Brands and political parties are about right positioning. Brand position is what you stand for and political position is the ideology you espouse. It is important to understand what defines localness and what defines nationalness. Brands and parties are not spending enough time doing this right now.
- Local brands must outperform and out serve their consumer base before thinking of going regional or national. Local brands make the mistake of spreading themselves too thin by geography expansion. This stretches resources and managerial capability is stretched to breaking point. A strong local brand has a role to play. It is in many cases better to be the king of a pond rather than a pauper of a sea. Ego doesn’t let the brand manager come to a rational conclusion. A good example is a ride sharing brand that went to a few countries and closed, the same is true for a watch brand that went global, failed and rightly came back to focus on India.
- Local context matters. You must play to your strengths. Imitating a national brand and going head on rarely wins you the day. Staying local for local is the only strategy for a strong local brand. A national brand will play a national game when it matters and a regional game when needed. As an example, Campbell soup was the first brand in the world to have a national brand with regional blends. The Tea brands in India – Red Label, Taaza – had similar strategies. National parties will play the blends game, local parties can play only one game – Focus. Focus is not a bad game to play, since you cannot be all things to all people. When a local brand loses focus, it becomes diffused, since it thinks it’s a national brand and must talk a national game.
- Performance and perception matter equally for brands and political parties. Longevity doesn’t matter if perception is dented despite decent performance. Perception works as an added layer when performance is of an acceptable level. Today, we see negative perception, where you throw mud hoping something will stick. Brands constantly upgrade themselves in packaging, in product etc. every two years. Political parties should do the same and have a 2.0 version, a 3.0 version of message, capabilities and execution needed. Living on past glory does not help when citizens want to know how the future will shape up. Brands and political parties go through the ‘incumbency effect’ when they don’t change with the times.
- Choosing whom you will target and whom you will partner with is important. When you open the fight on too many fronts/brands, you dissipate energy and come across as confused. Staying focused on one brand is more important, else you will be a bits and pieces brand, and the national market leader will eat you for breakfast. This is a mistake made by all brands in the No 2 to 6 positions in every category. They hope to nibble a little from each other to make some share. Finally, they end up fighting with each other, losing credibility and using up scarce resources.
- A local brand must play ‘guerilla’. But a guerilla game needs speed and being merciless on the leader’s weakness. A guerilla game is not about trading blows for blows, a trading blows strategy always helps the market leader brand, since the market leader has more ammunition and resources. A great brand example is the deodorant from Gujarat – Fogg.
- What happens to brands that fall below a threshold on appeal? They must embrace technology, ride the next wave of innovation, appeal to a newer set of incoming consumers and be a step ahead of everyone else in their appeal. Appealing to the same consumers who are targeted by the market leader and the local brand does not help. An insignificant brand has no chance if it ends up doing what the others are doing and imagining that it matters.
All the brand managers of the various political brands need to regroup with their teams and rethink their brand strategy. Attack is not the best form of defense now, retreat to rethink is the wiser option.
(Shiv Shivakumar is Operating Partner, Advent International and former chief of Pepsico India and Nokia India)