Haven't we heard this before: Why are there so many variants in a brand family? Is it logical? One way of understanding this is by likening brands to personalities.
Personalities can be versatile, but there are limits to how versatile they will be considered...
Just like in school we might have had one classmate who was very good in maths and in chess. And then there was this other classmate who was good in football and in running.
It's funny but true that even if the first classmate who was good in chess and maths ran well one day, it would soon be forgotten and in fact not even noticed. That is because images once formed, don't change very easily.
Now look at another example.
Mercedes makes great cars. So their logic for making the small car is - if we can make a large car so well, then surely we can make a small car too! But as you know, the customer doesn't really associate them with the small car and so they find it difficult to sell. It's also got to do with the DNA of the company. But on that, a little later...
Let's look at another example. When Cadbury launched the Dollops ice cream parlour, guess which flavour they sold the most. Yes, chocolate! And when they launched biscuits? Again, chocolate!
A funny one - would you buy potato chips from Intel??
Okay, now back to the point. When we say ICICIdirect.com, the world thinks of us as online - a format which is for self directed share trading. And online is the opposite of offline! Because online seekers are culturally middlemen averse. While offline seekers thrive on intermediaries, when we say "Securities", we accurately point to this category and at the same time, we do not carry the online image hangover.
There are some people who are suspicious of any intermediary - they think their driver steals petrol (no one has ever seen one do that though! I wonder where he sells it!); of dealers, and of brokers. They think middlemen stand in the way of direct and transparent access. They think middlemen distort the truth for personal gain. This is a typical salaried class mind at work. Such people love the online world.
And then there are people who are exactly the opposite. They infact thrive on other people for 'getting their work done. If something has to be done, they find someone to do it for them, for a fee.
The former seek self help formats and even trade online while the latter seek middlemen who will their respective needs uniquely.
Now what was that about the DNA?
Well there used to be a little gospel which went like this - twenty minutes into a board meeting in ITC on the subject of diversification, someone would puff at his cigarette and say "But you know in tobacco....."!
Saturday, July 4, 2009
"Traditional" and "Modern" brands
In the corridors of advertising agencies, some phraseology is more common than others. Of course, this too has changed with times. But advertising agencies and marketing departments suffer from the same malaise as everyone else. They follow what is trendy. They claim it is well thought out.
It’s the same with the human race. One human does something simply because another human being also does it or will do it. How else can one explain, the need to smoke a cigarette for example. Imagine the man who was the first to ever put a cigarette in his mouth! He must have rolled some tobacco in a paper and blown smoke in. And coughed after that. What for?
Decades later, we don’t even question the inane-ness in the very act of smoking. Our pre-occupation instead, is with it being ‘harmful’, not stupid! Now why is that? Not because the category makes sense, but because that brands inhabiting it have found acceptance, such that they are embedded deeply in our lives. So much so, that we think they define our personality. Such that they re-position even the way we once saw a category.
Yet marketing and advertising agency corridors are abuzz with the fashionable view that repositioning of anything is very difficult and long drawn! Actually like anything else, it is difficult only for those who don’t know. And easy for those who do.
Let’s come back to the cigarette example.
There once used to be a ‘feminine’ cigarette, yes ‘feminine’. It was targeting women. It even had a lipstick mark tipped on the filter! And what did this brand change to? Marlboro, that’s right Marlboro of the Marlboro man fame. And today it is difficult to visualize a more macho brand! Incidentally the handsome cowboy model died of lung cancer in real life.
Likewise there is another example that comes to mind in the context of advertising and marketing belief stereotypes. Under this trendy notion, all brands of the past and present are assumed to be ‘traditional’ and so their desired goal, their evolution is taken to be ‘modern’. And this is where the trouble starts. (Of course, it is true that there are some brands - MNCs often show the tendency - that court vernacular with an equally illogical passion, that it appears, and is contrived).
Now take a deeper look at the urban Indian consumer and the popular culture that surrounds him or her.
An Indian bahu smokes in office.
An IT professional consults an astrologer.
A fashion guru fasts on Tuesday.
The vacuum cleaner pleads and pleads and tries hard to replace the Indian Ayah, but the Indian Ayah rules unabated. The same doesn’t hold true for the washing machine, a proud possession of the housewife; her gadgety vengeance against the husband!)
And now modern chocolates are gift wrapped for Diwali while the traditional ladoo watches in horror.
The tabeez peeps out uncertainly from under a lycra ganjee.
And on Saturday night, at their western best, young men with drooping trousers and young women with lifted spirits open their armpits to the wind and dance all night to Bhangra Pop.
Yet brands continue to be fond choosing either tradition or modernity, even though the Indian consumer has clearly chosen both.
