The employee effect

The thought of writing a blog on the employee effect was hovering on my head since the visit to an electronic shop a few days back. To make sure that the best deal is struck, visits to few of the electronic shops were obvious. With the intention of buying one of the two brands of a particular product, everything else seemed so inferior and out of place. But the last visit was a surprise; the intention, the product and even the brand changed. Courtesy, the salesman.

This is where a brand is recognised. In course content, people talk of touch points. Touch points are all the points of interface that comes between a customer and the product/service (at various delivery channels). From a salesman to a mangaer to an advertsiement or commercial, anything that gets one closer to the desire of acquiring a brand makes a touch point. Customers come across these touch points for products as well as services. Moreover the experience is prolonged for a service.

Employees make the best touch point for any customer. It is the employee who can make an organisation grow, with his efforts and knowledge that make him the manager of his job. As an employee one is expected to represent the organisation in the best possible manner and that represenation comes with knowledge about the products and services his organisation offers. They hold the responsibilty of living the experience that the organisation aims at, giving to its consumers.

When employees are knowledgeble and satisfied about what they do and know, the same is carried in the firms' values as a brand. Thus, when we say that brands are an intagible asset of a firm, then it is a false statement, because the best brands' tangibility lies in its employees who take pride and are passionate in making the product or service a brand.

Brand Maintenance...

Time and again the world has seen the rise and fall of brands, but it is believed by famous brand gurus that its products that die, brands survive if maintained well. What do they mean when they say about maintaining brands? To me, maintenance is all about... maintenance what else. But how have many successful companies done that to sustain their brands.

When a vehicle or a machine starts wearing off, we get it repaired for longitivity, same holds true for brands. Brands usually lose their sheen and it is imperative for companies to repair those scratches by continuous improvement in brand value. When I was preparing for my entrance exams, one question that followed me was, "why companies keep promoting their products again and again?". The answer was simple enough, to create awareness, but then if creating awareness was the only motto then why do companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nokia, Reliance etc ever need to use IMC. Well everyone knows what these words stand for.

Thus, repeated promotion is not just to reach out and give customers more exposure but to maintain brands. It’s hard to build brands and harder to maintain them. Volkswagen had proudly developed and sold millions of beetles but then it did not move too well to the future, what did VW do? They recreated the magic with the new beetle.

Do brands survive massive maintenance? The question arises in a situation when companies like Jaguar and land Rover are up for sale and not surprisingly Tata Motors ahs bid for them. A recent news item revealed that brands like Jaguar and Land Rover spend three times on just the passenger division R&D of what Tata Motors spends on its entire array of products. Imagine the costs that run into maintaining the brand. What many experts feel is that any one who buys these great brands should have deep pockets, Tata Motors sure does.

Time will tell how these brands will be maintained. When mergers and acquisitions are at the zenith of business growth and victory, brands are rather changing hands. Thumps-Up became bigger with Coca-Cola but these marriages of brands and firms do not always end up in harmony. Let’s see how far Indian companies succeed in keeping brands alive and happening.

Probably we will see a few Jaguars and Land Rovers lined up with fiat cars and not to forget the very Indian Tata models in the same showroom.

India wins the twenty 20 World Cup...

India won the twenty twenty world cup. The record is set straight for India to be the first team to conquer the youngest concept of cricket. Now what does that translate to in terms of branding and brands for India or Indians. The simple logic is that the value of casting the Indian cricket team members will go up. India gains more respect for some fabulous gaming at the 20-20 world cup and so on.

What excites me about this new format of cricket is, what most of the Indians have grown up with. The amazing fact is that the teams that reached the finals are neighbouring countries where 'gali cricket' is the most favoured sport, where matches last for anywhere between 5 to 20 overs. The teams had players who have grown up playing such matches all through their life and now it has gone international. Globally accepted. The kids who played great matches on roads for just a couple of overs are playing the same as in the grounds of international stadiums.

The great show and excitement put up by the the best cricket teams just makes the game hotter. Although many experts and cricket lovers feel that twenty twenty world cup is not right cricket. But, all said and done the form has caught up well and now marketers will be busy making plans on how to push such events as it had great acceptance by the cricket crazy countries worldwide. As an event, it has succeeded in positioning itself as a great innovation. And when the buzz is so much around it becomes relevant to have more of them.

The newspapers and TV channels were flooded with the covergae of the entire event. ESPN did command a premium price for commercial space on the day of the finals. All goes well with what ICC has done to position the game. The same time saw the brand makeover of Hutch mobile services becoming Vodafone and the placement was excellent with people actually talking about the same. Marketers have made their impression during the 20-20 world cup in a big manner. Thanks to the response this new format had.

When it comes to brand recall for the duration of the 20-20 world cup, I just cannot forget Vodafone, Mountain Dew and Havells, that immensely utilised the popularity that 20-20 world cup was gaining within the short time period. But now, the issue that drives marketers crazy is that,"will the brand recall of the match period will be converted to sales?"

There are no answers to it till the sales figures for the respective brands are out. What can we do about it, just wait and watch the action that follows the multi million expenditure that companies have made during the first twenty20 world cup.

