Brand Equity most trusted brand survey 2009

What is a brand? Is it a symbol or name or what is it? Simply, “ A Brand is a Promise”. A name, signs and symbols are part of what a brand is. Trust is as fragile as it is precious and a brand is always fight to retain the trust of customer. A Brand need to earn trust everyday.  Economic Times Bureau – Brand Equity unveils the most comprehensive article of faith in the Indian brand world and the most unique listing of its kind, Brand Equity Most Trusted Brands 2009, in a glittering event held in Mumbai.

This independent nationwide survey conducted for Brand Equity by

 Nielsen is the benchmark for Trust, an ageless virtue and the ultimate pinnacle that every marketer and every brand wants to achieve. And this, the single-biggest study of its kind, has now become the gold standard for the entire marketing and advertising fraternity.

Nokia top list of India most trusted brand. Hindustan Lever is another big winner, with three brands in the top twenty.

A clear indication that today the Brand Equity MTB Survey is the one study that marketers put their faith in. In this, the sixth year of the MTB survey, there are two new entrants into the top 10. Coming in at No. 6 is one of the oldest brands in India, Horlicks.

Reliance Mobile which is the star of this year's edition, considering that it had failed to crack the top 20 in 2008. Telecom, as a category, is clearly on the ascendant. Airtel, BSNL and Vodafone have all surged up the charts to finish in the top 30, ranking 12, 19 and 30, respectively.

Hindustan Unilever, as has always been the case, continues to dominate the overall rankings with three brands (Lifebuoy, Lux and Pepsodent) in the top 10 and seven in the top 20. 

Rank 1: Nokia

• Advertising Agency: JWT/W+K
• About the brand: Nokia has established itself as the market and brand leader in the mobile devices market in India. The company has built a diverse product portfolio to meet the needs of different consumer segments and therefore offers devices across five categories ie. Entry, Live, Connect, Explore and Achieve.  ( www.nokia.co.in)

Rank 2: Colgate

• Advertising Agency: Ridiffusion YR
• About the brand: From a modest start in 1937, when hand-carts were used to distribute Colgate Dental Cream, Colgate-Palmolive (India) today has one of the widest distribution networks in India, a logistical marvel that spans around 4.5 million retail outlets across the country, of which the Company services 1.5 million outlets directly. The company dominates the Rs 2400 crore Indian toothpaste market by commanding close to 50% of the market share. Colgate was ranked as India’s Most Trusted Brand across all categories by Brand Equity’s Most Trusted Brand Survey for four consecutive years from 2003 to 2007. ( www.colgate.co.in)

Rank 3: Lux

• Advertising Agency: JWT
• Company: Hindustan Unilever Ltd
• About the brand: Lux stands for the promise of beauty and glamour as one of India's most trusted personal care brands. Since 1929, Lux in step with the changing trends and evolving beauty needs of the consumers, offers an exciting range of soaps and Body Washes with unique elements to make bathing time more pleasurable. (www.hul.co.in)

Rank 4: Lifebuoy

• Advertising Agency: Lowe
• Company: Hindustan Unilever Ltd
• About the brand: Launched in 1895, Lifebuoy, for over 100 years, has been synonymous with health and value. The relaunch of the soap in 2002, 2004 & again in 2006 have been turning points in its history. It is now in a superior formulation offering a new health fragrance and a contemporary shape. It’s vision is, “Making a billion Indians feel safe and secure by meeting all their health and hygiene needs”. ( www.hul.co.in)

Rank 5: Dettol

• Advertising Agency: Euro RSCG
• About the brand: Dettol is the gold standard of effective germ kill recommended by medical experts and healthcare professionals for its proven ability to protect families from germs. The brand remains up to date through the launch of new products relevant to changing lifestyles such as hand sanitizer, liquid hand wash, shower gel, all purpose cleaners, and antibacterial wipes. (Content: ET Bureau & www.reckittbenckiser.com)

Rank 6: Horlicks

• Advertising Agency: JWT
• Company: GlaxoSmithKline
• About the brand: Horlicks is the leading health food drink in India and enjoys more than half of the health food drink market. Although it has been a popular brand in Indian market since 1930s, Horlicks underwent a revamp in 2003 to further increase its relevance.  It is a favourite with both mothers for its nourishment and kids for its great taste and variety. ( www.gsk-ch.in)

