Comp Creating Iconic Brands

8/8/2019 Comp Creating Iconic Brands

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SPEAKER 1- RAHUL KANSAL- DIRECTOR, TOI BRAND, BENETT

COLEMAN CO.LTD.

CREATING ICONIC BRANDS IN THE INDIAN MARKET

EVOLUTION OF 'THE TIMES OF INDIA' BRAND

We have some fairly well thought through, fairly well codified thoughts

on how we look at the brand Times of India and the world at large. So I

thought I would like to share with you: on how we look at the brand and,

perhaps, that may give you a more generalized insight on what's happening

in branding.

I would like to summarize what this third wave of branding is all

about.The first wave was a wave created by the likes of David Ogilvy of

the world - where there were better mousetraps to be built - a world of

product attributes. The way brands worked, was by providing features thatworked for the individual - it's broadly the way brand

communication,brand marketing happened in that era. There were relatively

limited brands in each category, and there was enough space for people to

have concrete points of difference.

Gradually, with the proliferation of brands and with

the blurring of such differences, branding moved to interpreting product

differences in terms of benefits that actually answered some fundamental

human need. Pepsi, for example, depicted your ability to stand out as an

individual against the collective. Coke was the exact opposite; it was a

sense of brotherhood in a larger community. The idea of Whirlpool was the

sense of confidence of being a mom who could turn things around and

become a super-mom. So the benefit, or the feature of the benefit ofmobile phones, was the idea of being in touch with whoever you wanted to.

Therefore this was, in a way, being able to interpret attributes that

made sense and touched home deeper within. But even as this sort of thing

is beginning to get cluttered, because progressively most telecom brands,

for example, have moved up to the idea of communication and human

interaction as a broader theme. So even that space is beginning to look

crowded in some categories.

What is perhaps happening the world over, is the beginning of a new wave,

which is not so much about spelling out really what a brand does, but

merely creating a worldview which bonds with - resonates with - the

user's own worldview. This is all about empathy; it's about being brands

becoming soulmates that 'vibe' with consumers, which reflects theirworldview. If you look at the advertisements of Budweiser over the last

few years, it isn't remotely about what we are drinking anymore; it's

about male bonding, it's about chilling out, it's about being a certain

somebody. Anita Roddick's >The Body Shop< is a prime example. It's about

a worldview that says that the environment is getting ravaged. There is -

in the name of commercial marketing - all kinds of unethical testing of

products happening. It's a worldview that says, 'We'll play it straight;

we'll play it ethical.' So it's a worldview that actually begins to bond

with people. It'll be my attempt to share with you what The Times of

India<> worldview is, and how that reflects a changing reality ... the

way India is changing.

Let's start with newspapers, and the way they traditionally saw

themselves. By and large, most newspapers - not just in India, but alsoaround the world - have come up as the voices of interest groups of

various kinds. The Times of India itself, for example, was the paper

launched by the business community of Bombay. Similarly-reformers, social

organizations, lobbying groups, by and large most newspapers-came into

being by trying to change the world in the image of the promoter, of the

publisher. As a result, by and large they saw their role as a lofty one,

and while it pedestalized the industry, pedestalized itself through terms

like 'the fourth estate', there were statements like a senior editor of a

large paper saying that his was the second most important job in the

country. The whole business of newspapers was meant to be - and perhaps

it was - a relevant way of looking at newspapers at a time when India was

struggling to find its feet against the British, or struggling to find a

viewpoint in the modern world. The primary role of a newspaper wasperhaps education, emancipation, and other such fairly valid but lofty

ideas, because of which most newspapers tended to, so to say preach from

the pulpit. They deliberately chose a style that was often roundabout,

with complicated sentences. In terms of the choice of content, by and

large, it remained of a certain genre alone, confined to certain stuff

that mattered to the country - politics, government policy and so on. In

other words, overall the paradigm was very much that of a 'parent to

child' approach to communication, and it worked wonders. That was,

perhaps, the need of the hour in a Brahmanical sort of society with

strong ideals like 'mind over matter', ideals of building a new nation.

The newspapers were a guiding light in that process. Their design, and

therefore the internal content - politics, economics, state policy - was

marked by a relatively heavy, ponderous style with a sermonising tone.

It was catering to a need to feel educated and informed. This was a

society struggling to find jobs, to seem educated; the white-collar ethic

was all around us, and they played their role. But in the 90s, I think we

began to see some fundamental changes taking place in Indian society.

This was just midnight's grandchildren-the second post independence

generation that was around us. This was the generation tired of the

moping and the complaining of their fathers about all the constraints of

Indian life. Here was a generation eager to get on with it, to find new

avenues, to find new things to explore, fuelled by the opening up of the

economy with new brands flooding in, new media that exposed you to the

ways of the world. This was a generation impatient with the status quo,

keen to get on with it as though expanding not just in terms of theirjobs but in terms of their worldviews; they were willing to explore new

facets of life.

Another important aspect - particularly given the 'parent to child'

paradigm - most of the newspapers sort of occupied, is that over the last

ten years there's been a fairly dramatic change in the whole way we look

at authority.Traditionally,for example, if you look at the way popular

culture depicted fathers - you had the Dilip Kumar type of archetype, who

was a weighty man; or an Iftikaar. Most authority figures had that very

idealistic sort of aura, that gradually gave way to a man much more

'with-it', a 'vibing-with-his-kids' kind of a archetype, say, of the type

played by Anupam Kher in many films. If you see a watershed film like

Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, the whole character of Amrish Puri is set

up as the face of parenting that doesn't work anymore.

There was a fundamental change that was taking place in the way we looked

at authority. There was increasingly a dismissive air about people in

power - we saw the way politicians were depicted in films.Earlier in

films - from the 50s & 60s - there was a sort of a respectful,almost

reverential,air towards people in power because they were genuinely great

people till the 70s and 80s, where there was anger. It was a time of

unrest, and people were rebelling against the way the state works: and

that was captured best - in the embodiment of Amitabh Bachchan. It was a

time when people had gone beyond...they'd begun to lose interest in

scams; they were happening just too often, and they were beginning to say

"politicians aise hi hain". 

In any case, across-the-board-even in familial relationships-a loosening

up of relationships. We talked about father-son relationships;

friendships. Every story of friendship had to be yeh dosti kabhi nahin

todenge kind of a thing and look at the way Dil Chahta Hai has

depicted friendship. There was a certain coolness, a desire to chill, a

desire to have space around you. The workplace moved from pin-stripes to

Friday power dressing. You'll find examples across the board. There was

a sort of a quiet rebellion against the old parent-to-child paradigm.

People just wanted to be seen as equals and that, I am sure, you can see

in your own families. The way parenting is today with our own children,

is very different from what it used to be. 

So The Times of India - and I am just trying tocapture the essence of this whole thing and of course there are many

aspects that go into making the story at a fundamental level - we say,

'who are we to change the world? Who gave us the right to do so?' For a

newspaper person, it's a heady thing to feel that sense of power, that

you can actually change the society in you own image...but what is so

fundamentally different about newspapers as compared to any other

consumer product? We are here to be a part of our reader's life. The

reader is what he is; who are we to pass value judgments on what he is.

We are here merely to partner whatever his dreams are and to help him

master whatever misgivings or obstacles of his life. We are here to

perhaps read more insightfully than anybody else what really drives him,

what really his consciousness is all about, and cater to it. If - for

argument's sake - college admissions are far more important than thestate visit of an African President, then so be it. We'll carry it all

the way from our front page and devote a whole page to it inside. If

India-Pakistan cricket dominates our senses more some other matter of

economic policy, we take it all the way to our masthead. 

BONDING WITH READERS

We will be here to mirror, resonate...and just be with

readers in whatever avatar they are, and to which extent, instead

of our roles being seen as those of educationists and emancipators - we

see it as empowerment. 'Empowerment' sounds like a strong word, but

every morning, if the newspaper can just make you feel just that wee bit

more in control of your life - as in any case gloom, doom ,death, decay,

rapes and crime all around us - if the newspaper can do a slightlylighter take on that, you can actually see a silver lining on the clouds.

You can actually not appear like a lot of newspapers, who do that thing

about 'the end of the world is upon us'.Engage readers in whatever there

is going on in their heads - that's the way to be. 

