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D. Murali

FREEDOM of choice is a grand feeling but it has a flip side too. Anxiety. With products, what reduces our anxiety is not a curtailment of options, but a familiar brand. Paul Feldwick would define brand as "a recognisable and trustworthy badge of origin and also a promise of performance." Citing this in the second edition of Living the Brand, distributed in India by Viva (viva@vivagroupindia.net), Nicholas Ind writes brands, after all, exist in "people's minds"; and success can only be relative when companies seek to influence that mental image.

A brand is thus "a loose collation of fact and myth." Yet, you can gain a handle on them if they are `living.' How? Get your employees on your side. Reasons: "Employees flourish in organisations where they identify with the brand. Organisations flourish when the brand has relevance and creates meaning. And most important, purpose and values are not created; they exist — the issue is how well they are articulated and embedded."

This is no easy task because most companies suffer from a `silo' culture, points out Ind. "There can be extreme situations where one part of the organisation is deeply distrustful of other parts." Isn't that what we call `local politics'? When your staff can go `beyond politics' you'd be able to achieve cross-functional synergy.

The brand as a `value' will be a `fluffy' or an irrelevant concept, unless "individuals discover for themselves how the values are relevant to their day-to-day work." Direct interaction with customers can be a real revelation, `a moment of catharsis,' says Ind, because for most senior people the real field is remote. When was it last that you interacted with those who buy your products?

That's all fine, you'd agree, but why do organisations need purpose and values? A basic question, that is, and Nokia has this answer — that values "provide the foundation for long-term success". Nokia's values are customer satisfaction, respect for the individual, achievement and continuous learning. These are simple and self-descriptive phrases; only then would everyone understand these. Do you know that the company that took its name "from a lumber mill on the banks of the Nokia River in Finland" has moved, over 130 years, "from trees to diapers, rubber products, power transmission and telephone cables"? After the break-up of the USSR and "consequent free fall of the Finnish economy," the company debated selling its mobile division, but "no one seemed interested in buying it."

Adobe is another example that the book discusses. The hi-tech company is "pretty old", by Silicon Valley terms. It adopted "a new approach to communications and a greater commitment to external marketing spend," along with a programme to convey the idea of the brand to employees. The idea is to get people say `wow' when told you work for Adobe, rather than get a sympathetic response. This helps both in recruitment and retention. Success is when good ideas come from everywhere in the company, is an Adobe idea.

To percolate well, brand ideas have to be imaginative, authentic, courageous, and empowering, argues Ind. "Brand statements that stress ideas connected with cost or profitability will not be ultimately engaging," so keep the accountant out of any exercise to create imaginative brands. Authenticity is important because "there is no hiding place" these days, and your customers will find out the truth even if you didn't tell them.

Thus, "self-consciously using down-to-earth language in a marketing context means that someone has made an explicit decision to take advantage of a market opportunity." Courageous brands confront the anxiety of choice, with "a distinctive point of view."

Lastly, empowerment "uses the full intellectual power of the organisation to solve problems."

Articulating a brand is only the beginning, reminds Ind. "Only a few seem capable of actually delivering the ideas." The brand idea has to enter the systems of the organisation, "rather than being the crusade of a lone individual".

If you have the freedom to choose, get the Ind brand!

BookMark@thehindu.co.in

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