INSIDE OUTSIDE AND AROUND THE BOX

The scope for brand creativity is almost limitless, regardless of boundaries

The familiar phrase “think outside the box” is an invitation to business unusual. It pops out at times of difficulty, when other ideas feel uninspired or doomed. It appears at training and strategy off-sites. Leaders brandish it to demonstrate unconventionality and openness.

According to one source the expression originated in the United States in the late 1960s/early1970s. Various management consultants claim the phrase but a single-person attribution is hard to find. One early citation comes from July 1975’s Aviation Week & Space Technology, “We must step back and see if the solutions to our problems lie outside the box”.

Implicit in the phrase is a criticism of the box and the person in it. The box is a prison and the person serving time an uninventive plodder. The outside-the- box person is unhindered by orthodoxy or constraints, worthy of admiration. The box, accepting its finite boundaries and terms of engagement, needs repositioning, as does its hapless occupant.

Most sport – football, tennis, basketball, even cricket - is played inside a box. The playing area has lines you cannot cross. Players are controlled by all-powerful officials, who regulate behaviour. This might suggest limited room for innovation. How far from the truth that is! The scope for invention is boundless - without breaking the rules - especially in the hands of precocious talent. The ball at Christiano Ronaldo’s feet, the racket in Roger Federer’s hands, Steph Curry on the 3-point line and Virat Kohli, bat in hand, produce moments of magic that make a mockery of limits. Apart from gifted individuals, there is huge scope for creativity in team strategy, as successful managers like Zinedine Zidane, Steve Kerr and Ravi Shastri demonstrate. Looking at brands: Reliance Jio brought creativity to telecom, Red Bull to beverages and Maruti Suzuki to small cars with Brezza.

When a solution has been optimized it needs efficient and faithful reproduction. Ensuring a reliable repeatable outcome is worthy and admirable. Often a well-understood problem needs new ideas to solve it better. A great example of this is found in mathematician Professor Marcus du Sautoy’s 2015 documentary on algorithms: the challenge of handling large amounts of data at high speeds was better solved than the existing Bubble Sort method by John von Neumann’s Merge Sort algorithm.

Before going outside, stretching the box’s boundaries could prove attractive. One way to “expand the box” is to widen the frame of reference of brand consumption. The 50- and 20-overs formats of cricket are examples. In India Brand IPL lays claim to cricket’s expansion with its kitsch desi-ization of the American sports marketing model. Another example of expansion is Amazon Pay, through which an independent retail brand can avail of Amazon’s payment system.

Finally, there’s the delicious headiness of thinking outside the box. The guard rails are temporarily removed and the team can Blue Sky with abandon (until the evaluation criteria kick-in and many ideas bite the dust). When there’s no more room inside or around the box, this is the way to go. Flipkart will need to, to spend its reported $4bn kitty well, with fundamental thinking around questions like Theodore Levitt’s famous, “What business are you in?”. This will likely redefine their box.

No matter where you are with respect to the box – inside, outside or around it – an inspired new angle and a brilliant team make all the difference.  

BRANDS AT THE TIME OF VUCA

A strong brand is often the only dependable constant in volatile and uncertain times

In 1577, Sir Francis Drake sailed his galleon Golden Hind towards South America. Drake had offical approval to ‘benefit’ himself and Queen Elizabeth I, as well as to cause maximum damage to the Spaniards. This would eventually culminate in the Anglo-Spanish War. On March 1 1579, off the coast of Ecuador, Golden Hind challenged and captured the Spanish galleon. It had the largest treasure captured to that date: over 360,000 pesos (equivalent to £480m in 2017). Elizabeth’s share of the treasure was enough to pay off her entire government debt and still have a neat sum left over.

Drake was little more than a state-sponsored pirate. Of relevance is the vessel he counted on for conquest and profit. The story of Drake cannot be told without Golden Hind.

Centuries later, in July 1969 and a very different context, Apollo 11 put Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon, effectively ending the space race. The Apollo 11 spacecraft had three parts: a command module Columbia, with a cabin for the three astronauts; a service module which supported the command module with propulsion, electrical power, oxygen and water; and a lunar module Eagle that had two stages – a lower stage for landing on the Moon, and an upper stage to place the astronauts back into lunar orbit. Armstrong and Aldrin landed Eagle in the Sea of Tranquility. They stayed about 21 hours on the lunar surface, then used Eagle’s upper stage to lift off and rejoin Collins.

