Day Three: Back to school, exams and all

Today’s session was more bhashan and less participation.

The agenda was to highlight the dimensions they’d be wise to consider when defining their consumers and since it’s a lot of stuff to cover in just 2 hours, this was necessary. I sure hope I didn’t put these guys to sleep.

Actually I tried to involve a little discussion on each subject and I got the impression that I’m getting through. My fear is that it will not be internalized as much as it ought to.

Looking at the blogs for feedback tells me that the normal curve is alive and kicking. Some folks do extremely well, some don’t and most are somewhere in between. Read the 4 blogs and you’ll see this for yourself. The differences are apparent:

1. http://second-vitality.blogspot.com
2. http://genderblendin.blogspot.com/
3. http://fashionyogis.blogspot.com
4. http://insideoutdp.blogspot.com/

To those you writing the blogs: can you spot where you are?

We suffer from a little intellectual arrogance in India. Bright people too often don’t apply themselves enough, particularly when tight supervision isn’t provided.

Of course everyone has understood the branding related concepts to some extent, but the only way I can know what you got out of it is to see what you write. Don’t write about the subject we finish discussing and I can’t give you any feedback.

More later...

Day Two was fun

This is a completely delightful bunch. They are sincere and thinking individuals. I’m really enjoying working with them and hope I can leave behind something of value; parameters and thinking processes that will bring them greater successes in their future lives.

I’m feeling guilty at having implied that I can actually compress the subject into 7 easy lessons on consecutive days, because yesterday’s session made it clear that some things need thinking and rethinking time.

I don’t want to just spew logic at these guys. That wouldn’t leave anything behind. I’d like to see that they’ve internalized some basics thinking processes that cause them to probe and question everything, not just what they are told by others but also their own thoughts in the future.

Not so sow doubt in their minds about their own thinking but to allow them to strengthen their convictions through questioning their own thoughts.

Its so easy to get carried away with a thought and get caught up in the process of doing stuff that it helps to have a method to evaluate where you are going and why, and be very clear about what you are looking for before you commit your limited time and resources to just doing.

And yet, having said that, it is equally important to limit the time you spend thinking and get a move on with doing. Thinking doesn’t bring in any moola. Doing does.

Finding that balance is not an easy thing to do, so it helps to have the tools to examine your thoughts and move on with the conviction that you’ve asked yourself the basic questions.

The responsibility of making this happen in such a short time weighs me down a bit but fortunately this is a bright bunch and yesterday’s session itself served to highlight some contradictions that would have made them aware of needing a sharper brief for themselves.

All this will help them when they are charting their own paths, but before my time with them ends, I must remind myself to equip them to ask the right questions when they go work for others.

Day One at the salt mines

So I went, and chatted with them. The NID has often called me there and not mentioned where in that vast place to go and you have to blunder around asking people until you find the room where you are supposed to be, but today a staff member called Binota very considerately called as I was driving there and told me where to come. Thank you, Binota.

This bunch is very well behaved and receptive in that they all turned up more or less on time and was quite attentive to everything.

Not as responsive and argumentative as I’d hoped but it was the first session and I hope that they will unwind a little and argue and question everything I say (otherwise the swollen head I am often accused of having, totally unjustifiably in my humble opinion, will continue to swell).

Maybe there’s a lesson there. Everything I covered sounds so logical and self-evident that perhaps there’s nothing to argue against. Which means one must find ways to make it provocative and capable of generating different points of view. Now how does one do that? Advise anyone?

But a very nice bunch to talk to. I think they’re quite “getting it”. Which is immensely satisfying.

Tomorrow will bring feedback and then I’ll know more. Watch, as they say, this space.

Branding in 7 easy lessons

The folks at NIFT (National Institute of Fashion Technology) and the NID (National Institute of Design) often call me to sit on juries to evaluate student projects which they’ve worked on during their industrial training with actual client companies.

These are real-life projects and are a great learning experience, and a chance for the student to show how good he or she is. Some clients are thrilled with and offer them jobs, but the majority of the students come back feeling disheartened, because they feel that they don’t get good briefs and their work is evaluated arbitrarily and subjectively.

Subjectivity on design issues is inevitable, but the complete lack of any design criteria worried me. If clients can’t issue a good brief, why can’t the students be taught to extract a good brief, or even write one themselves and get agreement on that. Then, they would be in a position to draw up a list of criteria to evaluate their own work.

Another phenomenon I noticed was that they would design collection in complete isolation, with little understanding of the brand they were designing for.

I told the staff at these places that they needed to give their students a little perspective on branding, so that these kids have some basic parameters to work with, so they said design a course and run it for us.

