The “Provenance Paradox” and How it determines India Inc.’s Brand Positioning

In his rather thoughtful article titled “Why you aren’t buying Venezualan chocolates” (HBR January 2011), Professor Rohit Deshpande describes how organizations from developing countries are grappling with the brand image (and the resulting negative connotations) bestowed upon them by their country of origin. He terms the phenomenon as “The Provenance Paradox”, the paradox in question probably referring to how the country of origin determines the authenticity of the product.

It’s a phenomenon so natural; its escapes notice of even the most unbiased customer. As soon as he notices the ubiquitous “Made In ___”, certain pre-conceived notions surface in the consumers mind which hamper his rational decision making based on features and perceived value. Such behavior, though irrational on further analysis, seems at the moment perfectly reasonable from behind the veil of “experience”. And battling this mindset will be the biggest challenge the marketers of tomorrow will face.

A case in point from the Indian context would be that of the Indian IT industry. Indian behemoths like Infosys and TCS, despite employing near 1.5 lakh software engineers each, still don’t attract top dollar billing (or anywhere near it!) when compared to the West’s giants like IBM and Accenture. Deliberately pursuing a low cost strategy is one thing, but the figures point to a bigger challenge. Industry analysts attribute this startling gap to the “BPO” image of India’s software industry.

Another example would be of the Indian healthcare industry. Indian super and multi specialty hospitals have been accredited by various global agencies (NHS of UK and the US based Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organisations). Its high success rate and on par competence with global standards is reflected in the following figures:

» Indian specialists have performed over 500,000 major surgeries and over a million other surgical procedures including cardio-thoracic, neurological and cancer surgeries, with success rates at par with international standards.

» The success rate in the 43,000 cardiac surgeries till 2002 was 98.5 per cent

» India's success in 110 bone marrow transplants is 80 per cent.

» The success rate in 6,000 renal transplants is 95 per cent.

DS Brar, CEO and MD, Ranbaxy recalled how a CEO of a global pharma company kept him waiting for over 6 hours before granting an audience. That was largely how global companies treated brands from India those days. And it is only recently that the world discovered that it could get quality service at lower prices. Of course, the healthcare industry still has a long way to go when compared to global Medicare hubs like Singapore. Thus the vicious cycle continues, low prices affirming the low quality belief.

However, there are certain strategies that Indian firms employ to counter this bias. The first of course is flaunting your country of origin; Historically, Indian customers are thought to be very price sensitive. Thus Indian companies were thought to be low on price and thus quality. But slowly this misconception is fading as the globe realizes Indians are notorious value-for-money seekers. This image gives Indian companies the perfect platform to differentiate them as providing good quality at lower prices. An example of this approach can be found in most companies strategies when they move to global markets. Hero Honda, Bajaj and Tata have started gaining acceptance in international markets for their quality products. Indian service sector too has started transforming its work profile from being low quality BPOs to high quality Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) centers. Apollo proudly introduced itself as an Indian tyre maker. The Apollo brand capitalized, rather than downplay, its provenance claiming, ‘We are Indian, we make tyres for the worst roads in the world; if they’re good enough for an Indian taxi, they’ll be more than good enough for German autobahnen’ However the risks of this strategy include a long and tedious payoff period as well as an unwavering focus on brand management. But if companies still go down this route, a focus on intellectual property and innovation will lead to a stronger “Brand India”.

The second strategy employed by Indian firms is that of downplaying your country of origin; A Bose and a Hotmail were products of an Indian mind, but created and grown elsewhere. Tata Ceramics, who make bone china tableware products which are then sold overseas by luxury brands such as Wedgwood, Royal Doulton, Spode, Dunoon, Villeroy & Boch and Richard Ginori, have no plans to develop their own brand abroad. Countless other examples spring to mind of Indian companies being mere unbranded suppliers to global brands in diverse industries such as shoes, food, clothes, chemicals, engineering etc. The obvious risks associated with pursuing this strategy are lack of long term growth and appearing inauthentic.

To conclude, Indian companies looking towards a global growth strategy will definitely face this dilemma: what is the best way to overcome provenance paradox? Unfortunately, there is no set answer. How a firm choose its marketing strategy depends on its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats; moreover, these need to correspond to external changes in the political, economic, social and technological environment. Hence, a SWOT and PEST analysis should identify the best strategy for a given firm in a given situation. But, if I were to choose which strategy I respect the most, Apollo’s strategy of capitalizing and enhancing Brand India will be the one most likely to reap holistic gains in the future.

- Abhimanyu Sahai
IIM Rohtak

The Anatomy of an Online Marketing Campaign

World over, marketers are increasingly focusing their attentions on tapping the potential of the internet as a tool to achieve substantial market penetration in a far more effective manner, both in terms of cost as well as reach, than conventional modes of communicating value. This is also indicative of a paradigm shift in marketing, with the online campaign often integrating all aspects of a standard marketing drive with a direct distribution channel, something that is greatly beyond the scope from the traditional role online media has played in serving simply as an agent to increase what marketers term top of mind association with a particular product.

