Positioning India

Have been a big fan of Sunil Khilnani's The Idea of India and frankly, haven't come across a piece of writing that packs so much punch in as few as 200 pages. The book tries to get to the roots of how the Indian identity got created and deeply established in less than a century. If, about a hundred years ago one had asked any one living on the subcontinent who they were, no one probably would have played back 'being Indian' as one of the descriptors. Moreover, in the absence of a clearly defined geographical entity it was something that first needed articulation as there was no common Idea of India that everyone could relate to. The book explores how the Indian leadership, which was seeking freedom, had to first explore and articulate what the concept of India was. Nehru, Gandhi, Tagore, Savarkar etc. went in their own personal quests from various perspectives and eventually Nehru's vision prevailed over others and he even got the opportunity to orchestrate the post-independence India's initiatives to internally infuse the Indian identity on its citizens as well as position India on the global landscape.

Where Tagore reworked the poetic language and Gandhi turned to religious traditions to make their Indian selves, Nehru discovered India through the medium of history. temperamentally he saw the world historically; a perspective that at once defined his sense of political possibility and made him vigilant about attending to how the future would look back on his own actions.

As a student of Organization Brands, this book particularly interests me as a parallel for positioning a complex entity (like a Corporation)in a competitive scenario. In this case it happens to be even more challenging as the entity is marginal in terms of resources, is extremely heterogeneous and complex and exists more as a spirit rather than a well-defined geographical space.

Here is an excerpt from the book which captures the external challenge Nehru had to deal with--

Indianness was constituted out of internal diversity, but in Nehru's vision it was equally an international identity, a way of being in the wider world. In contrast to the sometimes narrowly domestic horizons of most in the nationalist movement, Nehru understood independence as an opportunity to establish India as a presence on the world stage. The international profile of states depended on their economic and military prowess, and India obviously could not make its mark in these domains. A new state like India, weak by international standards, would have to pursue its interests by creating its own opportunities and chances. By speaking the language of morality and justice, it might just be able to surprise and unbalance the more powerful, extracting concessions from their sheer embarrassment. Nehru, in this the follower of Gandhi, turned around the language of victim hood: instead of portraying India as a martyr to colonial subjection which had to turn inwards to find and repair itself, he affirmed India's character as a self confident actor in international politics.

Distinguishing Infy!

My obsession with Infosys continues :-)...for years i have been informally asking people in the IT industry on what they feel are the real differentiators between the Big Three of Indian IT- TCS, Infy and Wipro...and everyone has their take on it. There are those who believe that TCS scores with its years of domain knowledge and Infy is good at customer relations, Wipro has strong R&D and pricing advantage, there are those who say that TCS has character (a euphemism for being a bit boring and dowdy) while Infy has charisma and personality...Wipro just copies what Infy does etc. Some say Infy is strong on processes while TCS has technical expertise.

And there are those whose technical mastery gives them the ability to find differences in a much more nuanced technical platform kind of way...Infy is strong on Java 3.3 and Wipro has competencies in Web 2.020...just kidding!

However, to my mind inspite of similar business models and the remarkably similar jargon they themselves use to describe their differences (a la Global Delivery Model and end-to-end solutions)...Infosys really stands out as a brand. It enjoys greater coherence and uniqueness as an entity and it shows up in its performance i.e. profitability.

It in fact occurs as being more 'New Economy'compared to both TCS and Wipro which despite being in the same sector look a bit more orthodox, conservative and conventional.

The central value which Infy has and its comparative companies lack in my opinion is the cultural aspect of OPENNESS- it is on the whole a more imaginative and creative conception than the other two brands.And this value shines through in all its aspects of managing itself- the transparency in reporting, the generosity in sharing wealth, in providing outstanding facilities, in not being afraid to take stands on socially relevant issues...

Infy is an icon of the post liberalization India and as a student of brands in general and company brands in particular it keeps on mesmerizing me with its various nuances....

Actions do speak louder than words in the brand world...

Gareth Kay writes about Brand Defining Gestures on his blog and the idea that brands need to go beyond the so called 'communications' or 'marketing' and provide a proof of what they are committed to. A similar thought has been building up in my mind since i first read about 'signature policies' as a brand building tool for service brands in Stephen King's classic Brand Building in the 1990s. Increasingly companies that pit their money where there mouth is and use actions to communicate their commitment rather than words will get to be 'brands' ahead of others. To that extent some of the most iconic companies have used signature events to strengthen their equity- Apple and MacWorld, Infosys and its quarterly results (not off late though) etc.
The first step, in my opinion to think up an action would be to get in touch with the core purpose i.e. the sense of contribution that genuinely drives the management to work. And from there any large hearted, imagination capturing experience that suggests itself would be a great place to start. Recently Starbucks' decision to shut down all its outlets for 3 hours to get beck in touch with its roots or Intel management's walking out and reentering the premises as if a new management had taken over under Andy Grove are inspiring stories of using a difficult moment in the brand's history to reinforce its core value.

