How to use the power of unconscious to generate ideas - The 3i model of creativity | Sanjay Arora | TEDxNagpur

BUSINESS IS MARKETING. MARKETING IS BRANDING

In business the most deep-rooted myth probably is that businesses exist to make a profit. There can be no business whose basic objective is to make a profit. Profit can never be an objective, it at the most can be a by-product of a business. Saying that a business exists to make a profit is like saying we live to eat. Eating is a necessity to survive. We eat in order to be in the right shape to achieve our other objectives. Eating provides us with the requisite energy and nourishment required to build and sustain ourselves. Profits do the same for business. It is a must for the business providing it the energy and nourishment to keep it in a healthy shape. Yes without profit a business cannot exist just as life would cease to exist without food. But the purpose of business is to find a customer and retain him by satisfying his need in a manner superior to competitive need fulfillers. If this objective is met then profit is a natural by-product of the cycle.

This is exactly what marketing is all about, ‘to identify and fulfill a customer need’. Customer hence becomes central to the entire process of business. If there is no customer there is no business. It then comes as a major surprise when something as basic as this is lost sight of by a whole lot of businesses. It is not uncommon to see research, manufacturing, finance etc. to get so focused on their individual roles that they forget they are a small part of an entire system designed to satisfy the customer. All the R&D done, as a part of the business process is to enhance in some way the satisfaction package for the customer, the same goes for designing manufacturing processes etc. In fact every person in a business is a part of this promise to enhance customer satisfaction. It is only when all the different functional areas of a business work with this single overriding objective that you have a successful business.

Therefore there can be no ‘Vision Statement’, ‘Corporate Mission’ or any other such lofty philosophical or functional strategy statement, which is not in some very fundamental form also marketing strategy statement.

Having established the centrality of marketing to the business process it would not be out of place to understand that business is not just about products. It is about trying to retain this customer. It is about the building a bond with the customer and strengthening it over a period of time.

As technology advances product parity is becoming the biggest nightmare of companies. Today more than ever before, fresh entrants and virtual novices have access to the same technology that was a preserve of only established giants earlier. Technology therefore fails to offer a long-term competitive advantage. The ever-shrinking product life cycles further aggravates this problem.

The answer to this puzzle, which is becoming more and more complex by the day, seems to lie only in strengthening the relationship between the brand and its’ customer. Which takes us into the realms of Branding. Many a marketing pundits have indicated that a strong brand is probably the only real long-term competitive advantage that a company really has. It is the only guarantee that a business will continue to enjoy a customer franchise over a sustained period of time. The most hardened of the skeptics have also grudgingly acknowledged this when faced with hard research and financial data supporting this fact. In a study conducted by the renowned international brand consultancy Landor Associates there were some startling revelations. They went about researching the fate of 23 leading brands, i.e. brands that were number one in their respective categories in 1920. It was sobering to see that 19 of these brands were still leaders, number one in their categories in 1997. It had to be more than an accident for so many brands to be there right ahead of the pack for 75 long years in the face of all that the competition may have done to dislodge them. The entire set of activities that these companies undertook to stay ahead of the pack and more importantly stay close to the customer can together be broadly termed as Branding.

If the customer consistently preferred these brands to the others they were definitely not buying the product. When they bought these brands they definitely were getting something more than just the product. This value addition to the product went far beyond the original concept of the brand i.e. a product with a name to it. A brand today is far more than a product with a name to it, a certain kind of packaging, design elements that go with it etc. It is all this and more. It is a blend of rational benefits that the customer derives from it and a whole lot of intangibles such as the confidence it inspires, the past experiences, the fulfilled promises, the emotional overtures etc. It is the name of the relationship that includes all this and more developed over a period of time.

According to Stephen King, Director-WPP Group ‘A product is something made in the factory, a brand is something bought by the customer. A product can be copied by a competitor, but a brand is unique. A product can be quickly outdated, a successful brand is timeless.

And just how important is the role of brand building to marketing, what better way to understand this than from the acknowledged guru of marketing himself, this is what Phillip Kotler has to say “The art of marketing is largely the art of brand building. When something is not a brand, it will probably be viewed as a commodity. Then price is the only thing that counts. When price is the only thing that counts, the only winner is the low cost producer.” Amen.

- Sanjay Arora

The author is a Business Writer, Consultant, Management Faculty & the CEO, Shells Advertising Inc.