Varanasi and Brand Authenticity

I met many tourists from all over the world in the train to Varanasi recently. I wondered why so many of them are keen to visit Varanasi. There is no single architectural marvel, its not exactly a party town, and from what I remembered of it, it was extremely crowded and dirty! After I reached there I began to understand. I was overwhelmed at first and entranced as the days passed by. I had not been to a place quite like Varanasi. The throbbing, crowded, engulfing faith was in my face everywhere I went. I began to like it. It was real, stripped of all pretensions.

Whether it was the constant sales calls from tiny shops in the 'Bazaar' or 500 people squeezed chest to chest in a 10*10 sq feet room and falling over each other to touch the deity or the local acquaintance casually mentioning about the birthplace of Rani Lakshmi Bai after we passed it in a small bylane - its story of faith, antiquity and history all came alive without the need to exaggerate or dramatise.

And I began thinking of Authenticity and what a crucial anchor to building strong brands it could be. Especially now when we are flooded with images of consumerism and excessive glamourisation in the urban world, something that is stripped down to its essence connects with us. Authenticity could come alive in the simplicity of Google homepage (www.google.com) or in the way Apple lives up to its story of building beautiful technology.

How to build authentic brands? Passionate people with high integrity driving the brand would be able to do it. Authentic people build authentic brands. I saw it in evidence in tiny Chaat (snack) and Lassi (yogurt drink) stalls in Varanasi as I joined the crowds jostling for space to taste their fare. Maybe this is what Seth Godin is alluding to when he says makers of authentic products need to have "a deeper relationship with their craft, something that establishes a connection between themselves and their product."(http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/03/tom_chappell_se.html)

There are many ways to assess the authenticity of a brand. Bill Breen summarises it well when he suggests that a sense of place, strong point of view, larger purpose and integrity makes an authentic brand (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/115/features-who-do-you-love.html?page=0%2C2).

More on Authentic Brands to follow in the next post.

Facebook demography in UK and India

Did you know that

there are 7 million more Facebook users in India than in UK (36.4 mn vs 29.5 mn)?
yet there are nearly 5 milion less female users in India than in UK (10.1 mn vs 14.9 mn)
so Indian men are driving Facebook numbers up by truckloads. Nearly 11.8 million more male users in India than in UK (26.2 mn vs. 14.4 mn)


If you are company with presence across geographies - how would you allocate Facebook ad spend?
For companies not yet in India - is it more a question of when rather than if?

On another note -
The biggest facebook user group in UK is of women aged 30-49 (8.4mn). If you market to women, mums Facebook needs to be on your list in UK.

The biggest facebook user group in India is of men aged 18-29 (20 mn). Presumably, a lot of razors, bikes and gadgets can be sold on facebook in India?

Targeted advertising in Facebook

This is how targeted advertising can get in Facebook. Today I was served these ads on one of the pages I visited. All relevant based on my education demographics and interests.

Asian TV in UK

Spent some time watching Asian 'ethnic' television this evening. Advertisements during commercial breaks were primarily for
1. Food - rice
2. Food - paratha
3. Claims solicitors
4. Restaurant
5. Food - masala
6. Telecom - mobile operator


Get the drift? South Asians in UK are primarily eating and getting into accidents - probably because they were nodding off after eating so much or were talking overseas on their mobiles!

Do they not need to brush, bathe, work, play, exercise, use cars, credit cards etc. When will the mainstream marketers think about it?

Digital is getting back to basics

When digital was new, businesses were in a rush to get onto the digital world. Just being present there was differentiation enough.

Now with the digital space getting crowded, one can get lost. The only way to stand out is to focus and go back to the old-fashioned in-depth consumer understanding. So the holy grail of branding - Who is your customer? What is your positioning in customer's mind? What is the kind of brand personality you want for your brand? - have to be applied in the digital world too. Hence the renewed focus on Target Customer, User Personas and Scenarios, Online Value Proposition.

What remains different between the new marketing and old is the need for user participation in building brands online. You can claim to have provided the most awesome value online, but if users don't comment, like or share, then they have not seen the value.

Whose side are you on?

Recently I went through a few Brand Strategy cases that my colleagues had done over the last few years. As I kept thinking of these and the projects I have worked on, I realized that powerful brand strategies can only come if you leave the guys who hire you and get on the side of the customer. When you step on that side and immerse yourself in their world and feel their joys and pains, you work towards a strategy from the heart.

Having done that, you step back on your client's side and get down to practicalities and then the solutions that emerge are both relevant and pragmatic.

Marriage of the head and the heart.

What dilutes a brand

I have been reading the news of Starbucks $1 Coffee with some interest. What makes a case-study brand depart considerably from its 'core' of premiumness and comfort? Will it survive the new line of competition with behemoth value chains that it puts itself in now?

Brands are what add to margins. If so, what kind of brands still continue to do so during a downturn like this? I have been pondering over these questions for a while now. Expect to see some research based answers on this soon.