knowledge.......................................................................................
centre

BRANDING

“Branding consists of transforming the product category. A brand is a long term vision. A brand is a living memory. A brand is a genetic program, a brand is a contract.”
- Jean-Noel Kapferer

At Times Private Treaties we understand and acknowledge brand dynamics and its genetic coding. As part of our value added initiatives we collaborate and associate as ‘knowledge partners’ involving and immersing ourselves in the shaping of the brand, attaching ourselves like an umbilical cord to its success. After all we’re in the business of “Empowering brands”

Brands are immortal. Companies might come and go ownerships change hands but the legacy of a brand will always live on. And in a world where technology is democratic the key differentiator for goods and services to be successful is to create, nurture and invest in brand building by not just solving a specific consumer dilemma but also by engaging him and providing him with an experience that delivers a virtual world where he would like to reside.

Brands create value for the customer by offering a package of benefits from which they derive a far greater value than the cost incurred to get those benefits. Benefits can be rational, emotional, tangible and intangible. They command a price premium beyond their intrinsic worth.

Brands are what separate mere commodities which are undifferentiated goods or services into charismatic entities endowed with functional and emotional add ons.

A modern society is a fertile environment of choices and obviously there is more to brands for as John Williamson observes
“From water to coffee to phone to cars. In terms of physical characteristics, there are more similarities than ever before more choices than ever before”

Galvanizing this phenomenon is the consumer mind-state.
A mindset that has no space for commerce (skin care, sanitary protection)
Perceives no difference (service sector)
Refuses to get involved (categories like paints, cement…)

The process of arriving at a brand framework can be achieved with the right infusion of

Functional

By constant innovation, re-application in the forms & formats of the offering. Spending wisdom in how you want the consumers to interact with your product, the touch, feel it delivers, the sensorial it accentuates.

Emotional

When functional superiority cannot create consumer preferences, the thrust should be to drive the emotional attributes by accentuating the benefit or promise with a deeper understanding of the constituency you are addressing, insights into their sociological needs or probably guilt that it erases, an extension of their identity, a world of their self expression.

Experiential processes

Engaging and creating a typical brand experience. Meeting the consumer where he wants to meet you and then involving him to the picture that you paint of your brand.
The mushrooming coffee shops testify the success of the experiential dynamics of marketing where a product that costs perhaps, not more than a few bucks sells for a premium of Rs. 30-35

At the end of it all branding is an evolutionary process and has to reflect the consumers changing patterns and behavior. Marketing works on the principle of an astute and insightful understanding of the consumer. And it’s never about the quantum of your message but about ‘what’ the message says.