The Brand
Strategy Seven
By Harish
Bijoor
In the beginning is the
brand! Let’s start with the brand
then.
My definition of a brand: The
brand is a thought. A thought that lives in people’s minds. A simple thought that gets planted (either
by intent or accident) in the mind of a person. This thought then has the
ability to germinate and flourish in a person’s mind. It equally has the
ability to decay and get relegated to the farthest recesses of the mind.
Brands that invest in keeping
their “thought” alive, peppy, contemporary, relevant to the generation,
original in impact and innovative in their offerings tend to thrive and do
well. Those that don’t die and get pushed into the outer-most periphery of
near-oblivion in the person’s mind. And remember, this is a “person” and not a
“consumer” I am talking about. Brands live in people’s minds. And these people
are not necessarily consumers, as yet.
Brands are about strategy. And
not about the tactics that brand managers deploy every now and then, imagining
themselves to be alive and contemporary. And strategy is reasonably long-term,
durable and something that delivers perceptible business impact.
Now let me cut oblique brand-talk
and come to the point. If there are 7 Marketing strategies that brands cannot
afford to ignore today, what are they?
Here is my top 7 listing.
1)
The
Enabling Lives Dictum:
Brands are meant
to enrich the lives of people. Brands are meant to be solutions. Real solutions
to real problems. The moment your brand is moving away from this dictum, it is
time to re-orient your brand strategy. If your business owner is however
inclined to go his way, time to call your friendly headhunter and re-orient
your job-strategy instead.
Brands today are
offering solutions that look like solutions, but really aren’t. Time to do an
audit on your brand and see if what you are offering as a solution is really
one. Is it something you would offer your ailing father as a solution? Is it
something you would sell to someone who is investing his last buck onto it? Is
it something you would sell to this innocent little girl who knows little?
Do the innocence
check on your strategy. If you find yourself going berserk selling deodorant
that looks like a chick-magnet or offering a television that offers to cure
your Blood Pressure problem, time to re-orient strategy.
Brands at large
have a tendency to get carried away by the creative. At times brands swim far
away from the basic tone and tenor of their brand proposition statement. At
times brands adopt the most desperate measure of saying things they really
don’t mean and really don’t represent. Avoid this totally.
Brands are meant
to enable lives positively. Not by deceit. Not by subterfuge. And most
certainly not by clever lines that hide more than reveal.
The consumer is
not an idiot. At the same time, the consumer is not as intelligent as most
people imagine them to be. Successive small little doses of advertising
hyperbole have made urban consumers develop thicker and thicker skins of
understanding. Today, a lot goes, unless specifically pointed out to be a bit
too far in its logic. Brands need
to understand this, and need to correct issues where they have gone a bit too
far, and a bit too wrong.
There is a need
to do a check on every brand that you manage and handle. Ask the simple
question: does it enable lives? And am I communicating this fact adequately
with enough integrity? Or have I gone a bit too far? Must I correct this as
part of my overall brand strategy?
2)
The
Inclusive versus Exclusive Dictum:
Brands are
essentially meant to be inclusive entities that belong to and within
society. Some brands do not
however consider themselves to belong to this mindset. Brands, by their very
definition are meant to be exclusive statements flaunted by exclusive people.
This old
definition and mindset of the brand at large needs to be challenged today. The
rationale is a simple one. Society today is getting to be more and more inclusive.
Everyone who lives in it is knitted together with one common purpose. Your maidservant
is knitted to the purpose of your life, just as you are knitted to the purpose
of your maidservant’s life.
Relationships in
society have changed. The mindset of slave and master has changed, if you have
not noticed it yet. You may not be in love with your maid, but when your maid
is in trouble, you help. For whatever reason. Noble or ignoble returns-oriented
reasons as well. And when you are in trouble, your maid stretches herself to
help. At times with reasons more genuine than yours was!
In a society
that is progressively more and more knitted together, brands cannot afford to
be exclusive in their stances. Brands need to knit everyone’s purpose together.
It is quite likely that your driver wears a Levi’s and is married to the brand,
just as your wife is. And if you
check your driver’s 'loo', you are very likely to find the same tooth-paste you
use, the same mouth-wash you rinse your mouth with, and the “same-to-same”
sanitary napkin with the latest in absorption capacity (enough to soak up water
from a full swimming pool even!) that you find in your bathroom cabinet.
The brand lines
are blurring now. When consumption is becoming largely common, do a check on
your brand if you are a bit too exclusive for the society in which you operate.
If you are, time to change your strategy. Brands need to get off the
“Exclusive” pedestal and get onto the “Inclusive” bandwagon out there. The
Master and slave days are over. If you have not noticed that as yet!
3)
The
Green Dictum:
The reigning
color of the day is green. As more and more damage is done by brands to the
society at large, green is getting that much more relevant. Consumers are just
about sitting on the wall of an altogether embrace with the green ethos and
story.
It will start
first with categories that pollute the earth the most. It will start with cars
at the highest common denominator end, just as it will start with detergents at
the lowest common denominator end of the market. Green has a relevance to both
categories. Consumers will start looking at cars that gobble up Carbon dioxide
and sweat water vapor, just as they will look for detergents that enrich the
water let-off instead of pollute the same.
A part of good
and enduring brand marketing strategy for the future will need to incorporate
within it the Green and eco-friendly story. Any brand that does not incorporate
within its DNA the story of the good earth is skating on the thin ice of the
future. The future is going to be kind to those that support the earth and its
future, and completely unkind and cruel to those that don’t.