Method in madness...

This one seems to be taking a life of its own. Continuing in the spirit of my previous post about innocent drinks and help remedies, here is another cute, soulful, passionate and transparent FMCG firm called method -, into household cleaning stuff. According to their website, they are the fastest growing FMCG company in the US and their mission is to give face lift to the household cleaning industry.

And alongside is a remarkable post from Piers Fawkes at PSFK on the future of large FMCG a la P&G, Unilever etc.

More and more consumers appear to be attracted to ‘real’ brands - brands with soul, history and substance - brands like Innocent Drinks or Method soap. These brands live because they reflect the values of the management and staff and the transparency generated by the web helps fuel the love of them.

Company brand building is here to stay and the habit purchase FMCG is the last frontier that is at least beginning to get seriously repositioned by the entry of these maverick firms....

The Mother of all Logistics...

Happened to study a little bit about the logistics business in the context of a new business lead over the weekend. The logistics of logistics are quite overwhelming- eg. UPS, which has developed a new strategy for reinventing its brand for the future will take 6 years just for the visual identity change to take place because it involves 88,000 vehicles, hundreds of airplanes, over a million uniforms and nearly 2000 locations/facilities. Fedex saved millions of dollars in printing/painting cost when it shortened its name for Federal Express. Here is an interesting speech by the marketing head of UPS to announce the context of the band revamp. It explains in fairly simple terms the complexity of examining and nurturing an organization brand.

The Summer Collection...

The recent spate of rebranding initiatives clearly indicates the state of mind of a lot of managements in the country. Brand is high on priority but low on understanding. However there is some interesting work some not so great.
On the whole, here is what I felt of the 3 that I have noticed.
Shoppers is a pretty neat job of making the retailer future ready. The new logo has all the understated class and cosmopolitan feel of the brand while keeping it very accessible. The line- Start Something New – really is awful. Not only is it copied, it is so passé that it undoes some of the ground covered by the logo.
As Luke Sullivan says in Hey Whipple Squeeze This- If you don’t have a ‘just do it’, just don’t!
Godrej, I feel has gone a few decades back and somewhere the confused identity is leaping out. The new logo looks terribly inspired by Google and that is certainly a little too much for Godrej to replicate. However, it is pretty clear that Interbrand has not developed a strong sense of what Godrej has meant over the decades to Indians and left a lot of money on the table in terms of leveraging the equity of the group. The treatment of the new logo is terribly out of character with the group’s overall enduring, dignified and classy appeal.
I feel strongly about Ceat though. I feel it has shot itself in the foot by taking the rhino out. Metaphors like these are hard to come by. A gattu (Asian Paints), a Maharaja etc. have been few and far between and one wonders what kind of managements are not gotten by a great idea when they see one. In an earlier post I had written about the power of a Branding Idea.
To me Ceat getting rid of the rhino is a form of hara-kiri as other than that logo I can’t think of anything distinctive the company had going for itself for a while. The new logo is another one of those idealess logos where reams of longwinded explanation will be provided about every color, every nuance and every brushstroke that has gone into that logo but ask the consumer to interpret it and not even 1% of that will be played back.

What's in a Name!

