Branding 2008

Watching television, listening to radio, walking down a lane observing the outdoors, everywhere only one thing is been communicated, Happy New Year and New Year offerings. On observing these things, I started pondering over the ever booming & ever growing, business of brands.
Looking at the current trends, and the brand ‘Incredible India’ being established all over the world, growing incredibly with the almost always bullish stock market, I thought of analyzing the trends in branding, in India.
And here you are, reading, Branding-2008

Brand ‘Incredible India’: To start with, let’s take the mother brand, as in the year 2008 brand ‘India’ will raise tremendously. The reason for this will be the unending interest of foreign consumers in the brand. The best business woman, sports personalities and business tycoons shining bright in the world over is a great sign for the brand ‘Incredible India’. Let’s hope the brand to add more shine this year.

Healthy & Ready, ‘Snacking’

With more & more Indians getting employed, the urge for ready to eat, fast to gulp & healthy nutrients is increasing. With that Indians are known as foodies, for they have a weak taste bud. And this very reason is giving the marketer the signs for more & better food brands. The health awareness has led to emergence of brands like, ‘Bingo’, Coke getting into ‘Milk Products’ as there is a huge increase in the market for milk & fruit drinks then soft drinks, ‘Nutrella’ zero cholesterol butter and utterly butterly Amul going for ‘Amul Lite’ etc. So we can say brands will be healthier & fast to prepare this year.

Hindustani Names & ‘No Fear’ Branding

Now this trend will be followed as per the ‘Category’. The clothing & restaurant industry will have traditional & ethnic ‘Hindustani’ names ruling the roost. The consumers are getting more inclined towards such names, reason can be feeling attached to roots, genuineness, and the luxury attached to the names themselves. Looking at few newly launched or re-invented brands of big textile & designer houses are Amara, Kashish, Soch, Lilliput etc. Few of them have names as per the elements of the brands. So, this trend will follow & excel more in 2008.

Coming to the ever-growing restaurant chains, the names are taken deep from the roots or are very basic terms related to food & culture. The youth of course, looks forward to the foreign names in the fast food segment but the population who loves Indian cuisines and looks forward to an experience while dining is inclined towards the likes of Aangan (huge Verandah), Rasoi(Kitchen), Haveli(a huge residence considered as the ultimate in living luxury), Rumali (a kind of bread), Choki Dhani(an ethnic village resort), Annachi Chettinad (a part of TamilNadu, known for its architecture, food and rich people)etc. This suggests that Indian brands will be equally competent with the increasing influx of foreign players in both the above categories.

Now, I have also mentioned above about the ‘No Fear’ brand names, but of course they have some meaning, truth or relevance attached to it. To name a few we have, ‘Bang’ (some toilet cleaner), Vanish (a detergent powder) etc. Adding to the category we have online portals like, ‘BigAdda.com’, ‘Dekhona.com’ and many more to add up. This shows that, only the relevance of the message which brand holds for the consumer is important for the marketer.

Then there will be more Pharmaceuticals getting into the branding stream. Earlier limited to OTC medicines of general illness remedies, the segment will show an emergence of branding with the consumer becoming more aware and concerned about health issues. The recent aggressive communication of an offbeat brand like ‘ipill’ (i-pill is an emergency contraceptive pill which prevents unplanned pregnancy) is a signal of more socially significant pharmaceutical brands lining up in 2008.

Indians, choosing to create and emerge as successful Corporate Brands will be a very important & flourishing trend in 2008. More n more business players want to brand their categories as well as the group. They know the identity needs to be known to the consumer as it adds to the credibility & authenticity to the sub-brands of the business.

Last to the trends can be, Blog Branding, sounds a bit off-track but I think it has a way to go. Looking at the rate of increase in advertisements on the blogs, almost each online portal getting geared to publicize & have more bloggers on it is a sign towards blog branding. Some of the blogsites are already paying the bloggers for successful advertising on their pages. The phenomena if keeps on increasing at the same pace, might even lead to Branding of Blogs in the year to follow.

All this and more branding will bombard the average consumer with a number of choices and hence making their decisions difficult. At the same time, chasing the consumer and have more loyalists will be the challenge facing each marketer in 2008. So we as consumers can expect more catchy advertising, promotional offer warfare and reward programs in 2008.

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