From the surface, branding practices in our country falls short of the desired quality in the following ways.
1. We give one brand name to all products and extend the brand too far. The name that stands for cement is also applied for milk. At the end that creates confusion only.
2. Almost all our advertisements are a variation of some sort of jingle-song-dance routine. Nothing stands out and almost nothing delivers a punch.
3. We think we are smarter than our customers and know more than our customers do, since most of the people in Bangladesh are illiterate or semi literate.
4. Except technology driven categories like mobile communication, we are inherently, almost criminally less innovative than other countries. If we had things our way, innovation would always be about product variations or upgradings – not about creating breakthrough value.
5. Although we frequently quote terms like “Short term” and “Long term” in our strategy, almost all our activities are for short term. More importantly, we never quite know exactly what length of time we are referring to by those two terms. What is short term? And what exactly do we mean by long term?
6. We don’t spend enough time, resource or importance in understanding customer insights. We believe we know our customers well enough to make strategic decisions blindly – without backed by proper data or findings.
7. We somehow confuse the word “consistency”, the most important preaching of Brand Management, with boredom. We get tired of one advertising message very soon. The marlboro style branding, sending one cowbow style aspirational message for more than 25 years is unthinkable by us.
8. Almost all company in Bangladesh has a Marketing department, but only a handfull has a Brand department. This shows our focus on branding.
9. We believe advertising is the only form of selling product in mass market.
10. We actually perceive branding as an expense, not as an investment
This again adds to the belief that the solution is not “No Branding”, its lack of “Proper Branding”. We cant really say we don’t need something unless we do it properly.
One comment
parvez
August 9, 2007 at 7:26 am
We study for marks, we work for salary and we live to eat. We never eat to live, or study to learn or work for worth. Proper Branding is not the duty of most of Brand Managers of our country. Brand managers work like sales managers, sales managers works like sales executive, sales executive works like delivery man. You can not expect proper branding from a Sales Mnager’s point of view. A brand manager must start his day with a cup of fresh hot cofee made from beans, his eyes must be cool as deep sea, must have smile in his face and a relaxed attitude. He must be super creative, an average block minded bookish people should not choose these profession. In the name of Brand what we are doing everyday is make some STUPID BRANDS. These stupid brands took birth silently, makes sins after sins and goes to hell smoothly. I do appreiate you remind us the 10 deadly sin we are making everyday.