What Makes a Brand
Successful Today

Brand is not your logo. It’s not a promise that the company makes to the customers. Advertising perspective says, it’s a sum of impressions that companies make on an audience. It’s a result, a customer’s gut feeling, what image comes up in a person’s mind when they see or touch your product. It is to give a product a story & an identity.

The way we value things is how we perceive them. Therefore, the art of changing perception is called branding.

You create a story that is relatable and meaningful, in which your product is the hero. A name that gives a community a feeling and a sense of belonging. We give our hero, your product, a face through a visual identity. To create an idea about the product as a symbol of a movement with a powerful yet simple anchoring points inspiring people to think. 

Then use these anchoring points to create an entire new range of products & services. Revolving around the idea of inspiring people to think.

Branding is the architect and managing the meaning & experience of the brand with intention. It is to manage the meaning of the name of the product. It’s like a promise you make to the customer in every product/service you provide.

The most common mistake people make in terms of Branding, is to mix it with Marketing. Branding is what and why. Marketing is how. Branding is concerned with the long-term value. It’s about establishing a memory, an experience and a perception in the consumer’s mind. Marketing is concerned with generating immediate results with actions, that generate sales. Branding is the trajectory and marketing is the tactics. Branding creates value. Marketing monetizes that value.

Designing is the backbone of the Branding. We as humans started first with Symbols for each other by each other to communicate, to associate. The evolution started around 250 years ago when corporation started modelling their product as per the requirement and sentiments of their consumers, to create more recognizable consensus in people. But the real change comes in the last 10 years. Branding isn’t a tool of capitalism, it has rather evolved into much more, it has become a profound manifestation of the human spirit. Now consumers analyze what the company stands for, if the organization is communicating their beliefs through the behavior of the brand. People now question to challenge and then provoke the thought, this change in behavior comes from the understanding of their power, since the social media has entered our lives. It’s a sense of realization how their choices of choosing a brand impacts the future, is it healthy, organic, is the company for the people, for the earth, the climate and even uphold the values of the society.

It all starts from a thought, why!? Why do we need this thing/ idea/ belief/ product. The second question is what is the benefit. As people don’t just give you money, they give you a part of their soul, it’s a memory, it’s a choice and it’s an association to your brand. If your product has a sound strategic answer to these question then people believe you, they would want to be associated with you. Because that’s all it comes down to, do people believe in what you are selling.

Here are the 3 case studies reflecting the importance of branding in their establishment among the people. Their growth, the idea and how they targeted a simple gap in the market or realizing their own Unique Selling Proposition (USP), and integrating all of this into branding. Simply to put across what they stand for and why you should choose them.

BOAT

As branding has evolved, the most advanced aspect is Aspirational value. One can see how Robert Junior endorsed 1+ phones in 2019, making it into a bestselling phone in India for 2019. Similarly, BOAT endorsed celebrities and put the pricing cheaper than the competitors. We can segregate this approach in to forms: Tangible value, which is the result & effect & Perceived value, which is the judgement that is portrayed. 

Boat not only associated with Cricketers only but Actors , Singer and even collaborated with  Celebrity designer Masaba Gupta collaborated with the audio brand boAt to launch limited-edition headphones and resort wear collections at Lakmé Fashion Week. Taking it to next level by associating with BIRA.

Their approach was to build a quality product within India. They achieved this by the timing to enter the market. They stood out by lifestyle marketing and through strategic collaboration.

One can still notice and be surprised that BOAT’s earphones still sell at Rs.299, a huge target for students. Its one of their highest revenue generating products. A satisfied customer stays loyal and these students will eventually grow and earn to choose BOAT’s high-end products.

They must have received scrutiny as there are Giants like Apple OnePlus JBL, yet BOATS focused on performance with low pricing. It’s the idea that drives the product and branding just helps you to achieve it, by establishing the bridge between a consumer and the product.

“BOATS Stone also laid a foundation for BOATS to enter the speaker’s market with similar performance and half the price.”

BIRA

Their story starts from the owner of the company being an employee of a Beer distributing company that exports from Germany and Belgium to India. This helped him to understand and notice what kind of Beer Indians drink and who will be his target audience.

