Author name: Shubranshu Singh

A brand cannot be seen in isolation from society at large. A brand community is a specialised, geographically non-specific, free community based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand. A sociological interpretation is central to understanding the idea of a brand community. All brand communities have three distinctive traits – a shared consciousness of ‘us’, rituals and traditions, and a sense of belonging and responsiveness. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Brand communities are of immense value to corporations, causes and society at large. The operations of brand communities have rich implications for branding, developmental efforts on part of brands, and consumer behaviour itself. Community is a core construct in social sciences. Great social theorists, social scientists, and philosophers such as Durkheim, Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, Simmel and Weber commented on social architecture with communities as its building block. They may have been studying individual psychology, class friction or economics but the sense of relation with community was never overlooked. An understanding of community is the staple of political, religious, and economic discourse. Unfortunately, it is not so in the study of brand building and marketing. In fact, community building or formation has been neglected by social observers as well as brand builders. Modernity, market based capitalism and consumer culture have impacted society deeply. Yet, despite the centrality of brands and the change that is underway – particularly in the context of consumer behaviour and consumption – the stature of brand community as a field of marketing has not grown. Perhaps this is so because very few brands have a natural community following and fewer still have made it the basis for their existence. So what is the idea of brand community and what is its reality in practice? A brand community is a specialised community, based on a structured set of social relationships at the centre of which is a branded good or service. Like other communities, it is marked by a shared consciousness, rituals and traditions, and a sense of belonging and responsibility. The traditional concept of community got squashed by modernity. Early sociologists saw advancing nineteenth century modernity not just challenging community, but destroying it. A natural organic community was replaced by a more depersonalised, mass produced and less grounded modern society. It was formally distinguishable such as between the custom bound, familial, emotional small rural community and the mechanical, contractual, individualistic, rational urban society. Anonymity, rootlessness, dislocation, and disconnectedness were the result of modern commercialism’s triumph over socially knitted communities. The emerging consumer culture was one in which branded goods replaced unmarked commodities, where mass advertising replaced personal selling, and where the individual consumers replaced the commune as a whole. The submersion of community into the larger society also meant the imposition of sameness and the difficulty of retaining distinction between in-groups and out-groups. Cut to the present, when the pendulum is swinging the other way. After the universal thrall of sameness has become a reality, consumers are finding that it is only with a few brands with which they may be able to construct their social identities. Today, a brand community is one of the most accessible, pertinent and continuing forms of social identity and belonging that an individual can hope to be admitted into. The brand community, therefore, should have a central and prominent place in the discourse of modernity, community, and society. While there are many definitions of community, a review of sociology literature reveals at least three core components or markers of community, as well as the critical notion of imagined community. The first and most important element of community is ‘Awareness of Us’. It is the intrinsic connection that members feel toward one another, and the collective sense of difference from others not in the community. It is a shared knowledge of union at the level of community. The second indicator of community is the presence of shared rituals and traditions. Rituals and traditions perpetuate the community’s shared history, culture, and consciousness. Rituals set up visible public definitions and social solidarity. Traditions are social practices which seek to celebrate and inculcate certain behavioral norms and values. The richer this weaving, the more powerful the brand and its community. The third marker of community is a sense of responsiveness and responsibility, which is a felt sense of duty or obligation to the community as a whole and to its individual members. This is what produces collective action. With the advent of technology and modern communications, communities are not restricted by geography. Initially, community was thought of as linked to a place. New communication technologies have provided an ability to unite geographically dispersed individuals with a commonality of purpose and identity. Through modern history, modern marketing, consumer culture, and the mass media followed near identical paths of development. Media made modern marketing possible. Newspapers and magazines, then radio and television and now moving beyond broadcast media into the social and digital world enabled marketers to project brands into national consciousness. Now, brand communities transcend geography because media transcends geography. It was media and communications that allowed imagined communities to be connected and give each community member a sense of a larger world of the brand. In reality, people form communities locally. Nevertheless, consciousness of a global network of social relations marked by mutuality and emotional bonds is a powerful brand strength. This concept of brand as the maker of primary ties above notions of local solidarity is a big idea, due largely to the presence of inexpensive and accessible communication. Brands are undeniably and fundamentally social entities. Brands are created as much by consumers as by marketers. It happens via an intricate and enthralling dance of social consumption and community formation. This intersection of brand and community is an important one. Perhaps most significantly, this may be a place where consumers can contribute something beyond consumption itself. The existence, perseverance, resolution, and constant reinvention of brand communities is the most significant and democratic occurrence in a branded world. Those who understand this will thrive.