Therefore - from a parent to child relationship - why

can't we move to an adult-to-adult relationship and just engage people in

interesting discussions on what could be or indeed in child-to-child

discussions. Perhaps like the new Maybach dream car in India that costs 3

crores!! - whatever these are, they're just some of the things that

people lap up in their child avatar. So the range of content

today, as you would perhaps note as readers of the paper, reflects the

reader's consciousness. It's happened in stages so you may not realizeit, but even way back - just about 10 years ago, in '93 or '94 - it took

something like Amitabh Bachchan's near-death episode on the sets of

Coolie - for a film star to ever make it on Page 1. It was a

rarity, but today it happens quite regularly - let's say the story of

Aamir Khan's remarriage or whatever may well be the subject of a Page 1

story... 

So, beyond politics, into the everyday aspirations and

concerns of readers-the sort of common stuff that happens all the time.

From news that are important, in 'all Caps' - from where we took the call

as editors and newspaper makers - to 'News You Can Use'. In other words,

we are redefining what news itself is. News isn't necessarily a post

facto on something that has happened in the last 24 hrs. It could bea ready reckoner; let's say a guide on how to approach college

admissions. It could be a guide on how to approach the SARS epidemic or

whatever. So it isn't news in the standard sense of the term - it's

anything that empowers readers and makes them feel engaged. 

Doing away with political correctness: Again, I

think there is a whole chapter here, which again could be subject of a

separate discussion. This whole manner in which I think society has been

organized, in general, tended to accord too much importance to the

institution of man. History books will give you blow-by-blow accounts of

kings and dynasties, but hardly give you a sense of what happened in the

popular culture of those times. Similarly, newspapers tended to be

obsessed with matters of state - it would tend to look at 'Prime MinisterAtal Bihari Vajpayee'...that's the five-word nomenclature by which he

would be referred to, time and again. We thought if the normal man on the

street has begun to change his relationship with those in power - and, in

any case, they are here to serve us, and it's not that we have anything

against politicians; it's just that empowerment is to make people feel

able to look the world in the eye. In any case, most of us think of

politics as a game of charades - we call it the dance of democracy - and

approach the whole thing with a slightly bemused sense of detachment; you

could call this whole thing a political akhada. You have, you

know humorists like Bachi Karkaria and Jug Suraiya writing about this,

from time to time, and you have cartoonists - in fact more than any other

newspaper in the country today. 

Some tell us we get carried away with all this at

times, and perhaps we do, especially when it gets difficult to read themore illustrative points. None of these are perfected formulae. We are

also groping our way along. There are times - the recent feedback may be

- when we are going overboard with some of these things. We are, today,

reassessing - pulling back a bit - but I think the larger point is still

valid. 

EMPOWERING A NEW GENERATION 

Respect for individual aspirations over the

collective: this is something that we've done across our editions.

There is always a difference in viewpoints with the way individuals look

at life, and the way society looks at it. Society will look at peoplefrom the IIMs going abroad as brain-drain, whereas the individual will

look at it as a great job cracked. When dressing habits change, there'll

always be a bit of a dispute between the way the individual feels and the

way the collective feels. The newspaper is a platform for such debates,

and wherever possible, we try and take the side of the individual. Day-

before-yesterday, there was an edit celebrating the fact that

Jassi had landed up on a postage stamp. Again, there is the whole

thing of political correctness as well. We think this is about eschewing

the standard established way of doing things and questioning assumptions

and giving way to new individual aspirations. 

Space in the relationship: The way we write the

newspaper. Newspapers tended to be bludging you into a particular pointof view, the way a lot of newspapers do, even now. I don't want to name

some of the others that you may be exposed to, but they come on very

strong to have you subscribe to a point of view. If we have a view, we

deliberately also give a counter view. We'll have the Sunday sort of

debates. If, for argument's sake, after Gujarat, the natural tendency of

lot of journalists (who tend to be a little left of centre) was to trash

the whole thing in a big way, we deliberately offered space to Balbir

Punj of the BJP to give his point of view. By this, we ensure - we

monitor this - to ensure that opinions of various sides flourish, so that

people are treated as adults and arrive at their own viewpoint.

Therefore, the way we summarize this is that we offer choices, not

judgments. 

Now let's just share some advertising that perhaps

captures some these basic thoughts. " 'Eat with your mouth closed'

'speed limit 50 kmph' 'no smoking' 'go slow' 'no left turn' 'one way'

'no entry' 'for adults only' 'don't argue with me' 'cover your mouth

when you yawn' 'ladies first' 'please stand in the queue' 'keep off the

grass' 'no overtaking from the left' 'horn ok please' 'switch off your

mobile phones' 'night clubs will shut down at 11' 'isn't it wonderful

that in a world of rules and regulations, at least one newspaper doesn't

tell you exactly what to do?' " OR " 'from the minute you are born, you

do not make your own choices: you don't choose your parents, your family,

your sex, your zodiac sign, the colour of your skin, or the sound of your

name. As you grow older, society conditions you further, to start

speaking sentences others want to hear. You learn to please everybody

without pleasing yourself. You are conditioned by your first cousin, your

class teacher, your television, your job, your boss...everyone. Aren'tyou glad that when you live in such a narrow world, at least one

newspaper offers you argument, discussion and debate...and the freedom to

make your own choices?" 

Many ways to look at what's right, what's wrong, or

why.,who are we to pass easy judgment? Let us take up various issues

which we have debated in the paper 'Should prostitution be legalized?'

'Why can't you wear a T-shirt with an Indian flag on it?' 'What's the

right day to order a drink?' 'Is it ok to have pre-marital sex?' 'Who

decides when a party is over?' So it's more about things that are on the

margin, when it comes to moral issues. This is about other aspects of

politics and international matters... "Is there only one way? Surely

not?!" We respect multitude of opinion. 

Do many of you recall the films of Times of

India brand from time to time? The idea was that of taking life as

it comes, instead of getting heated up about how things are. This

is a very effortless finger on the pulse of this multi-cultural entity

called India. 

So you have this whole irony that when a VIP comes,

you put up the stage and then you pull it down again. There's a whole

film devoted to just this, with people on the sidelines watching in a

completely bemused way: all this so-called maya jaal of politics

and the near-illusory world that we live in. The whole idea is for the

brand to 'chill'; in a sense, that's the - in the world of newspapers -wake up call in the morning. The Times of India has an essential

point of difference - it is a youth-to-youth dialogue or an adult-to-

adult dialogue. t's seeking to bond with people - not through any

specific product attributes, not through any specific wave or singular

dimension of what we really we mean to the reader. Perhaps the closest

word I could come to, if you go to look for the singular value, is

probably 'empowerment'. 

More importantly, it's just letting a reader say, 'Let

me be me'. I think that's the essential point. I think it recognizes this

growing urge amongst our young people to find that space, and it says

'Let me be me'...which is really what I would say is the essence of

The Times of India brand. 

(text - editorially modified)



RAJESH J. Ex VP –Mahindra and Mahindra

CREATING ICONIC BRANDS IN THE INDIAN MARKET

This story is about obsession, an obsession to retain market leadershipto become a global player, an obsession to prove that Indians can win

anywhere against anyone. This story begins in 1997; I joined the story in

the year 2000, so I wasn't really a part of this story when it began.

India was fast becoming a global marketplace. By 1997. all the world

majors were here; you had Ford, GM, Toyota...practically everybody who

was somebody in the global car market. Our market share was obviously

under pressure, and we needed to reinvent ourselves. We had, at that

time, four strategic choices: Choice 1 was to try and control the

environment, and many people actually tried to do that. Many people

considered trying to lobby with the government and prevent the

inevitable...that of India becoming a global market-place.

Choice 2 was alliances: maybe sell a part of ourselves out, get somebody

else to come in and work with us, or run our company for us. Choice 3

was, obviously, to get out of the business altogether. Many said that the

automobile business was not for the weak- kneed; it is a business which

needs a lot of money, a global scale, and so this was definitely one of

the possibilities. We had a fourth choice as well. That choice was -

'Fight to Win'. We chose to be 'David' in this fight with 'Goliath'. We

chose to be David because we were still dominating the Indian market at

the time this story started. So we were David in a manner of speaking in

spite of being a dominant player in the market. We decided to fight on

and take on the challenge of fighting the best in the world. We had a

vision...