In the year 2014-15, about 270 million cases of beer were sold, out of which 1% was craft beer only. This keen observation was led to the birth of our Golden Boy, BIRA. Breaking all the orthodox about the market being saturated and no room for competitors. One can notice there branding is very attractive, quirky and funky looking. They targeted the audience through branding. Challenging the culture of buying high end Beer, to dissociate from the mass buyers of the cheap beers. This crowd searched for Crafted Beers, as they are young, aware and fully conscious of whom they associate with, by buying or consuming the products.

Advertisement and branding of alcohol is banned, so they only focused on distribution and its channel. Becoming easily available! Which was done by word of mouth for them, it was so readily available at every store, lounge café or bars that the consumers shared their experience and triggered a chain reaction. Which has led BIRA to become as one of the most popular and demanded beer across India.

Finally allowing them to take 30 Million Dollar funding from Seqouia capital. As they had strong branding and distribution channel. All of this was to open their own Manufacturing unit in India. Now they hold 4 manufacturing unit in India!

They have simply built the company on the customer’s taste. With a new taste and quality.  Especially the Monkey branding puts them out of the general image of Beers. Branding Element, Product Mix, Pricing Strategy, Marketing campaign and Collaboration. They target Urban millennia as they prefer differentiating from the mass targeted beers. BIRA means bro in North India. 91 is India’s country code and Monkey is the sign of joy and playful in every human. Reverse B means it stands for the people who oppose mass targeted beers.

They launched 2 products initially with both variants of strong and soft beer, taking an unconventional and unorthodox approach. Making it unique and appealing for the experiment lover millennials. Giving BIRA 30% of market share in India without any marketing! 

Then they introduced first of a kind Low calorie beer in India. They positioned it as a Lunch/brunch time lagger Beer. As they also decreased the alcohol % in those beers, making them a light drink rather.

With their pursuit of the Events and Collaborations: Bira 91 engaged with its targeted audience through music festivals, pop-up events, and collaborations with other brands. Their brand became a youth icon to chill and revolution.

MINIMALIST

HUL acquired Minimalist for 3000 Crore making it the largest all-cash D2C deal in India ever. Even though its just a 4-year-old brand. As it can help them scale offline due to HUL’s huge distribution network. One cannot make a 1000 crore company being online and the owners of Minimalist understood this ground reality. Parle, HUL & Unilever being the competitors, these 2 brothers from Jaipur changed the entire beauty industry game.

Rahul & Mohit Yadav started one of their ventures in 2018, Freewill. A personalized solution based custom based product, which clearly got them a good success, however it wasn’t a mass scaling project, hence keep its journey short for 2 years only.

They understood that Beauty & Skincare market was built on marketing more than products. As the giants would brand themselves as organic even though they used chemicals. A strategy known as greenwashing.

The biggest question was if the Indian customer could accept a product that was based on science and research, than brands using just tags like “Organic” and “Natural”.

No big campaign, no influencer, no big add campaign. Just one post, “We are live!”

They didn’t bring a change they triggered a revolution in the customers, erasing the misconception about chemicals being bad or inorganic was unsafe. Unlike the others, they made ingredients the highlights on the packaging. Showing their challenge to the myth and the sheer will to break the taboo of using Chemicals.

 The first batch of 1000 serums were sold in 2-3 days and the feedback showed it was the Transparency. Nothing but a simple form of honesty. Instead of involving influencers, they used real testimony and users feedback as the marketing. Making their repeat percentage to 60%, which on average for another brand is 16-22%.

Minimalist prioritized the quality by keeping the production in house. They didn’t outsource the manufacturing like other companies, making it a costlier affair. Idea was to spend more on their products and they don’t need to spend much on the marketing, just like TESLA.

They invest majority of their budget on manufacturing, Quality, Design & R&D. If the customers love your product, they will do the marketing for you.

They kept the options tight with smaller product range, keeping it to lower inventory cost and this means more efficient operations. Their image as experts for specific requirement was boosted by their website design. It gave them a platform to educate the customer about their skin or hair type, then customize and choose their preference. Showcasing how each consumer mattered, how their preference mattered. How each product was exclusive and as per their specific body requirement. Building a trust and value of respect and acknowledgement from the company to the customers.