Popular events attract massive media investment for brand promotions. Following the event there's always quantitative analysis and viewership numbers to prove the efficacy of advertising time on TV.

But how interested was the audience in closely absorbing the advertised brand while watching an event on TV? Did the viewer see some high order benefit in the product? Will this qualitatively translate to the purchase act? Do the top-line and bottom-line of companies actually increase after this? You'll not have answers to these questions. You'll get just facts and figures through the TAM (TV Audience Measurement) rating about the large size of the audience. You'll not know its impact on business.

Two global soda pop companies seem to have a strategy of entering different countries together. They enact a continuing battle for market-share everywhere and intrigue customers to get habituated to their products. They play with media investments like a casino game. Their extremely emotional television advertising does not link product benefit with the value of customer health.

A carbonated drink is not healthy, but it's shown as being very entertaining. Such advertising contaminates communication by deviating from product benefit, and at the same time provides a strong impulse of entertainment. Numerous media spots of these brands can become a reference that perhaps influences Indian manufacturers to project their brand communication in a similar way.

Would this reference be sustainable where health benefit in food products is becoming a priority for human beings worldwide? With a future perspective on their business growth, carbonated drink manufacturers may have to think of how to compensate for their lack of intrinsic customer health benefit by manufacturing other exciting products that are healthy.

Communication gimmicks alone will never succeed in selling real health benefit products, which they will necessarily have to move to, in future. That's why Indian manufacturers should not blindly benchmark with such communication tactical initiatives currently used for advertising carbonated drinks. If a communication does not have a fil conducteur which translates the corporate value, whatever money you may spend in the media, it will not reflect in the bottom-line.

What is the fil conducteur?
Fil conducteur is a French phrase meaning a unique driving nerve (thread). It can be used in business where it can seamlessly interconnect key aspects of all deliverables across an organisation, generation after generation
(see fig 1).
The values and the core concept of an organisation form its fil conducteur. They must be understood and internalized by everyone at every level in an organization, in every aspect of their jobs.
This nerve can link the organisation's core expertise through attitude, behaviour and action with the product's rational deliverable (which is non-visible) and functional deliverable (which is visible) towards an emotional content, which creates Emotional Surplus, a value beyond the customer's expectation (see fig 2).
When an organisation identifies its customer driven values and states them as a concept upfront, there is complete clarity both internally and externally.
This is the root of the fil conducteur which needs to be continuously marketed internally as a project to ingrain its value proposition with employees.

Fil conducteur brings customer focused value alignment in a manufacturing or service organisation.

The MD, CEO and COO can amplify their top-line and bottom-line objectives if they can establish the fil conducteur with employees who'll deliver value beyond expectation to customers through products, services and solutions.

Proven quality vs. subliminal image
When Japanese companies like Sony and Toyota, Korea's Hyundai, an American company like Kodak, or Nokia from Finland take a communication platform that is overtly emotional, it has certain logic. These companies have, over decades, either in their own or in foreign countries, clearly established their fil conducteur and value of rational and functional deliverables. Quality and performance have become synonymous with their brand names.

With quality and performance attributes being at a high horizontal par, and therefore a given, only the emotional aspect plays a disproportionately higher role in differentiating brands of such companies. The emotional aspect in their advertisements will make an impression on you because you already know their quality reputation through word of mouth.

It must be remembered though that quality and performance are not taken for granted by these international companies. They continuously upgrade these attributes to evolve and remain competitive in the market.

Indian manufacturers may think their brands must talk to customers in the same emotional level. This is the big mistake. Without proving the rational and functional performance of your product to the customer, how can these manufacturers own the customer's high order emotional mind space?

In the current scenario when India has already become a playground for international brands, you don't have enough time to prove, step by step, your rational and functional performance. You need to take a radical shift in course to value add on your rational and functional delivery. Or else global competition is around the corner to devour your business.

Indian companies cannot benchmark advertising with the communication style of these international companies. They must first benchmark internationally on product performance and quality to meet the increasing expectation of Indian customers.
With access to international product experience in different areas of daily life, customers are no longer tolerant of superficial content in their purchase.

The economic reforms were introduced in 1991. We had enough lead time up to 1999, even six years before WTO in 2005 will fully remove barriers to foreign players in India, to improve product quality and provide a higher order benefit.

But most manufacturers have overestimated the tolerance level of their customers. Because Indians are price conscious they mistakenly thought that customers will continue to accept low quality, and not pay for premium pricing relating to high product performance.
Should the customer pay a premium for the image of a company's external shell or the value of the product? In certain markets such as in white goods you will find that international companies have proven their quality advantage and even with higher prices, have overtaken domestic players.

We sport a very defensive attitude towards established foreign companies. Instead of observing, learning and absorbing their process of quality deliverables, and how they gain customer mindshare, we tend to criticize or copy their subliminal part. In today's competitive market, being critical about the proven competitor is not a step forward.
No particular company can ever have a monopoly on winning a high value slot in the customer's psyche. This possibility to enter the consumer's mind is open to every company. Indian manufacturers must become aware of the mechanism of customer value upgrading through the fil conducteur. Their challenge is to anticipate the market, improve product quality and performance, and grab an aspirational space in the customer's subconscious mind.

Make advertising value driven through fil conducteur:
The intangible part of a brand creates its goodwill. Entertaining story writing alone will not sell the product, nor create brand goodwill.
The fil conducteur that weaves internal alignment with value added products can lead to strong brand story writing. This fil conducteur can be enriched with an aggressive marketing strategy using a powerful communication platform to create goodwill. It's not necessary for an advertisement to be beautiful, rather make it like a consumable.
Your advertising can be linked to the fil conducteur when you are able to divide it into the rational, functional and emotional platforms (see fig. 3).

You will create a deep rooted brand building foundation if you make your customers understand your rational plus and rational surplus, step by step, in a very creative and subliminal angle. Don't get obsessed by fragile emotional story boards.

After building the rational part, you can step into expressing the functional benefit where you can also bring in a creative and subliminal angle. At this stage, you must be very careful not to get taken in by surveys and TAMs saying the customer didn't like the advertising showing the functional and rational benefits.

Re-brief your advertising agency to make customers first absorb the rational and functional components. Your briefing should convince your advertising agency to bring in as much creativity as possible to make the rational and functional areas get subliminally ingrained into the customer's subconscious mind.

Don't stretch the brand into becoming a peripheral entertainment story. Make the brand detail the fil conducteur and tell a story of the customer's benefit of life.

After establishing the functional and rational facets you can land on the emotional content. The rational surplus and functional surplus will create a basic foundation where customers will value the reason of purchase, while emotional content will make your brand fly in the high aspiration zone.

This is where you'll find your pay-off and competitive advantage. The rational and functional parts will bring equilibrium of customer trust and loyalty, and emotion will embrace the centre of this fidelity. Here you will inspire your customer towards purchase and unending motivation which is Emotional Surplus.

The perceiving of emotional content is always intangible. So being Surplus in Emotion means you are connecting to it in an unending way at the mental level with your customer.
The rational and functional base with an emotional content connects to people as a value beyond their expectation where the competition cannot enter.

An Emotional Surplus Identity has substance; it is not a mere representation of a corporation through a graphic design.
An identity has always been the strength in any civilisation. The pyramids of Egypt can be seen as an Emotional Surplus Identity for the country as the pyramids translate the mystery of the past in a futuristic way. The pyramids continue to be awe inspiring even today.

Shining Emotional Surplus Pvt. Ltd. is a management consulting house that aligns corporations for end-user benefit

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