The business of brand

It used to be that a brand manager could run 3-4 campaigns a year, negotiate heavily in media buying for efficiency, and roughly correlate effectiveness to quarterly brand health data and sales performance. With VC funding-led rapid scaling, digitisation,  real-time data, and polarised social media, this version is being rendered obsolete. The changing business context also means that looking at a 30 sec ad purely through a consumer lens is only half the story. Two recent examples made me reflect on the dynamics between brand, social media, and business.  I do realise that my commenting on them is a bit like the Nobody – Me meme, and delayed at that, but that’s one of the perks of having a blog.

Cred: We’ll begin with the Mad Men perspective, but after a short detour. Brand building for VC-funded startups has a template that actually works. Rational benefits with emotional storytelling. Flipkart and Myntra both went through a learning curve with “Granny and Mouse” and “Where fashion comes together” respectively, before they cracked it with “kids as adults” and “Real life mein aisa hota hai kya?“. It works because in addition to building the brand promise, it also has a tangible effect on business. And that’s why it’s often followed by many others across categories – Pepperfry, LivSpace, Khatabook, or even an extended approach like The Whole Truth. This is assuming that distribution, product, customer service etc are at least on par, and the execution is done well.  In that context, Cred’s recent ads, after readability issues in the first print ad, and the lengthy Jim Sarbh ad, were most definitely clutter-breaking. By not following that template. 

Could the ads have been tweaked to address the “Why should I download Cred?” question asked in every critique? Of course. A simple way was to have a few seconds dedicated to the “brand team” briefing the stars on the value proposition they are supposed to creatively communicate. But any “dumbing down” might have taken away from the bold “Not everyone gets it” stance that’s (also) tied to the credit score-based entry barrier. And add to the length of the ad, which matters on television. “Not everyone gets it” is an inherently polarising stance, and with this particular creative rendition, gasoline meets matchstick.

I’m not a fan of condescending brands, but that’s just an opinion, and it’s irrelevant in this context. Here’s why. Assuming you don’t like the ad, would you uninstall Cred? Unlikely, unless you were one of those who uninstalled Snapdeal three years ago. That example would tell you that just like customers, social media is not one homogenous blob. Cred’s existing users may have seen the deals shifting from marquee to DTC and exclusive to basic deals, but at this point it has product and experience differentiation. Brand love is absolutely something to aim for, but arguably, not mandatory at this stage. The job of the ad is only to intrigue people enough to download. Every commentary and tweet worked played into that objective. The trade-off was worth it. A logical question is “why couldn’t they just make a better ad?” Which leads us to “who decides better” and “good for what”?

The answer to the first is the creators of the ad, and the math men version might help answer the second. If it isn’t people like you, who and what is Cred really targeting? IPL and Bollywood are absolutely mass phenomena, so I would be surprised if Cred is still (only) focusing on its stated target audience – 20 million “premium” credit card users. Based on publicly quoted sponsorship ($15 mn for 3 years) and ad rates (12.5 lakh/10 sec), Cred’s spends can be estimated (~12-15 mn). This is a tenth of their total funding yet. From download data via Similar Web (extrapolated to ~ 1.5-2 mn by the end of IPL), I get a reasonably high CAC.

But maybe, even the expanded audience is the wrong one. Given Amazon’s entry into the core space (credit card bill payment), revenue streams (rent payment, loans) being in a nascent not-so-lucrative space, and a new player looking to expand the market, this is predictably the time to go for a new round of funding. A time in its life when showing that it knows how to deploy money, gain visibility, and scale downloads is more important than efficient marketing, revenue, controlling burn etc. Because tusks >teeth. And so it is playing out. But in the long run, especially with Amazon in the mix, it might be worthwhile to review that condescension since product and experience differentiation may not have a long shelf life. However, for now, the ads’ CTA couldn’t have been clearer, opinions notwithstanding.

Tanishq: I have no Mad Men version for this simply because the brand has come a long way from its “jewellery convincing a girl to marry” days. The “progressive stance” narrative has been going on for a while now. Remember grandma joking about a less trodden path in 2014, and the second shaadi ad from 2017? There have been more, these are just examples. I don’t really have an understanding of the category, but with 4-5% share of the overall jewellery market, and despite the rise of many region specific brands and jewellery going the ecommerce way, Tanishq is well placed to be the brand of choice for a certain demographic and psychographic segment. Continuing the trend from self esteem towards self actualisation.

IMO, the latest ad is a well thought-through trade-off. It’s not random woke! I think we’re doing a disservice to the Tanishq team if we assume that they didn’t think through the possibilities in the polarised, confrontational world we live in. As I tweeted, I doubt whether anyone who used #BoycottTanishq was planning to buy the brand anyway. On the other hand, those who like the brand would see this as validation of their choice. Especially when progressive-sounding (because I don’t really know them!) celebrities not even associated with the brand spoke up for it on social media. As for the real world, it isn’t as though retail footfalls are booming, and we’re not yet in a lawless regime where threats on stores and personnel cannot be addressed. Meanwhile, Google Trends show that the searches have rocketed.

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In essence, in the math men world, for the brand to thrive, the business has to survive. At each point, who the story is being told to matters a lot. In the case of startups, money is a moat, and the money in early stages is usually from VC funding (which loves scale), and not really revenue. For established brands, once there is parity on distribution and product and pricing innovations can only do so much, aligning to the self image of a consumer might just deliver the LTV that helps business.

In the mad men world, brand building is storytelling. And it’s long term. “The years teach much which the days never know.” But that craft is being forced to reinvent itself when media and memory is transient. In this polarised world, the only thing that a brand is likely to obtain by following the middle path is salivation – when they see rival brands who can game the system – social media and its polarisation. Though both Tanishq and Cred are different in most aspects, they were both in position to take advantages of unique stories and polarised opinions, amplified on social media. They did. Stance or circumstance, I don’t think we’ll know.