Let’s look at one more example. An example of how it impacts service philosophy, in this case in the world of airlines.
A young girl who wears salwar kameez on holidays, sculpts blood red western attire around herself while on duty; paints her eye brows and eyelids in a gleaming something; blushes her cheekbones high and looks like a mannequin carved under neon signs while proceeding to serve with tongs, aaloo paranthas in plastic-wrapped pickle, in an accent that is somewhere between American, Italian and Sri Lankan. Just roll the flight announcement on your tongue, in that familiar and distinctive accent that you last heard on flight: “Kursi ki pethhi baaaaand leejiye”.
Yet brands forever ponder about these two worlds of tradition and modernity, the euphemism for which is ‘Indian’ or ‘Western’.
Can there be watertight classifications of brands as modern or traditional? Or is it simply Indian? If it has to be authentic, it doesn’t have to fall into the ‘traditional’ archetype. It must speak the language of its particular and specific catchment. Why must service personnel of ‘big’ brands always speak in English to customers? Or speak Hindi in such an accent that it actually alienates a customer instead of getting him closer.
Why should the customer’s comfort not be the main criteria?
Now a professional working in a metro afterall has a ‘small town soul’. He almost invariably hails from somewhere else even if he is found of saying “basically I am from Delhi”. So we now live in metros, but have our origins elsewhere, from some small town or the other. So whenever the small town manifests itself in our metro paced lives, we respond to it with the same feeling as we do to an old favourite song.
Remember ladies and gentlemen, after the fourth drink, it is Kishore Kumar all the way!
Brands in India have to be rooted in the prevailing popular culture. And India as we know, is much more than a crucible of different cultures simmering in one cauldron. It is in fact the compression of various multi-cultural historical interventions and influences through its long existence as a civilization. That is what gives us our pluralism, which besides including all communities, also blurs the seemingly sharp boundaries between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’.
So have a happy weekend. Shed the tie guys and let the winds of bhangra pop take over!
The Small Town Soul and timelessness of Brand ideas
Often there is quite a song and dance about the impact of differentiated brand communication. Even though it is more than clear that a lot of advertising suffers from sameness in its laboured desire to look different.
A close observation will reveal that the appearance of advertising is like the appearance of people really. All young men studying in colleges in the metro cities tend to go to beauty parlours, which for them are called by male names. The word ‘unisex’ had to be invented to rationalise this societal code and to place all men and women within the same rental of real estate. And out they come, (the men) with ‘different’ hairstyles called ‘hairdos’ (a new name had to be invented for this). But closer scrutiny reveals that each of them emerges from the same saloon and parlour looking much the same! But that’s not true of old timers who look different than the youngsters. But then they look like each other.
Advertising is no different. A bunch of ads look quite the same, though different from another bunch of ads, which among themselves look the same! And like changing hairstyles they change with time. Who says advertising is immune to fashion? But then, when set within the same period they look the same, in their demanding desire to look delightfully different.
If a creative director of an advertising agency has a set of beliefs set in a time context, loosely referred to as ‘fashion’, then so does the client. So when thoughts are vastly different, the client prevails. But when the beliefs are common, they agree on an advertising idea, which suffers from the similarity, since another client and his / her agency must have agreed on the same one. We tend to agree on the safe ones that ride today’s trend.
Now that sounds confusing. Simply because it is!
So let’s easen the load on our mind with the help of examples:
In today’s day and age, we find the television replete with a full bunch of ads purporting enlightened differentiation, while being set in the same setting of a hospital ward for example, with a father nearly screaming “It’s a girl!” I haven’t seen a father do that though. We may want him to but he doesn’t, at least not in the manner of Columbus discovering America.
Now that ubiquitous cute dog has become such an acceptable idea, that it is almost spawned of as a full creative route. Notice how you may well have a neighbour who tearfully adopts what was earlier called a ‘street dog’ or ‘pariah’ with much fanfare, and feed it on the road with no responsibility for it vaccination or any concern for its training. So the dog now feeds ads and ads feed dogs, while people develop new phraseology to exclaim every other day about every other dog - “Choooo Chweeet!” Not that there is a problem in being a dog lover, but it’s the recency of the fashion that is noteworthy.
Now it is a formula - when in doubt, put a dog in the film. If not, then show a child. To pep up matters further show a child with a dog. Still not happy, tell the agency to play some music and show some fading romanticism. The brief here is simple - “Give us something different”. The result is the same!
Print advertising suffers the same malady.
Why must all Swiss watch ads show only the watch or a celebrity and nothing else?
Why must all airline ads show a plane in flight, when the experience of the flight is actually inside and when the plane looks the same from outside?