Can the story of “…one giant leap for mankind” be told without Eagle and Columbia?

Both Drake’s and the Apollo 11 mission, akin to so many other bold human endeavours, faced volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). Despite all the planning, preparation and training, several unknowns existed on the seas or in space. Above all else, the vehicle that anchored the mission, and held its precious human and material cargo, would have to be completely failsafe.

Golden Hind and Columbia are useful metaphors for your brand. The brand is a vessel for a business’s mission. It protects it from unknowns, unpredictability and hostile conditions. It is not made of sturdy timber or ablative heat shields, but of human goodwill, owned and nourished in people’s minds by great brand behaviour.

A brand’s equity is essentially a reservoir of reputation. Actions determine how large the reservoir is, and therefore how long it will hold out when everything around the business is changing or falling apart. It allows and assists changes in business strategies.

MasterCard is an example of brand equity assisting business evolution. We unfailingly recognise its interlocking circles logo. We know its ageless, timeless, “Priceless” slogan. This has supported changes in business strategy over the years, necessistated by technology changes in the payments industry.

A well cared for brand is arguably the only dependable constant in times of VUCA. Question is: do you feel as confident about your vessel as Drake did with Golden Hind or Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins did with Apollo 11?

HOW TO ADD OOOMPH TO AGEING BRANDS

When the first wrinkles appear, the search for the fountain of youth begins

Francois Mitterrand,  President of France for two terms in the 1980s and 1990s, was the creator of Grands Projets, an architectural programme to provide modern monuments in Paris symbolizing France’s role in art, politics and economy. The best known among these is the redesign of the entrance to the Louvre.  

The Louvre is the world's largest musuem. Playing host to 38,000 artworks, including of course the Mona Lisa, exhibited over nearly 73,000 square metres, it received 7.3 million visitors in 2016, the highest in the Western world. As an icon of France’s cultural pre-eminence, the Louvre is unique. But back in the early 1980s, the Louvre reportedly faced a number of problems. Footfalls were poor. Its eight sections had an unbalanced distribution of visitors. Crucially, it had lost relevance to youth. If something wasn’t done, this proud French icon could have become another faded relic of a long-lost past.

The Louvre rejuvenation committee made three brave and far-reaching choices. First, they appointed Chinese-American architect IM Pei to design the new entrance. Second, they accepted Pei’s radical proposal to install a glass pyramid (and three smaller ones) in the Louvre’s forecourt. Third, they implemented Pei’s proposals without compromise.  Unsurprisingly there was considerable consternation in the French cultural establishment: An Americal architect? Why not French? A pyramid? But that’s Egyptian!

Significantly, Pei’s design is not only an aesthetic triumph, but also solved the Louvre’sproblems: footfalls are up. The young now flock the museum. Visitor distribution is balanced, with the atrium below the pyramid influential in traffic management. The Louvre’s pyramid is a terrific example of adding oomph the right way.

Unilever’s Lux is an example of what not to do. Imprisoned by a drooping decades-old idea desperately in need of overhaul, Lux remains a soap. Meanwhile a vibrant ‘luxury beauty’ category has blossomed around Lux. Beware the fool’s gold of history. An archeological dig will unearth ancient artefacts, but these may not help with the future. People change, tastes change, expectations change. Tata famously brought commercial aviation to India, leading to what became Air India. Tata rightly and unemotionally dispensed with its unhelpful history when launching Vistara, and is much the better for it.

Another red herring is to look for new insights in the brand’s own category. This will deliver a poor catch, especially if the category is mature or overfished. An Indian category in need of largescale brand revitalisation is our banks.  Different logos, liveries and graphics do not make different brands when their products are similar, their branches are similar and their legions of apparatchiks similar. How can they reverse age if they only look at others like themselves? The real answers need discontinuity and intuition. They lie outside banking in other and newer categories, in new needs and wants, in new personal and life aspirations.

What’s said about banks applies to other brands too. Tata Motors, for example, is a brand that is long overdue a transformative makeover.

Too many brand owners tinker or are timid. The ‘fountain of brand youth is unlikely to be found in the backyard. It lies a daring adventure away. Why wait for the first wrinkle to appear? Why not make it an everyday journey?