Our vision was to continue dominating the utility vehicle market of which

we had a 50% share, and to become a global player. We gave this obsession

a name - we called it 'Project Scorpio'. This obsession was about playing

this game differently. We knew that we could not play this game the way

the rest of the people in the world played it; we didn't have that kind

of money. We did not have that kind of resources, so the only way we

could win was by playing this game differently. Hence, it was about

changing the rules of the game, about creating a new paradigm. This new

business model was called IDAM. IDAM stood for Integrated Design and

Manufacturing. I am going to talk about the three aspects of IDAM model.

It was about creating differentiation because that was, like I said, theonly way we could have won. I am going to talk the process we followed to

capture customer insight, optimizing the project cost, and the concept of

expanding the pond.

Let me start with customer insight focus. We had 500 people from the

cross-functional IDAM team who went out and met customers themselves.

This becomes very critical in a business like ours, because this business

is all about projecting into the future. You are talking to customers for



developing a product which is going to come out after five years and we

all know the pace of change; it's difficult enough to capture customer

insight for tomorrow. Obviously, it's a completely different kind of a

challenge to project what's going to happen five years later, when your

product is finally going to see the light of day! So this was a very

intensive project, which actually supplemented all the other market

research that we did. We followed a scientific process of defining theproduct specifications. We used a technique called QFD. We'll very

briefly touch on that later. A technique called PALS which is about

defining the areas in which you want to lead or be equal to competition

and setting up a functional image targets.

This is a kind of matrix which defines how we wanted to capture insights,

interact with customers at different stages of the development process,

including in terms of what we internally call the 'business plan

approval' stage. This is typically what a QFD matrix looks like, and

it's complicated. I am not going to scare you or spend time on it except

to say that on one axis you capture the customer requirements, prioritize

them, and against each requirement you actually determine what the

technical specifications are going to be. So you have a few 100 chartslike this when you are developing a product that has 4000 parts. It is a

highly time consuming, effort intensive exercise. We also define what we

call 'functional image targets', which is about various parameters which

customers experience in terms of steering, handling, climate control.

How you want to be, vis-a-vis different competitors in a market place.

This is an exploration of the concept which I called PALS, where you

decide in which areas you don't mind losing out, which areas you want to

be the best, and which areas you want to be equal to the competition.

Over and above all this quantitative numbers, was the task of culling out

of the insights. We distilled the insights into what the Scorpio essence

was, in few words. One of the words represented the customer insight was

'thrill' - we knew customers wanted 'thrill'. They wanted a sense ofpassion. They wanted power, but with all of this, they also wanted the

reassurance of luxury and comfort, and that's really the essence of what

Scorpio is. It's about providing customers thrill, passion, power but

with a driving experience which is comfortable and luxurious, much like

the analogy of the camping holiday. We all like going on a camping

holiday. We love the sense of adventure, the sense of thrill, the

excitement...but you still want to come back to the bed in your tent, and

you still want to have a regular toilet. So it's about mixing and

matching the sense of adventure along with a certain reassurance of

comfort and luxury.

CUSTOMER-DRIVEN VALUE

The other crucial insight was about the price - value equation. By this,

we don't mean commoditizing brand. It really means, in the Indian

context, providing great value to customers by giving them a lot at a

very good price, and that was one of the things which we consistently

worked on through the whole Scorpio development process. I spoke about

optimizing project cost: we needed to have the lowest project cost. Our

pockets weren't deep enough to develop a product of this kind with the

sort of money most other people in the world spent on projects like this.

We invested 120 million USD, which is about 600 crores. Sounds like a

lot of money. However, the global industry average for a project of the

Scorpio kind, which is a completely new vehicle with a completely new

platform - there was absolutely no carry over in the Scorpio from any of

the other product - typically, most of the world majors spent about a

billion USD on a project of this kind! One of the things which made it

happen was the whole concept of supplier alliances, which is reallysaying, "Let's use the best technologies in the world, ally with them,

give them our specifications but use their capability to develop rather

than build that capability ourselves."

So we allied with various people. We sampled up Korea for suspension, or

Germany for air conditioning, or the US for the external cladding systems

or even Lear for the interiors. We didn't do all this development

ourselves - we gave them the specs, we worked with them. We actually got

them to come and set up capacity right next to us. At the end of it, we

not only brought project cost down but we also had a fully indigenized

product. We really had to import nothing when we launched Project

Scorpio. The crucial thing was people; the team structure that we

followed was one that was cross functional, co-located people from crossfunctional segments. This was a big culture change in an old

organization. 90% of the decisions were taken at what was called the

'system team' level, and just 1% of the decisions would get carried

forward to the executive team. So there was a large amount of

decentralization of the decision making process.

The winning team was hence cross-functional, and very lean, multi

disciplinary, and co-located. The average age of the team that developed

the Scorpio was 27 years, a very young set of Indian Engineers. Just 120

of them worked on this and typically any other world major has at least

five to six hundred people who work on a project of this kind. It was a

completely inexperienced set of people - if their average age is 27,

obviously none of them have ever developed a vehicle before - a very veryyoung team, and just 120 of them.

This is a cover story, which a Detroit magazine actually did on the

Scorpio after the Scorpio was launched. It says that India's Mahindra &

Mahindra have done the unthinkable; is it a concept that can be used in

the US, Europe or Japan? The concept of being able to develop a product

like this in just 120 million USD captured the attention of people all

over the world, and they spoke about how we have actually used supplier

alliances as a way of creating a differentiated business model.

To sum up this part of IDAM process, we had an extremely low project

cost; a low product cost, which led to a very attractive launch

price of just five and half lacs, and yet an offering which was 'Best in

Class'. The task ahead for us was to expand the pond. We really needed tocreate the category. Yes, we wanted to retain market share. Yes, we

wanted to dominate the UV market but that was not a very large market. In

India, the penetration of utility vehicles to cars is about 15%; the

world average is about 40%. In countries like Indonesia, it's as high as

80%. Our task therefore was to really create the market, not just say we

want to be 50% of the non-existent or small market. We also said we want

to be 40% of the market in which we are going to address Scorpio

to...and, of course, we wanted to create a very strong global brand. In

RENDEZVOUS WITH SCORPIO

What was the Scorpio challenge? We needed to convert the obsession we

had into reality. We needed category growth strategy. I spoke about

expanding the pond. We needed to win the image war. One insight we had

was about customers- the most expensive thing that people buy is a house- and next is the car. Not as many people see you in your house as they

see you in your car! So image and status is a very crucial part of car

buying, because it is the most representative thing of what people see

you as. So image was a very important consideration for us in the whole

Scorpio game. We needed to create a differentiated customer experience.

The brand promise of Scorpio was 'functional, world-class, new generation

SUV, excellent styling, superior performance, car- like comfort at a

value price'. We actually exceeded competition, both through all

multinationals - Qualis and other cars - on all parameters, be it the

power, the torque or the capacity of the engines. Emotionally it was

meant to be an ownership experience, full of thrill, excitement and

power. The relationship was young, modern, premium and a city companion.

The brand promise was 'the luxury of a car along with the thrill of a newset of wheels' - coming straight out of the insights which we had defined

up front. 

The prism for Scorpio looked very different from the Bolero styling:

international looks, power, car-like comfort. The associated personality

was powerful, in control and sophisticated. The relationship was an

extension of his lifestyle, culture - which was living life on one's own

terms. User image was successful, new economy businessman, self-made,

evolved taste...a lot of the advertising you'll see as of how Scorpio

draws out of all these prism-defined parameters. For example, the evolved

taste, the villa used in the tennis court are all coming out of the

definition of what we wanted Scorpio to stand for. Self-image - a cut

above; expects the best from life because nothing else will do. We had tochoose our branding strategy. While we had progressed to Bolero, research

told us that Mahindra was still not seen as modern and technology tough

to take on the world players. We had different branding options. 

We could sub-brand, which is Mahindra Scorpio. We could go 'endorsed

brand strategy', which would be 'Scorpio from Mahindra'. We could go

completely independent, stand-alone brand, which is plain 'Scorpio'. We

chose 'Scorpio from Mahindra' which was the endorsed brand strategy

because we felt there was a lot of strength in the Mahindra brand. It

provided an assurance from Mahindra, which was known to be a large

company with a long-term commitment to itself...a very important

parameter in automobile buying. You don't want to buy a brand of a

company that is going to vacate the market, because then you lose resaleprice, you don't get parts and so on. Reassurance of who makes that

vehicle is indeed crucial. 

