Abhimanyu Ghosh - CEO

I am compelled to get back to the days when we as a team sat down and discussed this project which is very close to all our hearts. Powerbrands came into existence, because of our very strong belief that India deserves a book on brands, which deserve their stories to be read. Brands fight it out, a war as potent as anything possible today and in a market, which is the most idiosyncratic in the world. Powerbrands is a salutation to the brands that mesmerise the Indian con-sumers with their brilliant brand strategies.

However for us as a team the biggest problem was to choose the most powerful brands in India. It was difficult, it was confusing and it was troublesome because there are just too many brands, which are doing outstanding and we had to choose only a few. So as the content team and ICMR team kept discussing, various new possibilities came out and so did many combinations. We tried our level best to ensure that the research that comes out has to be authentic and full-proof. ICMR team led by Shivalee Kaushik did a fantastic job of coming to me with a grid of choosing brands through a nation-wide research that looked totally convincing and very scientific. It took both qualitative and quantitative aspects, which delved deep into most important factors of a brand driven by perceptions. After researching 50 industries and various sub-industries, they gave us a list that looked pristine. However most exciting part of the ICMR survey was the path-breaking POWER-FACTOR research grid that was developed and executed for every brand selected to be a POWERBRANDS 2010-2011.

For all the selected brands ICMR went directly to the target market and analysed the trust, recall and emotional levels of the brand. We have incorporated the essence of POWER-FACTOR research as a part of the content. POWERBRANDS 2010-2011 is a pristine thought process, super research and genuinely made consumer recognized process. While we were on a path of creating a credible research report in the shape of a coffee table book format, we kept getting constant demands from various brands that they wanted to be featured in an innovative format inside the book. I am glad to say that Powerbrands is not just a result of quality research but the design execution in the Mega edition book is a first of its kind attempt made globally and is a visual treat. I want to thank Yogesh Gajwani for some remarkable designs and Devdeep Singh who worked on the content grid of the book. Powerbrands is a compilation of India’s most powerful brands and hence the book also needed to be a powerful property. We tried everything possible in this project which makes the total proposition of Powerbrands, the most well done project on brands for the first time in India. According to our initial plans, Powerbrands was only a research report with a very well written coffee table format. But as we progressed with our work and the project kept getting stronger, we did some change in our planning.

For the entire team of Powerbrands, it was always the most important thing to deliver to the Indian readers a book that really showcased brands, which stand for-”excellence”. A coffee table would be restricted to few, so as a part of the plan to reach out to every brand enthusiast in India, POWER-BRANDS 2010-2011 is coming out in two different versions. A coffee table Mega edition and a corporate edition at a much lesser cost. In the making of Powerbrands, I would like to thank the Chairman, CEO and company spokesperson of every brand whom I or my team met as a process to understand the soul of these brands. Powerbrands is an eclectic blend of super-lative content, design and production making it the most unique book on brands ever published. I want to thank Tara, Sumer, Vikram and Yasir for writing some wonder-fully drafted content and specially mention the contributions of  Sakshi, Manvi, Sushmeet, Sarmad, Muneeb, Anisha, Preity, Preeti and Sunita for their tireless efforts of coordinating with each brand for the re-search, content and all other information on specific brands. Kanchan Chatterjee & Shahnawaz Ahmed for their designs and Sivam Ojha for managing the website.

Their contributions have been invaluable in the making of this project. Amim Ahmed has been my biggest support system. He went out of his way in helping to make this project a grand success with his great networking and marketing skills. The Mega edition has been printed by Pragati Printers who with their state of the art printing technology were able to give shape. Powerbrands has truly been a combined effort of a big human spirit called passion and team work. And that’s why we have the highest belief in it and we are sure everyone else will.I would like to thank Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri from the deepest point in my heart for being a support system for everyone working with the Planman and IIPM group. He encourages, motivates and gives freedom to give a shape to ones dream. Also big thanks to the Planman Media editorial, photo and production teams for the support that they gave in the making of Powerbrands. We put in our most sincere effort in making this book authentic in its research, world class in its looks and innovative with its design in the Mega edition and content that should justify all of it. I hope you love reading it as much we loved making it.

