Author name: Shubranshu Singh

Extraordinary, the wisdom to junk the average: Brand Matters

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It is true that ‘what gets measured gets managed’, but the concurrent truism is ‘what gets averaged gets mismeasured’, writes Shubhranshu Singh [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] A bespoke suit from say, Henry Poole & Co, Saville row, London costs anywhere from INR three to five lakh A top-of-the-line fighter aircraft such as the Lockheed Martin F-35B or the Dassault Rafale, costs about Rs ten billion each. A bespoke suit from say, Henry Poole & Co, Saville row, London costs anywhere from three to five hundred thousand rupees. It takes a minimum of three to four sittings. There is a three-month cycle for getting a suit turned out. First basted fitting maybe six weeks after measurement followed by a forward fitting a month after that to make the suit. To start with, one must take an appointment and have a conversation. In contrast, the fighter aircraft’s fittings and cockpit are designed for the average man’s bodily dimensions. However, there is no such thing as an average human hand or an average human body. That we call average is merely a narrower range of dimensions. When you design a cockpit for an average man you were designing a cockpit not for everyone. Why is the world of technology, design and marketing besotted with ‘the average man’? It is because all business metrics, and especially averages, look to the middle of a market and that’s how the bell curve pans out as well. In volumetric terms for doing ‘business as usual’ we are well advised to stick to the average. But this will not suffice for game changing work. Innovation happens at the extremes. You are more likely to come up with a good idea from the ends of the range than from its central casting. Consumers who are out of the ‘expectation range’, present more opportunities to understand factors for acceleration as well as the barriers to growth. A comfort with the average suggests lack of intellectual exertion, mental comfort, incrementalism and even, smugness. Perhaps, by this measure, traditional market research may have dismissed more good ideas than it has originated simply because of its search for the representative average. It is true that ‘what gets measured gets managed’, but the concurrent truism is ‘what gets averaged gets mismeasured’. If everybody is conditioned to pursue the same narrow goal, in the same narrow way they end up assessing their results in a similarly narrow way. The choices made using average criteria cannot bring out the full spectrum business reality to light. Arthur Lewis won the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics. His 1941 paper on “two-part tariffs” for a business requiring customers to pay an entry fee to gain access to products they then pay for the actual product or service. This brings out the question of how wide bracket is a definition of the average here? Economist Walter Oi authored a paper “The Disneyland Dilemma,” on the theoretical conditions for when it made sense for the amusement park to charge guests an entry fee as well as separate fees for every ride—or in other words, whether the revenue from the additional tariff was worth losing those customers unable or unwilling to pay the additional cost of entry. In the end, Disney opted for just the one tariff. In semi-monopolistic micro-markets like Disneyland, food, souvenirs, and other offerings function as a profitable second tariff. Ever been thirsty at an airport terminal? You will know that businesses can get away with exploitative pricing in situations where consumers have no other readily accessible options. It will hardly qualify as a story for the average mapping of the consumer reality. The dharma for a marketer is knowing their audience. If a brand builder does not truly understand the different types of people being served, how is it to be determined who will respond to a product, service, or intervention at scale? Always think “How broadly will the idea work?” Brands travel across cultures, climates, geographies, and socioeconomic groups and will inevitably meet vastly different realities than in the preparatory pilots. To truly achieve widespread impact, a brand owner needs to also think about how the current consumers might differ from the future ones. The initial audience, test population, or test market segment—that yielded your early success may not be a representative snapshot of the larger group of people needed to make your brand a success. Look for biases, homogeneity, and myopic representation of population. Fitness enthusiasts will be the ones looking for a gym. No genius required there. But does the brand that is looking to be in the fitness business serve the core? Or is it about a non -enthusiast segment? How are gym plans being priced? With which segment in mind? Looking at the typical average can distort results. All marketers encounter the “selection effect” whereby test results are way more positive than the actual subsequent scale achieved. Regular gym goers are more motivated to improve their health and may dine at eateries with a healthier menu of options. They may consciously manage stress better. In these cases, you might incorrectly attribute improved health outcomes to the gym visits rather than the other healthy habits that such enthusiasts will inevitably have. This is the false positive we must be careful of. The case of the ‘New Coke’ disaster has now passed into marketing lore. In the mid-1990s, McDonald’s did extensive focus-group testing on a new item – the Arch Deluxe that turned out to be a deluxe failure. It happened because the people who participated in the focus groups weren’t a faithful reflection of McDonald’s customers. The burger enthusiasts who participated were an ‘average’ of McD’s core but the average person in the larger population went to simply get a Big Mac. Your initial audience may not be representative of the population of interest. These challenges have even shaken the foundations of social science, on any claims to universal findings about human nature. Joseph Henrich, an anthropologist did research in Peru with an indigenous Amazonian

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Simply Speaking: Loyalty – A mirage or a fountainhead?

