A Newborn 'Brand'

A loud vexatious tone hammering the eardrums in the sound sleep, leaving no other option but to pick up the Apple iphone and snooze the bloody alarm off. This nettlesome task lasts for another 10 minutes when one finally gets up from his comfy Serta and slips his lazy feet into pair of Nike and put up pair of Tommy Hilfiger to enlighten his journey towards bathroom, precluding any chance of stumbling over anything.

After using some Charmin, one picks up his Colgate brush and applies morsel of Sensodyne over it and starts cogitating whether to wear black Van Heusen or navy blue Louis Philippe. After getting ready and having a bowl of Kellogg's and some orange Tropicana, one takes off in his blue BMW for office.

This is how most of us spends our every morning. We come across around 50 odd brands since coming out of our dreams to driving off to our office only. If we count the number of brand exposures a single person experiences on a single day, it pile up to 600-625 exposures.


Despite being surrounded by hundreds of brands daily, have you ever taken a break and contemplated about how these brands came into existence and reached this level?

Well..!! no worries, let me explain it to you in the simplest possible way.
A brand can be seen as a human being who is brought in this world as a baby after deep evaluation of their needs by a couple. A company is just like a couple, which decides to launch a new brand to satisfy their goals.

A new born baby refreshes the life of its parents and give them a new goal in their life, and a new brand revamps the company and gives it a new direction to work on. Parents shape the future of their child by giving their love, time, resources and company invests its resources time and money on its brand to make it successful. Giving a birth to a baby is no child's play and requires meticulous attention and care and so is the case with launching a new brand.

Just like both parents have to be involved in giving birth and take its responsibility, every department of the company has to work for the new brand be prepared for it. There are 5 stages in a brand life,

Stage 1- Embryo Stage: The most critical stage both in human life and in life of brand building.
In humans, at this stage, male sperm fuses in the female egg, union of both results in fertilization of egg and inception of baby life, after which the small egg develops to an embryo till end of 8 weeks.

In a company, every department has to unite and fuse with each other to understand each others' requirements and complications. Most brand birth fails at this stage due to inter departmental clashes within the company. This stage involves plantation of idea of new brand to every department and examination of company financial condition, the condition of its plants, the market reputation and the distribution channel strength. This requires an extensive and rigorous study about company, market and its needs.

Stage 2- Fetal stage: This stage is safe for both human and brand baby.

In humans, the embryo which was developed in last stage grows to a mature baby till the end of 38 weeks, as the organs and body parts grow.

In company, once the initial phase of complicated negotiations and retaliations get over, the idea of new brand is welcomed by every department and they start working on the idea. Finance department to give the funds to each department, the operations department to start manufacturing the new product under new brand, marketing department to plan its branding and advertising, sales department to plan its distribution network to make product available to the customers.

Stage 3 - Delivery Stage: In humans, the full grown baby is delivered and the first time when baby breathe in fresh air. In a company, it is the first time when world will know of their brand and will experience it.

Giving it a Name: In humans, most people give their babies new names but many people name their child on their name, like Martin Luther King Jr., Chanakya (son of Chanak), King George II and many more. In a company, while launching a new brand, and giving it a name, it also has following options:

• Naming it as a completely new brand, like Coca Cola, Pepsi, Cadbury
• Naming it as a sub brand of pre-existing or launching as a brand extension, like Diet Coke, Coke zero, Cadbury Oreo

Giving for Adoption: sometimes situations do not favor human and company to keep baby with them.
Many human babies are born out of mistakes and so is the case with brands. Some brands are born haphazardly due to faulty decisions of managers which conduce unmanageable situations in the company and they have to get rid off the brand by selling it off to another company which is more capable of handling the brand. When a baby is born and couple is not ready for it, they have to give it to other couple who are better equipped to give that baby a good life ahead.

Stage 4 - Growth Stage: At this stage, parents take care of the needs of their children and support them by every possible way to make them independent, A company supports its brand to become super brand and does not require any further diligence of company.

Stage 5- New Family: When the children are grown up adults, they are ready to take responsibilities of themselves and others also. At this stage they are ready to start their own family. Similarly, when a brand is matured and has turned to a super brand, it can support other brands launched under its umbrella. Many brands have turned to umbrella brands and resulting in the family of brands.

For example maggi was launched as a noodles brand of nestle and now there are number of products lines including ketchup, pasta, soups & spices launched as babies of maggi brand which together has taken a shape of maggi family and not anymore requires support of nestle.

