What's your company's signature tune?: Published articles/Business Line 1

Article in Businee Line, July 27, 06

What’s your company’s signature tune?

One “vision” commercial on television or a “corporate campaign” in Business World does not a “corporate brand” make – any more.

The making of a Corporate Brand today encompasses the Vision Brand, the Product Brand, the Service Brand, the CEO Brand, the Employee or Internal Brand, the Stock Market Brand, the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Brand, the Sponsorship Brand and even the Internet (Website) Brand. (And to push the point home, even the signature tune brand!)

While many Indian companies have indeed created new paths and tried new ideas, the totality still begs best practice, and surely calls for the CEO to take on the mantle of Marketing Manager, Corporate Brand. The key lies in finding that ONE WORD that’s at the heart of what your company stands for.


The now omnipresent Infosys, if you think back, actually first captured our imagination with its Employee Brand and the Stock Market Brand by making potential crorepatis of its many twenty somethings. The CEO Brand came later, and it helped to have a wife who took on the building of the CSR Brand. The corporate “image” of Infosys has really been built without having to resort to corporate “campaigns”. The company keeps its advertising to the appointment pages, celebrating its Employee Brand.

ITC, on the other hand has leveraged every building block. Working for you, Working for India says the Vision Brand. Enduring value – For the shareholder, For the nation… One of India’s Most Valuable Corporations says the Stock Market Brand. E-chaupal became the Service Brand. With ideas like Mera Gaon Mera Desh they spruced up the Employee Brand. Citizen First encapsulates the CSR Brand. Concepts like Triple Bottom Line build the CEO brand (if at all it needs building!). And of course, the lifestyle stores and the atta and the oil and the candies do the rest.

By having Vijay Mallya sign a statement saying “I created a product for you that is better than what I would have created for myself” Kingfisher First leverages the CEO Brand. By showcasing the endearing young man who approves his own business plan, Marico enters the arena with the Employee Brand. By getting its logo created by a challenged child, Mindtree launched itself uniquely through its CSR Brand. Lines get further blurred when Surf says Save Water and a HLL van with that message passes you on the road. And even Aamir Khan has a lesson or two to teach on playing the activist brand.


How the rules started changing

The now famous and clichéd Intel Inside becoming one of the world’s most valuable brands, and Dupont Lycra getting ranked alongside fashion brands put paid to the theory that components and ingredients (now fashionably called B2B) can’t build the Company Brand. (It is no more foolish to dream that Marlboro cigarettes will one day have India Tobacco Inside on the packet. Or no surprises if Kurkure says Porbandar Salt Inside or Pepsi says Nellikuppam Sugar Inside. As the joke goes, we hope to look at the White House one day and say India Inside!)

The other notion that was put to rest was the one that people have entirely different characteristics on and off the job. Most organizations now agree that before a person is a technician/specialist/banker/purchase officer/CTO/CXO/shareholder/employee, he or she is a human being first. And that he forms his opinions as much when he is sitting in his living room and watching his children sing along with advertising jingles, as when he is scrutinising a tender entry.


The point is, large industrial organizations are shedding their fear, shyness or contempt, as the case may be, for branding and brand building activities. Senior management in such organizations are beginning to admit that not all customer buying decisions are “rational’ as they thought it was, all these years. While they are fighting shy of using the word “emotional”, there is certainly all round acceptance and a deep desire for that magical, elusive, all encompassing word: IMAGE.

And then books like Brand Champions of Tomorrow get repeatedly quoted for saying “Today, branding has become the most important strategic differentiating activity in a company's arsenal. In the future, a brand that can forge a durable psychological bond between itself and all of its stakeholders/ constituencies, its customers, employees, suppliers and shareholders will represent the only real and sustainable source of competitive advantage.” It is enough to set any CEO thinking, if not pick up the phone and ask for five advertising agencies to pitch!

With the advent of brand value translating to shareholder value, the articulation and building of corporate brands has now become imperative. And the CFO is a tad less reluctant to approve the bills.

It is enough to get Accenture playing golf and Videocon chanting the gayatri – and for SBI to feel the need to tell us they are bigger than the other bank which we thought had become the biggest.

When does this need really grab companies?

