Brands have Emotionale

A visiting faculty to my college, Sumit Roy, gave us this powerful statement, which opened my mind to better understand the difference between a brand and a product. Anything that can be put on to a paper and floated around is what a product is. But when it comes to a brand, it is a far greater and closer to heart feeling that people carry towards the brands in their home. It is this feeling that people possess which leads to big words like brand loyalty and cults. The higher order attachment is actually the defining moment in the journey between a brand and its consumer.

Honestly, this is nothing new and people across the management verticals talk about this is ways more than one; basically there is nothing new that I can add here. But there is a critical part of this brand-consumer association which more often than not is the first level of this relation- we call it the brand experience and until recent, this was the biggest area of focus for retailers and brand to concentrate on. Everything that a brand put across to the consumer across all the mediums has a uniformity in terms of content and tone. The visuals and merchandise are in sync with all this. Lastly, it is about a sentiment a person has, an unfulfilled need at times, which a brand experience satisfies.

Brand retail- both as brand shops or Shop- in- shop (SIS) have their own charm. Walk into a Nike or Adidas store and even if you are not a hard core sports freak, you start feeling like one. Shelves full of shoes, jerseys, sports goods and accessories suddenly channel a rush of adrenaline. Spot a Federer or Bolt on the wall or just a face in the crowd out for a run on an empty road inspires one to just grab a pair right there to cherish that dream to get into shape. The sight of a man dressed in crisp formals at an Arrow or Raymond’s section builds the aspiration to make that impression in the meeting room. At the perfumery or the cosmetics section, all brands have testers for people to try it on and then decide what suits them in what kind of a look. Not to forget, at each stage, you have a personalized attendant to show you more options, recommend better products and even in case you are hell bent not to take his words seriously; no one hates if that person shares you a compliment. Feels like magic isn’t it?

Retail is a refined art. It is designed to stimulate your senses in every possible way. Attractive colours and themes on the displays, bright interiors with immaculately put up shelves with neatly arranged wares and smiling sales persons. Even the air within the store is pepped up with aroma candles and oils to make the people feel wanted and cared. Say for the look, an Apple store is expected to be in all white with the silver coloured machines and the staff in black Tees. A Samsung Smart Café or a Mercedes Benz showroom will look the same all across. It is all a part of giving you that distinguished brand experience. The entire affair with the look and feel is so great that clients hire specialized agencies as the people who will build this experience. These are the people who specialize in areas like retail window displays, the look for a season or festival as well as the overall retail design to catch our eye.

No matter what; this aspect of the retail experience is something which I believe cannot be easily duplicated in an online retail environment.  The convenience of shopping sitting in your lazy chair just does not have the charm of walking around in the isles, trying on stuff in a trail room to see how it fits you or at times, make you feel that you are shopping against surfing sites for the best deals. I agree that brands are putting in something very close to the SIS kind of arrangements on sites like Myntra, Flipkart and Jabong, but even with the banners and livery visible on the screen, it sincerely does not inspire the same sentiments. How can holding a pair of Ferrari Puma shoes in your hand be compared to seeing it online? How does one gauge the power dressing rush coming from an Arrow shirt by seeing some firang model wearing it unless you can touch the fabric?

It is good to know that brands are taking cognisance of this and keeping a distinction about what it sells through an online SIS as compared to its own online portals and physical outlets. They are ensuring that their products through a multi-brand online retailer is more aimed at brand penetration through these channels and maintaining a watch on the degree of discounts being offered to ensure there is no cannibalization. For all the pricing games and wars which happen every day on the online ecommerce retailers, there is much need to respect the sanctity towards loyalists through the traditional channels.   

Consumers live by experience. Comfortable, easy-to-use, convenient and ergonomic are what products are designed to be. Brands have a higher order of satisfaction- it is the aura, imagery, style and the ‘feeling-good’ factor added in. This is what makes brands, the emotions it invokes and wins consumers for life. 

Towards a Phony World

We all take pride in the fact that the world is shrinking; thanks to exponential improvement in technology and avenues to communicate. A 2010 movie named Udaan had a small joke about the state of telephony in India. A student being rusticated from a school has a small moment of ecstasy when the school master mentions about reporting matters to his father on phone- ‘You mean my house now has a phone line???’ I guess the joke shall fall flat today when India has more mobile phone connections than landlines.

