First impression and brands
‘What is your first impression of me?’ starts off Mr. Karthik Jeganathan, the co-founder of Purple Mango,on an early Friday morning at echoVME. As we give out adjectives to describe him, he tells us that our first impressions are the most powerful and probably the last impression we make of a person. The same applies to a brand of a product or service. This gives brand managers and marketers a huge responsibility of making a brand stand out among the millions of other brands that are offered to consumers.
The session on branding and positioning proceeded with him telling us about the kinds of first impressions we get of a brand, namely visual, behavior and even smell that influences the perceptions of the consumer. For example, Singapore Airlines has a smell that is peculiar only to their aircrafts!
Global brands, local competition!
Mr. Karthik compared Global brands and local brands of toothpastes as an example and says that even though popular global brands like Colgate, Close-up and Pepsodent are the most sought after, a few local brands could sometimes give them stiff competition because of something different that they offer like Indian toothpastes could have an added advantage of being ‘all-natural’ or Ayurvedic. Hence bringing something new to the market is what marketers or advertisers ought to do.
Should brands be consistent?
Being consistent to the brand’s style of advertising is a must to maintain its reputation if it is an old and renowned brand. For example changing a logo to just keep with the times could do damage to the brand’s age-old legacy. But at times, one must know when to upgrade the certain aspects of when it is out of place and has lost its relevance.
Another way that companies use, in keeping with a brand’s consistency is by making a brand manual to which all the marketing or advertising agencies have to adhere to be it in the copy, design, colour, etc.
Watch ads with these 3 questions in mind
He tells us to follow a simple exercise when watching advertisements. In order to analyze them, we must ask ourselves the following questions-
- What is the brand trying to say?
- Who is the brand talking to?
- Has the brand achieved what it wanted to convey?
Mr. Karthik ended the session with talking about brand communities which are the fan communities of bigger brands. Catering to the fan-base is important as it could prevent the brands from getting into an uncomfortable position. By providing a platform to promote a healthy discussion with the fan base, they are only uplifting the name of their brand.
On the whole, we had an insightful session with Mr.Karthik on Branding and Positioning. We thank him for taking time off of his busy schedule and educating on this platform. 🙂