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Marketers who can’t earn customer loyalty declare that it is dead. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Brands earn loyalty by distinguishing themselves with their actions. The decline and death of brands has been predicted with every disruption whether private labels, ecommerce or near perfect information availability. Instead we find top brands are strengthening their positions across industries. Loyalty is not dead, only the ability to create loyalists is wanting, writes our columnist in this week’s Simply Speaking. (Representational image: Artem Beliaikin via Unsplash) Corporate growth strategy has increasingly been accented towards new business acquisition and not as much on continuing business, cross selling and upselling. Loyalty has been seen as a ‘good to have’ aspiration at best. In the past few years, I have published numerous articles on brand sociology, tribal affiliation, fandom and the brand cult. My work allowed me to see the consumer- brand connect from the loyalty perspective across categories, managing and working with power brands such as Axe, Lakme, Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker and Royal Enfield. I studied reward programs closely when I handled Marketing for Visa for South Asia with more than 100 issuer banks on board. As CMO at Star sports, I created properties such as Pro Kabaddi that brought fans of a sport into limelight for the first time and created millions more. I know that every marketer knows it is easier to retain a customer than to acquire one. It is also more profitable to do so. Beyond doing away with acquisition costs, loyalists become allies to marketing. Consumer apathy to advocacy is the royal road to marketing nirvana. If you don’t believe in loyalty, you question the very basis for a brand to exist. Is a brand not an abiding preference that rises above commoditisation and builds deep, lasting associations? The growth of new age business was earlier declared as having risen above loyalty. Amazon, Facebook, Google or YouTube were seen as near monopolies. How could anyone be anything but loyal? Now Big Tech is in crisis mode and the Code Red call for action is loyalist retention. Ask Meta or Snap about the relentless growth of TikTok. Brand loyalty is often attacked as being not about loyalty but gratification. Rewards, schemes, discounts hold on to customers not emotion, so goes the argument. The scientific evidence on correlations between loyalty rewards and brand esteem is tentative at best. Certainly, it changes across categories. In some places, it has become currency as in the case of CPG wholesale trade, Airline frequent fliers and retail ‘earn and burn’ rewards. Can you deem a brand loyalty programme special if every player in the category has the same plan? Often what seems like loyalty is not loyalty but mere process adherence. The hassles of change are too painful and inherent inertia battles the urge to judge rationally and act accordingly. I may want to change my phone, house, car or bank but I stay on, nevertheless. Brand loyalty is now hard earned. But brand loyalty still exists, and it still pays. We don’t need evidence that brand loyalty exists. Each of us, in our capacities as consumers, have a sense of moderate to deep loyalty born out of a positive bias for a brand. I am privileged to work at the Tata group, revered as a national icon and institution. Our customers acknowledge the massive role Tata continues to play in nation building. This loyalty is genuine and such a loyalist core has had a disproportionate role in the development of brands. Brand loyalty is hard to achieve, probably harder now than ever because it requires an enterprise-wide focus on delivering a consistent brand image and experience. Kurt Lewin said, ‘there is nothing so practical as a good theory’. That cannot be said about our understanding of loyalty. There theories crumble in the face of practical considerations. Across leading brands, the prevalent practise is to measure a Net Promoter Score , a simple metric to assess traction with customers. Customers rank on a scale of 1 to 10 how satisfied they are with a brand overall or with a specific experience of that brand. Endorsers score at 9 or 10 ; detractors are those who rate it at 6 and under. Subtracting the detractors from the endorsers, you arrive at a net score . It is a direct measure of how many promote a brand and are likely to recommend it. That is seen as a good proxy for brand loyalty. As a customer I am bombarded by emails or text messages asking me to rate how satisfied I am with almost every interaction I have had with a company. My bank, airline, hotel, restaurant, dentist, mobile phone network, car company and grocery store all want my vote of loyalty. So, what is it about loyalty that marketers fail to grasp? The secret is that we are loyal to brands we truly like The Meaningful Brands Index by Havas with a sample size of more than thirty thousand consumers globally does a correlation between brand loyalty and importance to consumers. Consumers have no real loyalty to three-fourths of the brands they buy. But there are brands which are very important to consumers. These are brands with whom they have affinity, shared or common values and consider indispensable in their lives. These are the ‘meaningful’ brands. Loyalty can’t literally be bought. Fan following in sports, as loyalty with brands, must be earned. But while it’s difficult to put a price on acquiring the loyalty of any given customer, brand loyalty is certainly big business. Dawn Lerman, a professor at Fordham university wrote a book ‘The Language of Branding’ in which she explained how iconic brands can get followers to use a special lexicon that creates a sense of belonging and community. Consumers want an ongoing interaction with a brand that does something special for them and for the world in which they live. These are brands with ‘purpose’ and have acquired a stature to own it. Apple, Lego, Nike, Harley-Davison and Patagonia are such

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Simply Speaking from the FIFA World Cup 2022: Copo Del Mundo – Qatar emerges the winner