If you don’t
have a green ethos in your brand, whether you are a retail brand or one
packaged at the factory for end consumer consumption, you are a suspect brand of
the future. Incorporating the green strategy in your brand is possibly the best
thing to do in terms of future insulation. Those who start now have a leg-up to
those who start later.
In this space,
let’s accept one thing, brands just don’t have a choice. Do it now
in-expensively, if you don’t want to do it five years hence, very expensively.
4)
The
Social Grain Dictum:
If society wants
to eat less of you, are you pushing more of you? If society is getting sicker
and sicker with more of you in their lives, are you promoting more and more of
you? Time to do a check on this in your brand marketing strategy.
Brands need to
do a reality check on their social-grain status. Brands that wish to remain sensitive
need to swim with society and not against it. You cannot be a Salmon out here,
swimming against the tide. Swimming up-stream is fine for the tasty pink-flesh,
but not fine for your brand.
If society wants
to drink less alcohol, and you are an alcohol brand, what are you doing about
it? If society wants to smoke less of your tobacco-stick, what are you doing
about it? What are your social-grain brand stickler points? Even as you promote
your brand through the permission-marketing route, what are you doing to
correct the in-equity that it is resulting into? Are you active in spreading a
chain of your own de-addiction centers? Are you being even more pro-active than
that? Are you promoting responsible-drinking norms amongst your target segment
through mass-media advertising and PR campaigns that are real and solid, and
not just skin-deep, showy and just enough to get good Press for your brand?
Check every negative
action of yours with a counter-action that is positive. Check the weightage of
both. Yes, you are a business, and you cannot match every action with an equal
reaction. But are you at least an 80:20 brand in this space of correcting the
social issue at had caused by your brand.
The Social Grain
dictum I am championing here is not about the categories of liquor and tobacco
alone. Think about it. Every category has a soft under-belly on this count.
Even the most innocent-looking ones.
Let’s go down
the pecking order of what I call the future “Social-ostracism categories”.
Processed sugar? Brands that pack aspartame into them, including every Diet
drink in the market? Butter? Ghee? Carbonated and high-sugar drinks of every
type? Every burger and pizza in the market? Snack-foods of every kind?
The list can go
on and on. Do a check on your brand’s social-ostracism index. If you are likely
to figure somewhere on it, just put a flag in your strategy and correct it now.
5)
The
Communication Sensitivity Dictum:
The consumer is
getting more and more sensitive about the clutter of communication that is
staring back at him and his family today. As the days go by, the word pollution
is going to get a broader application in the world of advertising, branding,
marketing and consumer life.
The consumer is
going to discover “visual pollution” in the hoardings that stare back at him cluttering
his life. In the old days he had the trees and the open sky to look at, and
today it is just one hoarding leading to another seamlessly. The consumer is
equally going to discover “aural pollution” on his television set and his radio
in the car. Pollution is no longer going to be about the things that he is
breathing in or what he is finding in his water sources. Instead, pollution is
going to be about things he is going to perceive with his eyes and ears as
well.
Add
communication sensitivity to your brand marketing strategy. Do a check on how
the consumer is viewing your effort today. Make those corrections and use it as
an active part of your brand strategy. Don’t miss this one in a day and age
when we are getting lost in the creative loop that seems to be just getting
longer and longer. Let’s not hang ourselves on this one.
6)
The
Health-intensive Dictum:
Health is a big
concern. India is becoming the Diabetes capital of the world. As prosperity indices increase,
obesity is becoming a big issue. Hypertension is a day-to-day reality. As every
life-style disease becomes a big issue in India, brands need to make a check on
their health-quotient.
You may not want
to promote your brand as a health food for now, but do a check to see if you
are replacing cheaper un-healthier ingredients in your food today than you
must. If you need to rectify this, do it. Brands that do injustice to consumer
health, whether it is in foods and beverages or in auto or computers or telecom
for that matter, just need to correct their stances. If radiation in telecom
handsets is an issue, time to showcase it yourself as a telecom handset player
n the Indian market, rather than ruin the lives of millions before anybody
waking up. Or for that matter not waking up!
Incorporate the
health dictum into your brand marketing strategy. You will not go wrong. And
guess what, you will be able to go home to your family and get a nice night’s
sleep. Guess what, you might dream a nice dream as well!
7)
The
1:1 Dictum:
Dictum seven
then. This one is about getting personal with your consumer. This was something
every brand did in the good old days.
The best way of
selling a mobile-phone device is to sell it 1:1 sitting in front of the consumer.
When this got difficult, marketing folk did group-selling sessions where you
sold 1: Many. This was in person again, but 1 sales-person sold to 40 people in
a room. Less efficient than “1:1”selling, but still efficient.
When “1: Many”
got difficult, we took the route of getting behind a camera and recording a
brand TVC and doing a “1: Very Many” selling mode. This works less.
In this day and
age of extreme brand communication clutter, time to re-invent the good old way
of “1:1” selling. Try and incorporate this in your brand marketing strategy.
Looks difficult it the beginning for many a mass category like tea and toilet
paper. Try it though for categories you can. See the results for yourself. You
will be sold to it in no time.
An important
part of brand marketing strategy is still the way you sell. Don’t forget to include this nugget
into your marketing plan. Bumper sticker then: In an era when everyone is
selling “1:All”, the one who is selling “1:1” will reap the riches.
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Harish Bijoor is a Brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor
Consults Inc.
Follow him on Twitter.com@harishbijoor
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