And when set inside, why must they only show food? Especially since their food is almost always stale (another reason why we prefer the liquor!)
But then there are brands that try to root themselves in a thought that germinates from a need to seek timeless appeal - like the Absolut Vodka ads where the space is filled by only the bottle in a world of liquor where every other brand tries hard to show a celebration or premiumness.
Sure McDonalds shows children, but from the viewpoint of a child and not from the viewpoint of an adult or adult’s notion of cute children and / or childhood.
Take the Jaguar advertising which actually goes so far as to feed the product and vice versa. How else would one explain, how every boy lusts for a Jaguar as it passes by, and not for any other car. As for its advertising, it plays to the boy in every man.
Remember how when we go to a mall and watch someone whacking the ball into the cricket nets, a private smile ceases the moment and makes us inform whosoever is near us - ‘I used be quite good at this’ or some such thing. Whatever the man may be today, there is timeless appeal in his boyhood.
Lets look within ourselves now. And we will discover when we shed our metro make-up that suddenly we are not in a hurry. That we love to talk, the moment we reach home after a long day in a ‘metro’ office. Now let’s trace it back further. Why do we love to talk? Or better still who loves to talk? Well, the person who lives in a small town. Conversations without an agenda, not driven by the motivation to profit at the end of it are some elements of the small town conversation. Its the small things that one talks about. It has an element of banter; it is a version of aimlessness. It is accompanied by a smile. It is needlessly long. It evokes and delivers open laughter, that is not of the practiced kind. Nothing is rehearsed. It is real and authentic, not metallic, hurried or synthetic. Its like cotton, not terricot; wood, not glass; matte, not gloss; soap, not perfume.
Its not like a male beauty parlour called by another name. It is timeless, because it is set outside the influence of fashion. It resonates with our origins, not our projected selves, but our real selves. After all, wherever we may now be and wherever we may choose to head, we all hail from some small town or the other. So even through our mascara eyes, or through our Versace ‘shades’, when we see a sight that reminds us of home, we trust it because it come from home.
That’s because, between origin and destination, while it is fashionable for advertising to choose the latter, but that need not be the case.
So anyone for haircut and champi over the weekend?
A close observation will reveal that the appearance of advertising is like the appearance of people really. All young men studying in colleges in the metro cities tend to go to beauty parlours, which for them are called by male names. The word ‘unisex’ had to be invented to rationalise this societal code and to place all men and women within the same rental of real estate. And out they come, (the men) with ‘different’ hairstyles called ‘hairdos’ (a new name had to be invented for this). But closer scrutiny reveals that each of them emerges from the same saloon and parlour looking much the same! But that’s not true of old timers who look different than the youngsters. But then they look like each other.
Advertising is no different. A bunch of ads look quite the same, though different from another bunch of ads, which among themselves look the same! And like changing hairstyles they change with time. Who says advertising is immune to fashion? But then, when set within the same period they look the same, in their demanding desire to look delightfully different.
If a creative director of an advertising agency has a set of beliefs set in a time context, loosely referred to as ‘fashion’, then so does the client. So when thoughts are vastly different, the client prevails. But when the beliefs are common, they agree on an advertising idea, which suffers from the similarity, since another client and his / her agency must have agreed on the same one. We tend to agree on the safe ones that ride today’s trend.
Now that sounds confusing. Simply because it is!
So let’s easen the load on our mind with the help of examples:
In today’s day and age, we find the television replete with a full bunch of ads purporting enlightened differentiation, while being set in the same setting of a hospital ward for example, with a father nearly screaming “It’s a girl!” I haven’t seen a father do that though. We may want him to but he doesn’t, at least not in the manner of Columbus discovering America.
Now that ubiquitous cute dog has become such an acceptable idea, that it is almost spawned of as a full creative route. Notice how you may well have a neighbour who tearfully adopts what was earlier called a ‘street dog’ or ‘pariah’ with much fanfare, and feed it on the road with no responsibility for it vaccination or any concern for its training. So the dog now feeds ads and ads feed dogs, while people develop new phraseology to exclaim every other day about every other dog - “Choooo Chweeet!” Not that there is a problem in being a dog lover, but it’s the recency of the fashion that is noteworthy.
Now it is a formula - when in doubt, put a dog in the film. If not, then show a child. To pep up matters further show a child with a dog. Still not happy, tell the agency to play some music and show some fading romanticism. The brief here is simple - “Give us something different”. The result is the same!
Print advertising suffers the same malady.
Why must all Swiss watch ads show only the watch or a celebrity and nothing else?
Why must all airline ads show a plane in flight, when the experience of the flight is actually inside and when the plane looks the same from outside?