THE BEGUILING ALLURE OF “MASSTIGE BRANDS”

Trading places up and down the value spectrum isn’t always easy or successful

The Bombay Gymkhana, South Mumbai’s storied 140-year club, made news for its opposition, and subsequent surrender, to the demand by a group of guest members, whose temporary memberships were to cease following their retirement from positions that brought this sought-after privilege.

Without weighing in on either side of that controversy, the incident is interesting from a brand point of view because it underlines the irresistibility of prestige brands.

In times gone by the Bombay Gymkhana presented an image of rugged sporting competition but with fine manners, of high achievers who had sophistication and poise, of people who went to the right schools, spoke with the right accents and had travelled extensively. It was a small and exclusive group you were invited to join, and only after careful consideration.

What gives prestige brands magnetism and multiplies their appeal is they are not accessible to everyone. They occupy a special world not many can be part of, they are used by beautiful people many want to be or at least be like; they ask the consumer to rise to the brand’s way of life. They emanate a wispy stardom that consumers want to rub shoulders with.

Prestige brands are built not just by ‘restricted entry’ and polished imagery, but by unique creative vision that brings very high attention to the product. Craftsmanship, with precision and uncompromised quality, is a defining principle. The experience of unboxing a Tag Heuer is exciting and voluptuous, filling the buyer with the pride of ownership. Provenance, such as Switzerland for watches and Provence for L’Occitane, injects authenticity. Pricing is key, because something made well rarely comes cheap.

At the other end of the spectrum are mass brands. They are unabashedly accessible, court popularity and make no pretense of provenance or crafting. At their hearts they are democratic, wanting to belong to everyone. Count Maruki Suzuki, Airtel, Wheel, Patanjali and many other Indian brands in this category.

Both prestige and mass brands bring enormous value to companies that make them and consumers that use them. Mass brands remove or reduce barriers to entry, prestige brands put up barriers of quality and price. With each having their committed consumers, a happy equilibrium is maintained…until discretionary spending increases and lifestyles become more hedonistic. That’s when brands at both ends of the spectrum start to migrate towards the centre and the ‘masstige’ segment is born.

The logic is impeccable: if prestige brands create affordable extensions, albeit with a small drop in quality, they pick up a share of the rising consumer. Equally if mass brands add quality to their extensions, they can raise price and catch some downward consumer traffic.

But is there a sustainable masstige positioning for brands migrating from both ends? A prestige brand’s core is unquestionably compromised by lower-price extensions; so is a mass brand’s very reason for being as it hits a ceiling, often short of ‘masstige’, let alone prestige, beyond which it cannot extend upward. No matter which end of the spectrum you start from, migration to ‘masstige’ is not without dilution of brand DNA. ‘Masstige’ works best for a brand that is positioned in that segment, as Hyundai Motors has demonstrated so successfully in India.

So what of the Bombay Gymkhana, the prestige brand that very publicly compromised on its policy? It wouldn’t surprise if its brand value diminishes, as every little accommodation shifts it from its moorings and plunges it into the choppy waters of masstige-ness. For all you know you might have them dialing you with a membership offer!

ONLINE PERSUADERS

Strong tail-winds, but are Indian e-tailers getting their brands right?

The demonetisation of ₹500 and ₹1000, coupled with a strong push to go cashless, could be the turning point for India’s e-tailers. Of course, the big players were quick to jump in with full page advertisements and offers that encouraged customers to enjoy their new cashless state. This move, close on the heels of the festival season, has meant that consumers have been subjected to a ‘tsunami of e-tail’ with their morning cup of tea.

Armed with deep war chests and battle-hungry marketing veterans, the online marketplaces have been particularly relentless in their pursuit of the consumer. Yet, a fundamental question remains: Are they, despite the apparently bottomless budgets, really creating differentiated brands?

Disappointingly, our e-tailers behave alike, look identical and say the same thing: “We have a vast range of products and amazing discounts and we’ll deliver to your home and in record time and un-boxing them will make your family delirious.”

Are they differentiating their advertising? The visuals are virtually interchangeable. The emotions they attempt to evoke are similar. The only thing different seems to be the color of the box that arrives at your doorstep – and I doubt colour matters very much to the bargain hunter.

