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Strategic
Marketing Forum
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Brand
Culture and BRAND RITUALS
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A
panel discussion was organised by Strategic Marketing
on the culture of brands, how they adapt to and influence
the culture of the place in which they are operating,
how rituals form around them and so on. Held in Mumbai
in September 2001, the participants included Amit Jatia,
Managing Director, McDonald’s; Nabil Sultan, General
Manager (India & Nepal), Emirates; Gayatri Yadav, Marketing
Director, Godrej Pillsbury; Deepa Kakkar, Vice-President
& Executive Creative Director, HTA; M. G. Parmeshwaran,
Executive Director, FCB-Ulka, and Atul Sinha, Associate
Director, Marketing, Colgate-Palmolive. The discussion
was moderated by Dr Ranjan Das, editor of Strategic
Management. |
Dr
Ranjan Das : The topic for today is brand cultures
and how a brand influences society and, at the same
time, also gets influenced by it. Strategic brand management
has progressed considerably over the last 15 years—while
the corporate sector and agencies initially focused
on brand image and brand personality, attention is now
shifting to brand identity. Brand identity, now seen
as the fundamental platform for building brands, has
six key elements. The first two elements are brand physique
and brand personality. The third element is brand relationship—the
relationship a brand establishes with its target audience.
The underlying theme could be like a man-woman relationship
as in the case of a perfume or a mother-child relationship.
The fourth is reflection which is really the image of
what the target customer group wants to be. The fifth
is self-image, which matches with that of the target
group. And, finally, brand culture which determines
the kind of communication to be made and the kind of
products to be included under the brand portfolio. The
culture influences and infiltrates into the brand. For
example, Mercedes reflects German values. Some brands
promote individualism; some talk about collectivism.
Some brands reflect their country of origin—Coca Cola,
for instance, is all about America. When we talk about
brand culture, we also talk about how brands help change
society. A brand has an internal spirit that echoes
its personality, culture and self-image. In today’s
discussion, we will be talking about this inner spirit
of the brand. My first question is: how does a brand
build a culture around itself?
Deepa Kakkar: When we get the brief on the brand,
we define its DNA or the genetic code which decides
its personality and the way the brand behaves. After
getting the DNA right, the brand owner indoctrinates
the brand with his own culture and imbues his own value
systems in it.
RD: How do you visualise a culture?
Deepa: Unlike the other dimensions you mentioned,
culture is something that the brand develops over time.
It comes from the person who starts the brand. And then
it does things that gives the brand a particular culture.
For instance, Tata is a brand that stands for India.
It was created by one person who imbued it with his
values which are now being carried on by the third generation.
Thus, the culture of a brand goes beyond mere physicality
and has to evolve over the years. If you talk about
brand management as a job, where you cannot leave anything
to chance, I would rather say that even the cultural
part has to be imagined. Nike’s ‘Just do it’ surely
hasn’t surely just come in without any thought about
the brand culture.
Gayatri Yadav: If you take the instance of a
multinational personality like Pillsbury you’ll see
that there is a lot of method to the madness. Pillsbury
is a food brand that began in the US in 1869. A study
conducted in 1996 indicated that the awareness of Pillsbury
in India was zero. No one knew about the brand and here
it was aspiring to enter the Indian kitchen. Hence it
was imperative to develop a culture for Pillsbury in
India. Pillsbury in US started as flour, but today,
with its baked foods, it is all about moms pleasing
their family, it’s all about reunion and warmth and
togetherness and how bread is the staff of life. We
found that those values are very true in India because
when a mom puts a roti on a table she is putting a bit
of herself into the roti. This made us decide not to
talk about modern milling technology but to celebrate
the chakki and tradition. Our brand mascot, the dough
boy, bridged the rest of the gap...he existed to help
moms and provide cheers in the kitchen. He is the face
of our brand and is the personification of what we do.
He allows the traditional Indian woman to live up to
her traditional image, using modern means. I think the
Indian market is evolutionary but not revolutionary,
and Indian women are not yet ready for revolution in
food. If we are talking about food in the context of
home, we will have to be extremely sensitive to culture.
RD: Nabil, do you think that the cultural aspect
is as important a part of brand management strategy
in a service industry like the airlines?
Nabil Sultan: As the general manager for Emirates
Airlines based in India, I think we look at the brand
culture in all our services. We fly to fifty-odd destinations
and everytime we venture out into a new market, we take
a detailed look at its cultural aspects and values in
order to get closer to the people. For example, last
September after we started flying to Chennai, we found
that the city is famous for its traditional dance. So
we came up with an ad campaign that featured Bharat
Natyam and it was a success. With our forthcoming campaign
projecting NRIs who live abroad and parents who go to
visit them, we are striving to take our brand closer
to the Indian people.