And when set inside, why must they only show food? Especially since their food is almost always stale (another reason why we prefer the liquor!)
But then there are brands that try to root themselves in a thought that germinates from a need to seek timeless appeal - like the Absolut Vodka ads where the space is filled by only the bottle in a world of liquor where every other brand tries hard to show a celebration or premiumness.
Sure McDonalds shows children, but from the viewpoint of a child and not from the viewpoint of an adult or adult’s notion of cute children and / or childhood.
Take the Jaguar advertising which actually goes so far as to feed the product and vice versa. How else would one explain, how every boy lusts for a Jaguar as it passes by, and not for any other car. As for its advertising, it plays to the boy in every man.
Remember how when we go to a mall and watch someone whacking the ball into the cricket nets, a private smile ceases the moment and makes us inform whosoever is near us - ‘I used be quite good at this’ or some such thing. Whatever the man may be today, there is timeless appeal in his boyhood.
Lets look within ourselves now. And we will discover when we shed our metro make-up that suddenly we are not in a hurry. That we love to talk, the moment we reach home after a long day in a ‘metro’ office. Now let’s trace it back further. Why do we love to talk? Or better still who loves to talk? Well, the person who lives in a small town. Conversations without an agenda, not driven by the motivation to profit at the end of it are some elements of the small town conversation. Its the small things that one talks about. It has an element of banter; it is a version of aimlessness. It is accompanied by a smile. It is needlessly long. It evokes and delivers open laughter, that is not of the practiced kind. Nothing is rehearsed. It is real and authentic, not metallic, hurried or synthetic. Its like cotton, not terricot; wood, not glass; matte, not gloss; soap, not perfume.
Its not like a male beauty parlour called by another name. It is timeless, because it is set outside the influence of fashion. It resonates with our origins, not our projected selves, but our real selves. After all, wherever we may now be and wherever we may choose to head, we all hail from some small town or the other. So even through our mascara eyes, or through our Versace ‘shades’, when we see a sight that reminds us of home, we trust it because it come from home.
That’s because, between origin and destination, while it is fashionable for advertising to choose the latter, but that need not be the case.
So anyone for haircut and champi over the weekend?
REALITY, ASPIRATIONS and "SOCIETAL FASHION"
This has to be the mother of paradoxical marketing oversimplifications. Sounds weird? That's because it is.
But what exactly is this oversimplication that one is referring to, and calling paradoxical?
The first is that when we position brands, we tell ourselves that we must depict reality, not exaggeration. And the second is that when we talk to a target audience, we cater to its aspirations, not reality.
Now look at the bunch of paradoxes in the first example itself. Speaking in Hindi to a 'Hindi' audience comes from the desire to make the brand be in touch with reality. But now where does the ad appear? On an English TV channel! Now if to the audience, the choice of language does not lead to channel loyalty, then why should it matter to the advertiser. Look at it another way. Sure there is an audience that reads Hindi novels, Hindi newspapers. But what about its professional education? It's all in English. So clearly this audience 'understands' English, whether or not it likes the language. Now should it like the language, or should it like the ad? So why does the language of the ad matter? One could go on and on till the paradoxes themselves are tied in knots!
But now lets look at the bunch of paradoxes in the second example. In 1991, Limelight soap was launched to target rural areas. It depicted the rural reality and it bombed. Market research was hastily done to diagnose the problem. The reason it seems was that while rural reality was being depicted in the ad, the rural audience had urban aspirations! The soap was relaunched in rural areas once again, dressed up in urban tonality. And it was a hit.
Now brace yourself for here comes the mother of all paradoxes:
The first example says language and audience must be married in reality - so the language must be the spoken language. And the second says language must be aspirational and therefore consciously divorced from reality!
So how does one explain this. Firstly choice of language is immaterial and does not drive preference, in the minds of the target audience. Secondly, Reality and Aspirations as words themselves are oversimplications. There is no such thing as reality. And there is no such thing as aspiration. Because, sitting on top of these two issues are 'relevance' and 'likeability', with the latter being more important than the former. Now this simply means that it does not matter whether the language is 'real' or not or whether the serving is real or aspirational, as long as it is liked and is relevant.
And above all it needs to be 'refreshing'.
Hindi baselines under English brand names tell us two things. Thing One - that it is paradoxical. Thing Two - the consumer is also language neutral so it doesn't matter.
Celebrating the 'girl child' in advertising is also what one can classify as 'societal fashion'. Have all the 'boy child' in this nation been provided for that it is now the turn of girls. So why not just 'child' instead of 'girl child'. The overflowing love for animals is another 'societal fashion' in todays age given the fact that this may well be the age when the black buck shivers when sighting an 'aspirational' film star; or when the tiger ceases to exist.
