Desi brands are honest and earthy. We do choose them for their relevance and understanding of our needs. But in the coming days, Desi brands face big challenges.
They can be summarised as following.
- Desi brands lack the long term vision to sustaina nd grow the brand. There are some excpetions like the TATAs, Mahindras and AMUL. But most brands never look at the big picture. They try to make short term gains and sacrifice the long term vision. For a brand to suceed, we need a long term vision. Brands like Ford, GM, IBM and Apple were not made in one day.
- Desi brands lack the financial power to establish themselves as major brands. Most of them run on shoe string budgets. Marketing departments are pereneally under funded. So there is hadly any investment in development of the brand. Marketing departments jsut handle routine communication and public relations
- Desi brands lack the expertise. Some of the best marketing brains in the country work for multinationals whether in India or abroad. Most marketing positions are never well reseached and adequatedly empowered to attract top talent.
In addition to the points you have mentioned,Indian brands tend to be family/ Government owned, resulting in a degree of unprofessionalism/ ineffectiveness in the way their operate. The Tatas are an exception to that rule as they are owned by a group of families, but run by professionally by people who are not majority shareholders. AMUL could have seen much more progress had the government not interfered in its working. Had Dr. Kurien not given the Ad agency a free hand, the popularity of Amul would have been limited. In Mahindra's case the firm is not run by a family owned person and that is why they are able to bring in innovation in the last 10 years, as Anand Mahindra as Chairperson has a broader vision that extends beyond managing operational level issues.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Arch. The family/government owned enterprises don't spend much time on brand development and hence remain sub optimized as growth engines. TATAs, Mahindra's and AMUL are more the exceptions than the rule.
ReplyDeleteIndian Brands really need to aim high and broaden the vision.
ReplyDeleteThey need to have a look at a bigger picture by making sure that their brand shouldn't be just based on conventional communication. Rather using the communication they should touch the lives of the people.
HI KP
ReplyDeleteI agree. I think that is the fundamental problem with Indian brands. The lack of the big vision.