Mr. Nikhil Raibole, Planning Director, Ogilvy & Mather, interacted with IIM Indore PGP Mumbai participants on 16th of August. He was associated with different brands like Brooke Bond Red Label, Taaza, 3 Roses, Hellmann’s Mayonnaise and Cadbury to name a few. He spoke on Strategic Planning of Brands keeping the session very interactive.
He defined brand strategy as more of an art of understanding brand’s problem. According to him, a brand problem revolves around brand, category and consumers. He told that there is a business objective behind every brand which is converted into a marketing objective and then the brand strategist takes it forward to build communication objective. Before jumping to the communication objective, a brand strategist has to understand why consumer is not considering a brand by carrying out a consumer research. He then familiarized the concept with an example of Fair and Lovely Facewash to explain how to perform the above activities to solve a brand’s problems.
Mr. Raibole furthered with his ideas on how to carry out communication. Communication strategy differs with different problems. If there is a need of category awareness, demonstrate the usage and benefits of the product. If there is a need of brand awareness, communicate the differentiating factor to give consumers a reason to consider the brand. Quoting the example of Amazon’s ‘AurDikhao’ campaign, he explained how Amazon was successful in differentiating themselves .He also told that some brands like Red Label came up with advertisements conveying social message in order to create an emotional touch along with the brand benefits. He added that the communication should also include a creative angle to keep viewers engaged. He informed the participants that one can solve any brand problem by making things simple. Moreover, he also gave emphasis on what not to do in communication through examples of few ads which ended in disasters.
At the end, Mr.Raibole gave a situation- How Flipkart should project them when competitors like Amazon and Snapdeal are projecting to be the best in variety and value providers respectively. The participants raised lots of possible scenarios and understood the course of action of a Brand Strategist in each scenario.