Brand Building

There is considerable advantage in Brand Building. In fact I have emphasised that Brand Building and developing an appropriate Organization Culture as the two Critical Success Factors for any organization, and more so for a start up company.

Contrary to popular belief, Brands are not developed through advertising, but through brand experience. Everytime a customer comes in contact with a brand, there is a learning for him. It moulds his attitude towards the brand.

An leading organization in Kuwait changed the corporate colours to Red a few years back and claimed that it denotes all customers getting red carpet welcome. But the experience is different. Every single time a customer walks into their offices or calls them up for some service, the experience is so painful that the customer has to be thick skinned to ever use the brand again. Instead of the red carpet welcome the colour was supposed to denote, the customer now associates the colour with a danger signal warning him not to go anywhere near the brand.

Brand building is a conscious effort. Apart from consistency in product/service offerings, one should also carefully plan to improve the positive disposition of the target market towards the brand.

A decade ago, when I was an entrepreneur running a NIIT education centre in Thanjavur, we used to spend money on developing and augmenting the brand image. Our target market was essentially students (and their parents) who has completed 12th standard and missed out on an Engineering/Medical Seat. Every year, Engineering exams were held in 3 colleges which are situated in the outskirts of the town and in the month of May/June, when the temparatures are in the high 40's. Exams are held in two sessions for 2 days, morning and afternoon with a 2 hour gap n between. Parents drop their children in the morning, wait under trees so that they can give food in the afternoon and then pick the kids up in the evening.

We set up a temporary stall in front of these colleges and distributed cool Water packets (250 ml in Polyethelene pouches) free of cost. Trust me, if we had charged a 100% premium, we would have still sold off everything in no time and still got the goodwill and a tidy profit. But we gave it away free of cost. The whole excercise cost us nearly Rs 10,000 and the logistics involved in getting the water packets to the stalls were phenomenal. But the goodwill we got was unbeleivable. We came across as good people, not money minded but genuinely understanding and caring for the students. The parents were extremely grateful to us for arranging water free of cost, that too mineral water in sealed packets that posed no health hazards to their children.

Something to remember by.......................................