Insights Into Making Your Brand Eternal

Making Brands relevant to audiences on a sustained basis is key. How this is done is answered in this article By Ramanujam Sridhar, CEO of Brandcomm.

Recent years have seen a big surge in the awareness of brand building as marketers increasingly realize the criticality of branding to survive the commodity trap. Having said that, brands today have proliferated our lives and most segments and the key challenge today is not about having a brand but what are you doing or what can you do to sustain it, make it relevant to its audiences. Eternal brands, as these brands are called, break the barrier where most brands end up in the recycle bin after a period of time.

Sustaining the brand today is an ongoing challenge and you can’t really afford to sit back on your laurels. Fortunately or unfortunately, the younger generation is going to make a big difference in consumer lifestyles and the nature of demand and they by themselves are a constantly evolving lot. Therefore the brand needs to keep pace with their speed of change and demand. The entire brand needs to be contemporary and branding is no longer confined to advertising, as it was perceived to be in the earlier days.

Colgate is a classy example of an eternal brand in the present day context. We may not have been able to pass on the Vedas and the Upanishads to the younger generation but have surely been able to pass the mandatory tube. The reason they were able to do that was the continuous evolution of the product offering targeting different segments such as the coloured gels- more for the youngsters, the herbal mint for the elders and so on. Similarly Titan introduced FastTrack - a range of trendy, digital watches to capture the younger audiences when their existing range was selling well. Even Coke & Pepsi are good examples of brands, which have managed to remain attractive to newer audience down the generations.

This is clearly the best of times and the worst of times for big brands. Today the competition in the market is tremendous. Earlier, people were not aware nor was their such a vast choice.

In the Indian context, people used to aspire to get foreign brands for themselves. The earlier generation used to aspire to own a Levis Jeans. Today, it is no longer an aspiration among the youth. There are a number of international and domestic players in the sector. Consumers today are no longer loyal to one brand like it used to be in the earlier days. Today one just flirts with brands and it is a part of the changing trend.

Despite changes in business, technology, social and economic conditions, market perceptions of brands have not changed much. The brand perceptions and image is strong in the minds of the consumer. The market reacts to the brand based on what the brand offers. Every brand offers a set of promises or values that appeal to the targeted segment in a particular way. The trick is to have the product or service meet the values or promises for the brand to succeed. This is a strong battle.

Also today media costs are extremely high and isn’t really an option providing value for money. Domestic players do not have as much resources as global brands do.

What determines the life of a brand and why have some brands been successful where others have failed? It is very critical for any brand today to constantly re-invent itself. You need to consistently give something new to the consumer. If a brand has established itself very strongly in a product category and the category itself becomes obsolete, the brand will die a natural death, unless the company has the foresight and vision to enter related contemporary product categories that enable it to build on the existing equity of the brand. Rasna for example used to be the dominant drink at a point of time in any party. Today aerated drinks have completely taken over that segment.

Secondly, the core promise of the brand or the reason why consumers prefer the brand to other competing brands needs to be looked at constantly. You need to continuously create an excitement around the product and work on improvement in the features of the product, pricing and providing value for money, which is very crucial in the Indian context. The consumer today is fairly cautious and is not spending as if there’s no tomorrow. He is very selective about his investments. The life cycle of brands however has become shorter.

The third factor is that many successful power brands have now learnt that to extend the life cycle of a brand, it is not always necessary to either enter new categories or re-position the brand, but simply to re-define the brand’s target markets and segments. The entry of Ford Motors and Toyota in the Indian market illustrates this principle.

A brand’s life cycle, unlike the product life cycle is thus infinite and depends on the light-footedness, vision and capability of the team managing the brand to evolve constantly. No brand disappears overnight. It first becomes irrelevant before it becomes invisible. You need to be on the alert constantly and keep pace with the ever-changing consumer lifestyles and demands.

(The article was written based on an interview conducted by the businessgyan editorial team with Ramanujam Sridhar, CEO of Brandcomm, a leading brand consultancy firm. feedback can be mailed to: brand@businessgyan.com)

Issue BG22 Jan03