Now that the din of the T20 World Cup is buried under the images of the Gangnam dance steps, the time band our team uses to map the cool folk is relatively clutter-free. The Windies won the Cup and suddenly there seems to be joy and contentment everywhere as if the Caribbean side was everyone’s favourite. One heard comments such as ‘the famous Windies swagger is back’ and ‘these guys rock’. These remarks got us to revisit one of our earlier probes – that of the overt need in consumers aged 14-34 for some oomph in the brands and products they like to consume. Windies provide that oomph to cricket, at least for the moment.
We know, from our earlier probes, that while they seek transparency from ‘their-kind-of-brands’, the cool folk are more likely to be swayed by reasons that are not functionality-rooted. One of our probes had thrown up a figure as high as 41 per cent (of our respondents) requiring oomph, vibrancy and effervescence to be a part of the intrinsic brand personality. And this was against lower scores for the traditionally popular attributes such as reliability, extra features/benefits and value for money, all of which together could not even muster even half the numbers as compared to ‘seeking oomph’.
Now what is it that adds oomph to the brand’s proposition or persona? And like always our cool folk shook and stirred us up with their attitudes and dispositions. We feel it is important to let our new readers know a little of our methodology. Our mapping is an open-ended probe and we group responses post-probe and that’s done with much debate and consideration. We limit ourselves to the top four responses and redefine that as our universe. This means that wherever there are insignificant numbers we not only drop those responses from the analysis but also the respondent from our universe of study. Now coming back to which attributes add oomph to a brand, there was no clear winner. We had three attributes running neck to neck and since our base is small, we will not like to do a podium-like line-up this one time.
The three clear choices were: a) A genius product that generates a cult-like following b) Differentiation other than product’s tangible attributes that’s classy and is likely to last a while c) Acceptance by a group of people one looks up to as richer, trendier, modern or savvier (and this not just about a celebrity endorsing a brand). The fourth attribute that adds to the oomph factor was also a surprise. It was pricing (lower or higher) that delivers substantive value that can be categorised as ‘smart’. Now, do these negate our earlier probes or take us away to another planet? Not really, for we have known the cool folk to be operating on either end of the spectrum – we know of them doing contrasting things as they don’t ever fit into any straitjacketed description. Even the last probe was seen by us as a sociological change that’s manifesting itself finally in way the cool folk look at brands. So it is not just the top end of the market that’s seeking some element of oomph but even the value-conscious folks. Any ambitious marketer will tell the powers-to-be that ‘creating differentiation’ is doable except it is a huge ‘ask’. How huge it is before it becomes sexy enough for hordes to get glued to it is a thought we leave you to play with. Happy cool-hunting!
(Giraj Sharma is an independent brand consultant and a compulsive cool hunter.)