On analysis, most such successful campaigns can be seen to have three common components, each of which, in fulfilling its own individual role, complements and enhances the whole. The first part is the product website. Serving as the principal and one-stop source of information about the product, the website often contains data on the product, its benefits, features and variants, sources for support software and after-sales service, a link to the direct distribution channel for immediate purchase, and some information on the company itself. An increasing trend these days is to create individual websites, as opposed to sub-sites of a larger company website, for products, possibly in an effort to make them as distinct and easily accessible as possible. Also, the increased penetration of broadband technology has ensured that these websites are usually rich in multimedia content, highlighting product demos, advertisements, and, in some cases, user-created feedback videos.

The second part, something that it shares in common with traditional marketing campaigns, is the advertisement. Additionally, these are also observed in two distinct formats. The first is the conventional video advertisement, aired through multimedia platforms such as Youtube, and are usually used to highlight augmented product features along with the brand personality, something that has proven eminently successful in the cases of Apple and Vodafone. Often produced by advertising powerhouses such as Ogilvy & Mather, these videos are usually the fulcrum of the campaign, and their acceptance by the market is generally considered to be the litmus test for the success and sustainability of any such enterprise.

The other format of online advertisements, and the one that arguably could be considered to be a support to the previous one, is the small textual advertisement that finds itself on various websites, either in the form of pop-ups or hyperlinked images. It is important to note that while these advertisements are usually the least successful in actual terms of click through conversion, they are nevertheless required to maintain a consistent presence on websites low on outside multimedia content but high on unique hits like various sports websites and popular blogs.

The third component of a successful online campaign, and the one that is increasingly becoming the most crucial aspect in achieving a high degree of market penetration, is the viral component. While the efficacy of viral marketing has been much debated over the past couple of years, it needs to be seen as a single component of a larger marketing plan, that aims, principally, at creating a greater degree of top of mind association through proliferation and visibility, but communicates only a very limited part of the value promise itself. Primarily geared towards harnessing the potential of social networks such as the highly popular Facebook, viral content is based on the principle of user customized advertisements.

This principle essentially deals with addressing the esteem needs of the target market through the creation of images and videos that can be personalized by users to insert names and images of their own choosing to replace those of the models in the original creation in order to achieve a limited form of celebrity or brand association. While an extremely potent tool in any effort to achieve top of mind association, the success of the viral content is heavily dependent on the creativity of the manner in which augmented product features and/or brand personality are highlighted, the ease of customization and, most importantly, the visual attractiveness of the customized content. The last factor, as the champions of highly successful viral campaigns at Nikon and Apple will affirm, is the sole reason for a campaign to truly become viral, as the attractiveness of the final user customized content is what will encourage an increasing number of people to share and customize for themselves as well.

It can thus be seen that the success and sustainability of any online marketing campaign depends upon a combination these three elements, a combination that can be viewed in the form of a pyramid, with the first two components forming and providing strength to the foundation of the campaign, and the third, the viral component, forming the apex, the height of which can be considered a determinant of how far the product campaign can penetrate into the target market. It can also be seen that the absence of any of the two foundation elements destabilizes the pyramid, while the lack of a viral component severely limits the campaigns ability to penetrate beyond levels that can be achieved through conventional formats.

An excellent example of a firm that conducted a highly successful online marketing campaign is that of Apple for its iPod range of products. The website was designed to perfection, giving all the required product and support information, coupled with reams of multimedia content emphasizing the brand identity associated with the product. The advertisements, mostly made available online through various video streaming services, served as an extremely effective and innovative mode of communicating the brand personality and product value, while at the same time reinforcing the premium and exclusive nature of the product. But what truly created a buzz for the product was the viral campaign launched by Apple, creating dozens of easily customizable silhouetted images of people perceived to be a part of the stereotypically “cool crowd” wearing the distinct white earphones of the iPod. These images soon spread through the numerous web-communities, with each community customizing the images to appeal to their own sensibilities. This resulted in a level of market penetration, in terms of brand recall and top of mind association, that the marketers at Apple could not even have imagined. The success of the campaign also brought to light the sheer impact that a well-designed viral campaign could have on an integrated online marketing effort.

It is imperative to note that even the most well designed campaigns, like any other traditional marketing endeavour, may be rendered a complete failure due to an inability of the product to fulfil the value promise, or to match competitive forces. A case in point here is that of the Tata Nano. A campaign that well and truly integrated all the above components in appropriate measures, and even including the distribution channel to the extent that it was actually possible to book the car online, was considered an utter failure due to issues with the actual product being unable to match the value promise communicated by the firm.

However, aside from this particular caveat which all such endeavours are subject to, online campaigns have displayed the potential to far outstrip the traditional marketing campaign format, in terms of the penetration, cost effectiveness, and the sustainability of the campaign.