Rank 7: Tata Salt

• Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett
• Company: Tata Group
• About the brand: Tata Salt pioneered the branded salt movement in India in 1983. It was the first salt in India to be manufactured using vacuum evaporation technology. The desh ka namak (salt of the nation) advertising campaign lent voice to the emotional connect and warmth that people associate with salt. It earned for itself the epithet of desh ka namak and the trust of consumers across the country. Today the brand is seen as reliable and trustworthy and promoting the health of customers. Its appeal cuts across regions and it has become an integral component of a majority of Indian kitchens. ( www.tata.com)
  

Rank 8: Pepsodent

• Advertising Agency: Lowe
• About the brand: Pepsodent, launched in 1993, was the first toothpaste with a unique anti-bacterial agent to address the consumer need of checking germs even hours after brushing. Pepsodent packs included a Germ Indicator in February-May 2002, which allowed consumers to see the efficacy in fighting germs for themselves. As a follow-up, in October 2002, Pepsodent offered Dental Insurance to all its consumers to demonstrate the confidence the company has in the technical superiority of the product.The relaunch campaign in October 2003 widened the context to "sweet and sticky" food and leveraged the truth that children do not rinse their mouths every time they eat, demonstrating that this makes their teeth vulnerable to germ attack. Pepsodent's most recent campaign aims at educating consumers on the need for germ protection through the night. ( www.hul.co.in)

Rank 9: Britannia

• Advertising Agency: Lowe/McCann Erickson
• About the brand: Britannia strode into the 21st century as one of India's biggest brands and the pre-eminent food brand of the country. It was equally recognised for its innovative approach to products and marketing: the Lagaan Match was voted India's most successful promotional activity of the year 2001 while the delicious Britannia 50-50 Maska-Chaska became India's most successful product launch. In 2002, Britannia's New Business Division formed a joint venture with Fonterra, the world's second largest Dairy Company, and Britannia New Zealand Foods Pvt Ltd was born. In recognition of its vision and accelerating graph, Forbes Global rated Britannia 'One amongst the Top 200 Small Companies of the World', and The Economic Times pegged Britannia India's 2nd Most Trusted Brand. (Content: www.britannia.co.in)

Rank 10: Reliance Mobile

• Advertising Agency: Cartwheel Creative
• Company: Reliance Communications
• About the brand: Reliance Mobile (formerly Reliance India Mobile), launched on 28 December 2002, coinciding with the joyous occasion of the late Dhirubhai Ambani’s 70th birthday, was among the initial initiatives of Reliance Communications.  Reliance Communications is the flagship company of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) of companies. Listed on the National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange, it is India’s leading integrated telecommunication company with over 80 million customers. ( www.rcom.co.in)

11) Close-Up 12) Airtel

13) State Bank of India 14) Glucon D

15) Clinic Plus 16) Pond's

17) LIC 18) Fair & Lovely

19) BSNL 20)LG

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The Brand Equity MTB survey is the largest, most diverse and most prestigious survey of its kind, with over 8,160 respondents nation-wide and is conducted by The Nielsen Company on behalf of Brand Equity. 300 brands are evaluated and the samples consist of chief wages earners, housewivies, young adult male and females

Tissue Pack Marketing

One of the more clever concepts in awareness marketing in Japan is starting to get attention in the United States, advertising on the front of small packs of tissues. Tissue-pack marketing is a type of guerrilla marketing. Companies hire agencies to distribute small tissue packages with advertisements inserted in them. These tissue packs are then handed out at crowded city areas to various types of passersby. Some target only men or women, depending on the product/service advertised.

Advertising agencies have stuck logos on just about everything imaginable, but how many times in the winter do you wish you had a small packet of tissues handy to take care of a runny nose?

This concept creates an authentic value exchange with the customer – the advertising is giving something to the customer and in return the customer has the option of reading the advertisement, possibly many times. According to an article in Japan Times, over four billion tissue packs are handed out in Japan every year.

An internet survey of over 100,000 consumers show that 76% will accept the tissue packs, with over 50% saying that they’ll definitely look at the ad. One possible reason for this increased statistic when compared to fliers is that consumers were hoping to find coupons or special offers packaged inside with the tissues. In terms of appeal, tissue packs are more welcome than flyers and are more likely to be retained by the recipent.

