What the face!

Tell me what you think of when you hear these brands...

Amul, Parle - G biscuit, Manchester United FC, Ferrari & F1 racing, Kingfisher Beer & Airlines, Infosys, Virgin Airlines

Let me share what comes to my mind

Amul - Butter & the Utterly Butterly Delicious Girl & the quirky cartoons

Parle - G Biscuit - the chubby kid on the yellow packing

Manchester United FC - Wayne Rooney, Sir Alex Fergusson & Beckham

Ferrari & F1 racing - Michael Schumaker, Ayrton Senna

Kingfisher Beer & Airlines - Beer, Beautiful fit airhostesses & Vijay Mallya

Infosys - Narayan Murthy

Virgin Airlines - Virgins ;-p  & Richard Branson

I am sure that you too would have similar recollections / associations with these brands. The common thread running amongst all is the association of faces with each of these brands. Brands or products by its very nature are often inanimate objects that provide services or complete a need for us. But the association of faces /  individuals, who in our eyes embody the brand, make the brand more believable & more personal.

As humans we exhibit a need for community, a feel of being one amongst cohorts. Intelligent brands hence maximise the activity to make themselves seem human to the consuming populace. Celebrity marketing is something that you may realise is a classic example of this. While celebrity marketing - Ranbir promoting Pepsi for example, is generally used to create greater brand recall, break advertising clutter - it also puts a human face to the product, complete with normal aspirations & positivity - something that we can identify with.

The concept of organisations & branding as a science is generally assumed to have originated from the West where purchase decisions are supposed to be based on evaluation & rational decision making based on parameters. However in the East - decision making & influencing has always been about people. The networks of family, school, college, work,  the relationships that we build in our day to day life - with the neighbourhood kirana wala (shop keeper) for that matter, influences our decision making (& purchases) greatly .

The rise of the Social Network both in the West & here stresses the importance of people to people bonding. A no brainer then that people connect to people; not just to bright concepts or snazzy marketing ideas. So if you are someone with a killer idea / product, when marketing don’t forget to look human.

Based on ideas espoused in an article by Madhukar Sabnavis (VP Ogilvy & Mather-India) in Business Standard; pg 13, 1st Aug 14

The Storyteller

THE STORYTELLER

The True measure of a marketing idea is if it makes customers care about what the brand stands for. The age of TiVo & shortened attention spans makes it imperative that the marketing idea (in fact any idea), is embedded in the collective psyche of the recipients. For that, the idea needs to not just persuade but engender feelings of care & empathy, making the idea ones own

If you were to think about it you would realise that marketing communication is actually just story telling. How relevant & soul touching your story is often translates into how effective & successful your marketing idea will be. And in todays 'social & interactive' world, the interactive nature of story telling is what would differentiate a good idea from a really wow one.

So exactly why is the participative ( I call it social & interactive) story telling such an effective way to influence behaviour?  Neuro- scientific evidence points towards three compelling reasons rooted in how the brain makes brand decisions.

1. Stories actually change our brain, shaping the way we think, feel & behave. Remember how you felt & behaved differently after watching a Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan (action)film as a child?
2. Its all about correct mapping - Brand stories do this by strengthening the connections in the brain between the network of neurons representing a brand & the network of neurons  representing a particular need. The richer the connections between these two networks, the more the brain is biased towards the particular brand (or idea / or product)
3. Many more synaptic connections are created when we ourselves participate in creating a brands story, greatly boosting our chances of remembering the brand (or idea/product) when it matters the most

So the strategy of any good marketing idea is to create an excellent story around it that binds it with an issue / thought that people care about (feel for /empathise with it) & tell it in the most participative way possible.

Now the moot personal question is - Will this work on the Boss when I ask for a raise next month?  :-)

Derived from the article 'The Big Ideas Great Leap Forward' by Leo Burnetts Rajeev Sharma (National Brand Planning Head Leo Burnett India) as appeared in Brand Equity (ET Jun25, 2014, pg3)