How Marketers are Invading the Human Mind

On one of those mirthful nights of his summer holidays, Sajan Raj Kurup, Founder & Creative Chairman of Creativeland Asia was grooving to the beats of feet-tapping music in a bar in Bangkok. Everything was festal till he started getting flashes of a particular brand of alcohol looking at the crystal ball at the disco while shaking his head to the beat. One flash, and as he paused, the flash was gone. The dancing continued and so did flashes of the alcohol at regular intervals. Tired, Kurup approached the bar and did the most obvious – he ordered ‘Absolut’!

It’s quite similar to the plot of Christopher Nolan’s Inception, if you’re one of those given to salacious thoughts – planting an idea in the mind of the consumer and letting it grow to the point of purchase. Subliminal advertising is what we call it. To implant an idea in someone’s mind without letting him know about it is – and to enforce an actionable impulse based on that idea, calls for utopian marketing finesse. That folks, is the essence of subliminal advertising.

When perfumeries started giving print ads with small tablets attached to the magazine, which gave off particular fragrances, that quite didn’t qualify as subliminal, as the consumer knew the idea was being planted, and was not forced to take action. Compare this with what follows – you’re driving on Highway 150 in Mooresville, N.C., USA, and suddenly, the inescapably addictive smell of steak wafts in from the windows, and you start feeling too hungry. Voila, a moment later, you see the huge billboard of Bloom grocery chain inviting you to immediately take the next exit to their highway restaurant to enjoy the most delicious steak this side of the Atlantic! That, by all standards, is subliminal advertising. Bloom achieved this advertising benchmark a few months ago by a most innovative tactic – a billboard that spawned the steak scent onto the highway using a high-powered fan fitted inside billboard.

US based market researcher James Vicary was the first to conceptualise the existence of such a form of advertising in the 1950s. He observed that quickly flashing messages in a particular form on a movie screen were influencing consumers to increase their sales of food & drinks. He termed the phenomenon subliminal advertising. Over the years that followed, the term has not only broadened its ambit, but a lot of other facets have also been included in this jargon.

Rahul Mathew, Executive Creative Director, McCann Erickson, tells 4Ps B&M, “Subliminal advertising is something we do a lot. In TV commercials you see a lot of messaging which you expect the viewer to pick up. There’s repetitive flashing so that when the viewer chances upon the ad for the second or third time, he smiles about seeing something new, something he didn’t notice the last time. And it’s only at a later stage that he starts picking it up.”

But then, why would a marketer advertise subliminally for his product? How would an indirect communication help improve the sales? As per Mathew, “There is a lot of layering in commercial space, and as you go on watching a subliminal message, it starts building on you. Music, for instance, has got a subliminal affect on us. Likewise, our conscious self may not be watching an ad for its music but we tend to go with it subconsciously.” And that’s the reason why marketers have been using the technique for long now. When you think of colour, think of ___! There you go!

In fact, the first formal form of subliminal advertising was observed in 1973 in a TV commercial of a Danish game Husker Du (that’s Danish for “Do you Remember?”). The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) objected to the telecast of the ad because it intermittently flashed the message, ‘Get It’. FCC alleged the ad to be subliminal in nature and went on to frame a policy that subliminal advertising is contrary to the public interest and intends to be deceptive. Canada followed suit, and before one could know what happened, the ad was banned across the region.

Years later, another instance of subliminal advertising created news. During the US Presidential election of year 2000, in the campaigning pandemonium, a TV advert from the George Bush camp kept flashing ‘BUREAUCRATS’ every now and then. And then, during the flashes, you could swear you noticed frames that carried just the word ‘RATS’. Did it imply that Democrats were (ahem!) ‘RATS’? It created a one of a kind uproar. It was touted as malicious subliminal advertising done to demean the other candidate vying for the top post.