The concept of tissue-pack marketing was first developed in Japan. Its origins date back to the late 1960s when Hiroshi Mori, the founder of a paper-goods manufacturer in Kochi Prefecture called Meisei Industrial Co., was looking for ways to expand demand for paper products. At the time, the most common marketing freebie in Japan was boxes of matches. These were often given away at banks and then used by women in the kitchen.

Mori figured tissues would have even wider appeal than the matches, and as a result he developed the machinery to fold and package tissues into easy-to-carry, pocket-size packs. The new product was marketed only as a form of advertising and was not sold to consumers.

Where the more traditional flyers are often discarded without being read or simply not accepted by the consumer, the same is not true of advertising tissue-packs. The most important reason for this is because the tissues add functionality to the advertisement. This functionality has several benefits:

1. It is more than an ad. It is useful to the recipient. Bundled value asset (tissue paper) facilitates initial acceptance of ad message. It may also increase overall retention.
2. It is persistent. The message usually stays with the consumer for the lifespan of the pack: there is continual and repeated exposure over a period of time.

Japan is still the main market for tissue-pack advertising, but the practice has begun to spread overseas. In the United States, a subsidiary of the Japanese trading company Itochu, Adpackusa.com, introduced tissue-pack marketing in New York in 2005 and now offers it throughout the country.

A tissue pack isn’t the only asset you can use. The basic strategy is to tag a marketing message to a portable functionality that extends its lifespan and value.

More to Read : Guerrilla Marketing

Multi-level Marketing

Multi-level marketing (MLM) is a form of Network Marketing (however the terms are often used interchangeably). It is a marketing strategy that compensates promoters of direct selling companies not only for product sales they personally generate, but also for the sales of others they introduced to the company. The products and company are usually marketed directly to consumers and potential business partners by means of relationship referrals and word of mouth marketing.

The idea behind multi-level marketing (MLM) is simple. Imagine you have a product to sell. A common MLM product is some sort of panacea, such as a vitamin or mineral supplement. You could do what most businesses do: either sell it directly to consumers or find others who will buy your product from you and sell it to other people. MLM schemes require that you recruit people not only to buy and sell your product, but who will also recruit people who will not only buy and sell your product but also recruit people.

Distributors earn a commission based on the sales efforts of their organization, which includes their independent sale efforts as well as the leveraged sales efforts of their downline. This arrangement is similar to franchise arrangements where royalties are paid from the sales of individual franchise operations to the franchisor as well as to an area or region manager. Commissions are paid to multi-level marketing distributors according to the company’s compensation plan.
MLM is very attractive, however, because it sells hope and appears to be outside the mainstream of business as usual. It promises wealth and independence to all. Unfortunately, no matter what the product, MLM is doomed to produce more failures than successes.

The most successful MLM scheme is Amway. It has millions of distributors worldwide with sales in the billions. At the turn of the century, the average Amway distributor earned about $700 a year in sales, but spent about $1,000 a year on Amway products.

Most states outlaw this practice, which is known as "pyramiding." State laws against pyramiding say that a multilevel marketing plan should only pay commissions for retail sales of goods or services, not for recruiting new distributors.
Why is pyramiding prohibited? Because plans that pay commissions for recruiting new distributors inevitably collapse when no new distributors can be recruited. And when a plan collapses, most people -- except perhaps those at the very top of the pyramid -- lose their money.

This is not to say there is no benefit to MLM membership. You get certain tax write-offs. You get to buy products, some of which you will be happy with. You get to go to inspirational meetings, some of which will make you feel good. You may meet new friends and you may even make a few bucks. But more than likely you will end up alienating some family and friends. You will probably end up buying more stuff than you sell. And you will learn a lot about deceiving yourself and others. You won't be allowed to tell anyone how you are really doing, for example. You will always have to think positive, even if that means lying. You will have to tell anyone who asks that you are doing great, that business is wonderful, that you've never seen anything go so fast and bring you income so quickly, even if it isn't true.

More to read : Affiliate Marketing

Search is ON ... New Launches

Will you Bing it or Google it?