It is entirely possible that e-tailers may have exceeded their sales targets this season, convincing them perhaps of the efficacy of their strategy. Yet the brand differentiation objective is completely under served, even forgotten. Despite the pitched battles, they have at very best, helped create and expand the e-tail category, increasing the size of the pie for the benefit of everyone at the table.

That’s undoubtedly a huge and valuable achievement but also, to my mind, an opportunity lost. There are two broad strategies to category creation. One: Create the category first, never mind about brand differentiation. Fight to be among the ‘last men standing’, because the survivors will share the pile.

The second strategy: create brands as you create categories, just like the world’s leading chefs do on Netflix’s Chef’s Table. Differentiate your identities beyond just the logo: Act, talk and look different from competitors. Be excellent in delivering category needs, but also deliver higher order needs. Create distinct brands, even as you create new categories.

The airline industry in India is a great example of the latter. Category benefits are clean airplanes, cheap fares, on time departure and arrivals, quick ground services and pleasant staff. Most carriers do this well. But, while the number of carriers, the number of planes in the skies, and the number of destinations have all been growing rapidly, are all India’s airline brands the same?

Carriers have invested time, thought and effort into their brands, with impressive results. IndiGo, the poster child, has a perky tone of voice, excellent aircraft hygiene, impressive punctuality and helpful staff. Vistara is quietly classy, ever reliable. Spice Jet tries to be fun and provocative, with weekend dressing and racy copy. While price does play a role, fliers today are driven by brand considerations when choosing their airline.

India’s airline brands display two interlocking principles of brand creation: Performance, coupled with personality. Performance is all about delivering category needs, and always striving to do this better than competition. Personality is about who you are, your take on life, and how you say and do things.

Performance builds categories. Performance plus personality builds brands, as it builds categories.

To take advantage of favourable tailwinds, India’s e-tailers would do well to build differentiated brands. They have to look no further than our airline industry for inspiration.

THE JIO EFFECT

The entry of an aggressive challenger has revealed the weaknesses of India’s top telecom brands

Reliance Jio’s arrival exposes an uncomfortable truth about India’s leading telecom players: Far from being strong brands, they are little more than commodities with names. The big guns really had no big response to Jio’s entry into the market.

The companies’ decision – a price drop – was both revealing and polarising. Revealing, because the price drop confirms the commoditisation of telecom, and exposes a brand confidence deficit. Polarising, because the price drop prompted this reaction from many subscribers: If the companies could afford it all along, haven’t they been overcharging for years?

Other reactions, such as failure to complete competitor’s calls and having the Cellular Operators Association of India wag a disapproving finger at the new entrant, did no good to brand stature either. These came across as bad-tempered ploys.

It is suprising to find the admired and awarded telecom brands so vulnerable in terms of brand strength. They’ve known for years that Jio was coming. Why weren’t they better prepared? Were they lulled by the beguiling popularity of their TV advertising?

Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Perhaps the chickens of customer neglect are finally coming home to roost. Completing a call in Delhi has been impossible for several months without multiple drops. Post-paid “platinum” customers have been treated no better than a SIM-switcher pre-paid customer for years. Many a subscriber has suffered the ignominy of an aggressive collection call – even with an immaculate payment record.

High data prices, poor call quality, threatening collection calls and mediocre customer care. All of that compounded by an exit barrier because important personal and government services are tied to your mobile number – this isn’t a relationship. It sounds rather like being a hostage in a bad marriage.

So when a new face shows up on the scene, isn’t it only natural that the new arrival turns a few heads? Doesn’t the current provider’s sudden niceness feel defensive: Too little, too late? A truly powerful brand rarely, if ever, responds to a new entrant with a price drop. It shouldn’t matter how well-funded or intimidating the new competitor is. If the brand has a genuine relationship with its customers, buoyed by a strong reputation and a well-stocked reservoir of goodwill, it can withstand the entry of a competitor.

At the very least, a powerful brand should be able to lean on a well-stuffed brand equity cushion to absorb competitive pressure. Real brand equity doesn’t come from communication alone, certainly not just TV ads.

The incumbents might well find their brand equity larders embarassingly light when they need them to be at their most abundant. But all is not lost. The first step to build an unassailable fence of genuine service, quality experience and reliable performance around the top 10-20 per cent of customers who provide 60-70 per cent of revenue. The second is to eschew the fool’s gold of self-love TV advertising. The focus has to be customers, the unhappy spouses whom they’ve neglected for too long. Win them back with actions, not promises.