What is the task on hand? We'd said we wanted to

expand the pond. We had to really make this market grow. Just being 50%

share of the market was not going to be good enough to get the kind of

volumes we needed. We said we wanted to create the SUV category but we

said we also wanted to change the rules of the game. We did that by not

calling ourselves an SUV! So what we launched was a car, a car that would

make others suffer from low self-esteem; a car you walk into, not crawl

into; a car you look up to, not look down upon. The brand position,

hence, was 'car plus'. Why was it car plus? We said Scorpio was car-plus

because it's more spacious than a car, more powerful than a car; the more

stylish, more fuel efficient and yet as luxurious and comfortable as a

car. So the whole game was --- 'why buy a car, when you can buy a car-plus?' We translated that in the phase 1 of our advertising, which was

really to give a big brand feel. We said, 'cars will now suffer from low

self-esteem', we said, 'the car you walk into, not crawl into. The TV ads

were to drive premium imagery to make Scorpio seen as an aspirational

world-brand, and hence international feel was crucial. We wanted to be

seen as a preferred car and we had a grand unveiling film where the

product is the hero. We reinforced 'nothing else will do'.

This Scorpio got a phenomenal response when we launched it, but we didn't

stop at that. We interacted with customers, and we said we will need to

reinvent ourselves, and so within seven months of launching the Scorpio,

we actually upgraded it and we launched the new Scorpio! We also

followed it up with large amount of variety. Just when all other carsthought that the worst was over that was the new Scorpio. We

followed that up with the launch of a high-end variant, which does what

no other car does - it talks, which is the whole concept of the

talking car. So we kept innovating and reinventing ourselves and

we are going to keep on doing that.

There was a role of retail in how old Mahindra showrooms looked like.

This was the brand we inherited and we needed to work on and hence

brand at retail was one of the crucial parts of the integrated

marketing effort. When we launched Scorpio, we had 40 newly-designed

showrooms that symbolized the spirit of adventure, sportiness, and

technology, carrying through brand values right to the retail point. Weactually started work on this right when we did Bolero with our own

outlet, at Chowpatty and that was the look we have cascaded. Today, we

have 120 outlets with this look, and embedded with the philosophy of the

customer being the nucleus. There are no sales counters; everything comes

to you in a meeting room-a huge amount of emphasis on people and

processes. This was the new identity of Mahindra, and this is what you

see at the 120 outlets across the country today. 

There was a huge training challenge. We started working with McKenzie on

a project called Fast Forward, well before we launched even the

Bolero. In the year 1999, we'd actually started working on upgrading our

dealer process. We partnered with NIS during the launch phase. We

profiled on the people at our dealership through an exhaustive exercise;decided who were the right people to keep; brought in new people; set

manpower norms in terms of the number of people that we would need;

separated Scorpio - Bolero selling from the rest of the M&M range;

specified the kind of salaries that they would have to give. Uniforms

and other things got standardized with high intensity training. A whole

change management occurred at the dealer point, which is a crucial part

of the brand experience. We launched the Top Gear club and we do a

host of activities, which of course, has the conventional things too,

we said, "Nine eminent judges chose it the Car of Year, what does that

say about other cars? It's the Car of the Year; other cars

remained nominees; sorry, 'other cars"! We also got the National Award

for R&D from the Government of India; this award was being received by an

automobile company for the first time. We were also selected 'The most

successful brand of the 2003 Brand Derby', in Business Standard. We got

the 'Launch of the Year' Award, in the India Leadership Summit.

We got the Indian Express Award for 'Excellence in Marketing and

Brand building'. We got the Ad Club Award for advertising effectiveness.

We got MV's Award for Media Innovation. What satisfies us more is that we

got very high ratings on customer satisfaction. We said this is a great

way of telling and reassuring our customers and potential customers that

this brand actually delivers high on customer satisfaction. So we set 91

points to make one simple point to other cars, 91 points to Scorpio and

the rest to other cars, leveraging the fact that Scorpio actually scored

more than every car priced in the 9-lacs range, which is occupied by the

Lancer, Accent, Ikon, all of those.

To sum up: if one needs to succeed, you need a vision, anobsession to succeed. People, teamwork play a crucial role.

People have to feel passionate about wanting to deliver; to win; to stand

out; high amount of customer focus, because customer focus is what

actually enabled us stay ahead; rational benefit leading to an emotional

benefit. Scorpio actually had a very, very strong rational benefit. If

Scorpio didn't have such a strong rational benefit, I don't think any of

the advertising would have made any difference. So for brands to be

successful, they have to work 'rational to emotional', and not just at an

emotional delivery level; high amount of differentiation focus and need

to again stand out from the crowd. Do something that people don't expect

you to do; learning that big-scale brand transformations are possible.

We actually see this as a huge transformation from where Mahindra was

seen four years back to where it's seen today. We see a rub off on ourother ranges - mostly seen in rural areas - a huge rub off from the

success of Scorpio, because customers are convinced that this company is

capable of producing a technologically advanced product, with consistency

in everything that we do across time and touchpoints.

The tone and tenor of the Scorpio brand have remained unchanged. Press

ads followed the same language and the same look, ensuring a high amount

of consistency over two years and across every touchpoint. We believe our

technology was customer driven, a technology that was relevant. We were

very focused on target costing; we said our product couldn't exceed 5.5

lacs, because it had to be priced level with C-segment cars, and so we

worked back to see what best we could give the product at that price,

which was great value. We target-costed, we value-priced and, at the endof the day, we've got very profitable growths, and we are growing fast.

PRODUCT BRAND TO COMPANY BRAND

J SURESH, CEO AND EX-DIR, MTR FOODS LTD.

THE FUTURE IS IN CORPORATE BRANDING

On the topic of product brands, I'll start off with a quote about the corporate

brands, from Stephen King, of JWT; he says, "Corporate brands will be the only

successful area of new brand building in the future." Please note the words very

carefully. It says very clearly that corporate brands will be the only successful

area of new brand building in the future, as technology functions functions

as a great leveller - consumers increasingly depend much less on their evaluation

of a single product. 

This very succinctly sums up what is corporate branding, which is happening a lot

today. I think he has been a little subtle in talking about corporate brands and I

having worked a lot in product brands-almost 17 years in Hindustan Lever, which

was very much focused on product brands-I can very confidently tell that I think

the era of product brands, if not dead already, is coming to an end. Why

am I saying this? Let us look at some facts and figures.

If you look at the top 10 brands - I am talking about a world-

wide survey, which has been done by Interbrand Corporation - you can look at

this figure:

Out of the top 10 brands, there is just one brand, which is a product

brand! If the same survey had been done 15 years back, you would have

seen brands like NescafÈ, Crest toothpaste, or Lipton Tea. But today, just one out

of world's top 10 brands is a product brand, and if you look at the kinds of

brands which are advertised now - because typically product brands figure quite

a lot in FMCG, durables kinds of industry, which are large advertisers - it is prettyshocking. 

In the UK scenario, 10 years back or I think in the 80s, 19 out of 25 brands that

were advertised were corporate product brands. Today that is down to

one , which again very clearly shows that the era of product brands is coming to

an end if it has not become extinct already. Closer home, if you say, "Let me

count the number of product brands, which have been created in the recent

times" - you can count them on 5 fingers .Even 5 fingers may not be necessary,

because there are not many product brands, which have been created in recent

times in India. 

I actually put brands across different categories. A survey done by Business

Today of the top 10 marketers of last year - 8 out of 10 marketers have company

brands, and only 2 have product brands! This very clearly shows, we are entering

a phase where you would be largely dealing with corporate brands rather than

the product brands. 

Why this has happened? If you look at certain things happening around us -

classic marketers, product brand marketers - Unilever, for instance are talking

about power brands. They want to really restrict the number of brands and bring

it down to a certain number of power brands. P&G is talking about 18 world-

wide brands, which they are going to focus on. So even the classic product brand

marketers are talking about restricting the portfolio and focusing on fewer

brands. 

PRODUCT BRANDS LOSE THEIR SHEEN

Why this has happened? If you look back, marketing literature always advises:

"Don't get into corporate branding; it's always better to go for product

branding." I would like to engage some discussion on why this sheen on product

brands has been lost and why the focus is shifting totally towards corporate

brands.

I will actually do this through a little case study, looking at the era of productbrands. I think it is important that we know what's been the key significance of

product branding, where I will draw parallels between HLL tea brands which is

largely a set of product brands and TATA tea, which is a corporate brand. Then

put up a framework in terms of what are the new paradigms of brand

development. I then move on to a case study of my current company, to see how

we are using some of these paradigms of brand development to develop MTR as

a strong corporate brand and also give a couple of case studies and other

examples of how, in the current scenario, it is the corporate brand which alone is

going to survive in the future: giving the examples of South West Airlines and

Nivea Cream.