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[siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] “As a marketer, I saw an end-to-end attention to detail, focus and singularity of intent. They followed the dictum – do well that which matters to your customers – to near perfection”   Link: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cnbc-tv18_simply-speaking-from-the-fifa-world-cup-2022-activity-7010223323343130624-VGwU?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios https://www.cnbctv18.com/storyboard18/simply-speaking-from-the-fifa-world-cup-2022-copo-del-mundo–qatar-emerges-the-winner-15447701.htm

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Simply Speaking: The rise and fall of Kodak

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If ever there was a brand that owned a category, it was Kodak. But it lost its way thinking what it did was always right. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] In 1996, Kodak was ranked as one of the four most valuable brands in the world behind Disney, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. The brand’s themes resonated in every heart as ‘America’s storyteller’. On billions of occasions, it gave consumers ‘Kodak moments’ to cherish. In doing so, it entered the mainstream of social life and culture. Owning good times and fond memories was as powerful a platform as any brand could claim and own. (Representative image via Unsplash) “A dark tent, a nitrate bath, and a water container.! You did not bring just a camera to take a picture; you brought the whole lab. All this was to change, thanks to George Eastman. Eastman founded a company that has had major worldwide influence almost since its inception. To initiate and maintain an organization with such clout, Eastman required a variety of resources, including the intelligence to develop new processes, a good business sense, and a willingness to take risks. But it is unlikely that Eastman’s success could have been achieved without his strong brand: Kodak.” – Building strong brands – David A. Aaker Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, a shocking sum at that time for a company with 13 employees. The same year Eastman Kodak – the most storied company in imaging went bankrupt. It is a chapter of business history that marketers need to go back to again and again. Kodak was an institution. Anyone of my generation or before will instantly understand the meaning of the phrase “A Kodak Moment.” Kodak became an iconic brand. It was the source of a flood of innovations. It single handedly created a market and category. George Eastman had a simple vision: to make photography as simple as using a pencil. In the late 1800’s photography, a newborn process and technology was complicated. The sheer logistics of capturing images was hassle prone and mechanical. Cameras were big, heavy and hard to use. Besides the bulky cameras and their set up, you had to move with a lab to develop the plates. In 1888, Eastman began marketing a camera that made photography accessible to all, not just to the committed artist. The camera sold for twenty-five dollars. The beginner had only to pull the cord, turn the key and press the button. For ten dollars, the pictures would be developed and new film would be reloaded. One of Kodak’s first ads in 1888 served to position the firm for the next century. It showed a picture of a hand holding a camera, with a headline written by Eastman: “You press the button, we do the rest.” That is a compelling brand promise. It is evident of clarity and purpose. George Eastman made photography simple and portable. He democratised it, made it accessible, cheap and universal. In 1892, he created the roll film and a camera capable of taking advantage of the roll. Kodak was a fountain of first ever innovations. The folding Kodak, introduced in 1890, was easier to carry. The Kodak Brownie, launched at the turn of the century, remained the company’s staple product for almost eighty years. The Instamatic, an easy-to-load camera with flash cubes was introduced in 1963. A disposable Kodak FunSaver arrived in 1988 wherein the entire unit camera and roll were to be handed to developing studios for processing the film and recycling the camera. The brand was seen as iconic, but the brand’s purpose wasn’t seen as legitimately empowered to create shared value throughout the ecosystem of product developers, service providers, software developers, social media channels, and influential customers that comprised the new digital world. Consumers gravitated toward others who executed better than Kodak. For over a century, Kodak remained synonymous with capturing life’s moments. Promotions, advertising and an omnipresent logo also did their part to build awareness for Kodak. As early as 1897, twenty-five thousand people participated in an amateur photographic competition which Kodak sponsored. In 1904, it brought to life a ‘Traveling Grand Kodak Exhibition’ of forty-one photographs. As America built motorways, it erected “Picture Ahead!” road signs cementing its association with imaging. Its advertising was always about fun times, family and the product was presented bang centre. During the Kodak hour which was heard on radios in the 1930s, listeners heard family photo albums being described. Photo albums became the record of lives lived. A 1967 award-winning Kodak commercial featured a couple in their sixties cleaning the attic. They chance upon a carton of old photos showing their entire life journey starting in their twenties and across the years that followed – getting married, enjoying their honeymoon, having their first child and attending the graduation of their son. The commercial ended with the woman, now a grandmother, grabbing an Instamatic to take a picture of her new-born grandchild. Kodak made an early decision to go global. Only five years after the Kodak camera was introduced in the United States, a sales office was opened in London. In 1930, Kodak had 75 percent of the world market for photographic equipment and about 90 percent of the profit. In 1996, Kodak was ranked as one of the four most valuable brands in the world behind Disney, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. The brand’s themes resonated in every heart as ‘America’s storyteller’. On billions of occasions, it gave consumers ‘Kodak moments’ to cherish. In doing so, it entered the mainstream of social life and culture. Owning good times and fond memories was as powerful a platform as any brand could claim and own. But, by the time it went bankrupt in 2012, Kodak had vapourised $30 billion in market value between a peak in 1999 and its eventual demise in 2012. What happened ? What lessons may we all learn ? The shorthand answer given is that Kodak missed the digital photography epochal change and that its digital-age products were simply sub-par. Indeed there is a case to be made for poor strategic planning, lack

