Taj Mahal and Yoga are India's best-known non-corporate global brands

According to a recently concluded brushstroke survey by market research outfit NFO MBL India and Business Today magazine, Taj Mahal and Yoga are India's most highly recalled and recognised, global non-corporate brands.

With the objective of finding out how global are India's non-corporate brands, a list of brands was randomly prepared by the Business Today team and the survey was conducted among 148 non-Indian respondents from the US, the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Japan. The survey captured the findings under two distinct heads - proportion aware, which is a measure of the global awareness of the brand, and associations, which indicates how the brands are perceived.

Goa and Kerala, as India's best-known holiday brands, registered awareness levels of 44 per cent and 26 per cent respectively. But as a tourist destination, Kerala had a stronger association (30 per cent) and Goa was perceived as more of a place with beaches (19 per cent). God's own country Kerala gets as many tourists as Goa and accounts for less than 3 per cent of the Rs 22,000-crore that South Asia earns from in-bound tourists. Goa managed to attract 2.6 lakh international tourists in 2001 and earned revenues of about Rs 1,000 crore from tourism.

India's living icons from tinsel town - actor Amitabh Bachchan and music composer AR Rahman - had a poor showing in terms of awareness levels, with scores of 17 and 16 per cent respectively. While their recall was low, on the association parameter, Amitabh Bachchan scored a high of 85 per cent (as an actor) and AR Rahman, the musician, stood at 50 per cent. The other brands who figured in the list of India's sporting wonders were Sachin Tendulkar, who recorded an awareness level of 14 per cent, and an association with sports of 62 per cent, and Vishwanathan Anand, whose recall was 9 per cent and association with chess slightly better at 25 per cent.

While Bollywood's recall was as high as 50 per cent, its association with the Indian Film industry was 32 per cent. India's own Silicon Valley Bangalore's recall was 50 per, but its association with IT was low at 27 per cent. Religious guru Mahesh Yogi gave film and sports stars a run for their money by notching up better recall than Amitabh Bachchan. While the awareness level for Yogi stood at 25 per cent, Osho Rajneesh had 7 per cent and Satya Sai Baba 19 per cent.

Taj Mahal - the great symbol of eternal beauty and love, and one of the Seven Wonders of the World - had a recognition of 96 per cent. However, Taj's association with monuments was just 44 per cent. And the recognition of Yoga fell a few notches at 91 per cent, and its association with meditation and mind control stood at 56 per cent. © 2002 agencyfaqs!