Before I talk about the case study of HLL versus TATA tea, let us very quickly go

back to 80s and early 90s. What has been the environment? There have been a

lot of changes - compared to what the environment was in 80s and what it is

today - but I focused on 3 key things which are important from the brand point

of view. If you look at the consumers, they used to be much more passive and

less complicated - a little demographic segmentation, some amount of lifestyle

segmentation used to do the trick. They were much more passive and verygullible, I would say - you could actually shape what they thought about brands!

The media were not as fragmented as they are today. In fact, if I go back to my

brand manager days, the media plan always used to be a fight between which

Chitrahaar - the one on Friday or on Sunday! That used to be the major

debate, and if you really put your advertisement in Chitrahaar and Hindi

feature film, you practically reached the entire country without much difficulty!

That used to be the kind of media which used to operate in the era whenproduct brands really ruled the roost. Distribution used to play a very significant

role in brand building because larger companies had a bigger say in the

distribution and that always used to give them an edge in branding. This is the

part of branding which has been ignored. Actually, distribution systems have

built a lot of product brands in the country. Distribution used to be a big thing.

So when you have an environment like this, the simple marketing mantra used

to be: ' identify some product segments, some consumer benefit segments and

then launch a brand, and you won't go wrong as long as you have identified a

segment that's large enough. You won't go wrong in developing a very strong

brand.' So that used to be the scenario in 80s and early 90s.

Now let me explain how this scenario was utilized, based

purely on my experience of working in Hindustan Lever-how Hindustan Lever

used to leverage this kind of scenario and do a lot of product branding kind of

activity. This looks like a very complicated chart but it is quite a simple chart. If

you look at the Y axis, it is called the emotional benefit and X axis is the

functional benefit. So if you take a category like tea and plot what benefit

segmentation we can have on the emotional side and the functional side, this

will emerge thus. There is a strong tea; there is a good tasting tea; there is a

fresh tea; there is a top quality tea (in terms of the tea leaves); the orthodox tea

(which is again a type of tea), and a 'good colour' tea...all of which are - as all of

you know being tea drinkers - that these are the typical attributes one looks at

when you have a cup of tea. If you look at the emotional side: what is the

emotional benefit you get out of having tea - something like mental toughness,

comfort and sharing with family, because a 'tea moment' is something that you

always share with the family. Also, a status symbol - something you like to show

off - the upper end tea; feeling fresh, physically strong..

These could all be artificial - I am not saying that these are the kinds of

emotional benefits consumers actually see in tea. But this is how we are

used to create artificial postioning by creating small cells - which have on one

side, the emotional part of the benefit, and on the other side is the functional

part of the benefit. Then, the branding exercise is very simple. You just try and

fill up as many cells as possible with different brands. That is the genesis of the

product brand, and how product brand companies used to operate.At least in

Hindustan Lever, across different categories,- I can say with confidence that this

is a chart that was used practically for each category, You sort of launched

product brands filling up these matrices! That's how things used to

work.

I think it is fair attempt to say that Red Label means that a bit of sharing with the

family;A1 is for mental toughness...it's a reasonably a good job as far as creating

differentiation in the minds of the consumer is concerned, because if you really

analyze the tea, there might not be much difference in the base quality of the

tea.I think you must have got a feel of how to get the product brands going with

this kind of a matrix. I may be simplifying to exaggerate my point, but I think it is

a fairly simple formula because the environment was like this. Competition was

not much. What used to happen then is, you pushed it into the fairly large

distribution system. Your trade was supporting you, because you have a larger

company presence.

BRAND BUILDING - THEN AND NOW

We had a mass media - show the ad in a Chitrahaar and Hindi feature

film, and you've created a brand overnight, to some extent largely driven by the

distribution. The marketing team could actually be heard saying that they

created a differentiation and hance created a brand. Because what happens is -

in a situation like this - you will always find some regional markets getting

picked up by the communication or aligning themselves with the

communication, and then a particular brand becomes pretty large in a particular

regional market. Our country being very large, that itself will give a very sizeablebusiness. So it was a very successful strategy. In practical terms, I would say once

in 5 years, we used to create successful and large brands - 100 crores to 200

crores kind of brands. This was the scenario till the mid 80s. 

Now let's look at what happened to TATA tea during this time. If you look at

between 1965-1985, TATA tea actually followed the HLL model. They agreed that

this was the way to go - they had their own set of brands, which they felt would

have the taste benefit, the mental toughness, the strength / freshness benefit

etc. But they failed miserably because they neither had the distribution strength

of Hindustan Lever and - since they were frittering away their resources across

so many brands - neither could they create a pull for any of the brands, because

they were spending money across 4-5 brands. So it was a free run as far as

Hindustan Lever was concerned. Then the scenario changed. What really

happened in 1985? 

I think they somehow realized that, is there a tea you

can share with family, if it is meant for mental toughness? They asked, "what

do we look for in a tea?" I want to take fresh tea, that's number 1;

because it's a purely a physical product benefit, you will like to have a fresh tea.

Number 2 is that you are groggy in the morning or whenever you feel a little bit

down, you perk yourself up so you actually have a cup of tea. So this is, I would

say, a generic benefit of the category 'tea'. So they said, "Let us strongly

position ourselves on the category benefit of tea and bring in the TATA name,

because if corporate brand has to work, it has to work on the strength of the

company, of the values, the competencies of the company. So what they did was

- TATA had these gardens, which is a key differentiator vis-a-vis Hindustan Lever -

to say that if you are going to position the tea as fresh tea, I have the

gardens, so I will be able to give fresher tea than anyone else. 

So a lot of credibility came from the fact that they owned gardens. So now you

can see a subtle difference between a product brand and a corporate brand.

Corporate brands largely depend on the differentiation that we are creating in

the minds of the consumer through advertising. Here, we go slightly beyond

advertising, beyond communication, to give a genuine benefit to the consumer

by virtue of certain strengths, certain competencies, certain assets I have created

for my company. So that's the subtle difference emerging between a product

brand and a corporate brand. Then they used the brand name 'TATA tea'

because there is a tremendous trust associated with the TATA brand

name.

They leveraged the plantation and put in the brand as TATA

tea and then they had a packaging - which also goes with communicating the

freshness benefit - the polypack packaging was slightly different from the carton

packaging which Hindustan Lever tea used to have in those days. They became a

leading brand within the first 5 years. 20 years of failures reversed 'overnight'. In

just 5 years, they created a brand which became fairly large, very close to

number 2. Red Label is the number 1 brand in the country. Tata tea came very

close to Red Label within 5 years of launch. 

What were the reasons that TATA tea was able to create its position? The firstone is a starting point of a corporate brand getting into a FMCG tea category and

the second is after they had evolved and become a fairly large player in the

category, how they have actually leveraged the brand 'TATA tea'? The first one

was focused 100% on freshness then they actually moved to the area of taste.

TATA tea then slowly started inching towards 'nation's tea' kind of a positioning

,which Red label always used to occupy. What it really used was the same

matrix; if you really plot, what TATA tea did is, they occupied different segments,

just what a corporate brand will do. If you do your job properly, you will blur all

those artificial differences, which you have created in the minds of the

consumers. For some people, it definitely 'gave' a very fresh tea; for some

people, it 'gave' a tasty tea and for other people it 'gave' a top-quality tea,

showing the gardens and tea-picking happening directly at the gardens.

So a large number of those cells that I mentioned earlier - where you can plug in

different product brands - become unavailable to people, because consumers

start perceiving differently. They not only saw just tea per se, or maybe a brandname attached to tea, like A1 or Red label or Taaza. They started seeing

something beyond that. They started looking at TATA: what the values of the

company are, and what that company has done in the past, all those small things

go onto this brand and then everyone started picking out their own benefits

about the brand. This is a good case of how a category where a lot of product

brands got shifted towards corporate branding, and how it enabled a company -

which actually failed a number of times by launching product brands - to become

successful with a corporate brand. 

SUCCESSFUL BRAND POSITIONING TODAY

Now let us move into the second part of my presentation. What is the difference

between the business environment in the 80s and what it is today? I think there

is a major shift in the way one positions the brand. It used to be narrow

niches and sometimes, artificial differentiation in the minds of the marketing

people, in the minds of the brand managers.

