Branding in the Time of Corona

“Florentina Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty-three years, seven months and eleven days and nights. 'Forever,' he said.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
The great novel gives us a message - even if you have to face uncertainties in life, patience will lead you to your goal. At times we may have to step back to reach that ultimate aim. A brand owner has to be patient to make his customer loyal to the brand just like the lead character in that ever-famous novel by Marquez. It is not about bragging about what you have but end of the day it is about the customer falling in love with your brand.
 

Branding in the Time of Corona

These are testing times to the human species as a whole and every individual has a responsibility towards the global community in fighting this out. The corona virus has unleashed never seen terror among people through COVID 19 and every brand is getting affected by its devastating hold. So what should Brands do during these testing times?

Do’s and Don’ts

Be Silent – This is not the right time to try to sell your products or services through advertising. Nobody is going to even read out what you have to offer unless it is useful for their daily life to face this difficult situation. For eg. A bank should refrain from offering their products like fixed deposits, A hospital need not advertise about its huge infrastructure or equipments, A retail showroom need not offer discounts to lure customers. On one end these won’t get any eyeballs from your target audience and from another end the customers in these troubled times would look your brand as just plain insensitive. On the other hand a hospital can advertise its new video consultation services, a bank can advertise its digital services especially those services which may help the customer financially during these difficult times like allowing them to overdraw their salary accounts, a retail showroom can allow their customers to buy online and allow returns & exchanges on such purchases or even introduce EMI schemes so that the customer can pay later for their apparel purchases.

Care your customer from your distant shores – Brand loyalty is all about making the customer feel the brand as their own. It is not about the colour of the logo or the emblem but it is all about the perception of a customer on a brand’s ability to satisfy their personal needs, it is about the perception of the customer about how a brand cares them. For eg., When a bank advertises about all the covid care measures but don’t even sanitize their ATMs a customer doesn’t feel the brand cares them. When a hospital advertises about their infrastructure the customer may not notice them but when the hospital provides sanitizers for free it may connect to the general public. When a retail showroom announces discounts the customer may not even look at it where as when it does something to give out masks to the general public it may get noticed. In short it is not about shouting in their ear but about caring your customer to overcome these tough times.

Be patient, Shut your mouth – These are the times when the authorities under the Govt. and everyone world over are trying to spread the message about how to fight COVID 19. There is no need for the brands too to spread the same messages. Just sending the same messages they get from every other source along with your brand logo doesn’t make any change in the daily life of your customer in these difficult times except you are one more another person who clutters their mobiles and mail boxes. So be patient, shut your mouth and open it only when you feel you have an idea which may contribute your customer another tool to fight this deadly disease. Save your money & resources spend on useless advertising, wait for the good times and wait for your loyal customer to return to you on their own at the end of this mayhem.

Experiential branding – This is the time to create experiences for your customer that influences their perception about you. The other day I saw a 3 star hotel in my town, which was not that popular earlier, being appreciated by everyone passing by. What they did was simple. They put out their hand wash sink on the pavement outside their hotel walls which can be used by at least 5 people at a time to wash their hands with soap and water. Now this is what makes the customers notice than the hotel spending huge sums on advertising in mass media. These are little things for a brand to think about but make huge difference in the perceptions of the customer. They experience the care directly rather than the brand speaking for itself. When your target audience is facing difficult times create experiences for them which might reduce their pain a bit. Yes that too should be considered as a branding exercise for the brand’s long term benefit.

'The Hindu' - the mainstream Indian newspaper had the guts to publish an ad in their own newspaper saying it bluntly against the misuse of ad space during these difficult times. Kudos to them for saying it on the face.

Branding in the Time of Demonetization

Branding in the Time of Demonetization

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera.

Business and Economics is always about adjusting to market situations and reacting to market demands. Maybe it is for the first time that both business men and economists have reacted to a situation in the same voice. Demonetization and its after effects have rattled business men and economists alike. Nobody (here it should be read as ‘those who were not big enough to get highly classified information’) knew it was coming and now most of them don’t know how to deal with it. Those who thought this was just another gimmick are now coming to terms with demonetization as a reality but still most of the businessmen I came into contact were divided in their opinion as to how to deal with it.

