Author name: Shubranshu Singh

Gestalt refers to how the brain prefers to seek out the whole of something, rather than the individual parts. Brand Gestalt represents the whole of the brand – it’s the complete picture. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] In many ways, a brand is an illusion. It exists in our unconscious and in our feelings. But that – by itself – is powerful. These connections in the mind add real value to the products and to our lives. Wearing a fake Rolex will give us less pleasure than wearing the real thing. Take the Nike swoosh off a sneaker and it loses its magic. Why? Because value gets created in the mind. It must have emotional value to you. In this way, brands can add real value, beyond their physical product attributes. It is not water, it is Evian! (Representational image via Unsplash)   The whole is other than the sum of the parts. – Kurt Koffka Classical Brand Management craves simplicity. It values ownership of words and feelings. It attempts to reduce everything to a tagline, a word and a positioning charter. But the real world is complex. Often a brand is compared to a diamond with many facets but perhaps it is more like an intricate spider’s web. It has borders, lattices, holes. Certainly, the things articulated and understood matter less than the more unconscious and subconscious components. It’s a messy network of associations that get woven together to form an unconscious representation of the brand. Think of it as a primordial broth boiling above threshold with fleeting images, abstract thoughts, biases and nuanced emotions. But much more is in the subconscious. A brand is a collection of associations that exist in the minds of consumers. Many of these associations can be conscious, like the product or service itself in terms of its function, design, the advertisements, and so on. But, that is just the tip of the iceberg. Many of the powerful feelings and emotional undertones that we automatically and unconsciously connect with a brand exist below our awareness. There is a “gut feeling” that anchors every brand you know. It can be positive, attractive and compelling. It may be negative, even repulsive. If it is neutral, there is no real relationship with the brand. This hidden combination of associations powerfully influences our decision-making and behaviour, mostly acting subconsciously. To thrive, a brand must have positive traction. When a brand becomes something that people aspire towards, it grows. It could be a feeling, an association or a taste of the life they’d like to live. Modern marketing lexicon calls it “aspirational.” [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] A brand is an illusion. It exists in our unconscious and in our feelings. But that – by itself – is powerful. These connections in the mind add real value to the products and to our lives. Wearing a fake Rolex will give us less pleasure than wearing the real thing At Diageo, I once attended a full brand immersion session for Ketel One Vodka. Every element – its myth of origin, bottle shape, claim of bold masculinity, classic authenticity, Dutch heritage. It has been nurtured and furthered as a unique brand that cues ruggedness, purity, ‘copper pot still’ classic heritage. A brand that is honest, premium and confident. The ubiquitous marketing term “positioning” was coined by Al Ries and Jack Trout in the 1970s. For the first time, it was posited that a brand can only own one simple idea in consumers’ minds. One brand, one idea. I feel it was a brute oversimplification. What is more, the way positioning was originally described, it was more the physical product description a brand could own. For example, Amul is milk, Lux is soap, and Dettol is a brown antiseptic liquid with a unique smell. Those brands were housed between mental walls set up for what each of those brands can do. I have seen countless tools from major marketers intended to capture a brand’s positioning on paper. These can take many forms such as a one-sentence positioning statement, a brand house, a brand architecture, a brand onion, a brand key, a brand wheel, a brand pyramid, and more. None of these reflect the reality of how consumers experience brands. The map is not the terrain. They focus on the conscious side of brands, while almost entirely ignoring the powerful unconscious side. They reduce things to the absolute essentials. But it is in excess that the differentiation truly flowers. Can you visualise a home by looking at the architect’s plan drawing? It is certainly important to know who your target audience is, the insight you want to tap into, and what the functional and emotional benefits are, but isn’t it also important to viscerally experience and feel the brand the way your consumers do? This rich, 3D brand world is filled with emotions and loose associations. It is much messier than the simple positioning documents. Be wary of reducing the brand down to its essential components or a ‘one word equity.’ When marketers talk about reaching consumers ‘emotionally’ they are still focusing on conscious elements. In psychology, the term gestalt refers to how the brain prefers to seek out the whole of something, rather than the individual parts. The brain wants to quickly categorize something and figure out its function, so it will auto-fill what it needs to create a complete picture that it can make sense of. In much the same way, the Brand Gestalt represents the whole of the brand – it’s the complete picture-beyond just the conscious pieces that fit nicely on a page. “Gestalt” is German for “unified whole”. The first Gestalt Principles were devised in the 1920s by German psychologists Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler — who aimed to understand how humans typically gain meaningful perceptions from the chaotic stimuli around them. They identified a set of laws which address the natural compulsion to find order in disorder. According to this, the mind “informs” what the eye sees by perceiving a series of individual elements

The BBC’s global spread, cultural impact and soft-power are undeniable. But the century-old media brand is up against a new world. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] The BBC remains the world’s largest public service broadcaster with a total staff count of over 22,000, operating in over 70 countries. Its mission, laid down by Royal Charter, is to “act in the public interest,” champion impartiality, and “inform, educate and entertain.” (Image via Unsplash) In 2015-16, I was privileged to lead the revamping of the brand architecture for Star Sports as it moved to multiple channels across languages including a Hindi ‘Free To Air’ channel, Tamil channel, premium paid channels and so on. This is still its existing portfolio and brand identity. At the time, I had studied the example provided by Discovery, CNN and importantly, the BBC. I have continued to observe the transformations that media brands have made while navigating changes in technology and consumer habits. The BBC is an iconic brand in that group earnestly trying to keep its proposition relevant worldwide. As in the case of many pioneering media mastheads, it conforms to the ‘Sage’ archetype. Established on 18 October 1922, the BBC has completed a hundred years of existence. The British Broadcasting Company was established as a commercial broadcasting company in October 1922. Under Royal Charter, it became a public service broadcaster in 1927 and changed its name to British Broadcasting Corporation. It began broadcasting the world’s first regular high-definition television service from Alexandra Palace, London, on 2 November 1936. It remains the world’s largest public service broadcaster with a total staff count of over 22,000, operating in over 70 countries. Its mission, laid down by Royal Charter, is to “act in the public interest,” champion impartiality, and “inform, educate and entertain.” The BBC’s portfolio includes eight interactive TV channels, ten radio networks, and more than 50 local TV and radio services. The BBC World Service, established in 1932, reaches a global weekly audience of nearly 450 million and is considered by many to be one of the UK’s most important cultural contributions. From award-winning modern crime dramas such as Line of Duty to its beloved dramatization of classics such as Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice, the BBC is recognized and respected throughout the world. Anglophile or not, everyone nods an acknowledgement of the soft power represented by the BBC. Global programing and impact Perhaps no other institution is woven so deeply into the fabric of British national life as the BBC. It operates as an engine of ideas, risk-taking and ambition that powers Britain’s creative industries. It is the leading incubator of the UK’s story-telling talent. There is an exceptionally high correlation between places where people are aware of the BBC and places where people think positively about the UK. It operates in 42 languages from Korean to Punjabi to Pidgin. The global reach is on track to hit half a billion people by 2022 and over a billion by the end of the decade. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] At the height of World War II, the BBC launched what would become one of its most well-known radio programs – Desert Island Discs. Still aired to this day, celebrities would pretend to be ‘cast away’ on a desert island with nothing but eight musical tracks, one book, and one luxury item. The novel concept behind the show proved instantly popular with listeners who enjoyed getting to know the celebrities of the day, and their musical tastes, more intimately. The variety of programs and coverage continued to reach new heights throughout the 1940s. Still produced more than 75 years later, Women’s Hour would be the first radio program dedicated to issues affecting women at the time. Although the 1950s was a golden era for television, radio continued to entertain more people, and few radio programs have been more successful than The Archers. Set in the make-believe rural village of Ambridge, the show follows the life of several characters in the farming community and remains the longest-running soap opera in the world. Back in the world of television, Britain and much of the world were awe-struck to witness the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Her