If you want a very successful brand today - a very long lasting brand where you

can make margins, which should not become a commodity over a period of time- I think you should have a much stronger benefit and that 'much stronger

benefit' is typically something that is generic to a category. Number 2 is

consumer intimacy. I think I don't have to tell the audience here, that there is a

major difference between consumers of 80s and the consumers of today. They

are much closer to the company. The internet has collapsed the distance

between the company and the consumer In his book, the management guru C.K.

Prahalad has written about co-creation. Actually, you are creating a brand along

with the consumer. They are now much more closer to the company. We as a

mass product FMCG Company, get almost 15-20 emails on a daily basis about

our products.

How do you deal with this is extremely important in building the brand. You have

the emergence of self-service stores, where consumers are looking, feeling the

brand and then buying. They are no longer picking up something passively from

the shopkeeper. Company retail outlets are now emerging, where the

experience that the consumer gets is extremely important. The consumer todayis much more individualistic compared to what she was in the past. She is not

swayed by the herd mentality. In advertising we use the term 'herd mentality',

where you are able to capture one group of people that pulls around the others.

Today, the consumer is much more individualistic. Their evaluation is not purely

based on styling and superficial differentiation but on actual differentiation: is

the product is delivering value, is it delivering the sundry promised experiences?

When they send, for example, a web communication to the company, what is

the kind of response they get? How do they see the brand in the shops? Theseare all making a big impact in building the brand. She is much more different

today and she is also cynical, not easily swayed by the advertising - and much

more knowledgeable today than in the 80s, when the product brands survived.

As far as the product is concerned, the big difference, of course, is quality ( I am

taking it's base, in the sense that it used to be good in the past, it continues to be

good in the current scenario) but more importantly, people are not just looking

at the product, they are actually evaluating that as an experience - the

brand as an experience, not just as a product!

More importantly, the execution today is no longer the preserve of the

marketing department. It is not as if the brand manager or marketing manager

just go and launch the brand. It is a team - which actually starts from the CEO

and goes down to all the functional directors. If you are going with certain very

strong propositions on quality, unless the production director buys the point,

you are not going to deliver product of superior quality. So it is important that

everyone you are going to for a value proposition - unless your commercialdirector buys into that - you are not going to have a value proposition for the

consumer. Ergo, it is no longer a private preserve of the marketing department

or the brand manager; it is a total company effort that is going to drive the brand

in the future. If I had to put a theoretical framework to the corporate brand, I

would show these changes...positioning consumer intimacy, product and

execution changes.

WHAT DRIVES THE CORPORATE BRAND?

Basically, it's the total brand experience that is going to lead to the trust,

because when you are having a cynical, knowledgeable set of consumers whose

trust you have to earn, you have to re-orient the company to deliver the

consumer benefit. If you don't do that, then again it will be some artificial,

superficial differentiation that the consumer of today will totally reject. So if you

are going in for the kind of positioning where the brand has to emanate from the

vision, core values, core purpose of a company, then I think it is much easier to

accomplish that with a corporate brand than with a product brand. Allow me to

explain this principle with a case study about MTR brand development. Then I'll

touch upon two cases - South West Airlines and Nivea cream - on how the vision

and the entire activity system of the company drives the corporate brand.

If you look at MTR as a company, it started in 1924 as a small restaurant. But

over a period of time - the last 60-70 years - it has had a legendary status as far

as the city of Bangalore is concerned, where it has been a tourist attraction,

where you know people actually visit the restaurant as one of Bangalore's tourist

attractions; it's a legendary restaurant. The key thing here is a very strong

orientation, for over a period of time, the brand has built a very strong equityover the area of quality, in the area of the very hygienic way the product is

produced and delivered. This is the restaurant that started the habit of sending

the consumers through the kitchen to show them how hygienically the food was

prepared. That was the equity of the restaurant ... and no skimping on the

ingredients: a fairly large supply of quality ingredients, which made the

restaurant quite famous and had core purpose-to feed the people with love and

affection. So that is the kind of core purpose the restaurant has built over the

years and the value is integrity and wholesomeness.

In comparison - just to give one example how integrity is a very intrinsic value of

the brand - many of you might know that when Emergency was declared in

1976, the government imposed certain price restrictions on products ...

Idlis at this price, dosas for this price. What the restaurant did was

- they just could not manage to sell at that price because of the kind of quality

they were giving - they decided to close down the restaurant rather than drop

the quality and manage the pricing. So that's the integrity value which has beenbuilt over the years, something which is very integral to the brand.

So we have to transfer these core values and benefits to the

consumers, because ultimately if consumers align with our company core values

and core purpose, then we are building a very strong brand. That is possible onlywhen we do a corporate brand and not a product brand. Since we have a variety

of segments in which we operate, we have to really consider if we do it as one

brand: or - for each segment, each category - we have another brand. If we say

we have to build a very strong brand and particularly in the area of food, where

trust plays a very strong role, then we had to say that there was one brand-

MTR-that we had to build, because it has a core purpose, core values,

built over time, which are very intrinsic to any food brand. That's why we had a

vision saying that we provide authentic Indian vegetarian food experience acrossthe world. It is an ambitious vision for a small company. 

When we did a consumer survey, what we realized was: you can see three parts

prominently - 'Authentic', 'Vegetarian', and 'Across the World'. They stood out

very strongly. MTR gives an authentic taste and our vegetarianism is very

strongly attached to MTR and also we have a chance to play on the global

ground rather than doing it in India, albeit the number of people who knew

about the brand was limited. We know that we have lot of strengths. The idea isto really carry forward this strength and make more and more people aware of

the strength. So that's the key task really. How did we go about developing the

brand? On the positioning; translating this vision into positioning. 

Another important thing about corporate brand is your vision; core purpose and

core values are going to be very much aligned to your positioning. So you can see

the positioning is not very much different from our vision. It is about providing

pure and perfect food, and offering complete meal solutions. Why we are saying

this? There is a heritage, there is a positive product experience and there is a

huge variety that we offer. A 'complete meal solution' kind of a positioning was

very right for our brand. In a product brand sort of scenario, typically what we

would have done is created an advertising focused on just three aspects, saying

that we offer pure and perfect because we have the heritage. But, more

importantly, what we did was, we tried to strengthen our competencies to

ensure that we are able to really deliverwhat we are claiming on a large-

scale basis! That's why we said that we would be focusing on our sourcing

and manufacturing processes, on our culinary expertise and innovation ...

because that will give us a variety. We focused on how we managed the

complexity.

That is what consumer wants. He wants a lot of variety in food. It is a very

complex operation, so we should know how to manage our complexity if we had

to deliver that promise of a complete meal solution. You can again see a

difference here, where we have to gear up the entire company towards

delivering that benefit. That's the exercise we have started today; we are not

looking at just advertising to create the brand benefit, but gearing up the entireorganization towards delivering the promise and if - over a period of time - we

are able to align our consumers through a very positive experience on our core

values and core purpose, I think we would have built a very strong brand. So

what we did was, we created advertising. We picked up a few products and

created advertising which would work synergistically towards the corporate

brand.

So you can see how different categories. On the one hand it's 'ready-to-eat',which is very modern, and on the other hand we have sambar, which is a

very traditional product. We are able to bring it under the umbrella brand of

MTR keeping the 'pure and perfect' - i.e., the kind of food we are going to deliver

uppermost in mind. What it really did was: we had a very sharp growth in 'ready-

to-eat'-in fact, it helped us to become a dominant market leader with more than

70% share in that category. Gulab Jamun is, for us, a fairly large category;

we got nearly 50% growth!

We had almost 70 products and 200 SKUs. There was a fairly

large growth across all SKUs. We could not have created so many brands, not

even 5 or 6, advertised them all equally ... because if we run Gulab Jamun,

we exclude the others. So everything works synergistically and it really leads to

the growth of the Brand rather than growth of just that particular SKU and the

particular category that we are advertising. Here is a case where you are aligning

the vision / core purpose and the values, and core competencies, positioning the

culture of the company to create a very strong brand. I think this is where the

heart of a corporate Brand lies. And the fact is that you can only do this

with a corporate brand; you can't do it with a product brand. So this is the case

study as far as MTR is concerned. Before I conclude, I will just show a couple of

charts. 

