Not just marketing

Brand successes also reflect the power of ideas

The success of the Nano and Indian Premier League in Business Standard’s latest Brand Derby (reported in the Strategist section yesterday) should drive home three lessons for marketers. One, it is now possible for Indian brands to gain instant global recognition. Two, more than the money spent on promotion, it could be the idea behind a product which matters. And three, a great brand can be created quickly.

Indians have for long been seen as good low-cost providers of information technology services and producers of low-end products which are more like commodities. They have failed to create global brands. Oberoi would be an honourable exception, and Jet and Kingfisher might get there if their airlines become sound businesses, while some corporate houses (like Tata) are international brands too—one reason why the workers of Jaguar and Land Rover in Britain welcomed the Tata Motors bid. In some senses, ‘Bangalore’ has become a brand too.

 

Indian businessmen know the difficulties of doing successful brand launches for products that need a global platform. That is one reason why some have chosen to acquire global brands like Tetley and Thomson. In the local market, of course, there are several homespun brands which have come to be associated with sustained excellence, like Amul. But the international market is a different story. It is now commonly acknowledged that creating a global brand can take in excess of 20 years. But that is precisely the thought that has been killed by the success of the Nano and IPL, both of which have acquired an international cachet virtually overnight.

IPL infused new life into cricket. Outside of the Indian sub-continent, the sport had begun to lose popularity. English clubs found that the only way to draw spectators to the stadium was to enlist players from the sub-continent. IPL had all the right ingredients: Slam-bang cricket, league format matches, and glamour. Plus all the action packed into four hours. Viewers couldn’t have asked for more. The franchises aren’t complaining. At least one team (Rajasthan Royals) has unlocked some value by selling to an investor. Most of the others are expected to break even soon.

The Nano was all about a great idea. In fact, such was the proposition that it required minimal support by way of advertisements at the time of the car’s launch. It was a promise that was delivered, in spite of the odds. Nobody had ever made a full-blooded car that was safe, good to look at and fuel-efficient for just Rs 1 lakh. Months before the launch, every rival had sounded sceptical. Their calculations showed that it was not possible to build a car for so little. But Tata Motors combined frugal engineering with hard bargaining with component makers and smart tax planning. So, when Ratan Tata drove the Nano to the podium at the Delhi Auto Expo in January 2008, the automobile world had to stand up, take notice and applaud.

The Nano was a great idea. So was IPL. So you could argue that the success of both lay in the power of the idea itself, and not in any particular branding concept or brilliant marketing. That is both true and not true. Brands are complex things, and if it weren’t for the power of the Tata brand that stood behind the Nano, it might not have won the instant credibility that it did. Ditto with IPL, which began as a copy-cat thought with the backing of the cricket board, against the rebel Indian Cricket League which simply did not take off as a result. So parentage (or heritage?) mattered too, and that cannot be acquired overnight.