In that sense, one major facet of subliminal advertising is that it can pose a lethal threat to the image of a competitor’s brand. To this, Kurup says, “Subliminal advertising is prone to being misused. If you are cleverly adopting this subliminal art to sell products to children, it is highly unacceptable, because their minds are impressionable.” So, however interesting it might be as a concept, it has certain dark shades to its usage as well. But does that make it infamous in the ad world? “It’s possible for admen to use subliminal advertising in a positive light. But if it goes against any tenet of the Code, it should not be allowed,” Alan Collaco, Secretary General, Advertising Standards Council of India.

Further, it would be safe to say that subliminal advertising has had a radiant international history. But how prevalent is the concept and its application when it comes to our ‘Bharat Mahan’? Sridhar Ramanujam, CEO, Brand-Comm, feels that while it is nice to talk or read about subliminal advertising in the context of text books and research, in the Indian context, the jargon has not much of a relevance. The reason for this is that in the West there is a fair amount of cynicism towards advertising. People do not trust or believe advertising. However, India is placed at a slightly different level. “India is not a country for subtlety. People like messages that appeal to them, that they can understand and appreciate. May be we are in a different stage of development,” he says.

Although there haven’t been any incidences of messages flashing in between a commercial that have been reported about, but the ad caliphs do talk about using subliminal space at length in our commercials. In fact, subliminal advertising has a pervasive nature, that is, you can observe its presence in almost every aspect of standard advertisements, be it the visual sequence, the way the message is projected or the tagline, for that matter.

One subliminal story in the Indian ad space goes like this – take cigarette brand Gold Flake’s tagline ‘Honey Dew’ and keep repeating the tagline a few times; the term ‘I need you’ would get superimposed on the term ‘Honey Dew’ in your subconscious. That’s called subliminally conditioning your mind to create its need in your head (without letting you know that you have just been sold the product!).

Clever technique, but does all the hard work bring in the ‘moolah’ as well? Does it have the potential to become a niche in itself that goes onto moving the needle by a few percentage? Even if the answer is in positive, a large section of the ad fraternity believes that it won’t be feasible to invest money in something as abstract as subliminal advertising. Not in India, at least. People in the alternate media and in the business of surrogate advertising may resort to subliminal advertising, because they work on urges. So the next time you think of selling coconut oil through subliminal advertising the Bloom way on the Indian highway, allow us to sweetly recommend – just “don’t” do it!

The big difference

Shoumitra Rai Choudhuri

National creative director, Madison Communications

Advertising & subliminal advertising, what is the big difference? Debate on calling the two synonymous, but all advertisements have a subliminal effect. Subliminal advertising is not hugely different from advertising. All ads give away some subliminal message. These are messages which are weaved into the communication process through images and lifestyle. It is what gives the consumer the feel of the brand.

To be fair, most of the time, it just happens. You don’t sit down and chalk out a strategy to penetrate into a target groups’ mind through subliminal advertising. But when you illustrate the concept you elucidate on it and therein you unconsciously make a mark on the consumer’s subconsciousness Take the Economist ad for instance. It is subliminal because it appeals to the intellect of the consumer.

Clearly, subliminal advertising should be construed as unwritten messages that a good communicating ad should have. It is the essence of good communication. To cut to the chase, the stronger the subliminal cues, the more effective the communication would be. While image association, word association is a part of it, subliminal advertising is entirely different from surrogate advertising. But it cannot be seen as different from advertising.

Mahatma Gandhi, The Ultimate Marketing Guru!

Gandhi has been my favourite for seminars on leadership and management for years! In fact, in the last chapter of my first book Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch, I described him as the ultimate successor of Krishna as a management guru! The reason is simple! To me, there is no greater a management guru than Krishna; and the Gita is my ultimate guide to management! Krishna guides a handful of five brothers to victory against the army of a hundred brothers in the mythological Mahabharata, and in a similar way, Mahatma Gandhi guided us to Independence against all odds! Whether Krishna was true or not is debatable, but Gandhi was for real! And what we all know about Gandhi is that when he died, he said, “Hey Ram, He Ram, He Ram,” – though now even that is debated by various scholars. However, what many of us don’t know about Gandhi is that he used to read the Gita daily and called it the most important guide to success.

