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Business News/ Opinion / Online-views/  A 2014 wish list for India’s brand managers
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A 2014 wish list for India’s brand managers

In the new year, make your brand more interesting than a sheep following another sheep

The world is filled with me-too products, propositions, formats, campaigns and events. The result is their brands become as interesting as a sheep following another sheep. Photo: MintPremium
The world is filled with me-too products, propositions, formats, campaigns and events. The result is their brands become as interesting as a sheep following another sheep. Photo: Mint

To wind up the old year and start the new, I have headed westward from India, to end up in Amsterdam in our own house. Normally, the house is rented out. But it was free during Christmas so there was no better way to spend the holiday season than to fly home with the whole family. Christmas in Europe is always great, but this year was special because it was the first time we were back since we moved to Delhi four years ago. There were big family dinners, walks in the woods and on the beach, hot chocolate, open fires, presents, meeting old friends, cycling along the canals, savouring wine from a befriended Italian winemaker and going to the familiar neighbourhood stores to get the best organic cheeses, breads and chocolates.

Amsterdam is unusually crowed at the moment. Tourists from all over the world—also from India—have flocked to spend time in the village that never sleeps. The city council has invested enormously in its museums and there are now at least four world-class art temples. The Hermitage at the Amstel houses part of the huge collection of the former Czar, on loan from the main Hermitage in St. Petersburg. The Van Gogh museum displays the world’s best Dutch expressionist collection. The reopened Museum of Modern Art (Stedelijk) features an exhibition of Kazimir Malevich and the recently reopened Rijksmuseum displays the works of the old Dutch masters like Rembrandt and the arts from the Dutch golden century, when merchants from Amsterdam roamed the coast of Cochin and Calcutta among others. What amazed me was that there were one-hour lines to enter all these museums. While inconvenient, I reflected on how fantastic it is that people are queuing up to see great art.

The end of the year is a good time also to look back as well as forward for perspective. And so below is my wish list for 2014 for India, drawn up near the fire and under the Christmas tree.

1. Use your imagination

It sounds a bit elementary, but using a bit more imagination to think about what customers might really value often goes a long way. When the education system is excessively focused on improving the ability of children to take tests and complying with the right application of set formulas and approaches, we may not be educating them to be critical citizens and imaginative improvers. But there is still creativity in many people inside organizations to be optimistic. Company owners would do well to promote young people with seemingly wild ideas and allow them to experiment on a few pilot projects. Often, such people get stifled by older and more experienced managers who have lost their creativity long back and are mainly focused on not rocking the boat and avoiding making mistakes. Thus, they deprive the company of new and fresh initiatives and customers of new, home-grown ideas. The year 2014 might be a good year to start some new initiatives and try some new approaches.

2. Spend more on quality

Customers and brands in many sectors in India keep each other locked in a low-quality embrace. Rather than investing in better quality, brands think their customers only prefer a low price. Hence they are not sharpening their capacities to improve and innovate. In turn, this deprives customers of the option of choosing a better product and service at a slightly higher price. Many customers become focused on owning a lot of things rather than owning fewer really good things. Brands and service providers that really make the effort deserve to be paid a bit more. Not only is it good form to reward good efforts. In the longer run, better quality and innovation are the only way in which India’s companies can compete abroad and make an impression in the world. Germany, for example, is not only great at making cars because it has great engineering capacities. It is also a great because the Germans are willing to spend more on better quality.

3. Look around

Many marketing and communication people in India often tell me that what works in the West does not work in India. They love to impress on me that India is completely and uniquely different. They often say this while tapping away on the same new Samsung phone or tablet computer, wearing the same fashion brands, taking the same modes of transportation to work, sharing their lives on the same social media, etc., as their counterparts in the West. India is certainly very different, culturally. But it has a huge fascination and appreciation for things international. I notice the young people I meet in Amsterdam share experiences, products or new ideas from all over the world. Some have seen them while travelling, others have simply read or heard about them or stumbled upon them online. India is big but the world is much bigger and the best and most interesting ideas in many fields often do not come from within but from outside one’s borders.

4. Put some heart into it

The world is filled with me-too products, propositions, formats, campaigns and events. The desire to avoid risk is turning marketing departments into teams of box tickers. The result is that their brands become as interesting as a sheep following another sheep. Needless to say, real value is created when you put your heart into it. In many cities in Europe and the US, an entire new generation of carpenters, leather makers, retailers, artists, designers and handicraft specialists are enchanting their customers with offerings in which the main differentiator is the sincere, personal dedication invested by the makers. Almost every product can be a medium for personal expression and true craftsmanship. Why not use it and make a meaningful difference? Products and services can have a soul too, if their makers choose to infuse their brands with it. Customers will reward them.

Wishing you a happy new year!

Tjaco Walvis is the managing director of brand consulting and advertising agency THEY India, and a speaker at the Outstanding Speakers’ Bureau. He writes a fortnightly column on the softer cultural aspects of marketing that often tend to be ignored by marketers.

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Published: 08 Jan 2014, 12:28 AM IST
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