The Hindu Business Line : Brand myopia

FOR a moment forget you're a brand manager, or whichever title you go by - Brand Manager, Product Manager, Marketing Chief, Agency Account Planner ...

Think of yourself as a shop owner. Imagine a customer walking into your store and asking, "Do you have X face cream?" You know you don't have it in stock. Your answer should be, "No, we don't have it." But then you are the store owner and you'll be darned if you will let a customer go so easily. So you invite her in and turning to your salesman you say, "Show her that new fairness cream."

Why is it so easy for us to picture this scenario? Is it because it has happened so often in our lives? Is it because when you `own' a store you can't let business go? Then why, as a brand manager, are you able to turn away the same customer on the premise that your brand satisfies a different need?

Blame it on `brand myopia.'

Now go back to being the brand manager. Imagine yourself in the same shop observing this conversation between customer and shop owner. You see the salesman showing her your brand of fairness cream when she had asked for X face cream. You hear the customer protesting, "This is not what I asked for." But the salesman tries to convince her that the fairness cream is the preferred alternative. You hear the customer say, ""But I want a natural cream that'll prevent my skin from ageing and keep it soft, smooth and wrinkle-free." You see the salesman either offering her something else or accepting defeat.

The next part is important. You take out your PDA and note down the salient points learned from the exchange:

The market for your brand of fairness cream can be increased if

it can also keep the skin soft, supple and young,

it can be re-formulated or re-positioned as a `natural' herbal cream,

it has a nice natural fragrance (research to clarify), and

it is marketed in beauty parlours as a beauty aid.

Guess what the shop owner learned from the same exchange? "When that salesman from X fairnees cream comes next time, buy a dozen packs." How different can the learning be?

As brand managers, we're always looking at ways to improve the appeal and sales of our brand; asking what else can we make it do, how we can manage the brand's positioning and image so that it appeals to more customers or appeals more to existing customers. The basic thinking is that we can manage the brand and thereby the market.

And that is the problem. In an increasingly well-informed world, assuming you can `manage' an image for your brand and that consumers will accept it, is maddeningly regressive. We live in a world where the brand is co-created by the brand owners and its users. You put forward a proposition. Your customer tries your brand, comes to some conclusions about its usefulness and continues to use your brand for her reasons. This is why we do so much research. To constantly keep in touch with our customers and discover their reasons for using our brand. Then we use the information in our communication. In evolving the positioning for the brand, sometimes we lead the consumer and sometimes the consumer leads us. In such a co-creation scenario, do we have the control to completely manage our brand? And if we don't isn't it presumptuous to think that we can always manage the market through our brand?

Organisations need to behave more like the storekeeper. The really smart ones already do. They have recognised that `owning the market' is far more crucial than `owning the brand.' They have realised that the brand is just a tool to own the market. And if the tool doesn't work in a market, they have realised that the smart thing to do is to find other ways of owning the market. They constantly focus on owning the market. They have become `market managers.' Which are these companies?

A ready example that comes to mind is the much-feted CavinKare. The company started with shampoo in sachets and then moved on to fairness creams, herbal shampoos, herbal hair oil, unisex salons and now pickles in sachets! Between shampoos, hair oil and salons you can see a synergy and how the company moves from one to another. But fairness cream and pickles? Those new lines have come about because CavinKare sees itself in the market and not just in the hair care business. The company's greatest strength is being in touch with the market, a la storekeeper, and identifying the low hanging fruit. I'll wager that the company makes profits on every one of its brands and never spends ad money on `creating' a market!

All its spend is surely going into `owning' the market it has already identified. Do you think it'll become a Rs 5,000-crore company by 2012 as it aims to? The chances are it will. The chances are that it'll launch several new products in the next decade and you will read, three years from now, how CavinKare converted cottage industry products such as pickles and appalams into multi-crore brands!

Another great example is ITC. What synergy can you see between cigarettes and agarbarthis other than the fact that both burn from one end and produce a bit of a smell and a lot of smoke? How extraordinary should a company be to see itself progressively as a cigarette company that cultivates tobacco and hence is an agricultural company; sees the possibility of transforming itself into a food company; then reverse-integrates with the market to purchase produce through e-choupals and finally launches rural malls, chaupal sagar, where villagers can sell their produce and buy anything from tractors to toothpaste! You'll be hard put to name the agarbathi brand, even though it is a big success. We read that the food brands are also doing very well. They'll all be successful, well-known brands in the future. But today they are just `products with a name' that are being lapped up by the market because there is a need for them. ITC is respected because it is a brilliant `market manager.' It has learnt to look for products that the market wants and you have one more organisation that is converting today's cottage industry products into tomorrow's superbrands!

In advanced consumerist societies like the West, it has become increasingly impossible to identify new product needs. That is why these markets find `technology stocks' such incredibly attractive investments. But in a country like ours where people are just crossing the poverty line and entering the consuming market, the scope for identifying new product needs is immense.

The rapidly growing companies in India, without exception, all seem to be those that have identified strong market needs and plugged in the necessary products. Reliance, Nirma, Infosys, Bharathi, ITC, CavinKare are all `market managing' companies. They are all able to see beyond their existing brands. They are able to see where their brand management ends and market management takes over. Myopic brand owners, watch out!

(The author is Director, Fidelis Advertising and Marketing Pvt Ltd.)

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