The amount of agonizing I usually see over naming issues in companies makes me wonder if it is all worth it. Just to qualify, I have nothing against a truckload of creativity in naming a company ( a la innocent, Apple etc.) but when I see massive amount of management time being spent on commoditized businesses running under absolutely bland family names I wonder What’s really in a name?
Recently came across a client dilemma. An industrial business (B2B) has been operating under a certain name (a generic English word) across a few geographies. Now it wants to enter a new geography where some other business with the same name has already been in existence. The question is whether to go ahead with the same name and spend our money and imagination to establish our version of the same name more distinctively than the other or to choose a new, distinctive one. One would want to analyze the situation from various angles like the existing equity in their name, any regulatory hurdles etc. and not to mention some possible superstitions of the management.
However the question on my mind remains if we are grappling with the real stuff or just the cosmetics? And is it worth the time and money being spent on such exercises?
(Incidentally just came across a blog dedicated to the issue of naming - Namewire is an interesting blog which covers this topic from various perspectives and provides a lot of material to mull over).
In Indian we have had a remarkable marketing story unfolding over the last decade or so in the form of what is known today as Vodaphone. It has gone from starting out as Max-Touch to being Orange and then till a few months ago Hutch. Every time it has managed to transition to a new name absolutely effortlessly keeping the same core values and brand personality intact. Although it may sound a little too premature, there are two Reliances operating and carving out fairly distinct personalities for themselves. On the flip side there are the expensive but superficial rebranding/revamping exercises a la Shoppers Stop, Ceat, Berger, Godrej etc. that we have witnessed in recent times.
The point I am making here is that very few clients seem to be engaging with the real issue of brand personality which is where the brand gets built or destroyed and not in naming/visual identity. Only when a senior management is in touch with its organizational personality it can cause uniqueness to happen in the market and name in may opinion plays an insignificant role in it. Sadly, in my opinion very few pass that test and end up looking for answers in the wrong places like visual identity (a highly overrated domain in my opinion , but will leave that one for another day).
I have been a part of an absolutely brilliant naming exercise for a not-for-profit called Janaagraha where we identified what the movement needs to stand for and the name consciously evoked a certain proposition and personality of Gandhi.
On the other hand, my own firm which is called Centre of Gravity (not yet a brand by any stretch of imagination) has been a total positive coincidence. What is our firm today was started by a colleague who was into climbing/adventure sports and the name Centre of Gravity sounded apt for that. Due to a host of serendipities the team ended up doing brand strategy work for a few clients and eventually decided to focus on pure Organization Brands and when we looked at the name it sounded perfectly apt and incredibly creative since our work is primarily about helping organizations define the core of their being their identity i.e. their Centre of Gravity.
So, while we agonize over naming our rose- the starting point would be to get in touch with its smell…

Artificial Limits of Brand Extensions

Brand Extension has been one of the buzzing advisory space and as i read a neatly written post by Jennifer Rice on How far a Brand can Stretch, i was wondering if the limits we put to a brand are in any way real. I for one believe that every brand name can carry anything under it and it is only limited by its competence. There are no external limits to a brand in terms of consumer perceptions, which are absolutely and continuously capable of changing.
It may sound a little brash and provocative, so let me share where i am coming from. When i look at an Apple moving from category to category, or large conglomerate brands like the TATAs or a GE, i fail to see why a brand cannot cut across many unrelated categories.
My submission is that a brand extension assumes a certain easy-way-out by doing a me-to or a sub-optimal offering, which is aimed at purely riding on the strength of the existing equity of the brand built through the good work done in another category. It is actually a lazy marketer's answer to growth.
A brand really keen to enhance its reputation will focus on bringing something dramatically new to the new category and by doing that will not only succeed in the new initiative but also enhance the overall equity of the brand. Who would have suggested Apple expand into MP3 players?
After all, if brands are like humans, the argument can go towards their limitless potential in extending and expanding themselves. I have seen many individuals building successful reputations in more than one unrelated areas of life and being celebrated rather than questioned for it...
As the Company Brand paradigm takes hold, this question of what is the extendable limit of a brand is going to come under increasing pressure to prove itself innocent.

Being the Brand!

Can a corporation/a brand, in these complex and dynamic times with short managerial tenures realistically aim for long range strategic planning and 5-10 year objectives with roadmaps? Can they hope to get some where that is clearly articulated way down into the future or do they have to decide and be in that space from day one? Are great brand built as a result of getting somewhere or being someone?

I am deeply sceptical of long-term planning lead approaches...do we even know what course our life will take 3 months down the line (provided we are playing a dynamic game)....

The only approach for corporations would be to discover and articulate 'a way of being' for themselves that inspires them to be at their best. Lets look at a few illustrations of the way of being- Apple is being creative all the time across all its functions- whether it is designing a pc or launching a new product like ipod or conceptualizing its retail experience, TATA is about being responsible, Reliance is about being wealthcreating... the more consistently a corporation is being itself across all its activities (and communication is just the front end) the greater its chance of achieving true uniqueness...so now the question arises how does a brand discover its way of being! Can you look at the most powerful, iconic brands and distinguish a consistent way of being?

Watch out for more on this as this space unfolds...

Synchronicity!

Stumbled upon this very clearly written blog by David Maister on the woes of advertising which takes the discussion on the future of marketing further. Whose baby will marketing be, is a question urgently begging an answer... particularly when the company is the brand- shoudn't CEO be the chief marketing officer?

