Over the years,people,products and services have become more than just materialistic need,Now it’s about the mental feeling that associates with a product/person and we call them as Brands ! Unlike in olden days its simply not enough in creating a good product,there’s more than  just creating an excellent product.So we set out to find the changing perceptions.

What is a Brand ?

Wikipedia says a brand is a distinguishing name and/or symbol, intended to identify a product or producer.i would say things have drastically changed,the term have grown out beyond a materialistic realm

The brand Guru’s would define Brand as a gut feeling about a product or service in customers mind.Like i sad the term has grown beyond the control of a single force,its more people centric or to put in right words the term’s definition now rests in Customers hands.

Now this is really crazy and I mean it when I say that. There was a time when manufacturers or marketing experts used to decide on what a brand is but that ain’t the scenario ahead.The years ahead are going to see more power to the customers and i say that is a very good thing.Its like a brand is what they say “anything that a customer says”-Groundswell.The point is the control about a brand does not lie with the company anymore,they can simply drive or guide & make branding decisions.

The Past

Earlier what a brand is about the TV-ad they make or the kind of money they spend for advertising or promotion activities.The big news was about the ambassador tie-ups they make and people used to love that,they used to use it because a celebrity is endorsing it but all that is soon going to come to an end. Well it’s not that advertising is coming to an end as it is but one thing is for sure that gone are the days of 30 second as slots in television.

Brand stories in the past had these attributes: static,messages,look & feel or in one word it was all about the “transactions”. It was about creating lovely logos,lovely packaging designs and the very punch line said,very static !  People would easily associate with those gimmicks back then.

The Future

It’s not that advertising will have no reach,but what the point i am saying is brands are not about what people need,its about what they want. what we need to understand is that what makes them happy today ain’t gonna make them happy tomorrow and thats where the future tends to take us.

Like I said a Brands definition now rests with the customers and so the future advertising realms are going to be more about relationships. The future is about being dynamic,doing,conversations & most importantly ’experience’ and that’s how a brand can influence the customer community.

I will continue the discussion on the rise of Brand Avatar in the next part of this post. So keep reading. ( Part 1)Looking forward to your valuable vews on the subject to help me continue this post.Thank You…Andrine Mendez

Originally posted 2010-01-04 18:47:15. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Yup,it took me sometime to digest and understand this as i was reading “FLIP” by PeterSheahan.But then looking by my own experiences and by what the book said,i too agreed with it.

Ever since we ramped up our sales of Smiley Privilege Card,i used to think customer satisfaction as a prime index for our growth ahead but little sooner did i realize that customer satisfaction is merely an index of what we condition the customer to expect,not what he or she really wants and the big question here is what does the customer really wants ? And biggest question of all is does the customer know what he wants ?

Our product can only outclass competition when we can predict what the customer wants before he even thinks. i know this sounds weird but if you take a close look at ourselves as a customer i am sure sometimes even we don’t know what we expect from a particular product.But then if the product itself has set itself a necessity in our minds,then that i say is the selling point of any product.

We can never measure the demands of a customer and design a product. Look at the best in the business for e.g Apple never had a survey with people asking if they would like to own a portable music player with radio or some cool interface. They just just went on to create something out of the box.They went out there and created a necessity among their customers and that’s how it all happened.

So the bottom line here is that you can never sell something if you focus on customer satisfaction because that would just make you a puppet in the hands of your customer and you truly can’t commit to it.Design your product with a niche that no one else can and in way where your product creates the necessity among customers.

Originally posted 2009-12-27 20:53:43. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

It’s true that as Lifestyle changes so does our spending ways but the only thing that never changes is the ‘Pain‘ we have in spending ! LOL ! i mean we’re not talking about buying the basics here ! The area i am talking is the eat-outs,the holiday package, the luxury spa, 5-star hotels,luxury items,branded clothing and accessories and so on. The needs of the rising middle class and above are a lot in spite of  very limited growth in their financials. So fellas we need a solution for it,there is always the easier ones like go for cheaper stuff and leave aside the Brand consciousness,the quality,the comfort and blah blah  ! i mean its like telling our kids,boys you don’t have to work hard or thrive too much to excel because there is always the cheaper option a.k.a Downgrade your Lifestyle.

People who belong to the above category could exclude themselves from what we’re about to discuss here ! As for the rest of them we have a solution-a Privilege card or a Discount Card ! Now this is a term not much heard in real sense and for the same reason i had asked few of my friends on why Discount cards never worked and the answers i got were:

@abbiii Not heard more about discounted card which has more than one retailer, but one thing i can say is lack of promotion.

@fahadmethar to be honest i dont know!! .if i would have known that, u could have seen me as the best seller in india… #discountcard

@SudheshNair Discount Cards- One main reason may be lack of awareness about it. Many people dont know wat exactly r discount cards.

But believe me there is a space very much open and in recent times we have seen a lot of such cards http://privilegecard.in & http://www.dineclub.in being few examples,but what is missing is the awareness among people on how much these things are useful or may be by the time people are convinced the companies might run out of their resources. Either way as the post title would suggest in the time of high spending being an  unavoidable commodity Discount cards sure going to be an Aspirin !

i myself am working on creating a similar concept and it’s already 6 months old and now in expansions phase. Do get me your views on the above discussion and www.smileycard.in,my pet project !

Originally posted 2009-12-08 23:29:38. Republished by Blog Post Promoter