Brand power is not a birthright, it is bestowed by consumers in exchange for behaviour. It depends on what companies do, how uniquely they do it, how much they do and how they make people who matter feel. And, what about Jio?

Jio will find the same brand equity rules apply. While ads with people floating on balloons will get them attention, it is not enough. If they want to win someone else’s current partner, if won’t happen through the promise of a better marriage, but through the visible practice of one. 

BRANDS IN THE DIGITAL AGE

The year witnessed a manifold increase in brand activity on digital. Apart from the launch of new digital businesses, most branded digital activity was on social media. The approach among brands towards digital so far has hardly been subtle or tactful. Aided and abetted by social channels that are chasing revenue, brands have come across as party crashers. You know the type; gushingly shaking hands, handing out business cards, and relentlessly promoting themselves, without contributing anything meaningful to the evening.

‘Find nirvana with us’, said a real estate firm on a Facebook page; ‘Watch our new video on YouTube’, invited the FMCG brand. ‘You simply can’t miss my latest humdinger,” exhorted a Bollywood star on Twitter; ‘Lose 35 kilos in six weeks”, promised an online diet consultant’s pop-up; ‘Buy tickets (here are pictures from last year)’, Instagrammed the concert promoter.

Some of these tactics may have yielded results, encouraging marketers to believe they are on the right track. But are they? Are we truly making the most out of the opportunity digital presents?

The current state of play is symptomatic of Indian marketers’ outdated thinking. They continue to bring legacy, mostly advertising, models to their digital plays. Perhaps they are prey to transitive thinking: if digital is social, and social is media, then digital means media means buying interruption. For too many marketers, digital is still about brand communication.

While social media has a part to play and will always be important, digital presents a larger opportunity, allowing audiences to truly experience a brand. How many times have we heard a marketing director lament: “If only we had more time with audiences, we could really immerse them in our brand”.

Well, digital makes deeper brand experiences possible. What it needs is a shift of mind-set from brand-speak to brand-do, or more accurately brand-touch. How can Digital help create truly immersive experiences? Here’s an example.

Mumbai has two theme parks, each about an hour’s drive away. Despite one having been around for years and the other being more recent, I reckon both would love to be besieged by visitors, all year round. But does either compellingly immerse you in a high-adrenalin adventure in digital? They fall well short of the immersive digital experience required to attract discerning modern thrill seekers. Surely theme park marketing must make people feel water drench them as their cart splashes into a pool; the heart-stopping moment when the rollercoaster tips for its downward plunge; the brief seconds of weightlessness when the giant pendulum swings parallel to the ground. Digital can do all this, when you stop thinking communication and start thinking experience. What’s getting in the way? Apart from a ‘communication’ mind-set, here are some other barriers:

Corporate silos: In the necessary apportioning of responsibility, customer experience and brand are always put into separate buckets. The outcome is generals fiercely defending their patches, with walls between them raised so high that they are impossible to bridge. There’s rarely anyone at the table to rise above internecine squabbles for a holistic customer-led brand view. Who will bat for digital experience?

Narrow definitions of brand and marketing: In many industries and companies, the role of brand and marketing is brand livery and communication – largely in broadcast media, and largely for customer acquisition. This is a restrictive view that doesn’t take into account the vital importance of brand at every stage of the customer journey.

Brand equity is being created – and lost – all the time, through everyone in the company and everything they do. Marketing is always full on, 24x7.   

The wrong folks evaluating brand activity: There are few things more valuable to a business than a terrific finance team. There are few things more detrimental to brand decision-making than finance evaluating marketing ideas, especially if they apply only financial parameters. Digital brand experience might gestate at a different pace and work in hitherto unmeasured ways. Brand leaders must be given scope and opportunity to craft what is right without someone pulling the plug.

Innovation needs a different set of eyes: Innovation guru Vijay Govindrajan (VG) makes a persuasive argument to separate a company’s innovation engine from its performance engine, while maintaining a healthy connection. This is true for branded digital experience as well. The guys who make your broadcast media calls may not be ideal to run brand digital innovation. Innovation needs ‘disciplined experiments’, as VG puts it, and that’s not what performance engine managers do as a day job.  