While I have nothing against development or technology, I am coming to believe that technology is actually breaking the human bonds of the society by making us more and more impersonal. Today, almost all of us have a mobile phone, but the so called educated lot have given up calling and gone deeper into messaging. The charm of writing a hand written letter has now become something of a novelty (no wonder guys still try to impress girls by writing letters). I fail to recollect an ad I has seen some time back where there was a statement was, ‘technology today can tell you about what your distant cousin is doing in the US, but let aside mingling- we fail to even know or acknowledge our next door neighbours.’  The bottom line, Nokia may still say we connect people- but the human touch seems to be losing its grip.

Back in the days when I started working in GE Healthcare, the mobile phone became a need to connect with people towards getting solutions to field problems. In those day, my job role demanded me to be reachable round the clock for any emergency as a machine could go down at 7 in the morning or even 11 at night. With every breakdown having a rider attached of ‘human life at stake’, I was paranoid to a level where my phone had to be in the same room and as close to me each time I laid my head down. When I entered media, I got to learn that I was under a behavioural illness termed as Nomophobia.

Coined in 2010 in UK, Nomophobia (No-Mobile-Phobia) was a condition where a subject was living under a fear of losing mobile connectivity either by loss of the instrument, no network coverage, no credits or even the battery losing all juice. At that point, I remember there were stats like more than 70% people sleep with a phone at an arm’s length, 30% indulge in messaging during meetings, loss of a phone book record is more disturbing than losing a book etc. I cannot agree more that all this is happening. In fact, I had to take some forceful steps for myself like no phones during lunch/dinner, no phones when out with friends, phones on silent at night etc. to get me off this.

The next term that joined this list of new age phobias has been propelled by the increasing use of social media in recent times- FOMA (Fear Of Missing Out). It is not a stand-up joke anymore for people to visit Facebook or WhatsApp before the washroom after we getting up from bed or the finishing statement switching off the lights is hitting like on the last comment.  (http://www.warc.com/LatestNews/News/Online_India_gripped_by_FOMO_.news?ID=33659)

Let me just shoot you some numbers from this survey by Tata Communications undertaken in India, Singapore, UK, US and Germany. (China would have been interesting as well). With the 9417 respondents across these countries, 29% of the total spent more than six hours daily on the internet; the number for India being the highest at 46%. Of the total respondents, 56% could not survive for more than 5 hours without internet. For 12 hours without the internet, the Asians collapsed while the rest has over 70% survival. 82% Indians showed signs of FOMA and the gender ratio for anxiety was skewed towards women. What’s more, 43% Indians were prepared to give up on TV for more time on their tablets and smart phones.

It is evidently clear- technology is taking over our world too rapidly and eroding all other forms of media and inter-personal communication. In an interaction with students in their late teens, newspapers had made way for news apps on phones. It was not uncommon to spot a few smiling as they looked down to their groin. I threw a fit when recently on a vacation to Goa, my friend spent more time looking into his phone while sitting on a beach. The habit is so common amongst people that beach side shacks advertise being WiFi enabled. It was there by a refreshing sight when one shack declared it was a place with no frills but perfect for family time and live 90’s style.

I fail to understand how people can participate in twitter battles while watching a Federer- Nadal match or contribute to an absurd poll about Dhoni’s haircut while watching IPL. It actually beats the human nature of reward oriented actions as at end of the day, your tweet was one of a million that day. What an amazing date it is when the girl and the guy are both more interested in clicking a selfie with each other and tagging where they went and missing out on enjoying each other’s company.  

I am certain the scenario has risen out of two key components- easy access to mobile internet and social media applications for phones which are actually destroying the physical and inter personal relations in the real human society. It is thereby not uncommon to see some people taking a sabbatical from social media networks from time to time; it is a kind of a self-imposed restrain (or detox) to avoid the complete annihilation of their physical social structure. I just hope this doesn’t mushroom into a clinical mode of treatment- the indicators do suggest: we are after all moving very close to a phony world.