funeral was also courtesy the BBC all the way across the world. In 1967, BBC Two would become the first full-colour television service anywhere in the world, and the first event to be broadcast in colour was Tennis from Wimbledon. The world would watch one of the great documentary presenters of all time David Attenborough present Life on Earth in January 1979, a program that brought the natural world into people’s living rooms. The broadcaster and natural historian would go on to present landmark nature documentaries including, the Emmy award winning series Planet Earth as well as the Blue Planet series. The BBC’s coverage has cut across a spectrum. Be it the ‘Royal Wedding’ of Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles in 1980 watched by an estimated 750 million viewers in 74 countries or, later that decade, when BBC journalist Michael Buerk along with cameraman, Mohammed Amin, delivered one of the twentieth century’s landmark pieces of modern journalism. Reporting from Northern Ethiopia, Buerk’s coverage of the ‘biblical famine’ was picked up by over 400 stations worldwide. The coverage would go on to stir Bob Geldof and Midge Uhr to create the charity Band Aid, which was followed by the famous ‘Live Aid – Free the World’ concert a year later on 13 July 1985. Keeping the brand relevant in a new age In keeping its brand relevant and unified, rather than simply promoting individual TV and radio programmes, channels and websites, the BBC has pulled together its marketing output into packages with overarching messages about the core principles that drive the BBC. This strategy was put to the test by its coverage of the London 2012 Olympics The BBC’s overall editorial priorities were defined by the organisation’s Delivering Quality First (DQF) strategy. The marketing team saw there was scope to create campaigns that focused on the BBC Masterbrand and how it fulfilled its brief in areas such as drama or large-scale national events. A core and central BBC story that can be told wherever the audiences encounter the BBC.

That people can condition themselves to produce emotional responses to objects is a huge matter for marketing. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Marketing is a stimulus. Like with all other stimuli, a person builds up a ‘cognitive map’ of the world. Human behaviour obviously leaps way beyond conditioned learning. (Representational image via Unsplash)   Man is the only species that moderates its behaviour on the basis of continuous learning. All other creatures have an unfolding of instinct almost as a pre-programmed guide to action. But there is more than meets the eye. For a long time behaviourism was confined to studies with animals. In the 1890s German-born biologist Jacques Loeb first explained animal behavior in purely physical- chemical terms. At around the same time, the principle of classical conditioning was established by Ivan Pavlov using experiments on dogs. This ‘Pavlovian conditioning’ acquired fame though much of the rest of his work remained obscure. In 1905 Edward Thorndike established that animals learn through achieving successful outcomes from their behavior. Edward Tolman added the critical aspect of cognition into behaviorism in his theory of latent learning published in 1932. Through the 1950s Cognitive psychologists focus on understanding the mental processes that both lie behind and produce human behavior. It’s a vast subject to summarise but essentially the consensus was that the fundamental human emotions are fear, rage, and love. These are reflexive and unlearned. However where evoking feelings is concerned, they can be attached to objects through stimulus–response conditioning. This simple outcome, namely that people can condition themselves to produce emotional responses to objects – when appreciated for its psychological foundations – is a huge matter for marketing . It established that just anyone, regardless of their nature, can be responding conditionally to be anything. John Watson was the leading light of the experimental behaviorist approach. His academic career was cut short by his marital infidelity, but migrating on to advertising, he became one of the most influential and controversial psychologists of the 20th century thanks to his work on the stimulus– response learning theory. His 1913 lecture, ‘Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It’, put forward the revolutionary idea that “a truly scientific psychology would abandon talk of mental states… and instead focus on prediction and control of behavior.” This lecture became known to later psychologists as the “behaviorist manifesto.” Before Watson’s research at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, the majority of experiments on behavior had concentrated on animal behavior, with the results extrapolated to human behavior. Watson himself studied rats and monkeys for his doctorate but influenced by his experience working with the military during World War I , he was keen to conduct experiments using human subjects. He wanted to study the stimulus–response model of classical conditioning and how it applied to the prediction and mapping of human behavior. In the 1920s