What does your BRAND cost?

During a recent conversation with one of my friends in college, a discussion on blogs came up, I went ahead telling her about blogging but then she replied immediately about the bad of it. She told me that a few days back she did receive a link to blog where the content was inappropriate and thus she just feels blogging is a waste of time and a means to post non-sense. Does this happen to brands also? How far can a consumer go on to accept or reject a product or service with just a single first hand experience or as in the case above not even without experience but with a little buzz or view? many questions would arise if this is taken to real life product purchases or service availabilities. If this holds well, then it is disastrous for products that are new in the market or to a certain extent it becomes very difficult to establish reputation. And once the worth of a brand is proven then there are many factors associated to it. Or it can be said that the brand has an increment in its value. The more the brand value goes up, it adds to the overall strengthening of the firm associated with the brand. Sometimes the value of the brand surpasses that of the firm that owns it or even the product category.

An orator at a presentation had once told that brands become great and eternal when they either become a verb or a noun. Do you Yahoo! Just Google it buddy! Pass a Coke (an order for a cold drink)! Get a Xerox! and so on. Brands have become the a part of the consumer glossary. These factors add up to give high value to any brand and the same is reflected during mergers & acquisitions. When major companies are up for sale the price that is quoted is made up of very little of the tangible asset of the company rather a very large part of that price tag is fixed for the brands that it owns. Its the brands that create goodwill for a company. Now brands are not necessarily products or services, they can be even people, very evidently how the Beckhams have done it. Not that they are for sale, but then the price shows when they are hired for ads and commercials or at the time when they are associated to various products.

Things come at a price and its typically brands that can command a desired price, premium pricing as is termed in marketing.

How important is positioning for brand building...

Brands have over the years succeeded and also failed. The major factor that affects a particular set of "BRAND" these days is its positioning. Now in my opinion every product is characterised by some set of features, firms have adopted various techniques to position these products in a manner such that over the period the product gets converted into a brand.

What differentiates one brand from the other at the time of introduction is not the brand in itself but how it is positioned in the minds of the consumers. The simple the product, harder it is to position it, differently. Consumers look forward to have various advantages out of a product that companies try to bring into their brands but many times fail to do so. Leading consultancy firms and advertisers are minting money for creating differences for various brands.

Here is one of the very circulated images of competing airlines trying to position themselves better than others. The question is, "did it work?"

It is interesting to analyse failures of many brands due to wrong positioning through consumers. But at the same time it becomes hard to find consumers who would have had used such a brand and even if they have not used atleast should have heard of it. The issue is that consumers have a bad memory when it comes to brands that keep shifting shelves unless otherwise they are loyalists to that brand. On the contrary it is hard to find loyalists for such brands that we refer to as failures.

Sticking to the topic that I actually started off with. Now when I talk of positioning it is not restricted to the promotional part but goes beyond it. Many companies spend a big buck on positioning their products as differentiated brands as compared to competing brands. The brands that succeed in getting attention last longer in the minds of consumers and thus can be claimed to be strong brands, many firms cannot or for certain reasons fail to create one, thus end up making a weaker brand viz-a-viz competition.

The other issue that arises is that, to what extent can a firm be blamed or appreciated for its positioning. And what factors should be taken into consideration in terms of positioning, is it bound to the 4 P's or goes beyond. Take the instance of a product like a laptop. Companies have flooded the Indian markets with products ranging from prices as low as Rs.20,000 to prices that reach Rs.300,000. And competition has paved way for the pricing wars. But to add to the note, there are certain brand associations that consumers make to the firms that market those products. This is not necessarily true for products like a laptop atleast till the time you are around people carrying one. As for me, laptops are discussed among students in the college particularly when they are close to buy a piece or a distributor is around with presentations. But then there are a lot factors that anyone takes into consideration at the time of pre purchase decision. What influences this is the image the customers have for the brand of laptop, its configuration, the hardware and some additional features, when analysed its all in the mind of the customer and to a certain extent reflects the way a particular firm did position its laptop.

There are consumers who for various reasons do not value the brand as it is projected along with the company, instead go by the monetary benefits the brand gives them. For the rest it is the value they get from the company at a certain price they pay to acquire a particular brand. And they also count the non product features that come along it.

Positioning is a vast topic and cannot be claimed to be discussed in a short duration with a simple example. Take a look at what firms have done and to the extent they have gone in making their products strong brands, take Indica by the Tatas, Vaio or Cybershot by Sony, Swift by Maruti Suzuki, Razr by Motorola and the list goes on.

Again I would like to bring in the definition of positioning given in marketing management by Kotler & Armstrong, "Arranging for a product to occupy a clear, distinctive, and desirable place relative to competing products in minds of target consumers". Well if we try to see all products in that view, it can be easily realized that brands cannot survive without effective positioning and if they could had then there was no need for companies like Harley Davidson, P&G, Unilever, Ford etc. to keep their products alive and happening.

If carefully noticed a lot of what companies do as part of positioning is reflected in the post purchase evaluation of a consumer and what will grow or kill a brand is the difference in the clear, distinctive, and desirable place relative to competing products pre and post purchase.

Well that's what positioning is all about!