Language too turns societally trendy with people 'sending an invite' and not an invitation, 'meeting UP with you' even if the meeting is on the ground floor and calling anything likeable 'awesome' or 'cool' even it is really hot soup.
And advertising is merely a mirror of societal fads, seeking to justify it all with seemingly rational explanations, which when examined closely, get tied up hopelessly in knots.
But why does it happen, you might ask. Well because we human beings are paradoxical in our very conception. Remember we are after all animals wearing clothes!
Now this weekend look out for another paradox. In your morning walk, watch that man walking his dog. He is in bermudas and the dog in a raincoat!
But this Know Your Brand was supposed to be on 'rituals' (as per the last know your brand), you might say. But on that, next time
But what exactly is this oversimplication that one is referring to, and calling paradoxical?
The first is that when we position brands, we tell ourselves that we must depict reality, not exaggeration. And the second is that when we talk to a target audience, we cater to its aspirations, not reality.
Now look at the bunch of paradoxes in the first example itself. Speaking in Hindi to a 'Hindi' audience comes from the desire to make the brand be in touch with reality. But now where does the ad appear? On an English TV channel! Now if to the audience, the choice of language does not lead to channel loyalty, then why should it matter to the advertiser. Look at it another way. Sure there is an audience that reads Hindi novels, Hindi newspapers. But what about its professional education? It's all in English. So clearly this audience 'understands' English, whether or not it likes the language. Now should it like the language, or should it like the ad? So why does the language of the ad matter? One could go on and on till the paradoxes themselves are tied in knots!
But now lets look at the bunch of paradoxes in the second example. In 1991, Limelight soap was launched to target rural areas. It depicted the rural reality and it bombed. Market research was hastily done to diagnose the problem. The reason it seems was that while rural reality was being depicted in the ad, the rural audience had urban aspirations! The soap was relaunched in rural areas once again, dressed up in urban tonality. And it was a hit.
Now brace yourself for here comes the mother of all paradoxes:
The first example says language and audience must be married in reality - so the language must be the spoken language. And the second says language must be aspirational and therefore consciously divorced from reality!
So how does one explain this. Firstly choice of language is immaterial and does not drive preference, in the minds of the target audience. Secondly, Reality and Aspirations as words themselves are oversimplications. There is no such thing as reality. And there is no such thing as aspiration. Because, sitting on top of these two issues are 'relevance' and 'likeability', with the latter being more important than the former. Now this simply means that it does not matter whether the language is 'real' or not or whether the serving is real or aspirational, as long as it is liked and is relevant.
And above all it needs to be 'refreshing'.
Hindi baselines under English brand names tell us two things. Thing One - that it is paradoxical. Thing Two - the consumer is also language neutral so it doesn't matter.
Celebrating the 'girl child' in advertising is also what one can classify as 'societal fashion'. Have all the 'boy child' in this nation been provided for that it is now the turn of girls. So why not just 'child' instead of 'girl child'. The overflowing love for animals is another 'societal fashion' in todays age given the fact that this may well be the age when the black buck shivers when sighting an 'aspirational' film star; or when the tiger ceases to exist.
Language too turns societally trendy with people 'sending an invite' and not an invitation, 'meeting UP with you' even if the meeting is on the ground floor and calling anything likeable 'awesome' or 'cool' even it is really hot soup.
And advertising is merely a mirror of societal fads, seeking to justify it all with seemingly rational explanations, which when examined closely, get tied up hopelessly in knots.
But why does it happen, you might ask. Well because we human beings are paradoxical in our very conception. Remember we are after all animals wearing clothes!
Now this weekend look out for another paradox. In your morning walk, watch that man walking his dog. He is in bermudas and the dog in a raincoat!
But this Know Your Brand was supposed to be on 'rituals' (as per the last know your brand), you might say. But on that, next time
"Modern" and "Classic" brands
A lingering question often is what is the difference between ‘modern’ brands and ‘classic’ brands. Well there are dimensions to these archetypes, but we will touch just one aspect this time.
Well, in a sense it is like the difference between air travel and train travel. At one level, both serve the same purpose of reaching a far away destination. Still they are different. In fact, very different.
When we travel by air, we actually formally dress up for the occasion. We reach the airport well before time and immediately on entering, the procedures rule and we have no control. Processes and systems effectively take us to the plane.We are part of a queue. Our baggage is whisked away. We know (almost!) that it is safe and it will reach. We are now on an assembly line of sorts with one person behind us and one in front. At the entrance the ID and ticket is checked. After this, it is one section or one counter after another in a defined fashion. Once inside the airplane, the seatbelt and lights take charge. Funnily we don't really talk to the person in the neighbouring seat.
