Branding a Onetime Investment.

It was February 2016 I was traveling to my home town after a gap of one year from Bangalore. It was going to be a long journey since after much difficulty I was able to get a ticket for the train and also I was traveling alone. When you are along with your friends and family a journey will be never too boring but if you’re traveling alone and is not lucky enough to get friendly co-passenger the journey may become long as decades. But luckily I did not fall into that category and my co-passengers were friendly enough, as most of them were from my hometown itself and working in Bangalore in different sectors. Time passed and we kept talking on different topics soon, after covering half of the total distance we entered Orissa. We got jerk as the train stopped and looked out of the window of the 2 tier compartment and found we were at station Rourkela. Soon the hawkers started to enter with different things to sell. A person middle of 30’s enters with kettle and mud glass and shouting as “kharab se kharab chai pijiye’’ which means in English “drink the worse than worse tea”. Immediately person sitting next to me said: “Ruko bhai, ye karab chai hai na, chalo pilao” (Is it bad tea, give me one). He insisted even us to have it, soon every there got one for them. I tasted it and I was not at all bad. With this incidence two theories of marketing strike into my head immediately. Firstly the vendor Negative Marketing pitch that caught almost everyone’s attention and secondly Branding.

Branding is very important for any business, now if you have succeeded in creating a Brand then onwards you do not need to make too much effort on sales. Branding is the result of the level of experience and expectation.

• Poor Branding- When customers have no expectation of the product or service and even their experience is not great. Eg: Chinese products
• Product Branding- Product Excellence breaks the poor brand cell.
• Power Branding- When customers get emotionally attached to your product. Eg: Maggi is a product of Uniliver but hardly any knows it, other eg: is the photocopier machine is manufactured by company Xerox.
• Hollow Branding- When the customer has great expectations with the brand but his experience of using the product or service is low. It creates a Hollow Branding eg: Audience had very high expectations with Aamir Khan coming movie Mangal Pandey, but the experience didn’t match and the movie was a disaster.

Now coming to the ‘Karab Chai’ which means ‘Bad Tea’ the hawkers are not increasing the expectation of the Customers and when customers have it and like it, it helps in branding for them. Who tells best managers come from IIM and Top B-School, try this tea whenever you are passing MP or Orissa and take my words you won’t be able to forget it.

So, this all for today, leave your comment below if you have ever experienced any of such events.

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