Future of Advertising- Inevitable or Probable?

Happened to meet two passionate advertising people in the last couple of days and was surprised to find how out of touch with reality they were on the relevance, stature and potential of advertising as a strategic brand building tool. Having been an ex-advertising professional, and a passionate one at that, I have been witnessing the gradual decline of it on all the above mentioned parameters. Therefore, this blogpost is just a summary of a number of trends that have been documented in many places which have lead to the marginalization of advertising in the world of management.

No.1- we are living in the service economy so no amount of advertising is going to make up for a shoddy frontline job. The key brand communication tool for most of the brands built in the last 10 years has been the frontliner- be it an Infy, or an NDTV or a Jet or an HDFC/ICICI. HR is new marketing.

No.2- the rise of the company brand. Sony, Apple, Samsung, Dell, Nokia...the list goes on. Single line FMCG (Surf, Tide, Coke etc.) is going to be a rarity and people will first buy the company brand before a choosing a product band in that context. ipod works till Apple does. Ask a car buyer about buying a Palio or an Optra-- the woes of Fiat and GM have enormous bearing on the purchase decision. Even FMCG companies are reducing the portfolio and emphasizing the company brand (J&J, Nestle). And company brands get built by their financial performance, by the management philosophy, by their HR practices etc. CEO is the new brand manager.

No.3- Advertising will thrive, but more as a BPO and not as a strategic arm. CEOs do not even have time for their internal marketing departments, forget ad- agencies. Those hoping that 'great creative' is going to put them back on the CEOs table are trying to lispstick on an elephant...

No.4- Ad agencies have contributed to their problems by not investing enough in their people and attracting the kind of talent that today goes to any consulting job. Their central identity is in the creative function and the best creative talent is moving out of agencies to far more exciting options. However, the deeper issue that makes it even more difficult to fix is one of integrity. I don't intent to sound like a moral science teacher but the level of workability (because people do not have any respect for their word) is pathetically low in most ad firms.

Personally, in my post grad days i used to dream of being a part of another creative revolution of the Bernbach kind and got enrolled every time the head of an agency spoke about reinventing the agency in a manner that reinvents the industry.

Frankly, i have become a bit skeptical of any such claims, not so much because i do not trust their resolve, but more importantly because i always get surprised at how mis-diagnosed the disease remains.

Now what do i tell this girl doing her B.Com when she asks me for tips on building a career in advertising?

Infosys & the Curse of the Incumbent

Infosys has truly been an iconic brand for the 1990s...one of the defining metaphors for what our country went through as it shed its socialist past and embraced capitalism. To use Douglas Holt's thesis, brand Infosys provided a dramatic reconciliation for the ideological conflict the nation was going through. While a nations of so many underprivileged people naturally resonated with the idea of socialism and central role for government, the 1991 crisis exposed the vulnerability of that model. On the other hand, while the success of capitalism was unmistakable, our society was still suspicious of unbridled capitalism.

Infosys emerged as a brand which was highly competitive, global, high technology and yet humane, socially responsible and authentic. Like JN TATA almost a hundred years ago, it was difficult to say whether NarayanMurthy was a socialist or a capitalist. He reinvented the archetype for the new century. In a way, in the 1990s, he was more TATA than the TATAs.

Moreover, with their middle class educational upbringing, the management made the dream beliveable 'for the rest of us'.

However, the last 3 years have been relatively tepid as far as Infy's masterful performances are concerned. It has been a while since one got to see a bold visionary move that this brand had been so good at in the past. Whether it is putting the value of the human capital on the balance sheet or the generous wealth sharing or the breathtaking campus or taking bold stands on various issues...the new Infy seems to be far more conservative and self-centred.

And the impression one gets is of an extremely efficient execution machine delivering great stock market performance but losing touch with its soul. The CEOs after NRN have also been more managers/strategists than visionaries.

Probably they see themselves now as incumbents rather than challengers and thus the need to preserve status-quo rather than invent new paradigms....

At times their efforts at making a difference have looked publicity stunts rather than authentic expressions of care. Case in point being the one crore donation for Kashmir earthquake a day after announcing quarterly profits of over 600 crores.

It is a brand that has been the pride of this nation and one hopes it continues to play the progressive role it provided through the 1990s in inspiring Indian corporates towards greater transparency and equitable wealth-sharing. That was the Infosys difference and definitely something that all of us who want to see standard-setting global corporations emerge out of India, would want preserved.

The challenger in Infosys probably needs to be rekindled!