he conducted a set of experiments with response and object identification by an infant . The work gained academic fame as ‘Little Albert’ In the “nature versus nurture” debate, Watson was firmly on the side of nurture. He believed response conditioning is learned, not instinctive. In subsequent decades there was the rise of Cognitive or ‘purposive’ behaviorism’ as the dominant movement in psychology. Cognition as a starter and settler or behaviour was, till then, not universally acknowledged. The logic propounded was broadly as follows. As a mouse goes around in a maze he explores and learns. Each exposure makes the maze known, even familiar. Every journey builds on previous exposure. Mental processes, including perception, cognition, and motivation, earlier parts of Gestalt psychology advanced mostly in Germany were developed into a new theory summarily termed cognitive behaviourism in the United States. Marketing is a stimulus. Like with all other stimuli, a person builds up a ‘cognitive map’ of the world. Human behaviour obviously leaps way beyond conditioned learning. It is folly to think that behaviour is learned simply by an automatic response to a stimulus. In fact humans can originate thoughts and emotions independently as well without the reinforcement of a reward. But the experience of reward guides and makes decision-making easier. Edward Tolman in the 1930s designed a series of experiments using rats in mazes to examine the role of reinforcement in learning. Comparing a group of rats that were rewarded with food daily for successfully negotiating the maze, with another group who were only rewarded after six days, and a third group rewarded after two days, Tolman’s ideas were confirmed. The second and third groups made fewer errors when running the maze the day after they had been rewarded with food, demonstrating that they already “knew” their way around the maze, having learned it prior to receiving rewards. Once rewards were on offer, they were able to use the “cognitive map” they had built in order to negotiate the maze faster. Latent learning Tolman referred to the rats’ initial learning period, where there was no obvious reward, as “latent learning.” He believed that as all animals go about their daily lives, they build up a cognitive map of the world around them –the “God-given maze”—which they can apply to locate specific goals. He then established this extends at an even higher rate of learning and contextual absorption to humans. He gave the example of how we learn the locations of various landmarks on our daily journeys, but only realize what we have learned when we need to find somewhere along the route. In ‘Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men’, Tolman outlined his theory of latent learning and cognitive maps. Truly Edward Tolman did the work that made the confluence of the many streams of work on behaviourism possible. Edward Chace Tolman was born into a well-to-do family in West Newton, Massachusetts. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in electrochemistry in 1911, but after reading works by William James opted for a postgraduate degree at Harvard in philosophy and psychology. While studying, he travelled to Germany and was introduced to Gestalt psychology. After gaining his doctorate, he taught at Northwestern University, but his pacifist views lost him his job, and he moved to the University of California

All-Powerful brands can create social norms for their acceptance and inject themselves into cultural codes that enhance their centrality. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Some brands have acquired acceptance via social consensus. Their ability to be at the high table and still be the mass choice does not conflict with their aura. You fly in a Boeing on a budget airline as does the President of the United States on Air Force One. Warren Buffet drinks the same Coca-Cola that the poorest person would. (Representational image: Philip Myrtorp via Unsplash) Success in brand building depends on creating, nourishing, and continuously reinterpreting a unique and compelling identity or “meaning. That meaning has to be commonly held. Individual preference is deeper when it is enforced by social acceptance. This is an almost magical contradiction. The credit for this discovery and decoding it goes to the eminent Social psychologist Solomon Asch. He challenged our idea of ourselves as autonomous beings. He developed an experiment to establish our urge to conform. His work revealed that when people are confronted with a majority opinion, they just tend to conform. It is trite to say that a brand is a repository, not merely of functional characteristics, but of meaning and value. In increasingly crowded and highly competitive categories, brand differentiation based on discernible product differences is quickly imitated and duplicated by competitors. So, what makes one brand take a lead and stand out? Brands become phenomenally valuable because their existence has been translated into powerful meanings which society acknowledges. They are worth billions or trillions of dollars because they had gained a kind of meaning that was universal, larger than life, iconic. The