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Brand Matters: Exceptional means make an exceptional brand- Red Bull

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Red Bull was very consistent in associating with and embodying all things extreme. It focused deeply on the extreme sports market. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] “In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different.” —Coco Chanel   It is often claimed that the world of soft beverages is where the brand creates the most value followed distantly by a commodity product. You drink the brand not the liquid. Red Bull’s brand building has been extreme. It has been unrelenting. In the early 2000s, two Austrian entrepreneurs decided to dive head in and own a niche in the soda industry, unmindful of the massive barrier that the entrenched presence of global heavyweights Coca- Cola and Pepsi presented. Their optimism was so possessing that they overlooked one problem that their drink tasted terrible. Research after research validated that, at first taste, consumers found the taste horridly medicinal. The plans remained unchanged. What is more, in an act of chutzpah , the founders decided to sell the drink in smaller quantity per serve and priced it almost twice as much as Coke. All the data crunchers predicted a tragic outcome. They were all wrong. Today, it’s a globally recognised name generating $7bn in revenue each year. We know it as Red Bull. We must study and learn from Red Bull’s success against the odds. In branding opposite extremes can both be viable. The opposite of a great truth can also be a great truth. The converse of a great brand idea can also be a great brand idea. That is why it may be incorrect to judge Red Bull by Cola standards. The smaller size, thin can, medicinal taste, all seem to have -in fact- boosted its differential appeal. Pricing it above its competitors also positioned it as a speciality drink, in line with its perceived magical – almost medicinal – qualities. These features may be important. But Red Bull’s success, more than anything, comes down to its brand’s core value – Living extreme. No matter where and why you drink Red Bull – as fuel at work, pre party energy booster for an all-night out, or that bit of extra pep right before a big presentation – it is helpful to recall that at the start, the core target was a very small but aspirational minority : extreme sports enthusiasts. Red Bull wanted to own the transition between avocation and passion. From “I do paragliding” to “I’m a para glider”. It is the wilful transformation and its inherent appeal that Red Bull was targeting. Not just for paragliding, but for all adventure. Red Bull focused deeply on the extreme sports market. Beyond the screens and billboards, it embodied the active brand personality in its outreach in curating memorable experiences. These brand experiences were such that they aligned with their extreme traits that it wanted to own. It promoted and sponsored the X-Games– this is back when trendier extreme sports such as skateboarding, snowboarding and rollerblading were not in the federated International Olympic circuit. Red Bull was very consistent in associating with and embodying all things extreme. It’s been 10 years since Felix Baumgartner did the impossible and jumped from the edge of space all the way down to Earth. Carried up almost 39 kilometers high, Baumgartner then took the leap in a specially designed pressure suit and entered freefall before deploying a parachute to land safely back on the ground. Baumgartner also became the first person to break the sound barrier without any form of engine power. A new documentary is now depicting Red Bull Stratos in all its audacious ambition on its 10-year anniversary. Red Bull’s brand building has been extreme. It has been unrelenting. Going from success to success it hasn’t relied on the conventional 4 Ps. It is a lifestyle brand which happens to sell a beverage. Its product is subservient to its brand story, , and all aspects of branding tactics from messaging to brand experiences and customer touchpoints are consistent. If not the brand’s aura and excitement what is left? There are many substitutes to secure the same raw utility as you get from the product. There are now many copycats and other energy drink that taste better. What enables Red Bull to remain at the top of the pack is its strong bond with the consumer. RedBull’s extreme associations have been nurtured and never cease to deliver. In a brilliant extension to storytelling, Red Bull proposed that “extreme” doesn’t have to be restricted to sports and it began to expand its definition of “extreme”. Be it an athlete or a rock star or a young entrepreneur seeking venture funding – their product ‘vitalises body and mind’ for all . Red Bull is also a large publisher and its owned media -prominently led by Red Bull TV, social channels, events and partnerships – push this agenda all the time. Their advertising position is “Giving wings to people and ideas”. Marketing to the “extreme in all of us” allowed Red Bull to extend its identity base. The overt message to the consumer is that she will soar and triumph and Red Bull is the surge of energy that she needs. Red Bull hosts the Red Bull Festival which showcases a wide range of performers. For 30 days, across New York City, there is an experiential embodiment of the brand. What started as a drink for extreme sports enthusiasts has grown to become the drink for the “extreme” in all of us. In other words, Red Bull went deep, while also going broad. Without a doubt, there has been brilliant execution, but the most important step is the formulation of the identity itself. Red Bull going with “extreme” was a unique stroke of marketing genius, which checked all the boxes: it differentiated away from its competitors, it resonated with a core set of consumers and it was scalable to a wider audience. It also aligned perfectly with the functional features of the product itself. Foundational depth and solidity gave it

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Simply Speaking: The changing face of Big Tech brands – from focused value creators to conglomerates

