D. Murali

Chennai: Anticipation, poise and agility are needed if you want to successfully ride the wave of the future, says Nigel Hollis in ‘The Global Brand’ (www.palgrave.com). He defines a global brand as one that has transcended its cultural origins to develop strong relationships with consumers across different countries and cultures.

The future of global brands does not lie in one-size-fits-all offers and cookie-cutter marketing, Hollis predicts. “Successful global brands will embrace the diversity of individuals, communities, and cultures around the world. They will be comfortable appealing to a mind-set, not an age bracket.”

The book, scheduled for publication in October, speaks of five steps to a strong brand, beginning with ‘presence.’ Consumers who reach the presence level are actively aware of the brand when they think about the product category, the author explains.

‘Relevance,’ the next step, is where consumers ‘believe that a brand promises to deliver something of value to them, at a price they consider acceptable.’ Third, ‘performance,’ is where ‘people must believe that the brand delivers satisfactorily on its basic functional promise.’

At the fourth level, ‘advantage,’ the consumer believes the brand offers some rational or emotional benefit that distinguishes it from the competition. Finally comes ‘bonding,’ with the belief that ‘the brand offers unique advantages in terms of what is most important in the category.’

Hollis observes that people are typically at least 10 times more likely to buy a brand they are bonded to than one that they are simply aware of at the presence level.

Insights of great value.

Internal benchmarking

Vista Retail (disguised) is one of the many case studies in ‘The Execution Premium’ by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton (www.tatamcgrawhill.com). The company uses internal benchmarking to establish targets for its Balanced Scorecard measures, which include EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation), revenue per outlet compared to competitors, customer loyalty, and employee loyalty.

“Annually, vista compares the performance of each of its more than 1,000 outlets to that of the top performer for each measure. The difference between the two is the ‘gap to perfection,’ a portion of which must be closed during the next year.”

To help the outlets narrow the gap, Vista identifies and studies the practices of its highest-scoring outlets; these best practices are then transferred across the organisation.

Ready takeaways.

Actionable intelligence

Twenty-first century marketing is a world of customer information, databases, and shrinking campaign delivery timelines, avers ‘Direct Marketing in Action’ edited by Andrew R. Thomas, Dale M. Lewison, William J. Hauser, and Linda M. Foley (www.macmillanindia.com).

“The need to quickly respond to market changes has increased demands on direct marketing teams to deliver ‘just-in-time’ customer information to gain that competitive edge,” the authors write. “Unfortunately, there is no magical black box into which you can feed the information, and shazaam, a fail-proof, individualised client plan pops out.”

Extracting information from a database only leaves one with a large pile of facts and figures unless it is converted into something useful, they add. “Analysis is a good first step, but it doesn’t mean much unless you can make the information actionable.”

Direct messages!

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