So, folks, in case you hadn’t heard, weren’t there or simply didn’t know – U2 was in town! The frenzy it provoked amongst the swish set was quite unprecedented. I think it is a fit occasion to recognise the work that Bono has done besides his work as an entertainer. In my opinion, he has advanced the agenda of Public-Private Partnership in the area of actionable cause marketing more than any other celebrity or entertainer. His initiative (RED) launched in 2006 has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for ‘The global fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria’ – a public private partnership set up in 2002. Launched at the World Economic Forum, its purpose was to engage the private sector and its marketing prowess in order to raise funds for the fight against AIDS in Africa. On the back of a napkin, the idea for a unique union of brands and consumers was outlined. Wolff Olins conceptualised the visual identity and gave the communication formal shape. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] The global fund had received a paltry USD five million between 2002-06. Bono’s staggering achievement is to bring corporations and brands fully into the battle against disease and poverty. (RED) became the canalising entity for massive private inflow to ‘The global fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria’. The biggest beneficiaries have been the poorest of the poor in Africa. Going beyond funding, he help created awareness like never before. The global glitterati, top of the rung influencers and world stage politicians were roped in. Be it Oprah Winfrey or Desmond Tutu, Kate Moss or Alicia Keys, Drogba to Lady Gaga, Penelope Cruz to Steve Jobs – a whole galaxy has been associated with and supportive of the initiative. The PR guru Matthew Freud recognised Bono as “one of the great global marketers and the world’s greatest popular communicator “. This may be hyperbole but not false. To understand Bono and (RED), one has to zoom out a little and consider the emergence of popular movements from the early 1980s. Bob Geldof and Midge Ure (Boomtown Rats and Ultravox) organised Band Aid (1984) and Live Aid (1985) concerts in the US and the UK in aid of Ethiopian famine victims. Comedian Lenny Henry and script writer Richard Curtis set up a British charity – Comic Relief. Almost two decades after Live Aid – Geldof, Curtis and Bono started the Live8 concerts under the ‘Make Poverty History’ MPH campaign. Madonna, Robbie Williams and many more performed in London, Berlin, Rome and Paris. Therefore , we see that much before 2006 (RED ) was inaugurated , Bono had commenced on a programme of committed coalition building between NGOs, celebrities and governments. In April 2005, Bono and Bobby Shriver launched a black-and-white TV commercial . It was for a pledge towards the American ONE campaign ,the US version of ‘Make Poverty History’ . This commercial featured 33 celebrities including P Diddy, Brad Pitt, Susan Sarandon and Tom Hanks, and it was funded by sponsors Oxfam America and world vision. Once (RED) was launched, global brands such as Apple, Nike, Dell, American Express, and The Gap vigorously supported the mission. (RED) allowed them to tap into a purpose beyond their own profit. Partner brands created special (RED) versions of products and a portion of the profits from the sales would contribute to the Global Fund to fight malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS. It represents the simple idea that brands can be a force for good in the world. Being in the (Red) can be very profitable too. All has not been celebratory – there has been criticism as well. (RED) has been criticised for not having an effect proportional to the marketing investment and for being much less efficient than direct philanthropy. It has been accused of trying to create a retail middleman between the donors and recipients. Others have criticised initiatives such as (RED) for being diversionary noise or, worse, attempts at concealing the central profiteering purpose of corporations under a patina of philanthropy. However, one has to give credit for the fact that Bono’s endeavour has changed the marketing of causes and brought it into the popular cultural mainstream. He has also managed to link the efforts of a diverse group of people into a single branded movement with momentum. The reason why (RED) is special is because it relies on co-branding rather than initiatives under one brand. In a sense, (RED) is an umbrella brand built on the platform of continuity of support. It is representative of a ‘coalition of the willing’. Well done, Bono….. Play on! Published in Afaqs on 17th of December 2019. https://www.afaqs.com/news/guest-article/u2s-bono-and-the-passion-for-purpose-beyond-profits