So next time you see any baby, see it as a newborn brand and when you see any brand try to find out a baby in it, because every brand is or was a baby. Then you will realize the importance of that baby with which you are chatting with your girl friend or which is under your feet and giving you comfortable walk or which you are wearing and giving you your style or which is protecting your eyes from sunlight or the one which is inside your mouth giving you a good taste.

War between Marketing's 3Ps & 4th P

According to American Marketing Association (AMA), marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating (Product), communicating (Promotion), delivering (Place), and exchanging (Price) offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Fundamentally, sales should be the subset of marketing and not considered to be different from it. But in reality this is not the case.

While every other discipline including branding, advertising, market research is under the umbrella of marketing, sales is set up as a complete different department.

In real scenario, marketing department handles promotion,branding and advertising based on market research and sales department engages into distribution and making product available to the customers. Marketing department handles 3 Ps of marketing mix i:e product, price & promotion and sales department handles 1 P, i:e place.

Sales and marketing are considered as India and Pakistan, be it in terms of their origin or in terms of their disputes. Just like India and Pakistan are children of same mother, sales and marketing have also evolved from same source which is marketing.

There has been a serious war between 3Ps on one side and 4rth P on the other side, to get more attention of the managing board in order to get more funds. This war is often not handled effectively by companies and they start differentiating between the two and fail to understand that both of these are as important as two sides of a coin, coin is worthless if either of them is absent.


Let us take a case of three men visiting a modern retail store to buy some groceries, Mr. Tom, Mr. Dick & Mr. Harry.
They all want to buy some noodles for their home and went to noodles section in retail store.

1. Mr. Tom picked up Nestle Maggi noodles
2. Mr. Dick picked up Horlicks Foodles noodles, and
3. Mr. Harry picked up ITC Yippee noodles

Now the question which now arise is what made the sale of three different brands of noodles?
whether they were 3Ps which made the sales or the 4rth P which did the job?

There are many things which can influenced the sales of product like noodles

• Brand consciousness of buyer
• Price consciousness of buyer
• Discounts and promotional scheme offered by retailer
• Shelf space of a product

1. Mr. Tom is a brand conscious man and thus purchased Maggi noodles because it comes from the house of nestle and has established itself as a reliable brand.
2. Mr. Dick is influenced by shelf space and price and purchased home brand because it was given maximum shelf space and least price with a promotional offer of buy one get one free.
3. Mr. Harry at last is a discount conscious man with some sense of brands and purchased Yippee noodles as it was offering a promotional offer of Sunfeast biscuit worth Rs. 10 free.

This was one case of purchase made by three men and their regular behavior. Now taking another case, a bit different one, one fine day, all three men went to buy groceries to retail store and again went to noodles section and this time,

1. Mr. Tom picked up ITC Yippee noodles
2. Mr, Dick picked up Horlicks Foodles noodles
3. Mr, Harry picked up Horlicks Foodles noodles

Why there is a change in purchase decision of Mr. Tom and Mr. Harry.

1. Maggi noodles is out of stock and thus brand conscious Mr. Tom went for a lower known brand Yippee noodles.
2. Foodles noodles is also offering a discount of buy one get one free and it being sold at a lower price with a better shelf space catches attention of Mr Harry in a much stronger way than Yippee did.

After analyzing this case of purchase of such a general item of every household grocery list, can we say if marketing is responsible in getting a company profits or is sales making fortunes for the company?

This case showed three customers with different buying behavior, buying different noodles according to their preferences of the product specifications.



In first case of first customer, although marketing did its job in alluring brand conscious Mr. Tom to buy Maggi noodles, but later on when sales department did not met the demand of the retail store and it went on stock out situation, Mr. Tom shifted to Yippee.
Thus the whole marketing efforts by Maggi noodles went in vain because it was not able convert it into sales of product.


In second case, Mr. Harry shifted to Foodles noodles as he saw its advertisement on TV and therefore formed a perception of it being a good brand, whereas last time he did not recognize it as a brand and purchased Yippee.
Here the sales promotion scheme of Yippee noodles got overpowered by a TV commercial of Foodles noodles and thus sales department of Yippee was not able to make sales of product.

In first case marketing department was unsuccessful without sales and in second case vise versa. Therefore, each is incomplete without other, and both are equally important for achieving goals in any cut throat competitive industry which is every industry.