WE humans are living in a practical yet in a world of
fiction. Every individual life is a story, a journey of experiences and memories.
A person feels touched when he is able to relate his
experiences with other individual’s experiences; that point he feels closer to
that “other person”. He then tries to befriend that stranger, give that
stranger a space in life and hence form an association, which we call friendship.
What is a Brand? Is it just a product? Does it have any life
and identity of its own?
Brand like any other human being is an individual that has
identity, persona and motive in life. But hard point is that this individual
has no friends, apart from parents, who have created him. Another miserable
fact is that this individual cannot speak, he can’t explain his potential, he
seeks one chance for an acceptance in society, and he seeks friends that can be
loyal throughout his life.
Who explains the potential of the Brand to the world? Who
takes the responsibility to get friends for the Brand?
A Marketer acts on behalf of a brand. He acts as a mediator
between a customer and a brand. It’s the responsibility of a marketer to build
relationship between a brand and a customer. A brand without marketer is an aphonic
individual that crave for someone else to act on his behalf and introduce him
to the world.
Marketer, who is acting as a mediator, has to choose friends for
the brand very carefully because brand, an aphonic individual, is very gentle
and seeks long term friendship. Brand with a disloyal friends do not survive
for long and hence gets lost in the crowd. Hence marketer has to pay lot of
attention while choosing right friends for the Brand.
Brand as an individual is capable of catering to the need of
the customer; need that may not be visible; it could be emotional or it could
be functional. But how a Brand can convey this to the customer, he is aphonic,
cannot speak but can be a friend, who fills the gap in customer’s life?
To make customer notice, enquire and accept the Brand,
marketer has to form a story of a Brand. A story is nothing but an insight of a
customer. Marketer has to perform a tough task of first selecting some handful
of people, who can become a loyal friend of the Brand, from the crowd; then he
has to dive into the lives of the chosen individuals to gain insights of what
they feel on emotional front. Since a deep rooted friendship has emotional
attachment, marketer has to find that emotional need which is unmet or
partially met; he has to find that gap which is not fulfilled by other brands. He
has to find answer to the question how can I find friend/s for my Brand?
Once marketer has realised that unmet need, he forms a story
on behalf of a Brand; story that has a same insight, touch, and emotions as that
of the story of a customer. He makes customer realise that since the Brand has
the same story, experiences, emotion as of customer’s Brand can be customer’s
best friend.
Through a story, what we call Brand Communication, marketer
has to make customer realize that the Brand can cater to the unmet need better
than other brands because Brand’s life and its persona is the same as that of
customer’s life and persona.
Message of a story should be so clear that it should touch
the insight of a customer and should give customer an immediate “Ah” moment or
a feeling of love at first sight, and affect of that message should be such
that customer has to come forward and accept the friendship of the Brand.