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Being a ‘conglomerate’ is again the name of the game. The sprawling new tech conglomerates in a hydra-headed structure will bring up fundamentals pertaining to the brand for a fresh application or re-evaluation. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Jeff Bezos’s Amazon is driven on the vector of ‘efficiency via disruptive technology’ and is investing in server farms and drones. He owns the Washington Post in his personal capacity. Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook became Meta and he bet the shop on creating its Metaverse. Elon Musk, is not only the boss of Tesla, the electric-car maker and Twitter but also a huge investor in space travel and solar-energy systems. One of the constantly in and out of fashion constructs in brand marketing is the concept of the conglomerate. In the last 50 years they have been on a see-saw where brand esteem is concerned. Storied names such as GE, ITT, Hanson Trust of Britain, the Japanese Zaibatsu and Korean Chaebols got feted as the highest branded manifestations of capitalism. Then they were rubbished as inefficient, defocused, bloated relics. Gold framed MBAs at Wall Street claimed that companies should focus relentlessly. They opined that it was investor dharma to minimise risk by choosing sector specific companies rather than backing corporate pachyderms. It came to pass that ‘diversification’ itself was reason enough to attract a “conglomerate discount”. Brands were seen as stretching irrationally when crossing sectoral boundary lines. Warren Buffett – the sage of Omaha – must get credit for steadily resurrecting the stature of conglomerates. His investment vehicle, Berkshire Hathaway is a textbook conglomerate. When he bought Precision Castparts, a maker of aerospace components, for $37 billion, it was the biggest deal in Berkshire’s 50-year history. His method is focused on chasing growth and value over the longer term, and this knows no boundaries of vertical, category or industry. It seems that the pendulum of guru opinion is shifting back again to the other extreme and ‘being a conglomerate’ is again the name of the game. What is surprising is that the leaders of the current pack are the pioneering and focused digital Tech leaders of the world – Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon. Google’s evolution as Alphabet goes well beyond its mammoth original, core business – internet search and advertising. It has birthed several subsidiaries from commercialising driverless cars to extending human lifespans, each a potential standalone company within the group. In effect, it is on course to become an increasingly diversified company. This kind of metamorphosis is facilitated by two enablers – technology and secure cash flow. Information technology is transforming established industries, from mobility to education to manufacturing. Google – with the collective brain power its talent pool possesses and the cash pile its business generates – is well placed to pursue all sorts of projects, even as unrelated as creating artificial meat. Jeff Bezos’s Amazon is driven on the vector of ‘efficiency via disruptive technology’ and is investing in server farms and drones. He owns the Washington Post in his personal capacity. Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook became Meta and he bet the shop on creating its Metaverse. Elon Musk, is not only the boss of Tesla, the electric-car maker and Twitter but also a huge investor in space travel and solar-energy systems. This is surprising but not a first time occurrence. In its own era, General Electric grew into a conglomerate as Thomas Edison imagined electricity’s capacity to transform the everyday world. Many Japanese players began with microelectronics or miniaturisation as a core competence and extended far and beyond. Berkshire’s steady evolution into a conglomerate shows us why conglomerates are always around. Success lies in sound management and acute capital allocation. Conglomerates neutralise risk by diversification. They can cross pollinate talent and leverage a strong market position to their advantage. When GE went far beyond appliances, power and aviation engines into broadcasting and financial services, its ability to select, train and promote general managers was the enabler. Break-ups, divestments and spin-offs shook up the older established conglomerates such as General Electric, United Technologies Corp, DowDuPont, Honeywell, ThyssenKrupp, ABB, and Siemens. But the ‘Big Tech to conglomerate’ phenomenon is led by an entirely new breed of top performing, multi-talented entrepreneurs with the proven ability to revolutionise old industries by applying new technologies. Berkshire’s steady evolution into a conglomerate shows us why conglomerates are always around. Success lies in sound management and acute capital allocation. Conglomerates neutralise risk by diversification. They can cross pollinate talent and leverage a strong market position to their advantage. In the Developing & Emerging markets, this has always been the norm. There conglomerates outperformed more focused pure-play firms, because of better access to raw materials, regulatory leverage and better brains. Once again, in all parts of the world M&A activity is dominated by deals taking firms into new lines of business, rather than ones to build scale, which generate synergies. As walls go up across the world and globalisation takes a backseat, large multi-industry conglomerates will emerge in all major economies. This expansion by Tech giants is well researched and planned. Think of Amazon buying PillPack, an online pharmacy and making it a part of Amazon Pharmacy. Amazon’s venture in healthcare is an audacious one because it ties up so much of what it can potentially offer. Many tech firms have health care ambitions. Apple has tied up wellbeing to its iPhone. Alphabet sells wearable devices and is pumping money into biotech research. Amazon has an online service – the Amazon Clinic that offers virtual health care across most states in the United States. It acts as a virtual storefront connecting users with third-party health providers. Amazon’s Halo band is a wearable device that monitors the user’s health status. The move into primary care, disrupts the role of the General physician and is a big step in a market worth trillions of dollars worldwide. Valuing the brand when conglomerates own traditional hard assets was better understood but it’s not well established when it comes to estimating the worth of nascent digital ones. Big Tech has the staying power and is desperately looking for white spaces to avoid hitting the growth plateau. Amazon’s move into logistics flustered incumbents such as XPO Logistics, FedEx and UPS. There