Organisations planning quantum leaps in turnover. Organisations that have aged and need reinvention or have been overtaken by newer entrants who have taken mindshare higher than their market share. Organisations going through an emotional low and needing re-energizing. Challenger organisations that need to be seen as better than the big, for being small. Organisations coming together in mergers and acquisitions and needing a new anthem. Organisations breaking away and creating new entities. Groups of companies that together form another entity and want the advantage of belonging to a larger business house. Multi product companies wanting to leverage the many parts to make a greater whole. Business to business brands and technology companies that have long sales cycles. Brands with CXOs as target audiences. Or companies seeking capital. North India brands wanting to make inroads into South India. South India brands wanting to make inroads into the North.

In fact, increasingly, it looks like no one can escape this. Sooner or later, every company needs to take a good, hard, close look at its Corporate Brand.

And what task then do we set for the Corporate Brand campaign?

In one word: plenty!

It must help sell more products. It must help command a better price. It must get salespersons entry into prospects’ doors. It must lower the average cost of the sales call. It must get the company entry into government corridors and negotiate industry pricing policies. It must get better JVs. It must ease the way for buy-outs. It must attract better employees. It must bring in the cream from management schools. It must boost employee morale. It must bring in better dealers and franchisees. It must make suppliers supply at a lower cost. It must rake in the moolah in the stock market. And of course, it must help the company get better press. Not to mention, it must help the company stand its ground, when some activist finds some unnecessary angle to your product.

It helps if batch mates, ex-colleagues and competitors comment on it in airports. It helps with the in laws and the wife’s friends at the PTA. It helps if your company’s ad comes when you are watching the World Cup Final with your teenage nephew. The litmus test is: if the cab driver knows your office building! But most of all, it must help get the CEO invited to The Big Fight!

Strangely enough, corporate branding does end up doing all this. And more!

This is when it becomes really important to define the Vision Brand.

This is a little different from putting the company’s mission/vision statement into the corporate campaign.

Tom Terez jokingly writes about how difficult it is, in the first place, to write meaningful and differentiated visions and missions. “A recent study, conducted by the American Association of People Who Don't Mind and In Fact Advocate Long-Windedness in Their Communications, showed that the typical mission statement includes two semicolons, two dashes, and at least two business buzzwords -- while the vision statement contains only one dash but makes up for it with at least one run-on sentence. To be at all credible, a company's mission and vision statements combined must include at least five of the following terms and phrases: high performance - world class – diversity – empowerment - employees are our most important asset- exceeds- delights- right the first time -everyone's job- puts people first -puts the customer first -puts employee bonuses first. These statements are guaranteed to strike a deep chord in employees, customers, and printers of plastic-laminated cards. Imagine the employee who needs a quick dose of direction or inspiration. All they'll need to do is reach into their wallet or purse and -- oh gee, I must have thrown it out.”!!

When going in search of the Vision Brand, companies need to go beyond the Who We Are and What We Make, search deeply for a truth, and answer the question “what are we actually in the business of?” And find that single most important value, that one idea, that ONE WORD that captures their spirit.

Let’s take a look at a few of the Vision Brands that have managed to zero in on that one word. HP: invent. Microsoft: Potential. HCL: Guts. Honda: Dreams. Philips: Simplicity. LG: Inventive. These companies have looked beneath the “touching many people in many ways” theme, the “improving your life” theme, the “we have been around for 50 years” theme. And have gone beyond the serving India, spreading India, changing with India, traveling with India, understanding India, reflecting India, energizing India, building India themes – which is very tempting to do, specially when you have been quiet for a while and need to arrive like a leader.

What then would be a Best Practice sequence?

1) Find that One Word. Be clear about the support. Resolve doubts on the gap between vision and reality, if any.
2) Find Brand Champions to spread the word internally. Do not just announce and “distribute” the Vision Brand internally, but involve employees in understanding and owning the business implications. Establish that it is inspiring and actionable at the same time.
3) Incorporate and translate the Vision into measurable practices and behaviour, and performance metrics for every individual, group or department.
4) Be aware that you have to separately build the CEO, the CSR, the Product, the Employee, the Stock Market Brands. Find ways of running the same thread.
5) Find ways of measuring ROI, in ways that go beyond run-of-the-mill qualitative and quantitative market research methodologies, and aim to integrate financial measurement.

It used to be said that 50% of advertising works, only we don’t know which 50%. With corporate branding, one could say it works 200%, only we don’t quite know how!


Branding is certainly not the be all and end all of a successful business. But if well thought through, it could sit at the core of a company’s philosophy.

If the CEO has a signature tune in his head and the world can hear it, even the cab driver will take you there!