HughTrain - And MyTrain of thoughts
Published January 21st, 2005 in Advertising, Marketing.Thanks to a good friend and colleague at FutureSoft Santanu Chari sent me this presentation from Changethis. (Hugh MacLeod). A lot of these thoughts are very relevant in the current context of marketing, communication and advertising as an industry.
While at Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, we have had some great guys for professors and one such professional, Mr. Santosh Sood used to teach us Advertising and Brand Management. As I was reading this manifesto, I was reminded of him. We have had huge arguments during our classroom sessions trying to convince each other on the various topics relating to Brand Management. The argument was to figure out if Brand Management was an art or science. Prof. Sood maintained that Brand Management is more spiritual than science and it seems I would only tend to agree!
Quite a few people stop short of getting there because they probably think that brand management is advertising the offering and drumming ‘a thought’ in the consumer / customer’s head.
A brilliant illustration of this thought is given in “THE HUGHTRAIN”. If brand management was that easy, I think anyone can become a brand manager and anyone can build a brand. Unfortunately, the job is difficult and it requires a lot of conviction to achieve what some of the largest brand have achieved. Agreed that there have been tough times and tough markets for each one of the big brands that we are talking about, but these brands have reached where they are, only because of the firm faith, conviction and belief of the brand managers.
Is conviction enough?I would think that the answer is a big NO. We having conviction about the offering is one thing and the offering living up to the conviction is another. I also think that the quality of the offering comes before the conviction itself.
My first job was as a sales man in Tata Press Limited in Chennai India. Till then the only Yellow Pages I was exposed to was from the Telephones department and was run by M&N (a Sterling group company). The first 15 days of my work life was fun! We were in the process of getting convinced that the Telephone directory Yellow pages is all smuck and Tata Press is the best thing to have happened to the Yellow Pages industry! We (some 30 of us getting trained to be sales men for the first time in our lives) believed it. Honestly we did. But the product actually lived up to the belief. The company had done a good job in the other cities (Bombay, Delhi & Bangalore) and they maintained the quality in Chennai too. The first issue of the book came out on time. Got distributed for free and was well accepted! Fortunately for us competition delayed the publishing of their yellow pages and bingo! The brand was built and was accepted by the average Chennaiite!
But does it stop there? NO (again?!) I don’t really see those yellow pages in all the places anymore. Reinventing didn’t happen. Company changed hands. Diluted focus by getting into database marketing and use of the same sales force to sell few other publications led to the damage. This is my guess. I would stand corrected if a different reason is given or if it is proved that TATA PRESS YELLOW PAGES is still the vogue in Chennai!
Brand
There used to be a game called “Name, Place, Animal, Things” that I used to play when I was a school going kid. The task of the game is to write a name, a place, an animal and a thing with a particular letter of the alphabet picked at random within 15 seconds. Whoever completes all four the first with all legitimate entries would gain more points than the rest of the kids. This will continue till all the alphabets are covered. The kid with the most points would be considered winner and will be given a prize! The game helped in improving our vocabulary, GK and reflex. With due apologies for this digression, I am now trying to fit the concept called brand. Will it fit into any of these four? THE HUGHTRAIN claims of it to be a place and not a thing. We all would agree (at least I think so) that a brand is not just a name and it is certainly not an animal and if it is, it is certainly a very different kind of an animal to deal with. Where would we then fit a brand? I think that a brand is more a concept or a thought in the consumer’s mind! I am now again reminded of the conversations we have had with Prof. Sood. It is a thought in the consumer’s mind which every brand manager has to steer and keep it positive than just calling it a place or a thing. So the job of a brand manager is like a charioteer and the consumer is a horse. If you don’t keep all the horses in the same direction, the charioteer does not reach the destination. Most charioteers don’t.
Though I don’t agree with Hugh MacLeod (with due respects to your experience, Sir) on the thought that a brand is a PLACE and is NOT a THING, I would agree with him on the point that the success of a brand is achieved by having intelligent / smart conversations with the consumer. It takes a lot to have an intelligent conversation with a consumer and there are so many of them. The success is measured by the number of intelligent conversations that the company that has put money behind the brand indulges in. I may be wrong. I invite comments!
Messages?
I agree with Doc Searls’ thought that there is no market for messages. Because if there was, the TV companies need not make programmes between which the advertisments need to be aired. If I have to talk within the Indian context, I guess I can substantiate it with the amount of advertorial / “As seen on TV” programmes during which the TV companies suffer bad TRPs. The three hit theory doesn’t seem to work with them. At least that is the perception. It would call for an extensive research across the country to find out the number of people that call the numbers that gets flashed on the screen to buy a product worth RS.5000/- or sometimes more!
Advertisements Vs Advertising!
There are good advertisements and there is good advertising. One needs to chose between the two, depending on what he chases! A case in point would be MRF, the tyre manufacturer from India. A brand that I worked for when I used to work with Lintas Advertising - now LOWE. I strongly believe (actually after I left Lintas) that MRF makes good advertising, but never good advertisements. Their ads used to be bad (read BAD), but they have been in the market for as long as India has been independent and they are a very trusted name. The average consumer would know more about the brand and what it stands for than the average advertising man would. So the job that was in their hand, was just to remind the consumer about the company and to keep it on top of the pile to ensure that the next time he goes to buy a high involvement low interest level product like a tyre, MRF is the name that hits his mind first! They could manage this even when Bridgestone entered the Indian Market with their deep pockets. They always had other companies like JK Tyres & Apollo vying for a share of the market. And they have always managed to acheive it. I can tell with my experience, I have always found it difficult to manage to copywriters to work on MRF because writing for this client was not exciting. Maybe the client was right, maybe they were wrong. It can’t be proved by documented evidence, but their ads worked for them.
Spirituality
The spiritual awakening is probably in progress, and it differs from market to market. But the basics remain. It is a fact that branding is spiritual and it is a result of smart conversations. The tools employed are different in the current context. Reality TV, the internet and many other new media has arrived, but it is yet to be seen if they can stay. But smart conversations remain. With the splitting of the target audience between the various media now available being very high, the brand manager’s job of engaging the consumer in a stimulating, smart, delightful and a spiritual conversation.
I am thankful to:
Prof. Santosh Sood - Spent long years in Lintas and is now with DY&R in Delhi.
Hugh MacLeod - A brand consultant - runs ChangeThis & GapingVoid
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