Brand India and Indian Brands

I participated in a panel discussion about “Establishing India as a Global Brand” at ConneXion2012 at IIM-Ahmedabad this week. Professor Sinha, the chairperson of the marketing area at IIMA was our moderator and he asked a very interesting question about why India has not been able to create any luxury brands despite the fact that Indian culture and craftmanship has inspired designers world over in launching “ethnic” collections. He asked whether we can ever move beyond our “low cost, back office” brand association given these will soon not be differentiators.

I had a flashback to the conversation I had with the sales lady at the Etro boutique in Paris last week when I had a few hours to spare after the Paris CMO-CIO Leadership Exchange hosted by IBM Europe. The lady was showing me bags and scarves made in Italy using very typical Indian paisley prints. I told her that paisley was a very common print used in India and you see it everywhere and that I was looking for something more “special” and “unique”.  I also didn’t want to pay Rue St Germain designer prices when I could get something similar back in India for a fraction of the price. I was impressed how the sales lady was able to quickly absorb all the information I had given her about my taste, interest etc and she pulled out a number of things that appealed to me. Aside from showing me something special, she also made me feel special. She treated me as an individual, not as a segment (woman, tourist, south asian, medium build, professional) When I walked out, she gave me a catalog and her card and also showed me the list of stores they have in Asia because she remembered that I told her that I traveled around Asia (created value at every touchpoint during and after the sale).  She also smiled and said “I hope to visit India soon!” (made me feel like she appreciated my culture - who would think two women would bond over paisley?)

My shopping experience in Paris leads me to the conclusion that building a premium brand is more than just about the product. It’s about the entire shopping experience. Which means 3 things:

1. Knowing each customer as an individual (and therefore recommending products accordingly)

2. Creating value at every touch (from when I walk into the door to following up with me later)

3. Designing your company’s culture and ethic and the brand as authentically one (so that every employee, from the shop floor to the design studio, lives and breathes it in how they interact with each other and with your clients).

As long as we Indians (brands and clients alike) are focused on price and not on understanding customers deeply, delivering exceptional service throughout their experience and infuse a consistent value system into every employee, no matter how high quality or innovative our products are, we won’t see any globally recognizable premium brands with “Made in India” attributed to them. 

Next week in Gurgaon, we will be exploring these 3 imperatives with the CMOs and CIOs group of leading Indian brands from around the country at the CMO-CIO Leadership Symposium. They will engage in peer to peer exchanges and I hope we come away with some clear POVs on what these brands will do to help put India on the map for creating and nurturing global brands!  We will also continue the dialogue starting this week about the role of technology in marketing on a new blog we are launching: www.chiefmarketingtechnologist.in You can also follow the event live on Twitter #SmarterMarketing. 

Brand India will be built on the back of strong Indian Brands and DesiCMOs have a critical role to play in this journey. What do you think it will take to build an iconic Indian brand (outside IT)?

When too much Spice is bad for your Brand

What a way to spice up an otherwise ordinary morning! I woke up around 6:30am to a lot of commotion in the living room. My couch surfing friend (unemployed, pre business school) was eagerly logging into the SpiceJet website for the 777 deal for their 7 year Anniversary: All flights, anywhere for Rs.777  for 77 minutes this morning starting 7am, via their website. Indians take 2 things very seriously: deals and anniversaries so when you combine the two - this was a BIG deal - very smart marketing campaign. Sadly, the site went down soon after 7 and the Twitterati wrath kicked in soon thereafter. While #spicejet trended for almost 5 hours in India, most of the comments were extremely negative. SpiceJet even extended the offer till 10am and some folks were able to get online post 8:30am and were very pleased with themselves for scoring a good deal but for the most part the brand was left was a black eye on their anniversary.

There were many interesting reactions from tweeple - many were just annoyed that they woke up early for nothing, others that compared SpiceJet to KF and AI etc. that someone with a degree in social anthropology is better placed to comment on. The tweet that really struck me though was the one from SpiceJet themselves: " "@flyspicejet: Thank u 4 an overwhelming response & making this offer a success! Watch this space 4 more exciting offers. #spicejet"

Now it could be that they needed something nice to say, so that's what they came up with. But think about it. They ran a flash deal campaign and probably sold more tickets in a single day and acquired more 1st time customers than ever before at a very low operational cost (it was online).  So in a sales review, this was a successful campaign. In an agency review, they trended for a whopping 5 hours from 7-noon and their banner click through rates were probably unprecedented. Who knows, this might even win best digital campaign of the year. After all, on paper, the black and white results make this  a best practice campaign.

But if you were experiencing all this live, you would have been a frustrated customer who refreshed 777 times because the site didn't work for you or redialed 777 times because you couldn't get through on the 1800 numbers. You would have felt enraged about the suspiciously planted positive tweets (e.g. "booked 18 tickets. Spicejet rocks.")  Or you would have been exhausted after spending 3 hours battling the site just so you could score the deal. Does all this matter? It does. Because a short term sales boost is not worth a hit to your brand - ever. And today was a black eye for SpiceJet's brand.

This is clearly a case where marketing and IT didn't partner well during the campaign planning stages to ensure they had a scalable backend to support the spike on the web and in the call center nor did they have a social media listening and response mechanism to manage or neutralize the negative sentiments effectively.  Sadly, I see this all the time in my interactions with CMOs and CIOs. A few years ago, marketing would immediately blame IT. But As LK Gupta, a fellow DesiCMO, tweeted so articulately "easy to blame IT. But the project owner, which is mktg, shd hv forecasted the site traffic and anticipated the result."

If you read my previous blogpost, this does makes the case for CEOs hiring Chief Marketing Technologists even stronger doesn't it??  :-) Do spice up my post with your comments!