So what is it about the Mahatma that makes him such a revered figure even when it comes to management and especially marketing? For that, we have to perhaps study a little bit about his past and look at world history on the whole. World wide, freedom from the oppressor always meant violent struggles! Freedom was always synonymous with violent revolutions. You conquered with the power of violence and you got freedom by fighting violence with violence! But India had a peculiar problem! The problem was our prevalent religion. Gandhi himself called Hindus cowards. I wouldn’t say that, but we sure were complacent, patient and tolerant and relatively the most peaceful race in the world. We had not developed in us the spirit of war and violence! And therefore, when it came to motivating Indians and bringing them out for a violent revolution, even the man who defeated Gandhi’s own candidate in the Indian National Congress (INC) elections and became the President of INC – Subhash Chandra Bose – failed miserably. His war cry – “Give me blood, and I will give you freedom” – would’ve worked in every part of the world... but for India! And Bose finally had to leave India to collect his army from outside India to fight the Indian war of Independence! Gandhi, of course, was a keen observer and a quick learner – a key trait of a great marketing man! This man, with a burning desire to succeed in getting India freedom and realizing that violence didn’t appeal to the common Indian man, changed and did what was never done world wide – again, a great trait of a good marketing success story is being first! And Gandhi surely was the first to bring to the world, the concept of non-violence! This concept made him the TIME magazine’s Man of the Year way back in 1930 and won him followers ranging from Martin Luther King Junior, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and Aung Aan Suu Kyi amongst others over the years.

At first, non-violence was looked as the stupidest tool of revolution. But Gandhi knew what he was doing. He knew how to market his concept because he knew he was satisfying an existing need – the need to participate in the freedom struggle and throw the British out, which was combined with a desire to not be forced to take up arms and risk one’s life in a violent manner. He knew that his concept was a great solution to this need. The next thing he had to do was to connect with the masses and spread the word. In those days, when newspapers were a luxury, telecommunication absent and even transport and connectivity a rarity, getting the message across the length and breadth of this huge nation was the biggest possible challenge. Gandhi decided to go about it man to man! He always had a great respect for the end customer. He had said, “The customer is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us an opportunity to do so.” And in his struggle, the end customers were the masses. To connect with them, he gave up his suits and ties. In fact, to connect with them, his marketing campaign included burning of foreign clothes and making khadi. Many like Tagore didn’t find it logical. But being a marketing man, Gandhi knew it was helping him connect emotionally with his audience and convey his message across. The common man often understands symbolic gestures better than great works of poetry. And Gandhi reveled in such symbolic gestures. Being a great leader, leading from the front was never an issue, but what many Indian leaders fail to do even now in these days of easy connectivity, he did way back in the early 1900s. He went to his masses and became a part of them. He walked with them and inspired them to walk along with him. His new attire – the khadi – was something the common man identified with; and his half naked clothing was symbolic of the man whose support he wanted – the unfed and suffering Indian looking for salvation. As they say, there is nothing to beat a great word of mouth! The word of his work with masses spread like fire and soon the entire country was finding out ways to follow the activities of this man of peace, who was talking of giving India independence and looked closer to achieving it than anyone had ever had!

As a great marketing brain, he had done a great SWOT analysis. He knew his opponents and competition – the British – well. He knew that unlike, say the Nazis, the British were more cultured and believed in being fair and had a court that they were answerable to. So he knew that it would be almost impossible for the British to kill him if all he did was to walk and talk of peace. He used their weakness to be ruthless to his advantage and used intellectuals amongst them for his own PR! Not to forget, he used fasting as a great tool to drive home the message – that he was not scared of losing his life when it came to the cause.