South West Airlines: it is a pretty complicated chart, but just focus on the yellow

circles. This is another example where - having decided a position, that of giving

the lowest price to the consumer - how various activities of the company were

geared to deliver that. It is not just a positioning in the minds of the consumer

created by advertising: it is a total activity system which has been created

to drive that positioning of a low-cost airline ... again, a classic case, which you

can't do with a product brand. You cannot have different activity systems

promising different consumer benefits; you must align the entire company

system to deliver that benefit. If you don't do that today, then the trust you are

going to create for your brand is going to be that much limited. 

NIVEA: This is another case because there is one question, which will always

come in your mind: is it possible to operate across different categories with the

same corporate brand name? When I was with Hindustan Lever, we had a task

force to look at Dove - which is an international brand - to see how it

could be extended. In the example, steps which we took to develop the Dovebrand is seen in the Nivea cream brand. Nivea cream - which is a very strong

brand in Europe - used to operate with only one brand name : Nivea. What is the

core position of the brand? Caretaker of the skin! Using this positioning,

they have Nivea body, Nivea visage, Nivea sun, Nivea for men and Nivea shower

and bath talc. All the sub categories leverage on skin care equity!

KBS ANAND, VP (MKT AND SALES) ASIAN PAINTS INDIA LTD.

PRODUCT BRAND TO COMPANY BRAND

PRODUCT BRANDS vs CORPORATE BRANDS

Asian Paints was a collection of a large number of product brands and we

migrated to a company brand. All of you are aware that there are a number of

types of brands: you have individual brands, company brands, umbrella brands,

sub-brands, etc. I'll quickly go through what each of these is. In a company

brand,the organization is the brand. In many cases, it is also the

product brand, where the company name serves as the endorser, as we

saw in the case of Tata Tea. You have a number of sub-brands, which are

connected to the company brand or master brands. Sub-brands are used toextend the brands into a new segment - they augment or modify the main

brand.

What do the company master brands really do? As mentioned, they are

endorsers. They provide credibility and substance to the offering. Typically, they

reflect the organizations and they provide values like leadership, trust, and

quality. You have the example of HDFC, where your have a lot of offerings that

reflect the intrinsic values of HDFC. Company master brands also act like drivers.They give the purchaser a reason to buy because of the trust or familiarity with

that brand. What are the kinds of portfolios possible? Five years back, at Asian

Paints, we were literally a house of brands, we had a whole series of products.

Like P&G's Tide, Head & Shoulders, Ariel-where there is a separate brand for

each product market combination. At the other extreme, what we call a branded

house like HDFC - everything comes under the HDFC banner. In between, there

is the sub-brand approach, where there is a sharing of driver responsibilities with

a number of sub-brands. You have cases like IBM ThinkPad, Sony Walkman,etc., so the issue really is - how do we select the approach to be followed, and

what should be the company's brand portfolio? From our viewpoint, when you

build a portfolio, it depends upon four essential factors.

One, it depends upon the business strategy of the company. It depends on the

consumer brand strategy, brand behaviour in that category, the existing brand

portfolio of the company and real cost of brand building. If you look at

consumer brand behaviour, it is actually one of the most important

determinants of the portfolio strategy...but it is dependent on two purchase

variables. The first is the frequency of the purchase. Those of you who smoke,

buy cigarettes every day - so you have products which you buy every day and

there are products you buy once in ten years, once in five years. With high

frequency goods, there is a good possibility of a relationship developing on

account of multiple interactions with the brand. With a low-frequency purchase,

although possible, it is much tougher to build relationships and building a new

brand may take an enormous amount of time. 

The second is the involvement level, which basically says what is the level of

emotional, financial or technological risks involved. If an item is going to cost

you five rupees, you might not hesitate to try it out, but it's going to cost you five

lacs, the decision is not going to come so easily; you are going to get intimately

involved in the purchase. When you buy a house, you spend 50 lacs; the

involvement is even higher. So, dependent upon the financial factor, the

emotional factor and quite often the technology, the risk element varies. Where

the risk is higher, the level of reassurance required increases the need for a

company brand or a main brand focus. Thus, the involvement level dependent

on the frequency of purchase besides the time taken to build a brand;

involvement and risk level decide the degree of the organizational brand

support required; and brands buying behaviour will give pointers to the kind of

portfolios in different categories. It also has a bearing on the quantum of

resources required to build a brand. 

Third, another obviously critical factor is the business strategy. The brandportfolio is based on the markets in which it wants to compete. For example - a

case in point - today, Asian Paints is spread over 22-23 countries. In some of

these countries, calling yourself Asian Paints is an issue, because Asian

companies are looked down upon, so it is an extremely important factor - the

geographies you are in, on the categories you want to be in - which determines

the strategy you are going to adopt in branding. The choice of business is the

key factor affecting the portfolio and it also depends that how related or

unrelated are all the areas that you are in, how will they impact each other. The

last and obvious reason - probably the reason while most people are going into

corporate branding or umbrella branding - is the cost of brand building. The cost

of building brands today is the reason why everybody is going that way, because

advertising cost itself is multiplying year after year with increasing grades,

multiple channels, etc., and promotions are also extremely expensive. 

Summing up, the three main factors that determine the type of brand portfolio

are the business strategy, consumer behaviour and the cost of brand building.

But corporate brands also need to be focused, and as long as what the corporate

brand stands for is the same across a category or a range of products, corporatebrand building makes sense. Basically saying the values are the same across the

range of products - corporate brand building is logical. As all of us know, the

essential difference between a product and a brand is that apart from meeting

physical needs, it also provides an emotional value to the

customer. 

CREATING A BRAND 

But how is a brand created? It is created through past experiences with the

product, advertising, and interactions. In corporate branding, the emotional link

with the consumer should be common across all the products and services,

across the corporate brand, only then does it really work. A policy followed by

many global leaders is to build umbrella brands that span across multiple

businesses and products. Given certain core competencies they possess, there

needs to be something basically intrinsically common - a strength that builds the

brand. The core competence is like the foundation of the corporation and

umbrella brands the roof. You can have brands across multiple categories. For

example, Honda has a range of products that includes automobiles, generators,

motorboats, etc., but gradually, customers recognize the banner brand -

Honda - explicitly or implicitly, as the one with the skill-franchise in

gasoline engines. It's almost the core competence of Honda.

However, an umbrella does not have to cover the entire line of the products.

Quite often, it happens that the values you want in a certain area differ from the

corporate brands' values. For example, Toyota recognized that a brand could

not be easily stretched to cover luxury cars aimed at Benz buyers, and launched

Lexus as a separate identity. Here Lexus definitely

meant something different to the consumer. A company that did this, in another

way, is Omega. When they really wanted to go mass scale, they

launched a totally different brand called Swatch for a relatively

less affluent buyer, representing totally different values to the consumer. Thus

we see that wherever products under an umbrella brand communicate similar

values to the consumer, they work; where they have distinctly different values,

there is need for separate brands. Over the years, consumer durables and

service providers have used corporate brands, with a few exceptions, for their

product range. There is a whole series of examples here - Indian and foreign -

all of these are largely durables and corporate brands but there are a few

exceptions. In the case of service brands, it is becoming increasingly important

in the future to position organizations and brands in the consumer's mind, and

quite often the service element in the brand acts as a discriminator. A lot of

banks, financial institutions, hotels, use this as the main marketing mode.

Coming to the Asian Paints story, if you look at paint, it's very close to ACC..orCement. It's a near-consumer durable category, for most of us. Along with

categories like cement, tiles, laminates, the 'paint' category is one where the

final product - which I would like to define as the 'painted surface' - does not

display the brand name on it. Unlike other consumer durables like your

television set or car, you don't see the brand every day. You forget the brand

once it's been used on the wall. In addition, the frequency of interaction with the

consumer is extremely low. It's not like abroad, where they paint their homes

every year. In India, we are lucky if people paint their houses once in 3 to 5years. If you look at the consumer brand behaviour, the involvement levels with

painting are generally on the lower side, but for the time when the activity is

actually undertaken and thought of, the financial and emotional risk is high. Why

is this so? Because actually the cost of painting your house is more than the

price of many durables which you are intimately involved with, and if - in the end

each campaign rather than dividing it over many brands and we have not seen

any adverse effect on the sales of the products whose brand names we dropped

totally and converted to the corporate brand. 

SERVICES TO REINFORCE THE BRAND

We now need to look at services, where the corporate brand is both an endorser

and a driver, but where it is equally critical to build-in the values of the corporate

brand into the services. So: 'Services at Asian Paints'. Today, we are moving

towards a service economy. 'Why services?' is no longer a question. A

competitive environment has forced sellers to provide service to consumers.

