The essence is to understand the consumer in a rich, vivid, crisp and clear way. This paves the way for an understanding of the connections in relationships that can be created between consumers and the brand. The ultimate goal of brand building is to create an intense, active working relationship by getting consumers to buy your product. This happens only when the brand manager really understands the consumers in complete totality—every aspect of their lives from how they think, act to how they feel.

Absolutely! Although many suspect that in a cluttered market as of todays, it does not make much sense to look for new and relevant positioning spaces. But, the fun and challenging thing about marketing is that consumers’ needs never get completely satisfied.

They’ve many needs and are constantly seeking things to be better than they are and this is where the opportunity lies for the marketer. The fact that consumers’ needs are never fully satisfied is the great hope for the marketer. Dissatisfaction can be the bedrock for great products.

The important thing about positioning is that it’s not isolated —it’s not only about the benefits of my brand, but it is relative, i.e, how is my brand better than competitors. This, I believe, is the big difference between my positioning model versus the Ries and Trout model. I talk about points of parity and points of difference. Positioning is not just about creating differentiation and relevance for your brand, but its aggressive, it’s as much about negating and neutralising the intended differentiation of your competitors. A one-two punch, if you will!

The first step deals with the question: what are the brand elements? The logo, packaging, signanges, symbol, slogans etc. The second step is developing marketing programmes keeping in mind the product, price, distribution channels, and the communication elements.

The third step is again a short cut; leveraging of secondary association, borrowing from something or someone else—a country, a firm, a person. But, at the heart of the marketing programme is the product or service. Similary, at the heart of a great brand is a great product/service.

To me, the way in which the context has undergone a change can be displayed by highlighting four critical points that have implications for brand management:

* Increased Transparency: Consu-mers today know much more courtesy the increase in media and proliferation of online space. The manufacturer finds it tough to evade the onslaught of transparency.

* Increased Competition: The exploding competition is coming from many avenues: global competition and private label competition in different forms etc.

* Technology: It’s made a tremendous impact in terms of altering channels of communication. This created a different media and distribution environment. It must be well understood before it can be managed to create successful brands.

* Culture: Increasing globalisation of brands translates into brands entering new marketplaces. New marketplaces bring new contexts, sometimes radically different from each other where the brand was developed. The challenge for the marketer is to make the brand work as well in all these diverse contexts.

The truth is that these three brands are struggling in their country of origin just as much as they are in markets around the world. The worldwide dilution of their brand equity reveals an important learning—the country of origin and its association is not always going to be the key driver for a brand’s success. It might prove useful for some time in some regions, but the bottomline is that soon brands will have to answer hard questions like whether they’re creating products and services that are truly relevant and differentiated in the environs they are present in.

I would not regard the information explosion as a necessarily bad thing. But, in terms of what it means for the marketer, there is no ambiguity. The message is very clear—you have to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Basically, you can’t fool consumers anymore, for they know far more than what you can control. You could even regard this as a blessing in disguise as it forces the brand to confront critical survival issues and become more consumer-centric.

The entry barriers for new brands are definitely lower since now you don’t need a huge budget to invest in mass media for marketing. However, the fact still remains that a marketer has to invest something if he wishes to build a brand on any scale—it can be money or time. For instance, Starbucks is a great example of a new brand with a great product that drove its brand through PR and word-of-mouth. In fact, there is nothing better to build a strong brand than a strong product, but Starbucks took 15 years.

New brands like Google, RedBull, Starbucks have mastered superior delivery to the consumer. That is the key—to start with desired benefits, find out what people aren’t getting and relentlessly deliver on it. This is the wave for the new brands to ride on and become successful. Once you focus on this and deliver, the rest will follow. Positive PR and WoM will come automatically and accelerate your brand building process.

