question hour. Making cities inclusive

Making cities inclusive

Cities are brands, and our city brands suffer from intolerance. What’s ahead? An eventual collapse?

Ludhiana

Nidhi, I am not negative on this at all. I agree this is a problem, but it is time to reduce the jingoism of cities now. The city belongs to everyone. Those that live in it, and those that don’t. Our latent jingoism must not let us say that Bengaluru is for Kannadigas and Ludhiana belongs to Punjabis.

I think we need to deepen this sentiment, rather than make it shallow. We need to get a lot more inclusive than we are. This means every kind of inclusive behaviour we need to feel, emote with and display, in that order. We need to go out of the way and interact with people who don’t look as local as we do or feel. We need to be helpful to all.

We need to respect every language as we do respect every choice of food. We need to be more inclusive with those who do not have as much money as we do. When did you last take your domestic help or driver out for a lunch at a restaurant? When did you sit down and have a meal with them?

We need to get inclusive in religious, economic, political and social ways. That’s the only way to go.

Cadbury Dairy Milk is now CDM Silk. How does this brand renovation process work?

Mumbai

Shernaz, CDM is the gold standard for chocolate in India. It is indeed the mother brand of the entire category we know as chocolate in India. To that extent, this task of building a sub-brand, Silk, is a tough one. One fraught with challenges. Multiple challenges, really. We need to remember that Silk, the way it has been positioned, has the ability to stand alone today, basically due to the very different product delivery it offers. SILK is smooth and ‘melty’, whereas CDM is hard and chunky. The value-addition is that it is much more superior to CDM.

At the same time however, CDM and its base equity remains. In large parts of the country, the cheapest and the best chocolate to buy is CDM. This seems to be a product offering that has fought the fact that a cool chain (as opposed to cold chain) for chocolates is not available in India’s smaller towns by and large.

The challenges are therefore many, as are the questions. How does small town India look at the more expensive Silk? Does Silk re-position India's gold-standard chocolate as an inferior product of lower value? And is this a big risk? As CDM climbs the value chain with Silk, does it mean that the ladder rung represented by CDM will be chopped off and discarded as “yesterday’s gold standard”, something dispensable?

Only the market has the answers. And we will know soon.

Simple question. What is a brand?

Indore

Joshi-ji, I have kept your question on hold for months. Sorry for that, but here is my take.

I define the brand simply. The brand is a thought. A thought that lives in people’s minds. A powerful thought that drives passion. A powerful thought that stays and stays. A powerful thought that leverages its way into usage, habit, attitude and power.

Joshi-ji, simple question, simple answer.

Harish Bijoor is a brand strategy expert and CEO of Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. Mail your queries to cat.a.lyst@thehindu.co.in

COMMENT NOW