The world runs on risk, its monetisation and trading. It is not hyperbole to claim that ever since the financial meltdown of 2008, we have been living in the world coping with the commercial equivalent of a post-traumatic stress disorder. Equity markets, mutual funds, bank capitalisation, trades – these are only words to define simpler elements, limited forms, institutions or instruments of risk. Risk – like its cousin, ‘probability’ – has had no social recognition commensurate to its role and relevance. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] As it is, we humans have a poor intuitive grasp of risk, probability and exponential factoring. But even financial geniuses struggle to explain the instruments and ‘products’ devised in the past few decades. It follows that, likewise, even the regulators are unable to deconstruct it. People are unable to understand the fact that – at a meta level – they are only a counter on a roulette table where, in one moment they could be swept away. Professors Fischer Black and Myron Scholes of Harvard, propounded the creed of this new religion of risk. They summarised risk in a simple, single equation. This Black Scholes formula or equation gave birth to the options and derivatives industry. The entire worth of derivatives in market today will exceed many times the total tangible value of all assets on this planet. But marketing has been unable to explain and popularise this valuation of volatility. Had marketing taken the lead and explained the concept of ‘risk involved’, it would have significantly reduced the magnitude of the sub-prime crisis. Instead, Marketing was actually deployed to create the lulling illusion of a better tomorrow. Wall Street trading desks went to an exponential value creation curve with the invention of ‘securitisation’. It was a future trade, secured against something of present tangible value. Somebody must have asked why it could not be a mortgage. After all, it is essentially a contract with tangible value. That’s it! The seeds of the 2008 financial crisis were sown. These two things: options and derivatives on the one hand and securitisation on the other, turned all things into an elegant form of gambling. Banking, trading, investment, financial management all became means to a punt. In fact capitalism, in itself, was turned into a Las Vegas casino. A safe sounding measure was developed to explain this game of chance. It was named risk adjusted ‘return on capital’. Risk became the fuel for business like never before. Not calibrated natural risk but an unnatural, deliberately toxic risk. Everyone imagined that they had a tradable, calibrated, ‘return-indexed’ level at which they could entertain risk. Some knew the route being run had disaster as destination. Even they couldn’t stop the roller coaster when everyone was roaring with joy. Every commodity from soya bean to cobalt was traded via derivatives. The very concept of ‘shorting’ was invented by Hayne Leland in 1976 and accelerated to its apex in the first decade of the millennium. The biggest booster came when the plain vanilla home loan was chopped up and served like a salad. A simple mortgage was turned into a complex set of instruments on a much upped risk level. The trading was now about any future outcomes secured by the home owned by people- ordinary people – like you and me. Yanis Varoufakis in his book ‘Adults in the room – My Battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment’ writes accounts of how the banking establishment in the United States and Europe had effectively treated the entire economy and assets of Greece – a proud sovereign nation and a full member of the European Union – as one giant mortgage. Above all failures, this is the one thing about the religion of financial risk that marketing has failed to or simply chosen not to explain – which is that all of us are involved in it, whether we like it or not. In the period since 1990, a billion people, mostly from China and India have emerged out of poverty but they are probably trapped into ‘abracadabra finance’ accompanied by the rise in relative and absolute inequality. The world is richer now than ever before and that wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer people than ever. Oxfam has shown how the world’s richest eight people own as much as the bottom 50% . Comprehend this – eight people own as much as some 350 crore people put together. In such a situation, as marketers, is it not our duty to explain risk to investors? This is something we shall neglect only to make the world melt down irrecoverably. https://www.afaqs.com/news/guest-article/marketing-failure-how-marketers-failed-to-explain-risk utm_source=TwitterCompanyPage&utm_medium=TwitterCompanyPage

Royal Enfield, a brand that has always prided itself on being ‘made like a gun’, has been in business since 1901 and has been in India since 1955 – when the Indian army placed an order for 500 bullet motorcycles that were delivered to what was then Madras. The world’s oldest continuously manufactured motorcycle brand, Royal Enfield has survived two world wars. It’s not the fastest or the most tech-equipped motorcycle brand out there. So what makes it special? Recently, Shubhranshu Singh, global head – marketing, Royal Enfield, spoke about how this British motorcycle brand, perched on the intersection of man, machine and terrain, keeps its mojo alive. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Watch the video for the full presentation. Read on for key highlights. • Things endure because they’re relevant at each stage of their evolution. • A brand that can be many things to many people without losing its integrity, has a good shot at being iconic. For Royal Enfield it’s about passion and camaraderie – a sense of belonging to a tribe. • We don’t want to be contrived and ‘ad-zy’. We don’t do conventional ‘ad speak’. Almost every brand can make an ad, most brands can do a reasonable marketing job, but very few brands can create culture. • We believe in brand minimalism and being real, accessible, and ‘inclusivist’. • We are not a ‘motorcycle’ brand. We are a ‘motorcycling’ brand. • 70 per cent of our social media marketing is user generated. Only 30 per cent is commissioned by us. https://www.afaqs.com/news/mktg/what-makes-royal-enfield-special