Leo Burnett India rolls out Brand Belief; picks stake in MR agency

Bcom3 Group-agency Leo Burnett has announced the launch of its latest global branding philosophy, Brand Belief System, in India. Brand Belief has been introduced here within two years of its implementation in the western hemisphere, and the process of inculcating the philosophy in India "has already begun within the agency", according to Arvind Sharma, managing director, Leo Burnett India. He adds that the System will be implemented in India over the next six month, with investments to the tune of Rs 2 crore.

In a related move, Leo Burnett India has also picked up a "minority strategic stake" in Monitoring & Research Systems (MaRS), the research startup of Raghu Roy, ex-president of ORG-Marg.

Brand Belief is a trademarked brand building practice that, in some ways, is the very antithesis of ‘positioning'. It works on the premise that brand building through ‘positioning' is obsolete, and that in a competitive environment, brands can only survive by converting ‘buyers' into ‘believers' - by fostering a relationship with them. "Brand Belief is to the twenty first century what ‘positioning' was to the twentieth," A. Sharma says.

"Weak brands are those that build brand behaviour, while great brands build brand beliefs," says John Woodward, regional planning director, Leo Burnett Asia. "And belief creates loyalty, which can boost a brand's profits by as much as a hundred per cent. It is a well-researched fact that even a minority segment of brand believers contribute hugely significant volumes. So the obvious thing to do is grow the number of believers."

According to the Brand Belief System, the key elements to marketing success are ‘brand believers' and ‘brand bonds', and that the stronger the ‘belief', the stronger the ‘bond'. "You might position yourself to be whatever you are, but if you build a healthy relationship with the consumer by living up to a promise, over a period of time, she starts believing in you, whatever your positioning," A. Sharma emphasizes. "In that sense, your positioning becomes redundant."

Expanding on this, Rajeev Sharma, national director - brand planning, Leo Burnett India, says, "In the traditional approach to marketing, everything is defined as if it were cast in stone. ‘Positioning' is a very left-brained phenomenon, where brands are narrowly defined by either ‘personality' or ‘benefits'. Now when you define brands so rigidly, your advertising gets predictable, and there's no leeway for creativity. When you need to communicate something to the consumer, you have to find a framework that is both coherent and elastic. While positioning is coherent, it isn't elastic. That happens only when you define a brand in relationship terms."

Brand Belief is different from brand equity in terms of the crux of what is being defined. "Brand equity defines the core of the brand, not the core of the relationship the consumer shares with the brand," R. Sharma continues. Citing the hypothetical example of an employee-employer relationship, he says, "If you ask an employee what sort of a boss he has, he might say ‘a good leader' or ‘a motivator'. Now this is the boss' brand equity. But if he says ‘My boss is like a father to me,' he has defined a relationship. Similarly, people don't buy toothpaste only because it foams well or tastes right. There is something more… a bond, but that doesn't get articulated. That's what Brand Belief seeks to uncover, then leverage, to create communication that reinforces the bond."

What this line of reasoning suggests is that research, as it has been conducted so far, has been asking all the wrong questions. R. Sharma agrees, pointing out that this is a function of a misplaced belief that the brand is more important than the consumer. "People are either ‘the audience' or ‘the target', and you either ‘seduce the consumer' or ‘occupy her mind'. Even the term ‘consumer' is a marketing construct. The old framework assumes that the marketer is in charge, while in reality the power has shifted to the consumer's hands."

Now that Leo Burnett has figured that consumers need to be asked better questions, it has also introduced its global research tool, Brand Stock, in India. And that is where the alignment with MaRS comes into play. "We do not plan to buy out MaRS at any time," A. Sharma is emphatic. "And MaRS will not work solely with Leo Burnett either. Brand Stock is just one of the products that MaRS will handle."

But why MaRS? "We were looking at a startup for a very simple reason. The established MR agencies cannot, on the one hand, have products that swear by the logic of positioning, and on the other, have Brand Belief that says positioning is a dated idea," A. Sharma says with a twinkle in his eye. © 2002 agencyfaqs!