The Hindu Business Line : Mr Ramanujam Sridhar; Mysore University

Mysore, Nov. 11 It was an immersion into the world of brand building and advertisement as communication consultant and media columnist Mr Ramanujam Sridhar provided a practical perspective to a theoretical concept to the MBA students of the University of Mysore here on Wednesday.

He was delivering a lecture on ‘Building successful brands’ organised by the Business Line Club and sponsored by Syndicate Bank at B.N. Bahadur Institute of Management Sciences, Manasagangotri. This was the first of a series of lectures to be held in Mysore by the BL Club.

Mr Ramanujam said that customer experience was the key word in brand building and it was not merely about good advertisements, while pointing out that a brand must have a quality product or a service with which customers relate and identify themselves.

A great advertisement by itself without quality product cannot result in brand building, said Mr Ramanujam who presented a slew of commercials to drive home the point as to what distinguishes similar products with the rest of the motley crowd that flood the market. The emergence of technology related brands such as the Google, Infosys or IBM was a salient feature of his presentation who said none of them existed a few years ago but have come to dominate consumers’ mind given the quality of service associated with these brands.

While branding was about products, Mr Ramanujam said the concept has been extended to geographical places too and cited the example of Kerala’ ‘God’s Own Country’ campaign which has firmly established that State as a pioneer in tourism. From the customer point of view, brand is about association with products but for the industry it is about repeat purchase from customers which underlines the latter’s faith in it.

The net result of good branding is a potential for premium pricing which customers are prepared to pay for the faith they repose in quality of the product that differentiates it with competitors flooding the market, he said. Product differentiation is what matters in branding, he added.

Presenting an Indian perspective, he brought the reality of the social and economic conditions of a majority of the people and said given the high illiteracy levels, colour and imagery becomes important in brand building exercise but the bottom line would be making available the product at an affordable price.

Mr K.R.K. Pai, Chief Manager, Syndicate Bank Regional Office, Mysore, Prof. B. Shivaraj, Chairman, BNB Institute of Management Sciences, and Mr Y.Surajkumar, Customer Relation Manager, Syndicate Bank, were also present.

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