Can’t Google it? Microsoft will help you Bing it.  The world’s biggest software company Microsoft launch its new search engine Bing on June 3, and prepares to compete more effectively with Google. “Will you bing it ar Google it?” that’s the big question the Microsoft will be asking over one billion internet search users across the world.

While Google invented the advertising-based search model, which produces most popular items for each query, Microsoft is aiming to change the game by calling Bing a ‘decision engine’ , which will offer more insights to users for helping them take decisions, and not necessarily throw the most popular and relevant items. More

Link: http://www.bing.com/

Google launches search tool 'Google Squared'

Google rolled out an experimental new search product on Wednesday called “Google Squared”. Google Squared does not provide a list of links to Web pages, like with a traditional Google search, but presents information derived from a query in a spreadsheet-like grid called a "square."

Users of google.com/squared can then build, modify and refine their "square" through further web searches.

"Unlike a normal search engine, Google Squared doesn't find webpages about your topic -- instead, it automatically fetches and organizes facts from across the Internet," Google said in a preview of the product last month. More

Link: http://www.google.com/squared

Zoozooz Mania

Zoozooz - a character with big egg-shaped head with scrawny legs and thin body, looks like an alien, speaks a completely gibbrish language that appear in TV ads for Vodafone and have become all the rage in India.

Vodafone wanted to promote it's value added services and for that it wanted a charcter to form a link between their various ads. And hence, Zoozoo was created. Their movements, body language, emotions, gestures are all human like. The idea was to create a wrold which is very similar to humans yet very different.

 Zoozoo is definitely anthropomorphic, and was created by the creative team at Ogilvy and Mather (O&M) India.

Vodafone differentiates itself from other telecom operators through its value added services 

(VAS) and it wanted to educate the customers about it. Traditional commercial with adults to stress on the VAS didn’t appeal much although communicated the message very well.  ZooZoo ads by O&M - simply did the job of communicating the various VAS in a fascinating way. We can say they are simply the best.

So much so that the company’s launched to air 30 different commercials featuring the Zoozoos during the Indian Premier League’s (IPL) Twenty20 cricket series seems like a strategic masterstroke, although it is likely to come as a surprise to viewers that the ads aren’t animated—there are really people inside those Zoozoo costumes.

Zoozooz had thin limbs, contrasted with big bellies and a bulbous head, all add to the illusion that these creatures are ‘smaller’ than humans. Though the fact is that all the adult actors were used for shooting of these ads instead of the kids which would have been the perfect fit. So to make Zoozooz look small in size, big sets were created. Cinematically size was the trick. To make the Zoozooz look smaller, the speed of shooting was altered and the ads were shot in a high-speed format.

The stories told in 30 commercials are great. The greatest part about them is that Vodafone related these stories with the service they were promoting in a very intelligent way which made up for an intelligent advertising. Certainly better than those stupid commercials whose storyline has nothing to do with the product they are promoting.

• Zoozooz were meant to endorse the value added services of Vodafone and they did that quite well.
  
• Each of the 30 ads will promote a different value-added service on offer by Vodafone, from maps to stock alerts.
  
• Several characters were drawn up and considered by executive creative director (South Asia) Rajiv Rao and his team at O&M India, before they settled in on Zoozoo.
  
• With approximately 300 seconds of media being spent each day (on IPL), vodaphone had figure out a way to communicate as many services as possible in a way that would not cheese off the customer.
  
  

Zoozooz - a unique character that would always be memorable… somewhat alien and yet, very human. Created a big audience and open up a big market. Everyone would be talking about Zoozoo. People are crazy about Zoozoo these days. But some of the big questions are

• How long Zoozoo is able to maintain this Zoozoo Mania?
  
• How long this craze will stay?
  

In all the hype about the Zoozooz, the actual reason about their existence seems to be in a wilderness. They have overpowered the brand itself. This is because Zoozooz have themselves become a brand now.

It will also be interesting to see how Vodafone uses Zoozoo in the future. They have released 30 advertisements at a stretch. Zoozooz were meant to endorse VAS, but now it’s almost definite that they will get promoted to become full scale brand endorsers of the company. But how much Vodafone will be able to keep it’s identity in front of Zoozoo which has suddenly overpowered the brand itself.