RD: Now let us take a look at brand culture from
two perspectives. One, how does a local culture influence
a brand, and two, how does a brand impose the said culture
on different societies and reflect a specific local
culture? Let me take the first one viz. how does local
culture influence a brand? Amit, we have already heard
a lot about what McDonald’s is doing in this regard.
Amit Jatia: It is not just the marketing guys
or the advertising guys managing the McDonald’s brand.
It is as much about the operational guys, back office
guys, legal guys and everybody else. At McDonald’s,
the whole concept is to be childlike and build a culture
that makes everyone smile. Even a 60-year old should
be able to discover a youthful spirit when he is with
us. The sitting density in the restaurant (two-seaters
for college students and six-seaters for families),
the menu, the affordability and quality of the product
should be at par with the choice of the masses we are
catering to. In the South-East Asian markets, McDonald’s
is a family restaurant. But if you go to the US, it
is just McDonald’s. Since Indian society is family-oriented,
we positioned McDonald’s as a family restaurant. Our
survey in India suggested that the people here want
McDonald’s to serve something that is not available
anywhere else but at the same time is also distinctly
Indian in terms of taste. Thus, our menu had to be tailored
accordingly. McDonald’s philosophy is quite simple—be
global but act local.
RD: Deepa, do you have an example from HTA where
a foreign brand came to India and adjusted itself to
the local cultural conditions? Please remember I am
referring to the cultural aspect that is not visible
so easily.
Deepa: I would like to give the instance of De
Beers. In De Beers, the brand isn’t really a diamond.
It is something as intangible as love. Worldwide, it
is the ultimate gift of love. India spends 12 billion
dollars annually on gold as it is seen as an investment.
Diamonds here are supposed to be bought only by the
rich and the famous. Women here would prefer to spend
thousands on a Kanjivaram saree than on a diamond, as
they are not confident about being able to pick a flawless
one. Thus, De Beers was concerned about living up to
the aspirations and also attaching a price tag to its
diamonds. It was selling love with a price tag. In India,
De Beers had to undertake the tough task of changing
the consumer mindset.
RD: Mr Sinha, your product is known for quite
some time in India. Do you recall any effort on your
part to adjust your product to local cultural realities?
Atul Sinha: Well, Indian consumers do not treat
Colgate as an American brand. We have the advantage
of being in the country for the last 60 years. Let me
cite the example of our brand that we re-engineered
last year, Colgate Dental Cream (CDC). Pepsodent had
eaten away into the shares of CDC, and the brand was
in dire need of re-engineering. But while doing so,
we did not do away with the core identity of CDC. We
did not fall into the usual trap of making it more trendy
and modern. We modernised the brand but stuck to the
values the brand stood for—reliability and reassurance—the
values with which Colgate has always identified itself.
The campaign running now in India, ‘Meri big super shakti
meri big suraksha’, is essentially very Indian. And
yet, it is no different in its core essence, in its
core emotions from the Colgate that talks in Philippines,
Brazil, New York, London or anywhere else.
RD: Mr. Parmeshwaran, do you have any experience
on the same subject—foreign brands have actually getting
influenced by local culture?
M. G. Parmeshwaran: Yes. Let me talk about the
experiences of Tropicana orange juice in India. We did
some very interesting mood and mind web studies to identify
our challenges. India is a country where we don’t eat
too much fruit and don’t drink anything out of a pack,
since it is supposed to contain colours and additives.
Moreover, Indian consumers prefer to drink sweet juices
and Tropicana orange juice is not sweet but slightly
sour. Thus, we had manifold problems on hand. We decided
to carry the taste as the differentiating factor and
called it ‘the taste of good health’. The taste of good
health isn’t necessarily delicious. Go ahead and enjoy
it. This worked wonders, and Tropicana is doing extremely
well. This idea suited Indian consumers, who prefer
things fresh. Thus, while carving out the strategy for
Tropicana, we had to overcome a lot of cultural barriers.
Nowhere else in the world is Tropicana marketed as ‘the
taste of good health’.
RD: I would like to ask a question to Nabil.
Do you know of any instance where your airlines services
had to undergo changes to cater to the peculiarities
of Indian culture?
Nabil: We have to deal with these issues whenever
we fly to a new destination.
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