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Blog /
1 June 2010 /
by Ian Stephens at 5:18 pm 1 June 2010
Filed under: Branding, Identity
It’s somewhere around eleven in the morning on a Sunday and I’m on a flight from Bangalore to Mumbai. I’m flying on Indigo – one of India’s many new low-cost airlines – and of course as we’re all used to these days the actual onboard experience is pretty much identical to any 737 flight: new plane, clean seats, nice uniforms, smiling staff, M&M’s and Coca-Cola on the menu.
But what strikes me as more profound is that when I look up at the group of passengers that I can see from my vista in seat 12b I could be mistaken in thinking I’m on a flight from Columbus to Chicago, London to Lisbon or even Dubai to Doha. Yes there are a few more saris than you’d expect in Lisbon but not so many – what strikes me looking at the magazines people are reading, their hairstyles, the gadgets they are playing with and many of the clothes they are wearing is that you know that most of these people would be quite comfortable striking up a conversation with fellow low-cost travellers stuck in a queue anywhere in the world.
We’ve gotten used to the idea that brands are becoming more global – especially in luxury and b2b markets where it’s long been argued that the target audiences are globally mobile so brand inconsistency will be punished and consistency rewarded. But beyond the super-wealthy and premium business sectors the driving force for consistency has been more to do with internal ‘supply’ side pressures than external; it’s more efficient to manage one strong brand position, with all that entails for consumer insights, international sponsorships and investment programmes, than to manage 20 or 30 different brands for similar products in different countries. Companies like Unilever and P&G have been exemplars of this for some time now – and it’s why it the UK we’ve had to get used to new names for old brands like Snickers and Cif.
But my low-cost companions aren’t super-wealthy – and most of them don’t look as of they’ll be heading straight for the new Louis Vuitton flagship store in London’s Bond Street next time they’re in town to snap up the latest designs. Nevertheless the similarities in this thoroughly middle-class strata of global society are more striking today than I’m sure they would have been only 10 years ago – even imagining low-cost airlines existed in as many places.
So what? Well if there is growth in opportunity on the ‘demand’ side for more global brands then this could change the way that international companies develop and launch new products for these audiences – not just looking for ‘supply’ side efficiencies from similarities but expecting to find them in unexpected and new places. More new brands launched simultaneously in India and Germany? More advertising campaigns being developed with genuine insight across multiple countries? More products with apparent cultural appeal in one part of the world, finding new markets in another – in healthcare for example?
1 June 2010 /
by Tina Mehta at 9:28 am 1 June 2010
Filed under: Branding, Identity, Nation Branding
Our proposed brand for the Unique Identification Authority of India programme was selected as one of five finalist submissions http://uidai.gov.in/
An ambitious endeavour from the Government of India, the programme will issue a number to 1.2 billion people – some of whom will be systematically integrated into society for the very first time.
Run by one of India’s most admired businessmen, Nandan Nilekani (former CEO of Infosys), this could very well be the first of a fresh type of government initiative in India – one that is more transparent, accountable, inclusive and effective.
Functionally, the card brings people inside the system. But symbolically, it brings Indians closer together. We created a visual expression that is bold, simple and meaningful by playing on the concept of the index finger dot – a mark of democracy. The visual expression binds the individual to the larger system but equally, celebrates each person’s uniqueness – the collective colour and vibrancy that makes up India’s amazing diversity.
Our congratulations to the winners – whom we look forward to race again at the next new, bold initiative.
26 May 2010 /
by Avik Chattopadhyay at 6:56 pm 26 May 2010
Filed under: Branding, Identity
“Come back to your own island.”
Announces an advertisement for a premium apartment.
“The world connected to you on your computer.”
Claims a ‘social’ networking website.
“Build your own dream team and take on the world.”
Urges EA Sports’ FIFA 10.
“All that you want to know about the world around you. On your computer screen.”
Declares one ‘virtual’ encyclopaedia.
How wonderful the world has become! We return not to our ‘homes’ but our own protected spaces, our own ‘gated’ communities. We network ‘socially’ on our computers, in perfect isolation. We beat Chelsea in Stamford Bridge whenever we want with the flick of the finger on the ‘enter’ key. We get to know more and more about less and less, without any need of debating and sharing amongst individuals.
We have software, programmes and ‘apps’ to empower us to rule the world. Technology, once an enabler has now become the controller.