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A brand statement in a bookstore: Brand Matters

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Bookshops are constrained by physical shelf space, and offer a finite selection of books at a time. But an online seller can have an unlimited inventory, Shubhranshu Singh writes. The need of the hour is for physical book stores and independent retailers is to raise the experience quotient, he adds. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Morioka Shoten is a bookstore with a single book available at a time, for six days. Morioka Shoten is a bookstore with a single room with an event to gather every night. Morioka Shoten, a single room with a single book As we’ve know, Amazon and the rise of eComm devastated physical bookshops. Bookshops are constrained by physical shelf space, and offer a finite selection of books at a time. But an online seller can have an unlimited inventory. Books were a great choice for Jeff Bezos when starting off Amazon because all the necessary information about them could be easily digitised for the online experience. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] And, with the advent of the Kindle, books themselves became Amazon’s proprietary digital products. But is there nothing more to a bookshop ? The need of the hour is for physical book stores and independent retailers is to raise the experience quotient. If you were to walk into an independent bookshop almost anywhere in the world, you must have an experience of a lifetime. After all the bookshop experience is about the love of books and ideas. Have you heard of Morioka Shoten in Tokyo ? It has preserved the love of books but emphasised singularity…. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Morioka Shoten sells a single book at a time, on a weekly, rotating basis. For a week, everything in the story is dedicated just to that book, and that book alone. Morioka Shoten even curates its one room, minimalist space to fit the theme of the book, and the author often visits and interacts with shoppers.     The author is the vice president – marketing (CVBU) at Tata Motors. Link: https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/marketing/a-brand-statement-in-a-bookstore-brand-matters/95722981

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Simply Speaking: From Nike and Adidas to LV and Balenciaga – sportswear and its ascent into high fashion

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How the multibillion dollar sportswear industry wrote the rulebook on influencer marketing.   [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] The rise of sneakerdom is a wonderful example of what a magical world marketing can make. (Representational image via Unsplash) Fashion should be a form of escapism, and not a form of imprisonment. It’s time to let loose a bit. [People] don’t want to look at a two-piece suit with a wide belt. They want to see something that takes them away.” – Alexander McQueen Sportswear is now mainstream casual-wear across the world. Sneakers, track-jackets and pants have become haute ‘cool’. This story is an important one. It is most representative of how brand building will work for most categories in the future. The role that superstar celebrities – in particular musicians and athletes – play is worthy of detailed examination. The emergence of sportswear as a multibillion dollar industry wrote the rulebook on influencer marketing along the way. Not all is well in the sportswear fashion world on this count. In a succession of terminations, the industry has chosen to bleed away revenue and profits rather than tolerate racism, bigotry or xenophobia by those who are otherwise acknowledged as super achievers. Nike stopped its relationship with Kyrie Irving, a basketball player and will no longer release his new shoe slated for launch this month. He was suspended by the Nets for publicising an antisemitic film on social media. Nike is facing challenges and business is hardly the usual. Its stock has fallen 41 percent in the past year. Kyrie Irving, was due to launch his new shoe, the Kyrie 8, which was supposed to hit the market now. Just the last month, ‘rapper – designer’ Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, made a series of antisemitic remarks and wore a shirt with a slogan associated with white supremacists. Major brands such as Balenciaga and the Creative Artists Agency cut ties with the artist despite his proven commercial success. Adidas also pulled the plug on its relationship with Ye, at an enormous cost. At Adidas, an entire division was devoted to selling Yeezy merchandise. Estimated revenue loss is of the order of $250 million. There are other, longer lasting relationships which continue to lay the golden eggs. Nike and its association with Michael Jordan selling a line of sneakers and other athletic wear — amounted to $5 billion of Nike’s $44.5 billion in total revenue. Going beyond, Nike has LA Lakers superstar LeBron James and Kevin Durant of the Nets in its platoon of influencers acting as designers for their signature merchandise. Using celebrities and athletes to design, develop, merchandise and market sportswear is not a new phenomenon. Nike, Adidas, Puma and Under Armour have all actively nurtured ties to entertainment stars and top athletes. Now, in the age of social media, the risks are just as real as the rewards. When a face was an endorser in the past, the brand was making the advertising campaign more resonant with what the celebrity stood for. The attributes, products, brand values were in a straight line. Then the world got more chaotic, and the chaos moved faster around all stakeholders. Nike boldly embraced disruptive advocates and pushed what was seen as bold but polarising content in the areas of equity values. It has been signalling to consumers since partnering with the former N.F.L. quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2018. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] But Irving’s antisemitic remarks were an outrageous foul which merited action. He posted a link on social media to the film “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” clearly seen to be antisemitic including Holocaust denial. A well regarded sneakerhead, besides his sporting stardom, many of the shoes Irving designed for Nike like his “I Love You Mom” series of shoes were not linked to sporting imagery. This is the age of the sneaker. A rubber-soled, simply uppered footwear has been magically transformed by marketers into a product of fantastic urges. It is a class of product which ‘everyone wants even if not needed’. A vastly profitable category worth billions of dollars with a brand velocity uniquely uniform across most of the world. Like Blue Jeans, the sneaker has come to be an emblem of cool. For the uninitiated, initially there is a casual relationship and Nike, Puma, Adidas and Reebok – are all “same same but different”. But as you get into the ‘sneaker mindset’ it becomes a deeply evocative subject and a pair of shoes transforms to a most valuable asset. I learned much from “The Ultimate Sneaker Book” published by Taschen. It’s a history of sneakerdom. From Jeremy Scott at Adidas to Kanye West with Reebok, Nike, Louis Vuitton and Adidas, it chronicles the change in sneaker marketing. Like a mountain river that floods the plains, a niche has expanded to a universe all its own. The yet to be initiated may do well to peruse the content of Sneaker Freaker, a website that, since 2002, has become the be all and end all of sneaker wisdom. Coming back to the “track pants”, Ermenegildo Zegna has a cashmere-wool mix with buttoned snaps at the ankle. Giorgio Armani has them in checked mohair. Hermès sells one that is technically treated silk. The likes of Lemaire, Berluti, Louis Vuitton, Paul Smith, Brioni have many more of their own. The revolution has reached main street. The “joggers”, go with a tuxedo jacket and sneakers. Elasticised pants are not only in vogue, they are gripping on to global fashion. Back in 2009, at the Paris Fashion Week, Kanye West designed three sneakers in collaboration with Louis Vuitton. The resulting shoes each retailed at $1,000 a pair. It was an all-red colourway titled the ‘Don’. In time Ye, then going by Kanye West, got called Kan, the Louis Vuitton Don. These shoes, precious as they are, now retail between $6000 to $18,000 on auction and merchandise sites, where available. Simon “Woody” Wood, Sneaker Freaker’s founder and editor of “The Ultimate Sneaker Book” makes the point well in his foreword: “Strange, isn’t it, that a few bits of leather and suede sewn onto a slab of rubber and wrapped in nylon thread could mean so much to so many.”