commonly accepted meaning of a brand is its most priceless and unique asset. Whether you’re selling a soft drink, a service or a truck, what your brand means to people will be every bit as important as its function, if not more so. This is because our derived meaning tells us “this one feels right” or “this one’s for me.” Meaning creates feeling in the collective conscious and unconscious. Such meaning cannot be developed via short lived advertising campaigns, but only because of consistent and enduring expression in all forms and facets. And the more it is acknowledged by many, the more this meaning will get strengthened. An understanding of Social Psychology helps marketers understand how they are perceived or not. This, when converted to consequential actions may create enduring brand identities that deliver meaning to customers, drive up perceived value and inspire customer loyalty. All Powerful brands can create social norms for their acceptance and inject themselves into cultural codes that enhance their centrality. The reason some brands become synonymous with categories, cultures and even national identities is because they have acquired acceptance via social consensus. Their ability to be at the high table and still be the mass choice does not conflict with their aura. You fly in a Boeing on a budget airline as does the President of the United States on Air Force One. Warren Buffet drinks the same Coca-Cola that the poorest person would. Group conformance can lift above commitment to what individuals hold true. Solomon Asch pioneered this work in impression formation, prestige associations and conformity. In his paper ‘Opinions and Social Pressure’, published in 1955, he elaborated on the social influences that shape a person’s beliefs, judgments, and practices. This revealed the effects of group pressure on individual decision-making. It was the first time we deciphered how, and to what extent, people’s attitudes were influenced by social forces around them. My point is not to view this negatively but to appreciate, as marketers, how this dynamic plays out. Positive conformance done for the right reasons can build mammoth brand advantage. Asch’s work was preceded by that of the Turkish psychologist Muzafer Sherif who, in 1935, set out to answer similar questions. He used a visual illusion called the autokinetic effect, wherein a stationary spot of light seen in a dark room appears to move. The subjects of his study were told that the light was going to move and asked how far they thought it had shifted. Tested in groups, the participants’ estimates converged into a group norm, revealing that they used others’ estimates as a frame of reference in an ambiguous situation. Asch took this forward in a different way. To him, conformity was measured in terms of an individual’s tendency to agree with group members who unanimously give the wrong answer on a task that has an unmistakable solution. The simple perceptual task he designed was named the Asch Paradigm. The experiment was conducted with male subjects, each of whom was put individually into a group of five to seven “confederates” – these were people who were aware of the real aims of the experiment but were introduced as fellow participants – and each group was shown one card with a line on it, followed by another card with three lines labelled A, B, and C, and asked which one of those three lines was the same length as the line on the first card. The experiment was organized such that the subject would give either the last or the last but one answer. Over the course of 18 trials, confederates were instructed to provide the correct answers for the first six, but then to give identical but incorrect answers for another 12. This was to test whether the subject would answer correctly or whether he would match his response to that of the confederates when all gave the same but incorrect answer. The results of the study were revealing. When surrounded by a group of people all giving the same incorrect answer, subjects gave incorrect answers on almost a third of the questions; 75 percent of them provided an incorrect response for at least one question. These figures indicate a high degree of compliance by the subjects. On the other hand, not a single participant conformed on all critical trials, and 13 of the 50 participants never conformed at all. The results proved

TikTok is a test case for global business, global internet and global capitalism.   [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Since the start of 2022, TikTok has been downloaded more than 175 million times. TikTok has surpassed 10 million downloads for the past nine quarters now. (Representational Image: Solen Feyissa via Unsplash) It is said that the ugliest sound in the world is the tick tock of a clock because it tells you time is passing, never to come back again. It is the one thing we cannot get more of, or get back. Mark Zuckerberg would agree. But the relentless TikTok that pains him is that of the eponymous Chinese social media giant. Launched only five years ago, TikTok is one of the world’s fastest-growing social media platforms. Sensor Tower in its “Q1 2022: Store Intelligence Data Digest” reported TikTok as the top app by worldwide downloads in Q1 2022. The app previously had surpassed 3.5 billion all-time downloads in the first quarter of 2021, becoming just the fifth app (and the only one not owned by Meta) to achieve this milestone. Since the start of 2022, TikTok has been downloaded more than 175 million times. TikTok has surpassed 10 million downloads for the past nine quarters now. No app has had more downloads than TikTok since the beginning of 2018. This is significant for two reasons: Firstly, this stellar performance has punched the entrenched Silicon Valley social media giants in the nose and they are bleeding. Secondly, TikTok is seen as a danger to those who see the business as an extension of China’s new internet ambitions. It is an indication of the finesse with which China players can deal in such areas. The followership, brand appeal and gush of content has left everyone awe struck. In America, the average TikTok user, on a daily basis, spends 50 percent longer on the app than the typical user spends on Instagram. Powered by such reach and engagement, advertising revenues have surged. TikTok’s revenues are expected to reach $12 billion this year and $23 billion in 2024. Meta has been particularly hard-hit as tech stocks have taken a beating on flattish growth and privacy concerns and the firm is now seen as re-engineering its products to mimic TikTok. But this success has raised a shrill alarm. There is continued scrutiny and concerns regarding the rise and rise of TikTok. What is the reason for such alarm? The risk is privacy at minimum and national security at the other end of the danger spectrum. Simply put, China’s regime reserves the right to appropriate data from its companies. No one is exempt. Some have questioned these data concerns arguing that the average social user is unconcerned by privacy and most advertising models are based on companies reading data and usage. By this logic, the advantage of inside access is not new. Data is being analysed by all. How would it matter if it is one company or another? They see TikTok as a publisher of harmless, even frivolous memes. Can world power be impacted by quirky dance moves? But TikTok is not slapstick comedy and bad dancing alone. The bigger, material concern emerges with TikTok as an entertainment and news platform. TikTok is a news source for a quarter of all Americans and perhaps most of its youth. This deepens this sense of anxiety. The Chinese government actively meddles in domestic media; TikTok’s content creators are outside China, but the app’s algorithm is within Beijing’s sight. Given an adaptive, personalised feed, manipulation cannot be easily detected. TikTok might be the easiest social act to be a part of but lurking under the simple interface is bleeding edge Artificial Intelligence which adapts and adopts content at a blinding pace. No wonder TikTok signed up its first 1 billion users double as fast as arch-rival Facebook. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] A TikToker who creates content around beauty. It is estimated that 44 percent of TikTok’s American users are under 25 (compared with 16 percent of Facebook’s). (Representational image: AFP/Getty Images) China knows that social platforms have clout particularly in electoral systems. It recently classified content-recommendation algorithms as a key technology. The commercial implications for TikTok’s competitors are dire. Facebook’s entire business is based on tracking users to feed its advertising machine and it is rolling in cash. Last year alone, the company made $40 billion in profit. But the key issue is a growth slowdown. Meta’s market cap dropped $230 billion in one day-the most ever for a publicly traded company- on account of privacy-linked constraints to its model. Apple took a lead in this matter and raised the privacy bar. So, the western tech bloc is hardly an indivisible monolith advancing its interests. TikTok’s success is not a fluke. The social media app cuts through with relevant trends, unique algorithms and a diverse set of communities for every niche subject matter. Recent updates include interactive add-ons for in-feed ads and its own AR development platform-Effect House. This has made Meta and smaller other players doubt their technical skills as pertinent to where consumers see value. Despite being banned in India, which has one of the largest markets for app installs in the world, TikTok was ranked third overall in Asia. It was number one on the App Store. Looking at US overall downloads, TikTok has been the top app each quarter since Q1 2021. The last app to beat TikTok was Zoom in Q4 2020. Also, since Q1 2021, TikTok and YouTube have been the top two apps on the US App Store each quarter. TikTok was also the number one app on Google Play for the third quarter in a row, with installs up 19 percent year-over-year. Starting with the Trump Administration, the United States is keen to box Chinese tech expansion. Be it TikTok or Huawei, they have moved proactively. Brendan Carr, one of the FCC’s commissioners, shared – via Twitter – a formal letter written to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai in late