Business
Tata top brand
The Tata brand has topped the list of the second The Economic Times and Interbrand Best Indian Brands study, states The Economic Times supplement Brand Equity (BE) (August 6-12, 2014). Of the 40 top brands listed Godrej is ranked number 10, Tanishq, a Titan brand (Tatas) 26, and Britannia, part of the Wadia Group of Companies, number 40.
The financial daily asked some users and investors to "weigh in on the value these brands and their products add to their lives.”
Kunal Gupta who works in the telecon industry says "as a kid I was fascinated by trucks and Tata trucks dominated Indian roads. My first watch was a Titan, a prized possession… I associate electricity, something as basic and vital as power, in Bombay with the name Tata. My father has shares in TCS (Tata Consultancy Services). (The) Tata Group is the most reliable and safest bet you’ll ever make. You can wager your home on it. And the company rewards those who have faith in the legacy organization. It’s like people who bought shares in Apple early on, 20 years later they are zillionaires…
On the drawbacks, Gupta states "I’m not sure what Tata and Jaguar were thinking when they signed on (actress) Kareena Kapoor. The association just doesn’t fit. Nobody’s perfect, right?”
Shalini Vaz, a professor, says she holds the Godrej brand "in high esteem for multiple reasons: it’s a Parsi owned Indian conglomerate so immediately we associate the attribute of honesty with the brand. It’s a very large business house with financial credibility and stability. And finally, it’s a brand we grew up with… trustworthy and reliable.”
Vaz however feels Godrej "needs to be more aggressive and reinvent itself. I believe if brands want to stay relevant in a hyper competitive market, they must become far more inventive. Even on the marketing end of the spectrum, I want to know how a brand and products are relevant and valuable in my life, I don’t care about what a so-called celebrity uses in his or her home.”
In an accompanying piece, Interbrand India’s Ashish Mishra asks "so why aren’t Indian or broadly speaking, Asian brands outside of Japan and South Korea ranked on ‘Best Global Brands?’ In my mind, it has to do with a prevalent business belief that brand is a cost, rather than a strategic and long-term investment. Here businesses clearly lead the brand with the latter mostly relegated to an expression tool…
"Many companies in India believe that brand building is a short-term and tactical advertising campaign, or a quick exercise to refresh their logo. We have had to constantly educate and encourage senior managers to see their brands as long-term investments, rather than short-term projects to boost sales numbers over the next month or two.”
"For now most brands like Godrej, Airtel and Marico seem to be parking their global ambitions in various countries of Africa and Asia, which is perhaps more pragmatic and also provides a good learning curve,” states journalist Amit Bapna of BE. "In many cases this journey is traversed through acquisitions of global brands as in the case of Tata’s buying out Jaguar Land Rover, Bajaj Auto buying a stake in the Austrian sports bike company KTM, or the local acquisitions done by Airtel and Godrej in the markets they have gone to in Asia and Africa. Of course to the puritan brand-custodian, this is far from building a local global brand, which is a much more hard working and nuanced job.”
A report by BE correspondent Shephali Bhatt quotes Dheeraj Sinha, chief strategy officer, South and South East Asia, Grey (WPP) as stating the cultural ideas such as yoga, Indian food and Bollywood have traversed better than commercial ideas. "We may be one of the largest sellers of tea but we are not one of the largest tea brands.”
The financial daily asked some users and investors to "weigh in on the value these brands and their products add to their lives.”
Kunal Gupta who works in the telecon industry says "as a kid I was fascinated by trucks and Tata trucks dominated Indian roads. My first watch was a Titan, a prized possession… I associate electricity, something as basic and vital as power, in Bombay with the name Tata. My father has shares in TCS (Tata Consultancy Services). (The) Tata Group is the most reliable and safest bet you’ll ever make. You can wager your home on it. And the company rewards those who have faith in the legacy organization. It’s like people who bought shares in Apple early on, 20 years later they are zillionaires…
On the drawbacks, Gupta states "I’m not sure what Tata and Jaguar were thinking when they signed on (actress) Kareena Kapoor. The association just doesn’t fit. Nobody’s perfect, right?”Shalini Vaz, a professor, says she holds the Godrej brand "in high esteem for multiple reasons: it’s a Parsi owned Indian conglomerate so immediately we associate the attribute of honesty with the brand. It’s a very large business house with financial credibility and stability. And finally, it’s a brand we grew up with… trustworthy and reliable.”
Vaz however feels Godrej "needs to be more aggressive and reinvent itself. I believe if brands want to stay relevant in a hyper competitive market, they must become far more inventive. Even on the marketing end of the spectrum, I want to know how a brand and products are relevant and valuable in my life, I don’t care about what a so-called celebrity uses in his or her home.”
In an accompanying piece, Interbrand India’s Ashish Mishra asks "so why aren’t Indian or broadly speaking, Asian brands outside of Japan and South Korea ranked on ‘Best Global Brands?’ In my mind, it has to do with a prevalent business belief that brand is a cost, rather than a strategic and long-term investment. Here businesses clearly lead the brand with the latter mostly relegated to an expression tool…
"Many companies in India believe that brand building is a short-term and tactical advertising campaign, or a quick exercise to refresh their logo. We have had to constantly educate and encourage senior managers to see their brands as long-term investments, rather than short-term projects to boost sales numbers over the next month or two.”
"For now most brands like Godrej, Airtel and Marico seem to be parking their global ambitions in various countries of Africa and Asia, which is perhaps more pragmatic and also provides a good learning curve,” states journalist Amit Bapna of BE. "In many cases this journey is traversed through acquisitions of global brands as in the case of Tata’s buying out Jaguar Land Rover, Bajaj Auto buying a stake in the Austrian sports bike company KTM, or the local acquisitions done by Airtel and Godrej in the markets they have gone to in Asia and Africa. Of course to the puritan brand-custodian, this is far from building a local global brand, which is a much more hard working and nuanced job.”
A report by BE correspondent Shephali Bhatt quotes Dheeraj Sinha, chief strategy officer, South and South East Asia, Grey (WPP) as stating the cultural ideas such as yoga, Indian food and Bollywood have traversed better than commercial ideas. "We may be one of the largest sellers of tea but we are not one of the largest tea brands.”
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