Saying this, of course, is a lot easier than actually designing a course and running it, but I myself have benefited so much from the people who taught me that I couldn’t say no. I have to try, even if it gives me the heebie-jeebies.

I suffer from a need to do everything well, and that becomes a great barrier to getting on with things. You keep reading and thinking and can’t actually get going. Totally unproductive.

So, good, bad or ugly, I’m attempting to do so, teach them a little bit about branding in 7 easy lessons.

To make the subject a little “real”, this is being done at a time when this group of students are working on some apparel design projects and what I’m going to attempt to do is to give them perspective on some dimensions of branding which they will apply to the design projects they are doing.

One group is working on a craft-based unisex line, another one on a line of lingerie and intimate wear, a third on a line of beach/resort wear for visitors to Goa (love that place!), and the fourth group are working on a line of yoga/exercise wear.

I’m requesting each group to start a blog. Their blogs and this one will trace the progress of these sessions. At the end of each session I'm going to ask the students to document how what I've discussed can be applied to a design project they are involved in. I've asked them to start by reading an article on my website called Branding is for everybody, size doesn't matter.

Here is their first input, prior to starting:

1. http://second-vitality.blogspot.com
2. http://genderblendin.blogspot.com/
3. http://fashionyogis.blogspot.com
4. http://insideoutdp.blogspot.com/

Here is how I intend to do this. Suggest changes and I will try and incoporate them.

1. What is a brand? What is branding?
A brand defines
A brand differentiates
A brand states who you are, and what people may expect from you and what they may not expect from you.
A brand accumulates goodwill and ill-will
A brand defines responsibility

2. Where do you start? Why goals are important.
Where branding starts, at the inception.
Define the goal, where you want to be in 10 years, 5 years, 1 year, 3 months.
Before you think of how you’ll get there, define why you want to be at these points. Your basic motives. Why are you doing this in the first place?
Then, in keeping with your motives, define what your values are (what you will do and what you will not do – as a preliminary, ask them to write down words they would like people to use for them, then sharpen that until they have just 5). Then see if they match with the motives, and whether there is any contradiction between these and the goals. "Who are we as a company and why do we do what we do?"

3. Now we come to how you plan to get there.
Let’s start with your assumptions.
What’s the opportunity or gap you see in the marketplace?
Why do you believe you will be able to fill this gap?
Why do you believe others have not/will not attempt to do so?
When they do, what will you do?

4. Who’s your consumer?
Demographics
Psychographics
Lifestyle, day in the life
Peer group
Reference group
Work/study/entertainment
Other products they use
Where do they shop?
Who do they shop with?
Under what circumstances is the product bought?
What do they aspire to?
What do they dream about?
What role can your product have in those dreams?

5. Product:
Start with competition.
Tech issues: where are you in comparison to whom?
Why does your consumer buy these items?
What is the satisfaction they are seeking?
Separate the emotional satisfaction from the physical need.
Where do they find this the most today? This could be another brand or another product altogether.
Can they do without your product? Is it a marginal requirement?
In what way would you most effectively compete with your own product?
10 years ago, who was the leading brand/product? Is it the same today? Either way, why?

6. Positioning?
Position your product against your competing brands. The idea situation is where you can reach a definition where you have no competition.
Within the same product category
In other products categories

7. How does your product get transacted?
Does any part of this satisfaction come from the process of ordering/receiving/transacting?
How much control do you have over the process of buying?
Do your competitors have more control or less?
What can you influence or change here? How much difference would it make?

8. Pricing
What is your competitors pricing v/s your intended pricing?
How much influence will you have over the eventual pricing?
What would happen if you raised your price by 40% or reduced it by 40%. Speculate on this, “I don’t know” doesn’t cut it.

9. Packaging
Does packaging have any bearing on the satisfaction your customer derives from your product?
What kind of packaging have your planned?
What kind of packaging is done locally/internationally
Is there any scope for innovation here?

10. Identity
To be a brand you must develop an identity. Let’s discuss what an identity is and agree on a definition.
This is usually correlated to the identity of the business entity, so we have to look at that identity.
It also has a correlation with the personalities of the people involved. This may not happen in very large corporations but is inevitable in small ones.
Before you freeze on an identity you have to be clear that you can carry it off.
Personality
Character
Quirks
Role Models
Symbols

11. Name and logo
How important is the name/logo in your business?
What are feelings you’d like this name/logo to invoke?
Which of your competitors’ names/logos invoke what feelings?
What kind of differentiation would you like to create?
List 5 other items/events/anything that invokes the feelings you’d like to invoke?
How can you exploit that knowledge?
Now, decide your name and logo.