Also, heritage is now a double-edged sword. It creates positive associations but it can also send the message that the brand is old-fashioned. I think, the changing context has really leveled the playing field to a large extent. Old or new, the brand has to do the right thing: making sure its relevant. For a new brand, the opportunity lies in entering with a new approach, marketing strategy and becoming more relevant. Is it right to say creating a great product that caters to the unmet needs and then developing the marketing programme from there is the right brand building model? I think this is the best model. If I think of the brands that have been most successful in the last decade, this is what they have done—the less differentiated and less relevant the brand is, the more difficult it is for them to be successful.

This trend of trimming the portfolio to work with a fewer stronger brands has been around for some time. The end limit of the theory is to arrive at the corporate brand as the pivot of marketing. For instance, Unilever which went from 1,600 brands to 400 and then even fewer.

It is a fact that lot of companies are realising especially keeping in mind the economies and efficiencies that are introduced with fewer brands and especially the benefit of a corporate brand with a strong equity like Samsung and General Electricals. But, per se, this does not build a case against sub brands because they also allow you certain benefits. There are examples where brand portfolios allow consumers to connect with consumers with multiple brands.

The application of this principle depends on the product category. When you go to the vertical dimensions, it is harder for companies to stretch across with a single brand especially for some categories, like fashion-clothing, watches etc.

The primary reason is that a stretch needs a imagery that is relevant to different consumers. In a business-to-business setting, where the product’s functionality is very important, a corporate brand is a great idea. But in settings where a lot of imagery is important, the situation changes.

I won’t say this is a new trend: we’ve private labels, offshore manufacturing for years. But it does reveal a set of implications for established brands that come at a premium.

One, is that it forces the brands charging a premium to create strong points of difference, to add value through products and marketing programmes which consumers value enough to pay a higher price.

Second, it makes the pricing aspect clearer. Unless, I am offering something with higher value, the consumer has another lower-priced option to choose. So, I need to see what value I add and how can I price it accordingly.

It’s definitely a possibility in the next decade, but not in this decade.

I wouldn’t put P&G in that category because globally they have done very well in the last two-three years with record profits. I would also not go so far as to say that the erstwhile icons are missing the picture totally. They are doing things differently. They are not just relying on 30-second advertising but moving towards getting a very comprehensive under rstanding of consumers in terms of developing marketing programmes that are holistic and emphasis on design and innovations.

The trouble with old icons like Levi’s etc is that they have not found a new formula that works well or create a holistic understanding and this struggle for the new formula is the raison d’etre for their problems.

Promotions are not necessarily bad always. What matters more is the context and what else does your marketing programme comprise in addition to promos to enhance your brand equity.

This makes the role of promotions very clear—the impetus to get consumers to react to a strong brand. There are promotions that drive the brand building, coupled with creating an incentive for the consumer. So, the trick is to come up with promotions the creatively build the brand are also very motivating for customers.

Also important is to look at other aspects of the marketing programme that should reinforce brand equity. Promotions are a part of the marketing programme.

Dr Kotler’s name is synonymous with great respect. I admire him for being extremely active and involved in terms of keeping track of the dynamic nature of marketing. The width and breadth of his experience in the field is impressive and it’s fun working with him, an endeavor that took us almost a year to complete.

In the 12th edition, we have talked about the 4Ps model but more in a historic sense rather than a learning tool. Personally, I don’t think it is probably not a good characterisation of how marketing works. In the new edition, we talk about holistic marketing that includes four main themes—internal marketing, integrated marketing, relationship marketing and performance marketing.

Personally, the 4Ps I would like to emphasise on are people, processes, programmes and performance. These 4Ps capture the new marketing environment. For instance, people—consumers and employees are not just looked at from the point of view of a single transaction, but need to be looked as people. Programmes are the activities you are involved in as part of the brand building activity.

Processes look at what needs to be done in order to make marketing more vigorous. Performance takes us to return on marketing investments and understanding what are you doing for the consumer, the environment and other immportant metrics. This encapsulates the spirit of what we’ve talked about in the book.