Earlier, we used to provide products, now we have to provide more than

a product. For all of us in our everyday lives - booking movie tickets on the

phone is much easier, getting your digital photographs printed through the net is

instantaneous. As consumers, when we get service in one area, we expect

service in each and every area of our interaction with products and categories in

our life, so it's inevitable that all manufacturing companies have eventually to

move into the servicing economy. But 'service' is actually all about consumer

experience a good experience wins a consumer's loyalty, and gets more

consumers in by word of mouth. 'Why services?' is actually no longer a

option, 'How service?' is the real question. 

So where does Asian Paints fit in, in this environment? About five years back, we

started investing in building infrastructure and developing consumer services. I

would say today we are easily among the best in the paint industry when it

comes to consumer services, probably among the best in the manufacturing

industries. The service brands have used the corporate brand to both drive

business and endorse the values of corporate brand of leadership, quality,

reliability, technological leadership, innovation and value of money -all the

attributes for which the corporate brand stands for. But the service brand, too,

needs to reinforce these values and add back to them in terms of the type and

quality of the service they deliver to the consumer, the quality and reliability of

the service, the decor edge they provide, the innovativeness and, finally,

anticipating customer requirements, leading to customer delight-the key

element in the service economy.

TAPPING END-TO-END SOLUTIONS

I would classify services into three categories. We have the Asian Paints Help-

line, the Web, and Home Solutions. We launched the Help-line in 22 cities in

early 1999. The objective was to provide the consumers this service where he

could get all details on painting - an area he, very often knew very little of. But

the response was a little mixed - in the metros we got a great response but in the

other centres, it was extremely weak. But overall, we got around 25,000 calls a

year and each was stretching to around 15 minutes indicating the interest the

consumer had, on enquiring about types of paints, cost, labour, availability and

even colour selection, decor, etc. This diversity in response had its own issues

and problems. We were not really able to maintain standards of service across

the country, especially in smaller towns, because the response was so weak. To

counter this, we established software to facilitate query handling and meet

increasing customer needs regarding decor and colour selection, and we

centralized the call centre in Bombay, thanks to the revolution in the telephone

industry. It's probably cheaper to have a centralized call centre today, than to

have a separate one in 22 cities. The call is still toll free from any city, buthaving a centralized centre and with a lot of software to help the people at the

call center, we were able to upgrade the quality of the service and meet

customer demands. 

Today we are in 22 cities, we can easily extend it over to 100 cities, to provide

better efficiency and control, and we expect to get around 50,000 calls this year

over the Help-line.If we go to www.asianpaints.com , till '99, again, it was more

of a corporate website, but in '99 we decided to make it more consumer

oriented with information on paints, painting problems, cost, colour selection,

paint availability, decor ideas and the colouring tools, where the consumers

could paint homes on their own. We've had a great response. We get close to

25,000 visitors every month on the website. Another indicator of the value of

this is - a few months back, we provided stencils to users so they could paint

their children's rooms. 1600 people downloaded the stencils from the websites! I

don't know whether they painted the rooms, but the downloading was done. So

definitely, there's growing consumer interest in new concepts. We found that

not everybody was that computer savvy or internet savvy and there was need to

facilitate usage on the website to get a better response, so we created 'Aparna',

an online consultant which is basically a web-chat facility. Very few websites in

the country offer this - we have close to 600 chat sessions a month-where

people get involved very intricately on what they want to do there in their

homes, what colours, how to select, how to do, how to use the website-and

there's a wide range of queries. It's even led to a lot of home solution leads and

business to the company. As a matter of fact, the online consultant has resulted

in very high customer satisfaction with the website, which we've measured

through an online survey, and it's provided detailed information and guidance in

a customized manner. It's definitely added back to the corporate brand in terms

of the type of service or the value we want to give to the consumer. 

Asian Paints Home Solutions - The Help-line and web interactions indicated

a strong need among consumers for a painting service, 'to remove the pain from

painting', as we call it! To confirm this, we conducted an extensive survey to find

out what it is that the consumer really wants when he buys a can of paint. We

found that the consumer is most concerned about the final look of his home yet

he finds the entire process of painting totally painful; the dislocation in his

house, the dust and the dirt. Over and above that, he feels that he has no

control over the process. He thinks that the shopkeeper is taking him for a ride,

the painter is doing whatever he feels he want to do and he has no idea whether

the final effect is going to be good or not. Even if he is happy with final effect, he

doesn't know whether he's been taken for a ride or not. So in the end, since he's

not totally happy. So, we tried to study what it is that would make the customer

happy. They want expert advice on painting and paints, minimal discomfort, they

want the job to be done quickly and neatly and they want a guarantee for the

job. Basically, they want a painted home. So in the year 2000, Asian Paints - to

the best of my knowledge - became the first paint company in the world to offer

a painting service. Seeing (the success of) this, I know now of one Canadian and

one Mexican company that have followed suit. But it was a highly complex task,

as it involved using or handling painters of varying scales and calibre all across

the country; handling the trade, who saw this as a threat to their control over

the painting process and rates they would get; yet, as far as the customer is

concerned - delivering a standardized good job across the country. We plunged

into it like the proverbial fools that rush in where angels failed to tread! It

involved a strong ground level activity. We had to appoint agents and provide a

lot of training to the personnel regarding paint, painting, decor, selecting

contractors in each city, those who were willing to work with us, who'd provide

good service; handling the trade, fixing rates and the quality of the job so that

we were both fair to the consumers as well as do not alienate the painter, who

gives you a 50% market share in the cities. It was launched in 6 metros and we

offered a 1-year guarantee to the consumers against all defects. Simultaneously

we did a lot of continuous research on consumer reactions to the

service. 

THE PAY-OFFS

The response was excellent. As a matter of fact, it was too good to handle, and

we had great difficulty in controlling the quality of jobs as the volumes increased.

Simultaneously, what kept a consumer was happy yesterday no longer kept himhappy today - his expectations kept on increasing! So we took stock at the end of

the first year. There was one side of the company that said this is great, we are

getting good business - let's expand it phenomenally. Then there was the other

side, who were saying. 'Look we aren't delivering what we should be

delivering - we are harming our brand - we need to do something else." After the

first year of operations, the learnings were - the painting quality was a matter of

concern because it wasn't uniformly good everywhere; painting practices were

not standardized; some painters took care, some painters didn't. Some spoiledcarpets, some didn't. Customer expectation were high - not uniformly met and

kept on increasing. Besides, they needed a lot of other services apart from

painting, when they were getting their houses painted, and they were used to

painting contractors providing these services.

to get into things like moisture meters and measuring devices, etc. We had to

teach painters on the use of masking tapes and a lot of other factors. We also

added a lot of services like water-proofing, decor, colour guidance and

introduced a lot of special effects. 

If we had to build the Asian Paints brand, we couldn't afford to be 'a better

painting contractor'-we had to be something much, much more. This led

to a much better quality of jobs all across the country and much greater

customer satisfaction due to added services. All throughout the period so far,

we've been measuring customer satisfaction through Gallup - initially 100%

consumers, today maybe about 30 to 35% of the consumers. Overall, our

'customer delight' factor - or what they call the 'top box' - has jumped from

some 18% to 32%, which is quite a fantastic jump. 

The gains - we've had a 40-50% increase in consumers, year on year, in home

solutions ... and the ability to sell a lot of new specialty products. We were able

to upgrade the consumers much more easily to premium and better finishes,

because you can talk to them on a one-to-one basis. Till now, we always sold

only through the shopkeeper. In some of the low market share areas, it had a

significant impact on the market share increase of the company, and definitely a

tremendous increase in the consumer loyalty, and it added back tremendouslyto the corporate brand of Asian Paints. 

A service brand is all about satisfying consumer experience delivered

consistently.A sign of this customer satisfaction is that today more than

25% of new customers come through references of old customers - we don't

have go and scout for them, they come on their own. But I'm sure that where

the service industry is concerned, this is a continuous process. Continually

assessing customer requirements, upgrading the offering, improving levels of

service and continuously training personnel to deliver that. Only then will we

continuously build the brand 'Asian Paints'. As you have just seen, the values of

the service brand need to fit in very well with the values of the corporate brand,

only then could they add to each other.

Comp Creating Iconic Brands

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