Getting experiences right can have a huge upside. Remember The Blair Witch Project, which redefined the experience of horror in that time-honoured movie genre back in 1999? Made for just $22,500, (with another $2 million spent on purchasing the movie at Sundance and marketing it), it grossed an amazing $248 million. At the core of its success is the experience it created for the fan. That’s the kind of impact our brand digital experiences should aspire for. Let’s make a start in 2017.       

A ROBOT IN THE MARKETING DEPARTMENT

The next marketing superman could be a string of code

Science fiction writers have long predicted the arrival of human alternates. Ranging from mostly human to the fully mechanical, with every conceivable permutation in between, the face-off between man and machine has fascinated us for centuries. Frankenstein, Robocop, The Terminator excite and frighten us. Isaac Asimov relieved our anxieties about human-harming robots with his Three Laws of Robotics. Truth is we want our human alternates strong and clever but obedient and benign.

The human alternate has found use in repetitive business roles humans don’t want or are likely to make errors in. They manufacture cars, make medicines, plant and harvest crops, deliver parcels, manage banking. Our world is increasingly automated, programmed, robotised – with our admiring and gratified consent.

What started in manufacturing and services has arrived in marketing.

The robot in the marketing department isn’t human in appearance. It is an algorithm. It helps find things, display choices, book orders, ask for feedback, analyse interests and intent to suggest alternatives. It serves desire-creating messages to us based on who we are, where we are and what we want to be. It feeds our avarice, oniomania and hedonism, as much as it feeds off these. It is growing globally including India, where people-dependent service is notoriously unreliable and automation facilitates scale.

To global business owners, such as Google, Amazon, Mercedes and Kraft, wouldn’t having robots managing their brands in different parts of the world be attractive? Upgrades and new versions of products would be distributed globally from a single source!

With techie-created algorithms creating and managing demand, where does that leave the present day marketer? What will become of our wordsmiths, image crafters, deal negotiators and social media manipulators? 

The marketing tribe – seasoned warriors with many notches on their belt, as well as young bravehearts waiting to scoop their first one – will insist their profession is equal parts science and art. The science side is about measurable aspects, such as sales, product development and media and about data-led decisions. The art is all about intuition and flair that directs non-numerical aspects such as design and aesthetics. The marketing cocktail isn’t complete, let alone delectable, in the absence of either. There is deftness to marketing, an adaptability to bend and weave to a customer’s rhythm, an instinct to pitch emotion when logic is running out or vice versa. In short, there can be no Marketing without people. Period.

But, is that as absolute a truth as we would like to believe?

Historian Yuval Noah Harari in his book, Homo Deus, writes about humanism as a form of religion that worships humankind. It puts mankind and its desires at top priority in the world while basing itself as the dominant being. Looking ahead to the next century, Harari predicts a universe where dataism becomes the paradigm and technology holds a threat over humankind. Harari postulates that man’s relevance could depend on the ability of humankind to give meaning to its life under these new conditions, while prophesying the coming replacement of humankind with a super man, with supernatural abilities like eternal life.

Harari’s superman - as an expanding, improving and intelligent algorithm - is on his way to the marketing department, if not there already. Isn’t it therefore, possible that in the near future,  we have an algorithm from Google competing with one from Amazon for the title of Marketer of the Year?

PATANJALI & THE PURSUIT OF MARKETING SUCCESS - PART II

In Part 1, I explored the fascinating connection between Marketing and the ancient yogis’ 3-Step Appraisal-Impulse-Action.

The pioneers of yoga observed that literally hundreds of thousands of different “objects” entered through our six sense doors, setting off a complex 3-step chain in the mind-body. This observation is particularly prescient in the modern media environment, when consumers are bombarded with a vast number of messages.

So how can the astute present day marketer use this time-honored wisdom to create value for his or her brand and business?

Step 1 - Appraisal

Appraisal divides all “sense objects” into one of three categories: pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.

It is vital for marketers to dig deep into human psyche to unearth what “pleasant” means in their specific category. What makes something pleasant is universal, profound and even at times primal. “Pleasantness” is not superficial – for example, having a slightly differentiated product benefit, or making a TV ad with a bankable movie star.

How a brand looks, feels, smells, or tastes relates to how we humans see, and assign meaning to, color, shape, aroma and tactility.

What people think and feel about a brand is rooted in fundamental human needs – needs such as Autonomy, Celebration, Integrity, Nurturance, Self Expression, Social Emotional Interdependence and Spiritual Energy.

