The Hindu Business Line : Branding, in the first 100 days

If the new UPA government headed by Dr Manmohan Singh needs to start with a bang of a brand image, what do you believe it must do? What should they focus on to achieve that first 100 days’ salience and top-of-mind share as a government that works?

- Rohit Reddy, Hyderabad

Rohit, your question is an important one. A government that will run a full term at the Centre will have all of 1,825 days ahead of it. The first 100 days are the ones which will be keenly watched, though. There is a latent expectation of the electorate and the government must certainly not lose this opportunity to brand itself right.

My top five mantras would be as follows:

Allow corporates to enter agriculture. Fashion a benign policy of corporate-small farmer partnership. This will be mutual benefit agriculture that will unlock the potential of fallow land, unutilised land due to small fragmentation, under-utilisation of land, opening up of sectors such as vegetables and fruits and herb cultivation. Bring a method to the madness of Indian agriculture. The sector has recorded a negative growth number of -2.2 per cent in the quarter ended December 2008. This is pathetic. It needs to be corrected. Food security issues have to be addressed.

Adopt a process of simplification in terms of government agencies, forms to be filled, fees and taxes to be paid. For a start, no form must be more than two pages long.

Transparent governance through e-governance systems need to be adopted in a big way.

Create jobs and an environment that helps create more jobs. The biggest key issue is a tremendous loss of jobs in India. The textile sector has seen anything between 26 lakh and 45 lakh jobs lost. IT has lost two lakh jobs.

On corruption in the bureaucracy, we need a zero-tolerance policy, for a start. It is very important to bring back credence in the system. The Lok Ayuktas have to be given more teeth than they now possess.

All this in the first 100 days.

Intel has gone in for a re-branding exercise with “Sponsors of Tomorrow”. What’s this all about?

- Jupiter Sethi, Chandigarh

Jupiter, if that’s your real name, that’s good branding for a start. Memorable.

‘Intel Inside’ has been a game-changer campaign for Intel. For long, the campaign delivered excellent bang for the buck, excellent degrees of brand recall and made component branding a science in itself.

The key challenge of a chip within a processor and an end-utility device becoming the hero of it all was addressed very well by the campaign.

The campaign became generic and boring as well. This is what happens to killer game-changer campaigns. Execution options of every kind were tried, tested and done with. Time for change. The current campaign is an exciting one as well. Its timing is exciting. The whole world at large is in the grip of a recession and many parts of the hitherto aggressively growing world such as India and China are going through a period of successive quarterly slowdowns. The mother market of the US is showing shrinkage of upto 6.3 per cent in GDP terms quarter after quarter.

‘Intel Inside’ was a today campaign. It was all about the power of the processor and the fact that it could do wonders for you. It was about a booming today.

In reality, however, “today” is a worrisome phase the world is going through. “Yesterday” was good, but is done with. Time then, for a “tomorrow” campaign.

There is plenty of promise left to unlocked tomorrow. Tomorrow is a dream. It can’t be worse than today is. Go for it!

That is the way I see the theme unfolding in Intel’s ‘Sponsors of Tomorrow’ theme.

I do believe it is topical, natty and intelligent in its presentation. It repositions the brand and contemporises very well.

Loyalty programmes are difficult to handle. Which work best and why?

- Rano Chabria, New Delhi

Rano, loyalty programmes are difficult to handle, for sure. The one which works best is the one which focuses on micro-customer management and not one that rolls out plastic cards and dead mailers and inanimate communication formats at play.

God is in the detailing of the loyalty programme and not in the dumb doling out of cards and mailers and stuff like that. The secret lies in data-mining with sensitivity, patience and care that is micro-tuned to context.

Is social marketing about a single idea that rolls all across?

- Sampath P. Balan, Tiruchi

Social marketing can be a single idea or it can be a cascade of many ideas that are campaignable. Tata Tea’s Jaago Re is a single idea. An idea that attains relevance during election time in a big way. This single idea can be used in different ways altogether. The joy of this idea lies in the fact that tea is a stimulant. The product story can be woven intrinsically into the campaign with no disconnect at all.

Longevity of such ideas, however, lies in the creative excellence that can be achieved through differing and different campaigns. This is important.

Rural and urban compete in a marketer’s set of priorities. How are these priorities actually addressed with intelligence?

- Nayantara P. B., Mumbai

Nayantara, intelligent question in itself.

Companies are re-inventing their urban-rural mixes. Companies are focussing on developing rural markets. Sharper and sharper brains from within the organisation are being diverted to rural strategy formulation. In the old days, the weakest ones in organisations without a star-career path held the reins of the rural marketing divisions. Today, things have changed. And this is proper prioritisation. The rural is bigger. Urban is smaller.

Importantly, companies are realising that what the urban and rural want is largely the same. However, the rural person is savvier and demands real value for money. In a bid to offer real value for money as perceived strongly by the rural consumer, marketers are re-engineering products.

Let’s look at the auto segment. The urban man wants a car as does a rural. Both have the same amount of money. The rural person, however, believes spending Rs 6 lakh on a car is a sin. He wants the same at Rs 1.5 lakh. The Nano is, therefore, a solution.

Every category needs to operate on the Nano paradigm. The needs are all the same, across rural and urban. The solutions need to be different. For every category, this is an opportunity and a gap at the same time.

(Harish Bijoor is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. askharishbijoor@thehindu.co.in)

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