But perhaps the biggest marketing tool behind a great success story is always the art of owning a simple uncomplicated line in your customer’s mind… Marketers spend millions to do it! That’s what marketing is about finally – owning that one line in your customer’s mind. Be it “Just do it” or be it “Taste the thunder”, if you own this one line in your customer’s mind, you have cracked the marketing code. And Gandhi owned the line “non violent movement”. It was the perfect positioning line for him for the market he was catering to. And thus, success had to be his. Today, years after his death, our nation is using Gandhi to market itself, by printing his snap on all currency notes; celebrities across the world are wearing him on their t-shirts to market themselves better, United Nations is using him to market itself by declaring October 2 as the International Day of Non-Violence; and the Congress party is marketing its NREGA programme by calling it the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA programme! Commercial companies are not far behind, with Mont Blanc making its India presence felt with the launch of its Mahatma Gandhi Limited Edition pen. Inevitably, when it came to this year’s Hall of Fame issue, we felt Gandhi on the cover was the best way to market our magazine to you… no doubt he was the Mahatma of marketing!Mahatma Gandhi, The Ultimate Marketing Guru! 

100 Most Valuable Brands- Ranking Per Category

Will M&M’s Foray into Mobikes be Successful?

Back in August 2008 when Anand Mahindra, MD, Mahindra & Mahindra got his hands on Kinetic Motors’ assets to pave way for the Group’s entry into the two-wheeler segment, critics cautioned that the buy may prove to be a costly affair as M&M had no expertise in the two-wheeler industry. However, Mahindra stood his ground on the decision and proved everyone wrong by selling one lakh units in just 10 months from the day he launched the first model.

Cut to September 2010, M&M is again the talk of the town with the launch of Mojo (a 300cc motorcycle) and Stallio (a 110cc motorcycle), which mark its foray into the motorcycle segment. Without a miss critics are back in job too questioning whether Mahindra will be able to replicate the same success that it achieved with scooters. However, a visibly confident Anand Mahindra says, “We are geared up to redefine the biking experience in India with the Stallio and the Mojo, which are a potent blend of global technology and innovation.”

But then, with players like Hero Honda, Bajaj Auto and TVS Motors already bubbling in the industry with their huge portfolios, one cannot deny the fact that it will not be a cake walk for Mahindra this time. Going by the experts’ views, a lot will depend on how M&M positions its bikes in front of the already established players. On that note, while the recently launched Stallio is an out and out competitor to Hero Honda’s Splendor (India’s largest selling motorcycle), Mojo is the first 300cc bike in the country, which aims at establishing brand Mahindra in the segment by carving a niche for itself. Explains Devendra Shinde, Vice President – Marketing, Mahindra 2 Wheelers, “Stallio will be a volume puller for us, while Mojo, which is a sports cruiser, will establish Mahindra as a brand in the motorcycle segment.” Adds Anoop Mathur, President, 2 Wheeler Sector and Member of the Group Executive Board, M&M, “These world class bikes are worthy additions to the Mahindra’s product portfolio and are part of our commitment to establish an end-to-end two wheeler business in every segment of the industry.”

The company seems to be very particular about how the bikes are to be positioned. So, even before the bikes were launched, the company released a teaser campaign, depicting itself as a technologically ahead bike-maker. And if Shinde’s words are to be believed, then consumers will get to see a lot of it in the upcoming communications.

Be it IT, SUVs, tractors or any other segment that M&M operates in, it has been the company’s modus operandi to be in the top league. Having said that, attaining such a stature in this particular segment will be a tough task. Shinde confesses, “As far as volumes are concerned, we would not be in the top three. But our active marketing strategy has already ensured that Mahindra two wheelers are on the top of the mind recall of the bikers.” The company is fighting hard to create that recall as it has already signed Aamir Khan as its brand ambassador for Stallio – a move, which, as per experts like Jagdeep Kapoor, CMD, Samsika Marketing Consultants, is followed by automobile companies only when they desire to achieve high awareness in a short time span.

In order to have a competitive edge against others, M&M is also focusing on offering features in existing products rather than segmenting them on the basis of the engine power. But then, Bajaj Auto has been following the same strategy of differentiation and technology for the past couple of years. Where is M&M different?

M&M believes strongly in its aggressive marketing plans as Shinde says, “We had utilised digital marketing in the pre-launch campaign to generate strong awareness”, and expects to tread along the same path in future. But, the perception building activities will remain imperative for Mahindra as consumers still associate to it as a company that makes tough, rugged SUVs, which is totally different from the desired recognition of a technologically advanced manufacturer.