Bringing these diverse and apparently abstract ideas together into an actionable cohesive and attractive blend is Brand Architecture. The world’s most successful brands – Apple, Mercedes Benz, Gucci, Singapore Airlines, New York City and Arsenal Football Club to name a few – do this with refinement and distinction.

The aforementioned brands live and breathe their identities, pleasing us through some or all of the six sense doors. The astute marketer invests time, intellect and energy to create a brand that just is. By being uniquely itself, the brand becomes alluring and enchanting. 

Step 2 – Impulse

Impulse is about creating passion and desire. This is when thoughts such as “I like” or “I’m drawn to” become “I want to own or belong to”.

This is when the omnipresent P’s of marketing play a role in giving tangible, reliable and rewarding form to a brand through design, materials, pricing, communication, distribution, service and so on.

This is when Apple gets sleek design and user-friendly interactivity, beautiful graphics and watchable communication. This is when Singapore Airlines trains its crews to provide the best in-flight service in the world. This is when Arsenal backs long-standing manager Arsene Wenger to assemble team after team of the best global talent to play a unique style of football unmatched for its fluidity, invention and verve.

This is when people, based on their personalities, wants and needs, make decisions on which phone or laptop is right for them, which airline to fly with and which football club to love and belong to through thick and thin – which brings me to the third and final step.

Step 3– Action.

Action is when brand experience, activation, merchandising, store design, channels to consumer, service standards, quality of staff, on-time-in-full delivery and relationship management become key.

People typically have an abundance of brands to choose from. For them to take the final step in choosing a brand – the “I have” step – demands extraordinary brand performance in the last mile.

This is when Apple’s attentive, amicable and helpful sales teams in their well laid out stores create a faithful fan following; when Singapore Airlines’ genuinely friendly crew, impeccable service and exemplary punctuality creates loyal flyers; when Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, branded T-shirts and televised games provide the Arsenal experience no matter where you are.

There is of course more to success in modern day marketing, such as bringing quality and differentiation across the many activities I’ve touched upon above. I will explore these in future posts.

I’d like to end this one by saying that, while the context is different, isn’t it amazing that the foundation of Marketing is the very same understanding of human consciousness that Patanjali discovered thousands of years ago?

To talk about Patanjali and modern marketing and/or all things brand and marketing related, write to me at bharat@bb-a.co.in 

(References and inspiration from Stephen Cope’s The Wisdom of Yoga, Bantam Books, 2007 and Need Audit extract from Marshall B Rosenberg, 1995)

PATANJALI & THE PURSUIT OF MARKETING SUCCESS - PART I

Yesterday, I discovered that a powerful piece of yogic wisdom also throws light on the fundamentals of Brand and Marketing.

Some might find this unsurprising; some mind find it revelatory, while others might even find it controversial! I’m going to take a belief from the uplifting world of spiritual practice and apply it to the very tangible world of marketing and business.

Patanjali’s use of the word chitta, for consciousness, comprises both mind and body. Chitta includes all four sheaths of human experience – the physical body, the energy body, the mental body, and even the most subtle bliss body.

Yogis have long understood that our chitta is constantly bombarded by inputs through the six sense doors – taste, touch, smell, sight, sound and thought.

Through these doors come literally hundreds of thousands of different sensations, feelings and memories, often called “objects” in yogic tradition. Each object sets of its own complicated chain of events in the mind-body.   

First, our consciousness recognizes and appraises each input – every one of the hundreds of thousands we receive every day – determining it to be pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. We see a rainbow – pleasant! We pass an overflowing garbage dump – unpleasant! We learn that Pluto isn’t a planet after all – neutral (well, I was)!

In the second critical function, our consciousness reacts to this appraisal with an impulse - attraction, aversion or neutrality. To a stimulus that is appraised as pleasant, consciousness reacts with attraction or craving, unpleasant with an aversion impulse and neutral with, well, neutrality.

The third and final link in the chain is action. If the first two links are Pleasant-Craving, then the action link could be that we reach out for the object. Unpleasant-Aversion would lead to pushing away the object and Neutral-Neutrality to no action.

The implications for brands and marketing are obvious. I’m fascinated by the relationship between objects and mind-body, through the Appraisal-Impulse-Action chain.

The Appraisal-Impulse-Action chain was revealed to yogis thousands of years ago, and has been used by teachers past and present to break the hold that objects have on human consciousness.

