There is nothing fast or easy about building a strong brand — persistent champions of branding will vouch for that. In their book Brand Building Advertising, authors MG Parameswaran, executive director, and CEO, Mumbai, of Draftfcb Ulka Advertising and Kinjal Medh, COO, Cogito Consulting, have put together the learnings from a series of case studies that have put some companies and products on the brand map. Here they take on questions from the strategist on the challenges before marketing today and how advertising can manage people’s changing perceptions.
Technology is making ad-zapping easier than ever before. How do marketers trying to build new brands and nurture old ones deal with ad-zapping consumers?
Kinjal Medh: Fundamentals of brand building and brand building advertising will not change, as has been brought out in the Brand Building Advertising Case Book II. Some of the dimensions will change, often shaped by technology. Technology has a way of surprising us around every corner. It is as true of television as it is of any other medium. While it poses its challenges, technology also offers its advantages.
The digital medium offers unprecedented opportunities as it provides data that can help in addressability, precision ad serving, measurability, content consumption and interactivity, thereby opening up new avenues for attracting and engaging media consumers (no longer just passive ‘viewers’).
At the same time we must also understand that this opportunity (or challenge) will initially be fairly limited, and will concern only a narrow base of the more affluent/elite consumers. For example, of the 200 million households, roughly 120 million access content through cable and satellite and only around 20 million do so through direct to home. So advertising and media companies will need to cater to both audiences simultaneously. While advertising has to be on strategy and should sell the brand, progressively we also need to see advertising as ‘content’ that can be shared digitally by consumers. In fact, the future will see not just ad-zapping consumers, but also an equally large number of ad-sharing consumers. Are we ready for them?
Defining the essence of a brand is only part of the battle. Communicating it to the consumer is the other. How do you build a brand in a world in which consumers are increasingly in control of the media?
MG Parameswaran: At a global conference we heard a CEO mention that the 30-second ad is dead. This was 10 years ago, but the 30-second ad is still alive and thriving. But we need to understand that the days of media advertising alone building and nurturing a brand may be soon behind us. In fact, no significant brand can be built without engaging consumers and augmenting the quality of interactions.
For example, in the auto sector a brand is built not just through media, but every point of interaction, whether it is online reviews and blogs, or dealer interaction or post-purchase sales and service or even the brands visibility and user profile on the road. Brands that control or positively guide all these interactions will certainly do much better than brands that don’t. In the book of cases II we have presented several cases where we have showcased brands that have gone beyond the mass media, to engage with the consumer where they congregate. The Zod! case illustrates how the brand went ‘pubbing’ to connect with its consumers.
With competition increasing in every market, taking potshots at competition through advertising is becoming common.
Do comparative ads help in building smarter brands?
MG Parameswaran: Comparative advertising come in many shapes and sizes, so there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution. Let us take the case of the launch campaign of Tata Indica. We used a very competitive stance to present Indica as a car that offers a lot more than the common ‘small car’. Though we had mentioned 800 cc car, the advertising did not name the competitor’s brand intentionally. The consumer was left to make the connection, and they did decode that Tata Indica offered ‘more car per car’. The launch campaign of Tata Indica was extremely successful in positioning the brand as a much better alternative to the largest selling car brand of that time. However, just a series of comparative ads cannot build a brand, though they can be used quite effectively as a part of an overall game plan.
We have just been through a slowdown and seen how companies are cutting costs at every turn. Would you agree with experts who say a recession may feel like the worst time to be a marketer, but it may be the best to build brands?
Kinjal Medh: While the knee jerk reaction is to cut spends, there are enough researches that have pointed out that brands that do not cut spends or other marketing effort actually tend to gain share and emerge on a higher trajectory than their competitors post a recession. This is because the brand that continues marketing pressure during recession, eventually ends up with a higher relative share of voice and marketing effort than before the recession. It is a great opportunity for leaders to increase the gap between them and their nearest competitor and marginal brands to emerge as significant players.
Smaller brands tend to get hit the hardest and often vacate the market temporarily, opening up gaps in the market for the stronger, more resilient brands. The adage ‘Tough times do not last, tough guys do’ is so true in marketing too! The brands presented in the book of cases are almost all been built by assiduous investment in advertising, even through the toughest times. Let us take the case of naukri.com. The promoters of the company took a huge risk investing in television advertising and a very provocative ad at that, when dotcom companies were all conserving cash or running for cover. When the storm clouds receded, naukri.com had emerged as the strongest brand that could command a huge valuation in the Indian stock market.
What can you do with your brand if it no longer fits your corporate mission?
MG Parameswaran: The biggest asset of any corporation is its brand. So a corporation cannot exist unless the brand values are not in line with the corporate mission. Let us take the case of UTI Mutual Fund. After the break up of the guaranteed return plans from the floating return plans, there was conviction in the company that UTI brand need to be revived, not buried. The campaign that ran to relaunch UTI Mutual Fund with the tag line ‘Welcome to UTI Country’ was born out of the conviction that the brand UTI could be reenergised and reactivated. The result was there to see. So a corporation is the brand, and the brand is the corporation. The case is different if it is a company that sells products and services under distinct brand, then one would adopt a SWOT analysis and decide which brand to invest in and which brand to divest.
