The Hindu Business Line : All for brand chatter

The challenges of brand building continue to multiply exponentially. Consumer behaviours are changing drastically making marketers revisit and reconsider the standard tenets of segmentation. The media environment is one where layers and layers of complexity are getting added each day.

Customers have transformed. From the glory days where consumers were mere recipients of marketing messages, converting these into perceptions, consumers are now active participants in media. The extent of customer “expression” powered by blogging to Facebooking to the recent and rapidly increasing “twittering” phenomenon are changing the rules of marketing everyday.

How do marketers create “buzz” in this environment to strengthen their brands? The word “buzz” encompasses a lot of things from the attention grabbing properties of the brand, to the impact of the brand and finally to the word of mouth or what we can say “non-paid media” cascading impact that it can generate. Based on my own observations, let us look at some of the brands which have successfully harnessed the “buzz” factor in recent times in a developed and mature market like Hong Kong.

Consider the launch of the global fashion retail brand H&M in Hong Kong. A European fashion retailer popular for its trendy and ever-changing designs marked by affordability. This fashion retailer had an arduous task as Hong Kong is swarming with apparel retailers who provide a range that appeals to every conceivable demographic and psychographic segment. Add to that the fact that Hong Kong’s retail environment is extremely crowded with a large number of malls many of which have become a habit for customers in this city starved for space and bursting at its seams.

Well established apparel brands operate across all points of the pricing and affordability spectrum. Rather than opening their first store in a mall and becoming another retail face in an already crowded environment H&M opted for a standalone store. And that too in the heart of Hong Kong’s central business district. This standalone store strategy significantly helped in establishing brand awareness and creating curiosity about H&M even before the store had actually opened. Much more than what conventional mass media print advertising may have achieved.

Another challenge would have been to quickly establish some brand association. The strategy was to focus on the segment that loves shopping and more important loves talking about shopping. Women. H&M chose to advertise their brand by linking it to pop icon Madonna, someone who appeals to women across all age groups.

But the celebrity association went a lot beyond mere brand endorsement. The fashion retailer actually got Madonna to design a whole collection for them. And the launch campaign commenced by showing Madonna, the clothes designed by Madonna and an even more important variable — the pricing.

Finally for the launch H&M announced that there would be a limited number of trench coats and sun glasses signed by Madonna offered on a first-come-first-served basis. The pre-launch buzz about this availability reached such limits that more than a thousand odd people waited for the store to open its doors to Hong Kong, overnight.

By continuously refreshing their collection, associating with major designers and never losing their focus on price, H&M is thriving in a developed fashion market like Hong Kong and adding more stores.

Another example of the buzz factor is the cotton bag that has the statement “I am not a plastic bag” emblazoned on it and created by London-based designer Anya Hindmarch. The bag was designed with a noble objective of making consumers use less plastic bags for their grocery shopping and saving the environment. A designer handbag that made a statement about the user and was available at probably one per cent of the price of normal designer handbags.

Fashion magazines started covering this bag and giving it huge exposure significantly enhancing the “must have” quotient. To accentuate this further it was announced only a limited number of originals had been produced and only a portion of those produced would be sold in Hong Kong.

Again thousands of customers lined up on the day this bag went on sale. The bag costing only HK$ 120 or around Rs 600 became a hugely coveted object selling at a premium many times over its original price.

Before the financial tsunami struck, the Beijing Olympic Games was the biggest event of 2008 in China and in Hong Kong. Bank of China, one of the major banks in Hong Kong and China, harnessed the buzz potential of this event in a unique and unconventional manner which created a huge must-have effect for the product it created. As a currency issuing bank in Hong Kong, Bank of China issued four-million-odd currency notes commemorating the Olympic Games. These bank notes were lapped up for seven times their face value as customers simply wanted to frame them as a memory of the unique event.

McDonalds is another brand that continues to harness the buzz factor on an ongoing basis to ensure repeated footfalls into their outlets. Their creative use of unique giveaways with Happy Meals helps them to attract their core audience of children who love to get these ever changing collectibles. Recently, they went one step further in Hong Kong. The standard for retail stores in Hong Kong is the ubiquitous Seven Eleven chain of convenience stores. The brand name actually stands for the time that these stores stay open from seven a.m. in the morning to eleven p.m at night. Most McDonalds outlets in Hong Kong are now open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

While all this has happened in Hong Kong one cannot help noticing that brands are also harnessing buzz power at home in India. Tata Tea created a huge amount of buzz recently with its Jaago Re campaign encouraging India’s youth to participate in the electoral process. By doing this they have perhaps redefined the awakening attributes of tea and encouraged millions to vote for stability and progress.

(The author has worked in Japan and now works at an international bank in Hong Kong. The views expressed are his own.)