Saturday, April 05, 2008

Branding...


It was a class project that was different. It was fun doing it and at the same time brain draining too. Well, it is generally fun but it becomes brain draining when you have deadlines hanging on the head.
It was a long week and I think, it was good that this branding presentation was slated last. It provided a befitting end to the series of presentations. Coming to the project, the whole class was given some brands which had failed or were not doing well in the market. Each team had to rebrand these products and make them sellable. Products were like Sweekar, Sunfeast Pasta, Hamam, Indian Express, HMT etc. Ours was a ‘hatke’ one - Indian Airlines. It started with deciding on the Repositioning (Positioning is the image of your product that the consumer has in mind), deciding on the target markets, defining the brand identity. Next came the print ads, TV ads, Radio ads, designing new logo, new taglines, new packaging, new events, and sponsorship proposals. People were living their products and involved like real Brand Managers. For an exercise such as these, you need ideas. And ideas can come anytime, anywhere. They came while reading, attending lecture, on the shit pot. Everywhere. There were inputs and suggestions from friends and families. New Brand Ambassadors emerged. Amitabh Bachchans,SRKs and Sachin Tendulkars gave way to the guys and gals from class with that ‘boy/girl-next-door’ image. Even real life mothers came on reel. Finally, everything merged into an afternoon where each group put up its stall and displayed the hard work they had put in. It was a mix of this diligence and creativity with lots of fun thrown in that was on display. People coming to your stalls, admiring your work. You going to others and feeling in awe of their work. No matter how much we cribbed about it (we do it all the time.. nahi?) but the whole experience was simply exhilarating.

Any one at Indian (formerly Indian Airlines) listening ?? Guys, we have rebranded you.. you can leave a comment if you want to hire us :-)

A quotable quote on the exercise from our Marketing Stud Rohit Hegde..He says, 'unbelievable times i tell ye..of toil, of hilarious times,of snapping at each other, of irritation, of bruised egos and massaging egos....and finally the sweet taste of success...now thats wot i call "teamwork"! '

10 comments:

Rahul said...

Great to see that you documented our memories... Please continue...

Alesea said...

hmm...well it was fun filling up that questionnaire....but wt exactly did u do..? did u make it go the kingfisher way or something? and well im curious about Indian Express....! i hope they were not turned into some market driven morons!!!!

SiD said...

@KR: will sure do dude!!

@alesea: well..not at all the kingfisher way!!
we made the whole experience completely Indian!!
projecting Indian families and indian tourist places etc..
Indian express - again no market driven morons.. they projected themselves as true, daring journalists who have the guts to expose the truth!! and worked on that funda!!

50scent said...

This blog explains the reason why this post took so long to come up, all the creative juices of your brain were being consumed by this branding exercise.

50scent said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bharti Bedi said...

i hope the input from 'families' were helpful..send me ur final ads atleast!!

SiD said...

@50cent: there were much more exercises apart from branding too!! :)

@island girl: ghar aa ke dikha dunga.. kaafi badi files hain!!

Hex said...

yup! it truly was an exhilarating experience...the highs, the lows (like to believe they were more of the former;-))..keep penning dude!
Cheers,Hex

Hex said...

er..."Mktg Stud"??...might i remind you of a certain Mr.Bedi who just happens to be the Mktg Whiz behind the Bulls' roaring successes over the recent months!!! :D

SiD said...

@Hex: well. u can attribute the bull run primarily to the solids of number crunching part rather the gas of marketing ;)