Yet this very chain also lies at the foundation of Marketing. The astute marketer can use the same knowledge to do the exact opposite – create positive outcomes in the interest of his brand and business.

To impatient modern-day marketers, my advice is to hold back from rushing into a too direct manipulation of consumers’ actions. Investing intelligence and diligence in a comprehensive understanding of what makes a brand pleasant and attractive will unearth untold marketing treasures.

I’ll share some more thoughts on this in the second and concluding part of this blog.

To talk about Patanjali and modern marketing and/or all things brand and marketing related, write to me at bharat@bb-a.co.in 

(References and inspiration from Stephen Cope’s The Wisdom of Yoga, Bantam Books, 2007)

HOW THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS BRANDS GOT NAMED.

BEHAVE LIKE A LEADER OR GET OUT OF THE WAY

Happy 2015! The first week of the new year is always fun – some introspection about the year gone by, cautious or unbridled optimism about the year ahead (I tend to swing wildly between the two!) and of course committing to resolutions that are meant to be broken.

And my introspection and optimism always brings me back to a topic I feel very strongly about. Therefore my first blog in 2015 is dedicated to it. That topic is ‘personal leadership’.

Leadership is complicated. Especially at the workplace.

We criticize those in leadership positions for not doing enough or doing it badly. We wait to be formally appointed in a leadership role to display leadership. And very often, when finally in that role, we display the same short-sighted tyrannical behaviour of those we condemned previously.

We all know how this cycle pans out and the culture of fear and nepotism it creates. We’ve all been part of that company, the company where leadership was the privilege and responsibility of the few and the rest were cast firmly in the role of ‘followers’. It’s a culture that stifles imagination and innovation, celebrates stereotypes and will ultimately demotivate both leaders and followers.

So I say let’s uncomplicate leadership in 2015 and beyond.

Let’s democratize leadership.

Democratizing leadership means that we all behave like leaders in our own sphere of influence and don’t wait to be led. Democratizing leadership means you, me and everyone can make a difference.

Leadership is accessible to all of us. I believe we all have hidden or expressed leadership traits. Leadership is as much about one’s ability to listen, understand and relate as it is about leading people decisively and successfully.

Unfortunately most people don’t believe they’ll ever be anything more than a follower. Most people undervalue their ability to make a difference. Most people lack the one defining quality of leadership – self-belief. None of this is a good enough excuse.

When companies and society democratize leadership, making it both a right and responsibility something wonderful will happen. People will forced to act like leaders well before they think they are one.

It shouldn’t matter what you do. Whether you are a factory worker or the Chairman of the Board. What does matter is you think and behave like a leader. 

As Tony Robbins says, "Whatever you hold in your mind on a consistent basis is exactly what you will experience in your life."

Leadership on the job is often about getting the little things right consistently rather than the big things right once in a while. And that’s the scariest thing about leadership. It always puts you firmly outside your comfort zone and is the headiest mix of adrenaline and fear, confidence and self-doubt. The trick is to continuously expand the self-imposed boundaries of your comfort zone.

I don’t believe people are born great leaders. It’s a process of evolution. There are things one can do to grow into leadership. Here’s my list of the top 4 things you can do to unearth your own leadership potential  

1. Power of Curiosity: Be insanely curious. Read, explore, ask, invent and don’t fall into the trap of pretending to know everything. Re-engage with the curiosity you felt as a child – to know, to understand and to ask. You’ll unearth not just lots of new information but a great leadership trait. That trait is of empathy, of openness and of connection with those around you.
    
2. Play the part: My ex-boss in my very first job told me something that changed my life. He said “Act and dress for the job that you want, not for the one you have.” You have to signal to the world that you are leadership material by doing three things – behave like a leader, speak like a leader, dress for success.
    
3. Be bloody good at what you do: Be the subject matter expert in your current role, the guy who gets things done. People want to attach themselves to successful people and be led by them.
    
4. Don’t be a jerk: You would think that this is pretty obvious but it never ceases to surprise me how often behaving badly at the workplace is considered okay as long as one delivers financial/business results. Strong, collaborative relationships are the bedrock for leaders to succeed and it’s never too early to start building them.

This year, let’s commit to personal leadership. Let’s commit to making a difference.

As Margret Mead said so beautifully “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."