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Simply Speaking: A brand is a dream, and its real home is the unconscious

Leave a Comment / Simply Speaking /

Fashion brands know the power of tapping latent emotional desires. They convey and own dreams and aspirations. They derive more from authority, class and provenance of the brand than mere expertise. They know the mood and feeling of the dream world that they want to connect with and that becomes their marketing strategy. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Brands have created their own brand worlds. They've opened a window to this world through their products, advertisements, catalogues, stores, celebrity endorsements, and so on. All these get subconsciously associated to their brands. A brand’s esteem is real. Its value reflects in its price. Its social exaltation may have moved it to the heart of a society and culture. Millions may gush about it. Despite the distinguished history of brand building in capitalism, and despite its immense influence in our culture and society, scientific research has not revealed any evident, consistent set of measure to ‘size up a brand’. Whenever neuromarketing, research and experimentation has been attempted it always finds tremendous diversity, not homogeneity. The only reasonable scientific conclusion is that our relationship with a brand is not what we typically think it to be. Such a relationship is not innate but made from basic constituent parts. It varies from culture to culture. It is something we cultivate and create. Brands are real, like money is real – an outcome of human agreement. Gestalt is the concept of the whole being other than the sum of parts. We respond to brand facets and associations consciously and even more, subconsciously. The power of these underlying connections with brands becomes obvious when we look at the luxury experience. It is the brand that brings alive the dream more than the product or service. You want a Mont Blanc pen. Which one of the many can be decided later. You own a Louis Vuitton bag and that is-in itself-a qualifier. Quality, preciousness, rarity are possible to create via imitation but the singular uniqueness that is embodied in a brand can never be copied. The goal of luxury branding is to gain and sustain pricing power. It rests on intangibles. But it wasn’t always so. In ancient or medieval times the richest of the rich, including royalty, patronised bespoke luxury. But it was luxury because they bought it for their use. Value was in the raw material, craftsmanship and expense. In modern luxury, value resides in the brand. What Cartier sells in its bright red boxes are dreams. This kind of brand power goes beyond the rational. Our unconscious mind tells us whatever we need to know. We feel positive impulses and use that as a shortcut to our decision. A luxury brand has a set of emotions or feelings attached to it. There’s a desire embedded in a dream. The brand is in the entirety of sensory engagement. Though , with will power, we can consciously override our emotional pull toward the luxe product and choose the cheaper option, many of us just feel life is better with the luxury. We buy a reputation built and attested to by elites. The visual imagery is brilliant. Joining a luxury brand club is a ticket for social advancement. These gut feelings have impact on quick decisions at the shelf in the supermarket, at the drugstore, or even online. Our feelings serve as shortcuts; we don’t want to think about the choice too much. – The fashion world is all brand but very little conventional brand management- Fashion and luxury brands build compelling brand dreams better than any other industry. They’ve built profitable empires on rich brand associations and emotions. Judging by conventional mass marketing norms, Luxury can be viewed as not strategic in the typical sense of having a clear brand message, role of the product, or point of view. But think of fashion as a verb. Maybe they know something we don’t. Gabrielle Chanel died in 1971 but Coco Chanel is still living. Fashion brands know the power of tapping latent emotional desires. They convey and own dreams and aspirations. They derive more from authority, class and provenance of the brand than mere expertise. They know the mood and feeling of the dream world that they want to connect with and that becomes their marketing strategy. Think of a fashion brand. Do you know anything about the brand positioning of Gucci ? I am assuming that you don’t. What is your knowledge about Gucci, as a brand ? How about Prada, Hermes, Chanel, Patek Phillipe , Estee Lauder, Balenciaga, Valentino? Does the turquoise box from Tiffany’s need a positioning statement? Each one of these has a clear, distinct, and rich brand culture connected to it. They’ve created their own brand worlds. They’ve opened a window to this world through their products, advertisements, catalogues, stores, celebrity endorsements, and so on. All these get subconsciously associated to their brands. Bottega Veneta has built a strong brand with prestige, cachet, and style. Of course, it produces high quality products that are on trend, but does it have a message, a unique selling proposition, or a functional positioning in the market? It has none of these, and it doesn’t matter. It has a boldly consistent brand look and feel that creates a relevant and aspirational package. It has cachet. The strongest brands are built like a spider’s web. Each strand is an association. Each strand is fragile but the web is strong and lasting. The strongest brands in the world have this kind of associative lattice. And one doesn’t have to be a luxury brand. Think of Coca-Cola, who have owned the top spot on the list of the world’s most valuable brands. According to Coca-Cola, the brand stands for happiness. When you open a bottle, you “open happiness,”. Is that all ? Happiness may be a key component of its brand and is a great emotion for a brand to connect with and own, but Coca-Cola is a globally loved icon because it is representative of America. It’s all-American. It offers a taste of America for all. It’s optimistic and uplifting.

