It used to be that a brand manager could run 3-4 campaigns a year, negotiate heavily in media buying for efficiency, and roughly correlate effectiveness to quarterly brand health data and sales performance. With VC funding-led rapid scaling, digitisation, real-time data, and polarised social media, this version is being rendered obsolete. The changing business context also means that looking at a 30 sec ad purely through a consumer lens is only half the story. Two recent examples made me reflect on the dynamics between brand, social media, and business. I do realise that my commenting on them is a bit like the Nobody – Me meme, and delayed at that, but that’s one of the perks of having a blog.
Cred: We’ll begin with the Mad Men perspective, but after a short detour. Brand building for VC-funded startups has a template that actually works. Rational benefits with emotional storytelling. Flipkart and Myntra both went through a learning curve with “Granny and Mouse” and “Where fashion comes together” respectively, before they cracked it with “kids as adults” and “Real life mein aisa hota hai kya?“. It works because in addition to building the brand promise, it also has a tangible effect on business. And that’s why it’s often followed by many others across categories – Pepperfry, LivSpace, Khatabook, or even an extended approach like The Whole Truth. This is assuming that distribution, product, customer service etc are at least on par, and the execution is done well. In that context, Cred’s recent ads, after readability issues in the first print ad, and the lengthy Jim Sarbh ad, were most definitely clutter-breaking. By not following that template. (more…)