Gone are the days when we actually played a good game of soccer on a rugged field. Or sat on a bench in the evening and debated issues out, ending with sharing a cup of tea. Or when we planned to save money to fly in for the alumni dinner. Or insisted that once a month it would be your turn to have guests in your condominium home for the Sunday lunch.
Here are the days when we happily register into yet another social networking site. Insist on having 24-hour security and video surveillance to keep the unwanted out. Have our children do projects by downloading information from the net, cut-copy-paste and take colour printouts. Get to know everything about ice hockey and its nuances without even getting out of the house.
What exactly are we selling?
A house or a home?
A game or an experience?
A piece of information or knowledge?
A network or a community?
I am afraid, we are selling “isolation”.
Where living alone is being together!
5 May 2010 /
by Wally Olins at 3:51 pm 5 May 2010
Filed under: Branding
Apart from the endless grimacing of the three candidates for Prime Minister in the UK General Election – what else is news?
Well quite a lot actually. There are three long running fascinating stories all different from each other, but all with one factor in common. They are catastrophic for their respective brands.
Greece, till very recently, one of the European Union’s starlets is struggling with financial meltdown. You can’t pick up a paper or watch the news without gawping at striking Greek fireman, tax inspectors or hospital orderlies waving lovely old style communist flags with the hammer and sickle all over them.
Goldman Sachs remains extremely rich, but the organisation reveals itself as morally and ethically bankrupt.
And finally poor old BP is so far from being Beyond Petroleum that it’s leaking oil everywhere except where it ought to be.
Each of these problems is not minor – they are all disastrous. And you can’t help feeling – how are the mighty fallen.
They are all getting publicity they can well do without. And all of us in the business of creating, reinventing and sustaining brands must be wondering, somewhere in the back of our tiny little minds, I wonder if they asked me, what I could do to help.
Well the answer is; not much. These are not just little local difficulties. When you have a problem of catastrophic dimensions, what you have to do first and above all, is deal with it. Come clean. Tell the truth for once, which Goldman for example might find difficult. And then when the fuss has died down a bit, start to rebuild your reputation. It can be done. It has been done. I’ve from time to time been involved in doing it. But it isn’t quick.
So it seems that not all publicity is good publicity after all.
Sure, if you’re Ryanair charging people to go to the loo – and piddling issues like that – maybe yes. But when it comes to the real thing as the Greek Government, Goldman Sachs and BP will tell you – all publicity is certainly not good publicity.
30 April 2010 /
by at 3:48 pm 30 April 2010
Filed under: Branding
It is time for a new financial language that the common man and even the man on Wall Street can understand and trust.
Financial institutions all over the world speak in code. No one understands; even those within the sector don’t even fully understand it. Does anyone really know or understand what CDOs (Collateralised Debt Obligations) or Credit-default Swaps, or Naked Wagers are?
Even Allan Greenspan, the once revered Chairman of the Federal Reserve, confessed “some of the complexities of some of the instruments that were going into CDOs bewilders me. I didn’t understand what they were doing or how they actually got the types of returns that they did… and if I didn’t understand it and I’ve got some fairly heavy background in mathematics and access to a couple hundred PhDs, how the rest of the world is going to understand it sort of bewildered me.”
To many, they were and still are black boxes of the subprime era. Byzantine creations of the brightest minds on Wall Street that made – and then lost – vast fortunes. I wonder how many investors would have really put their money into Collateral Debt Obligations if they knew that the underlying collateral were a group of mortgages with a 90% probability of defaulting. And naked wagers? Not much more sophisticated than showing up at a craps table in Las Vegas and rolling the dice, playing against the bank and hoping to yield a 300% return on an original investment. Yes…billions were made…but also lost. Who actually lost the most is another blog subject in and of itself.
The consequence has been absolutely devastating for the major financial brands that were once reverd as the pillars of western capitalism. No amount of PR and marketing spin is going to change people’s entrenched views.
You only trust what you understand. What will slowly change people’s perceptions is a new language that everyone comprehends. The financial institution that gets this and adopts a simpler and more layman way of describing who they are, what they do, and how they do it will at least be on the road to striking a new emotional chord with the audiences that need to fall back in love with them again. A loss of trust in financial institutions ultimately hurts all of us everywhere.
What do you think?
