Recently, I wrote on my blog that I had ordered a copy of Michael E Porter’s book, Competitive Advantage along with Peter Drucker’s Practice of Management. I have written about the first, though not as a book review because it wouldn’t have been fair to Drucker. As far as Michael Porter’s book is concerned, I… Continue reading Brands and Competitive Advantage
In my last blog post on brands, I had written about brands having the ability to affect and influence companies’ operations at the corporate level, not merely at the marketing level. That is, if brands are used to determine and guide a company’s direction. If used strategically and imaginatively well, brands might even help reinstate… Continue reading How Brands Can Propel Business Strategy Forward
We all talk of brand equity, especially in the advertising and brand communications industry. The Economic Times in India even has an advertising and marketing supplement called Brand Equity. What exactly do we mean, when we speak of brand equity? The term has come to encompass many aspects of a brand’s growth, from brand awareness… Continue reading Between Equity and Valuations, What Brands Represent
As an advertising and brand communications professional who has been observing and working on brands for many decades, it strikes me that there are many industries and indeed companies in India that are ripe for market segmentation. In marketing, of course, that would mean tailoring specific products/brands to meet the specific requirements of select groups… Continue reading Market Segmentation: Different Strokes for Different Folks
The idea of working on this retail brand struck me when I was reading The Economist online recently. Not a place where you’d expect to see an advert for M&S, but there it was. A typical catalogue-style advert of women’s apparel, staring at me on my computer screen. I couldn’t help but think what is… Continue reading Ways a British Retail Institution Can Remake Itself
It was hardly surprising that automobile sales started to revive worldwide, post the Covid-related lockdowns. That was in large part due to China’s fast recovery from the pandemic. In luxury automobiles particularly, the Chinese market has a huge effect, in addition to US and Western Europe. This, accompanied by a general preference for SUVs for… Continue reading Ideas to Help Land Rover Go Above and Beyond
As someone who has worked in the advertising industry in India for decades, I am always surprised by how few companies think of themselves as brands. Not just in India, but across the world. The few who do, think of it in terms of slapping on a corporate logo at the end of a brand… Continue reading Building a Corporate Brand Requires a Change in Mindset
In addition to my last blog post in which I had shared five of my presentations on the building blocks of brand development, I thought it might make sense to explore other aspects of brand-building as well. I have been thinking about these subjects for many years, while observing developments in the advertising and marketing… Continue reading Brands Need Long-term Vision and Care
I recently wrote a set of slide presentations for SlideShare to explain very simply, what brand-building is all about and I thought it might be worth sharing them with my blog’s readers and subscribers as well. In recent years, brands have become more significant in a company’s operations and there are entire new disciplines emerging… Continue reading Brand Development, Explained
At the start of the Covid pandemic, we all faced shortages at grocery supermarkets and while some of it was due to panic buying, the main culprit was supply shortages due to lockdowns imposed. It has been widely reported that due to lockdowns as well as economic and job uncertainty, many consumers were forced to… Continue reading Open to the World, Covid or Not
Peripatetic Perch 