This is a very western journey - very formal and precise. But then when we buy an airline ticket, this is what we sign up, because we like it. It is quick,efficient, systematic, fast, hassle free and also aspirational.The service is squeaky clean. It is silent and smiling. Few words are exchanged. Everything is automated. Even when we get into the plane, we barely talk to our neighbour on the adjoining seat. In effect, when we travel by air, we consume a western type of accessible luxury that efficiently gets us to our destination. It is transactional in flavour. Conversation is minimum.
Ditto with modern and transactional brands. From the time the customer touches them till the time he exists, everything is almost automated. It is a modern world with western efficiency. This is quick and efficient and to the point.
Contrast this with a comfortable air conditioned (AC) train travel. The same person traveling by train undergoes and in fact seeks a different experience.
Sometimes, speed is not so important. Or the journey we seek is not much less than the destination. There is no need for hurry and a train will do. Nobody bothers to dress up formally for a train journey. In fact, the kurta pajama seems just fine! What's more there are hardly any procedures here. One doesn't even enter a highly westernised environment. One does not dress up for the occasion. One talks a lot. There is no whispered service here. Conversations between strangers are common. It is clean but not squeaky clean. It is not silent. It is not just metal and glass. It is aesthetically Indian. It is talkative and free. Conversations are long. And loud. In a train, we are in small town India. It's a world we sometimes miss and sometimes seek. The western world is now nowhere in sight, in look, feel or behaviour. Nothing is automated. There is no conveyor belt or assembly line here. You can board a moving train and jump out of a moving one! This experience is very interactive. The journey occupies a large slice of the experience.
In these ‘classic’ brands, there are no transactions on offer. There is a pleasant journey to reaching the destination that the brand promises. It is high on conversation. It is high on relationships. Silence is out of place here. These brands have a 'small town soul'. They are almost avuncular. That’s why they are inviting.
Are you wondering why this email was long? Well, because no one talks to people who speak sparingly. People like talking to talkative people. People from small towns.
Well, in a sense it is like the difference between air travel and train travel. At one level, both serve the same purpose of reaching a far away destination. Still they are different. In fact, very different.
When we travel by air, we actually formally dress up for the occasion. We reach the airport well before time and immediately on entering, the procedures rule and we have no control. Processes and systems effectively take us to the plane.We are part of a queue. Our baggage is whisked away. We know (almost!) that it is safe and it will reach. We are now on an assembly line of sorts with one person behind us and one in front. At the entrance the ID and ticket is checked. After this, it is one section or one counter after another in a defined fashion. Once inside the airplane, the seatbelt and lights take charge. Funnily we don't really talk to the person in the neighbouring seat.
This is a very western journey - very formal and precise. But then when we buy an airline ticket, this is what we sign up, because we like it. It is quick,efficient, systematic, fast, hassle free and also aspirational.The service is squeaky clean. It is silent and smiling. Few words are exchanged. Everything is automated. Even when we get into the plane, we barely talk to our neighbour on the adjoining seat. In effect, when we travel by air, we consume a western type of accessible luxury that efficiently gets us to our destination. It is transactional in flavour. Conversation is minimum.
Ditto with modern and transactional brands. From the time the customer touches them till the time he exists, everything is almost automated. It is a modern world with western efficiency. This is quick and efficient and to the point.
Contrast this with a comfortable air conditioned (AC) train travel. The same person traveling by train undergoes and in fact seeks a different experience.
Sometimes, speed is not so important. Or the journey we seek is not much less than the destination. There is no need for hurry and a train will do. Nobody bothers to dress up formally for a train journey. In fact, the kurta pajama seems just fine! What's more there are hardly any procedures here. One doesn't even enter a highly westernised environment. One does not dress up for the occasion. One talks a lot. There is no whispered service here. Conversations between strangers are common. It is clean but not squeaky clean. It is not silent. It is not just metal and glass. It is aesthetically Indian. It is talkative and free. Conversations are long. And loud. In a train, we are in small town India. It's a world we sometimes miss and sometimes seek. The western world is now nowhere in sight, in look, feel or behaviour. Nothing is automated. There is no conveyor belt or assembly line here. You can board a moving train and jump out of a moving one! This experience is very interactive. The journey occupies a large slice of the experience.
In these ‘classic’ brands, there are no transactions on offer. There is a pleasant journey to reaching the destination that the brand promises. It is high on conversation. It is high on relationships. Silence is out of place here. These brands have a 'small town soul'. They are almost avuncular. That’s why they are inviting.
