselves to the market, rather than take their tailor-made solutions to the market. Bottom-up marketing is the mantra to adopt. Not pompous top-down marketing norms that we have imported, imbibed and practiced with lack of success in the past.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harish Bijoor is a business
strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email:
harishbijoor@hotmail.com
Labels: ADVERTISING, branding, Brands, Celebrity endorsement, Hindi
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Celebrity Endorsement and Real Estate
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
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
Labels: Brands, Celebrity endorsement, City brands, real estate
