The Hindu Business Line : Reverse-engineered branding!

Divya Bhaskar did things differently. It preferred a huge market research exercise to a smaller survey. The efforts paid off, with the newspaper becoming the market leader on day one of coming into existence.

Daring to go against the tide

THE running of brands is tough business. The business of creating, nurturing and establishing powerful brands is getting progressively tougher as the days go by.

The early years of branding, in many ways, are much easier than the later ones. Pioneer brands find a much more accepting consumer space to swim in. Early branding in a society that is new to the charm of branding is, therefore, easy.

As society evolves into a space that is filled with a clutter of brands in every category, the going gets tough for new brands. Further, as society gets more and more brand-cynical, the Brand Manager swims much against the tide!

What does a brand manager do in the new days ahead then? How does he cope? How does one create a sure-fire brand that will be a success from day one?

The answer to all this is really blowing in the wind. In the winds of change the science, art and philosophy of branding is witnessing. And witnessing right at our very own doorsteps! Right here in India!

Brand managers in our country seldom dream. Even when they do, they dream within paradigms. Within limitations they draw for themselves. Dreams that swim within the boundaries of the environmental situation they find themselves trapped within. Commercial society dictates the span of their dreams!

Brand Managers seldom dream of creating a brand that will capture an 80 per cent market share from day one! Brand managers seldom dream of toppling the market-leader of yore overnight! Brand Managers build brand plans that talk of a market-share achievement of 6 per cent in the first year, 11 per cent in the next and possibly 35 per cent over the next five years! Brand managers are normally trapped in the Hindu rate of growth paradigm! And that is a worry!

Enter then the concept of what we will call "reverse-engineered branding"!

A sure shot way of creating that brand which is a success largely from day one! A brand that will topple the market-leader from day one! A tool and technique that can well be adapted across a range of industries in the arena of products, services and dreams! Something new and something truly charming!

A nice way of getting under the skin of this concept and practice would be to peek through one such success story. A live story that packs all the glamour, glitz and masala of a brand coming alive in a market overnight! This story comes right from the heart of the newspaper industry. The Gujarati press for a start!

The brand: Divya Bhaskar! A Gujarati daily from the Dainik Bhaskar group of publications, which commenced publication on June 22, 2003, in Ahmedabad!

The story: Divya Bhaskar emerges the No.1 publication in Ahmedabad on Day 1 of publication! The paper will not wait to notch up market-share numbers gradually! Instead, it becomes the market-leader from Day 1!

The rationale: In the newspaper business, there is just not enough time left anymore for a publication to notch up shares gradually. There are several worries. For one, if a newspaper waits for years to emerge the market-leader, precious advertising revenue eludes the new publication. Revenue happens slowly. Revenue starts as a trickle and the cascade takes ages! At times just too long! The low-margin newspaper business cannot really afford to wait that long to turn the corner. Advertising revenue must come in quicker to be able to sustain the business!

Therefore, the ideal way to success is to emerge market leader from day one! Simply said!

The mechanics: Divya Bhaskar commences as a seed of thought. Everything moves rapidly from then on. The brand is arrived at adopting a process that is truly mass-based!

A quick survey of the existing offer on hand in Ahmedabad is done. Two existing competitive publications emerge with different numbers. Both publications in the vernacular are long-standing publications that have been in the market for many a year. The positives and the negatives of the brands are mapped.

Even as this quick survey is on, a market-research exercise is on simultaneously. Possibly the biggest MR exercise of its kind known in this part of the world! While traditional market research focuses on small sample sizes and strives to extrapolate on findings from this limited sample size, Divya Bhaskar will do things different! Divya Bhaskar will reach out to eight lakh homes in the city of Ahmedabad. Every home will be visited by an operative who will map needs, wants, desires and expectations of the newspaper reader in the city. The researcher will capture the data and promise to get back!

The researcher gets back as well to the same home! This will be done after all the research-data of the first exercise is collated. The data will be collated and the new brand will be created as per the wishes of the consumer. Wishes expressed not by a sample size of consumers, but wishes expressed by the whole Gujarati newspaper reading mass in Ahmedabad! All eight lakh of them!

The second home visit is one in which the operative will take back the findings of the initial visit and disseminate the same to every home! This visit will also reveal the new offering that Divya Bhaskar will provide! An all new-offer, devised keeping in mind consumer articulation! This brand, in every which way you look at it, has been created using the process of reverse engineering!

Every home visited is simultaneously given the choice to subscribe for a six-month test period. The price is attractive enough (but not downright low!) and the product is everything the consumer wanted. The offer is irresistible. Consumers love brands created by them! They jump in and subscribe. Divya Bhaskar, on day one of print, will therefore have a print run of nearly 5 lakh copies! The brand is a market-leader from day one in terms of market shares! An irresistible story for both the potential advertiser and reader alike! Everyone loves to be with the leader, it seems!

Moral of the story: Consumers are progressively getting tired of brands created in the Ivory Towers of brand people. Limited dipstick probes and consumer market research of the extrapolative variety holds limited potential in the future. The future is complex. Consumers love brands they will help create in their drawing rooms! Give the consumer what the wants, and not what you think he wants! Old tools of finding out what he wants are getting out-dated. Discover the new way of going out there in the great Indian marketplace and finding it out from every one of your consumers... and not a small sample size of them!

In short, let the consumer create the brand! It is bound to be a success!

And finally the warning: Reverse-engineered branding! This is sheer labour of love. Backbreaking effort and work! This is the hard way of creating a brand! The simple way is the old way. Lab-made and lab-tested brands! Brands, which you hope will succeed. Sometimes they do, but this is getting rarer and rarer!

Reverse-engineered branding is a theory that will hold good for the next new toothpaste, the next different Cola, the next new BPO initiative that will sway the market and equally for the next new motorcycle to hit the market! Try it!

(The author is a brand-domain specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. Feedback can be e-mailed to bleditor@thehindu.co.in)

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication

Stories in this Section
Protein punch

On leaping before you look

Who killed the idea?

The sunny South beckons

Has MTR got its recipe right?

Reverse-engineered branding!

Attracting a mate is like selling a used car