Are you wondering why this email was long? Well, because no one talks to people who speak sparingly. People like talking to talkative people. People from small towns.
"Look and Feel"
It's difficult to explain the feeling of going to a hill station in childhood. It was certainly more than just the weather. Just as, later it was difficult to explain the feeling of driving into Jaisalmer. It was more than that rational something.
Equally, even photographs flounder in their inability to describe the 'jannat' (which again begs more descriptors) Kashmir, or the monument Taj, or the soaring reality of the Khajuraho temples. In pictures, Kashmir looks ordinary, the Taj, overated, and Khajuraho, puny - the exact opposite of what they are.
Language too, struggles in vain in its laboured attempt to describe Persons, Places and Things. Grammar calls these three 'nouns' and adds a category called 'adjectives' in its strenuous attempt to describe them.
Now what did Nehru see in Coorg? Or why did Indira Gandhi travel two days into a Kashmiri autumn? Merely to see the chinar leaves changing colours? No, it can't be so simple.
Let's go deeper. Why does a disproportionate part of the holiday experience in a remote wilderness, constitute the phase involved in getting there?
Now if Kashmir was only about a few defined contributors to its heady experience, then all we need to do is put a mound of grassy mud into an air-conditioned room, surround with water, give it a false ceiling of the azure of a Kashmiri sky (technology can perfect this) with a few more condiments added to this synthetic recipe. And bingo, we should get Kashmir! But don't we know better.
Which brings us all the way back to the sprightly subject of ambiance. Now ambiance is what retail formats thrive on. And because they struggle to add ingredients a la a synthetically created Kashmir, they fail to achieve the purpose.
In a mall in Dubai, they ski down on artificial powder snow, delighted to dole up their desert dreams. But a nature lover winces with the experience. Few people return to ski there.
The moral of the story - the mere assemblage of hard material in a retail format, does not a brand make. The 'living' experience is vital. Brands have to live and moreover, the powerful ones are those that titillate one of the five senses.
A Seagram scotch ad story line, set in a cold and misty Scotland, brings forth the fragrance of great scotch. It's like hot pakoras in the pouring monsoons of Mahabaleshwar. Or notice how the car ads convert full grown men to boys, as they watch shiny eyed, bright red cars careening, spinning and whizzing past wet roads. Or see the forbidding, threatening glint in your wife's eye, as a De Beers diamond pops out in media. It is known to cause blindness in alert husbands. Coffee ads and frothy fragrance, now who hasn't been through it.
Some brands however, miss out on this very soft part, given their penchant for placing strategy in linear boxes of cause and effect. So when you see a Subhiksha, it appears to be apologising for its presence. But a Domino's confidently surveys the world with its bold masculine fascia. And a SubWay looks cool and green. Coke bottles look sprightly and bubbly. Big ice cream brands struggle to out do each other in showing dollops of ice cream, but Natural Ice Cream of good ol' Bombay shows the fruit instead, scoring a march. So one stops and enters the parlour. A few slurps into real fruit, and brand loyalty starts galloping.
If you thought it is only about soft products, then think of Dove and you virtually experience cream. With Liril, despite the angrezi, Nimbu Paani in summers achieves that fabled fresh feeling. Just add a Karen Lunel under a waterfall and you pepper the freshness with escapist abandon, a private seeking of all, regardless of demographic and psychographic typecasting. Will only SEC A and B want to escape the straight jacketed world! That's like saying that only men with white hair want to be younger!
And then to call all this sweepingly mere "Look and Feel" is like calling everything below Madhya Pradesh - Madraasi and everything above - Punjabi
Equally, even photographs flounder in their inability to describe the 'jannat' (which again begs more descriptors) Kashmir, or the monument Taj, or the soaring reality of the Khajuraho temples. In pictures, Kashmir looks ordinary, the Taj, overated, and Khajuraho, puny - the exact opposite of what they are.
Language too, struggles in vain in its laboured attempt to describe Persons, Places and Things. Grammar calls these three 'nouns' and adds a category called 'adjectives' in its strenuous attempt to describe them.
Now what did Nehru see in Coorg? Or why did Indira Gandhi travel two days into a Kashmiri autumn? Merely to see the chinar leaves changing colours? No, it can't be so simple.
Let's go deeper. Why does a disproportionate part of the holiday experience in a remote wilderness, constitute the phase involved in getting there?
Now if Kashmir was only about a few defined contributors to its heady experience, then all we need to do is put a mound of grassy mud into an air-conditioned room, surround with water, give it a false ceiling of the azure of a Kashmiri sky (technology can perfect this) with a few more condiments added to this synthetic recipe. And bingo, we should get Kashmir! But don't we know better.