Accept Reality

Yes it is for real. Demonetization has happened. Whether it is good or bad for our business is unpredictable. Alas if market economics were so easy to predict then we would have got lesser number of entrepreneurs in this world. Entrepreneurship would have been boring if there was cent percent predictability in market situations. The first thing to do for any business is to accept the reality. Accept the change in mode of operations. Government is going to push digital transactions like anything, telecoms are going to push their services more, and people are going to use digital transactions more. So stop cribbing about the advantages of dealing in cash and move on.

Every disruption in the market is an opportunity

There is a popular story narrated at most management classes about the Chinese that while the US markets were reeling under the shock of 9/11, the Chinese had already started exporting caps & t-shirts with US national flag elements printed on them. Demonetization is definitely such a catastrophic event in business world which has disrupted the whole market operations. Does that mean everything is doomed? No, there will be opportunities among disruptions. The faster you find those opportunities the better. Especially in an Indian context we have smart business houses who innovate in every way to market their products. Each market within our country is unique and the effects of demonetization are different in each state and even different in parts within each state. The need of the hour is to find out which market is faring better and reach out to that set of customers. Find new markets, new opportunities, out of the box marketing techniques like cross branding and so on.

Digitalize your transactions

Yes digitalization is not a future thing but the present thing which has captivated all the markets in the world and it is transforming the way business is done. The earlier you digitalize your transactions the better your customers would stay with you.  Already the government has announced discounts & offers for digital transactions and we all know what happens when customers are lured with such bounties. The same customer who sided up with us today, the same guy who hated to use digital payments would ask us why you are not offering digital payment options. The scarcity of POS machines/ swipe machines is not an excuse you can hang upon for long. Customers are more aware of options like internet/mobile banking, paytm, mobile wallets etc. more than before and will be ready to use them more because it is not the customer who is worried about paying that extra tax on billing but the shop owners are. It is not the customer who is afraid about the source of their income while making a purchase but it is the shop owners that are worried about the consequences of under billing or low stock declaration levels. Customer loyalty starts when they get what they expect from a brand and ends when they feel they don’t what they expect. So the day your competitor starts accepting digital payments with offers, your loyal customer will be the first one to leave you. Digitalizing your transactions has its benefits. You get better customer database, can learn on the customer buying behavior and improvise your offerings at a lesser cost than before. So it’s all about adapting to the situation at the earliest and reaping the benefits of digitalization than lamenting about the demerits of demonetization.

Measure your ROI on Ad spends

As a brand strategist it is interesting to note that most of the times it is good for brand owners to face disruptions. Be it a recession or a demonetization, these are the times to retrospect and reinvent. When the cash flows are over flowing most business houses spend too much on advertising without even caring about the return on their investments in such huge advertising budgets. If there is one thing that we all agree upon it is the fact that demonetization has brought upon us, as individuals & households, a certain kind of accountability, even spend thriftiness, in our daily expenditures. The same applies to business houses. This is the time to relook at your advertisement expenditures. At the same time every business needs to market their products to grow and in these times of cash crunch it is the time to be patient about brand building activities. More importantly it is a time to measure the effectiveness of your expenditure on advertising. Whether your brand reaches out to correct target audience is to be taken seriously and the necessary changes in the medium of advertising is to be made. Gone are the days of mass marketing only through print & TV. Other media vehicles on the Internet like social media, blogs, YouTube are all now part of daily life of an average customer and more importantly we are going to see mobiles playing a major part in marketing your products. Still except from big corporates, we see very little branding activity on those frontiers like mobile apps, mobile games and virtual reality from smaller entities. Make sure your marketing communications break the clutter. Use innovative and creative approaches to your marketing communication. Go back to your basics, call your loyal customers one by one and inform them about the new mode of transactions. Help them if they need help in moving to digital transactions. Forget those days when you had lots of unaccounted money to do mass advertising. Revoke those old days when you talked to your customer directly. Maybe relook your product packaging and renew it with new digital windows like QR codes, bar codes etc. Get online to reach out to new customers.