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Advertising revenue – turning anti-social ?

Leave a Comment / The Economic Times - Brand Equity /

Big advertisers have led the stampede away from social given the impact of the economic downturn, inflationary contraction and supply chain breakdowns that burnt a hole in the pockets. Social media platforms, more than other digital channels, were the showy end of the brand building carnival online. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] The past few quarterly results and revenue guidance from social media players leave no one in any doubt that breakneck growth has stalled and may in fact, nosedive going further. That said, it is not yet concluded whether it’s on account of inflationary pressures, economic slowdown or inherent issues with players like Meta. In the merry go round of capital, innovation and enterprise – the accusations have begun to fly thick already. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai have hinted at structural issues in the global economy as potential spoilers going ahead. It is on social media platforms that the erosion in advertiser confidence is most evident. Per reports from industry analysts and eMarketer, US advertisers projected spendings on social networks will add up to USD 65.3bn. It amounts to a growth rate of 3.5 per cent, one tenth of what it was last year. Big advertisers have led the stampede away from social given the impact of the economic downturn, inflationary contraction and supply chain breakdowns that burnt a hole in the pockets. Social media platforms, more than other digital channels, were the showy end of the brand building carnival online. Billions were spent on fund sponsored fireworks aiming to build brands. That gusher of fund backed advertising has reduced to a trickle. As the world watches the US- China game of high strategy unfold, it is TikTok that seems to have advantage on US turf where social media success is concerned. Spooked witless, the incumbent majors are disrupting their models hoping for renewal. Short video rules social media. TikTok has demolished Instagram and Snapchat where audience acquisition is concerned. YouTube Shorts will start monetising early next year. Instagram persists in pushing Reels, its own short-form video format. The ‘blink and its gone’ media culture has inherent issues with its ephemerality. The time to serve advertising to audiences is shorter lived than ever in the past. With a rising graph, TikTok’s revenues are still puny compared to Meta. But the revenue always comes running behind a winning chariot. Watch this race. Amazon’s ad revenue increased by 25 per cent in the third quarter which rides on ecommerce ‘trade marketing’. The revenue figure at USD 9.5 billion is impressive at twice of what TikTok made in the same market. Ad spend on retailer platforms pose a competitive threat to social media platforms because advertisers reach consumers with the same modality of search and banner ads but closer to the point of purchase. Ad attribution is but one click away from the cash register. The privacy related changes such as those implemented by Apple took a USD 10 billion bite out of Meta but retailers do not rely on “third-party” data and hence are less impacted. ` Zuckerberg is the last founder at the helm of a Silicon Valley Tech giant. Perhaps he will be the last. (Subhranshu Singh is the vice president – marketing at Tata Motors. All views expressed is his own.)   Link: https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/advertising/advertising-revenue-turning-anti-social-/95217804

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