Which brings us all the way back to the sprightly subject of ambiance. Now ambiance is what retail formats thrive on. And because they struggle to add ingredients a la a synthetically created Kashmir, they fail to achieve the purpose.
In a mall in Dubai, they ski down on artificial powder snow, delighted to dole up their desert dreams. But a nature lover winces with the experience. Few people return to ski there.
The moral of the story - the mere assemblage of hard material in a retail format, does not a brand make. The 'living' experience is vital. Brands have to live and moreover, the powerful ones are those that titillate one of the five senses.
A Seagram scotch ad story line, set in a cold and misty Scotland, brings forth the fragrance of great scotch. It's like hot pakoras in the pouring monsoons of Mahabaleshwar. Or notice how the car ads convert full grown men to boys, as they watch shiny eyed, bright red cars careening, spinning and whizzing past wet roads. Or see the forbidding, threatening glint in your wife's eye, as a De Beers diamond pops out in media. It is known to cause blindness in alert husbands. Coffee ads and frothy fragrance, now who hasn't been through it.
Some brands however, miss out on this very soft part, given their penchant for placing strategy in linear boxes of cause and effect. So when you see a Subhiksha, it appears to be apologising for its presence. But a Domino's confidently surveys the world with its bold masculine fascia. And a SubWay looks cool and green. Coke bottles look sprightly and bubbly. Big ice cream brands struggle to out do each other in showing dollops of ice cream, but Natural Ice Cream of good ol' Bombay shows the fruit instead, scoring a march. So one stops and enters the parlour. A few slurps into real fruit, and brand loyalty starts galloping.
If you thought it is only about soft products, then think of Dove and you virtually experience cream. With Liril, despite the angrezi, Nimbu Paani in summers achieves that fabled fresh feeling. Just add a Karen Lunel under a waterfall and you pepper the freshness with escapist abandon, a private seeking of all, regardless of demographic and psychographic typecasting. Will only SEC A and B want to escape the straight jacketed world! That's like saying that only men with white hair want to be younger!
And then to call all this sweepingly mere "Look and Feel" is like calling everything below Madhya Pradesh - Madraasi and everything above - Punjabi
From "USP" to "Value Proposition"
Sometimes people continue to ask a question that was once fashionable: "what is the u.s.p" of the brand / product?"
But that's like wearing bell bottoms today!
Times have changed. Now there is product parity; there is technological parity and so there is no 'u' 's' 'p'. 'USP' is dead and gone - for good.
No single unique selling proposition can sell, for the simple reason that it is not unique anymore. But that is true as far the product goes. The product may be at par, but the brand may be unique. Confusing?
Consider this: while subway sells sandwiches, and could have chosen to sell simple sandwiches, they instead chose to sell health. Now one might argue that 'health' is therefore the u.s.p. But then it is not. Subway offers no one 'unique' thing or 'proposition'.
When you buy from Subway ("Eat Fresh!"), you buy (a) low calorie food, (b) fast food, (c) it is customised for you - so you participate in it's making, (d) it is very clean, (e) it has a different shape ( f ) and to signify that it has a new name i.e. 'sub', ( d ) and it is really expensive! (sometimes we consciously buy expensive stuff), ( e ) There is also a lot of 'greens'!
And of course you buy into some images, colours, tone and style...but on this later!
What subway has, is a "Value Proposition", which when written by a marketing manager, occupies a very large paragraph, unlike the the old fashioned proposition written in a single line. (even 'freshness of lime' is not a u.s.p. Remember, Cinthol Lime also has it.)
Now let's think of different elements of the McDonald's' Value Proposition - ( a ) Burgers and fries, ( b ) Really low priced, ( c ) Children love the 'place' (by the way, the food is secondary!), ( d ) Place for families, ( e ) Drive through (new concept and new name again!), ( f ) Like home (have you noticed how the floor is being cleaned while you are eating! just like home) - 'home away from home' was once their advertising theme, ( g ) Open kitchen, ( h ) Hygiene, ( i ) Steel kitchen (easy to maintain - also appears clean, ( j ) Happy meal, ( k ) Play pen, ( l ) Ronald McDonald seated outside, ( m ) Fast food, ( n ) Limited fare (consciously in order to keep costs down!).
It is funny how in these times of downturn, unbranded shops selling generic food products in the mall are shutting down. I have never seen a McDonald store shutting down in my life, even though their fastest selling product is Rs 20 burger. And no one calls it a dhaba!
Modern Brands have changed in their construct. Now they are multi layered, like an onion. Peel one layer and their is another one below. But yes, they have a core - but on that, later!
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