Love in the Time of Cholera

Use this period to understand your employees and customers. Love your employees more, love your customers more. Make the ambience of your store or appearance of your product more appealing to them. Use this period to build your brand and reach out to untapped markets. If you can come out in good shape after this demonetization period you are well equipped to fly higher.

Recession and Retail Market – Kerala - Part II

Who said Kerala was affected by recession, everyday new showrooms are opening up! Don’t think we can make the payment in time, there is huge cash crunch. Business is dull even in this wedding season; don’t know how to go forward…

These are some of the talks heard out there in the market nowadays. So as I had promised here is a sequel to the earlier part (though I hate sequels).

What happened to the Kerala Retail Market after the initial recession mania period? How has clients adapted their marketing/advertising strategies to maintain momentum?

Dubai syndrome

The news reports of Dubai facing financial crisis, hit the Kerala market hard in the last quarter of 2009. Suddenly business people felt the cash crunch more than ever before. Some of the businessmen I spoke to made it clear that it is going to be real tough times ahead as already they felt it difficult to raise funds from their NRI investors, which was so easy earlier. As the NRIs in Middle East feared for the worst and either stopped or withdrew from big investments once again the dependence of Kerala on its NRIs came to the focus. As investments dried out on one side and consumers spending less on the other side the business houses started facing cash flow problems. Small business houses started feeling the pinch in the last quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010 didn’t make anything better. Though it was wedding season and vacation time for Keralites during March, April, May, interactions with several businessmen shows that sales volumes have gone down when compared to the previous year same period. Most retailers, both new and old felt the heat of the squeeze on their margins.

Brand Value came to the fore

Coming back to where we left off in the earlier post, what happened to the new retail showrooms (especially in textile & jewellery sector) that came up during the recession period? Could they succeed in their journey, how did the big retailers react to the situation? It is indeed interesting to look into these aspects.

The bigger retailers, who were already established in the Kerala market, though initially slow to react to the onslaught of new comers in smaller towns, realized the change in customer attitude. A sudden change in the marketing and advertising strategy was quite visible in Kerala Retail market. The big player’s ad campaigns started to communicate mainly about the tradition, lineage and quality of products they were offering. Ads of Seematti (textiles), Kalyan (jewelers), Kalyan Silks (Textiles), Jayalaxmi (Textiles) etc. in the last quarter of 2009 and first quarter of 2010 clearly showed the shift in the big player’s strategy. This was the time to bank upon their brand value which they have created over the years by spending huge sums of money. Also we could see most of them changing their brand identities (new logos, new color schemes and so on) during this period.

The second quarter of 2010 shows a clear indication of the new comer small town retailers faltering on their way. The reasons for this fall must be high expectations from the shift in customer preference to smaller towns (which clearly was a temporary shift), amateurish business planning, huge ad spends, huge capital investments and so on. Gradually the customers started to come back to the cities for their purchases, recession panic started receding, purses started loosening but with care. Once again brand value came to the fore and those retailers who had build up their brands, which had acquired a certain customer faith earlier, were the winners now. Slowly but steadily their customers started coming back and more interestingly, the new retailers in the big towns are not seen as successful as the old players in winning back their lost customers. This in turn helped the existing big players to get a new crop of customers too. So once again brand value came to the fore and those business houses which had the patience to create a loyal customer base through consistent advertising & marketing strategy were the winners of this round of uncertainty.

The festival seasons (Onam) in Kerala is fast approaching and let’s wait for the final outcome of this intriguing period in the Kerala retail market. Now the biggies are really investing in new store launches (even in smaller towns) to spread their wings and establish themselves. Will this benefit in the long run with economy of scales or will this turn a waterloo at least for some of them? It will be quite interesting to find out.Let’s wait and see.