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The Value of the Brand
Brands reflect trustcrucial in this era of super-short product cycles, and tiny online-user attention spans
Prasanto Kumar Roy
Saturday, September 06, 2008
As Tata's Rs 1 lakh Nano struggles to take off against the cross-wind of
agitation in Singur, WB, Maruti's original people's car is doing a spot of
rejuvenation on its 25th anniversary. There are over 2.5 million Maruti 800 out
there. Facing a 12% annual sales decline, the new '800 Uniq' sports “new
features like body graphics, beige upholstery...”
Automobiles and tech are a world apart, not least because no tech product
would ever see a model living 25 months, let alone 25 years. And no tech vendor
would get away with a 'new launch' by adding body graphics and beige...
Two sectors, poles apart. .But tying them together is the brand: the common
factor across almost every sector in the world.
Brand Maruti is famous for service, low running cost, and resale value. So
most new models have a rush of bookings and months of waiting for delivery.
But in the automotive world, products do have a chance to build a reputation
within their life cycles. So even a new entry has many months, sometimes years,
to do it.
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| Prasanto K Roy,
president, ICT Publishing Group, CyberMedia, pkr@cybermedia.co.in |
Not so in tech, where products change so rapidly, and a laptop or router or
server is obsolete the month you buy it.
The brand plays an even bigger role there. The brand is larger than life. Few
products get the chance to be judged within their lifespan on the shelves. So
the brand is everything.
Apple has shown what the power of the brand can do: Steve Jobs yanks out slim
and slight products from his jeans at a MacWorld and screaming fans queue up
overnight at the launch of the iPod or iPhone.
Brand Apple is known for the coolest, sexiest products on the planet. There's
cutting edge design, often very limited features (omissions that those fans seem
to not notice at all, or forgive, for the overall package).
The iPhone skips the basics people are used to in a phone today: swappable
batteries, expandable memory, video recording...even SMS forwarding..the list goes
on.
The whopper is that the India launch happened at three times the US price,
while the iPhone's great new addition, 3G, would not be usable in India for
another year.
Despite that, the fact that there were eager buyers is testimony to the
brand. If the brand defines the premium you can charge, well, the iPhone 3G
passes the test with flying colors! But the same applies to a Nokia phone, which
so many millions would buy blindly.
This month PCQuest runs its annual survey featuring India's favorite IT
brands, and bringing back the old favorite, the User's Choice awards.
Some results are predictable (Windows XP for instance continues as the
enterprise favorite, though Vista makes it on the consumer charts), some
unexpected. Most of the strong brands continue as winners, but there are upsets:
for instance the old faithful ThinkPad is out of the top 2 even in the laptop
enterprise charts, knocked out by HP and new entrant Dell. VSNL gives way to
Airtel for enterprise connectivity; AVG trumps Norton for desktop anti-virus
(consumer)...
Brands are a big deal in the online era, where they imply trust. Users might
be wary of files from unknown sources, but they'd happily download programs from
CNET Download.com. And they'd trust results from Google, the Internet's top
brand...
Even with rising commoditization--brands are going to get more important with
the years.
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