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A quest for truth

It was a quest for truth that led us to create the Brand Trust Model back in 2007, after understanding the nature of trust, from hundreds in the three disciplines that learn it as a subject – psychologists, sociologists and communication experts. When a brand embarks on the trust train, it is riding a customer-centric brand model that ensures intense focus on the customer in everything a brand or organization does. Adopted by hundreds of brands now, this has pivoted them around customer-centricity, and this can make all the difference in a brand’s journey.

Though it doubled the effort and time, it was well worth it, for it removed even the slightest human interpretation subjectivity that could have crept in during analysis.

An election year can mean different things to different brands. For some it is a reason to be cautious, for others the flux becomes the opportunity. Some multi-category brands had their Brand Trust Index divided into more specific categories.

A consumer is an emotionally sensitive, easily pained by brands unfulfilled brand trust assurances. For those which do keep their trust promise alive, a consumer forms eternal bonds. As Billy Joel emphasized in the starting lyrics of his 1986 hit song ‘A matter of trust’,

Trust is the basis of relationships

Trust is the basis of relationships, and Brand Trust is the basis of relationships with consumers and other brand stakeholders. These primary ‘watchers’ of a brand are the true ‘owners’ of the brand, who decide what the brand means to them depending on the different engagements it has with them. The legal proprietors of the brand must believe and act as custodians of the brand, the ‘parent’, if you will, with the only objective to nurture, grow and nourish the brand.

From a large list of over than 9000 brands which get associatively recalled for the many Brand Trust attributes, get picked the leading brands which make it to the coveted list of India’s 1000 Most Trusted Brands.

An idea, product or service, can be considered to be a brand when it acquires the ability to memetically propagate from mind to mind, much akin to genetic propagation. It is then that it can be said to have a life-force, a soul. As this life-force strengthens, with many more minds propagating the brand message, so does its brand force.

Trust is a survival instinct, and exists in all animate beings - human and animal. However, in modern day humans, the evocation of trust accrues from many more subtle aspects which make it a complex multidimensional entity that is dependent on the attitudes, perceptions and actions of the brand and the consumer.

In our life we often act on the basis of incomplete information, and without the bridge of Trust, all our decisions would, at the very least, take more time and effort. Trust allows social and commercial action that may otherwise not be possible. Trust is the crux of all engagement – buying, selling, sharing, learning, innovation, love, cooperation, coordination, resolution of conflict, courtship and more. It is also essential for making decisions, big or small. Trust is the basis of all our exchanges, with people, things, brands, and even ideas.

If trust is so large and important, then as a corollary, it becomes imperative for brands to have an acute focus on it. Those brands which tend to relegate trust to second place - giving more tangible aspects like single-minded pursuit of profits, extreme efficiency, uber-performance – will tend to suffer the consequences of consumer disconnect and brand erosion. Brand Trust must always be an accompanying objective, if not the predominant one, for the company, no matter what other tangible objective it seeks to achieve.

If you are a brand custodian, then your answer to one question will give away your approach to the topic in discussion. If you could only choose one of the following two states for your brand, what would you prefer – (i) Would you prefer your brand’s trust exceeds its brand sales, or (ii) Would you prefer that your brand sales exceed its brand trust?

Dwell on it. Your reply, if thought through, should give you solutions and not just an answer. It will tell you more about your own approach to your brand, it will probe you to analyze why your brand is where it currently is, among many other expected and unexpected things.

We have had the scams that affected some important public sector and private sector banks. Among the airlines, Air India has been attempting sale, yet to reach any conclusion, with discussions that may impact its brand trust; another private airline displayed passenger apathy forcing disembarkation; some IPL comeback teams have started their season with a stupendous win.

A relationship of a brand based on a sale is a just a fulfilment of a consumer need. A relationship of a brand based on trust gives the glue that connects the brand ‘owners’ to the brand custodians. Trust infuses life to this relationship. To keep the adhesion of this force intact, brands must look at getting an independent and unbiased Brand Trust expert on the same executive board which seats the heads of marketing, finance, operations, human resources and other functions, discussing different aspects of the brand and company. In this age of transient relationships, to have a consumer relationship based on a sale, or to base it on a deep level of trust, is the most important question that every brand must answer for itself.

Strategemata, and the business of trust

Strategemata, loosely implying ‘tricks of war’, perhaps reflects the meaning of the modern day word for Strategy better than any other. Sun Tsu, Kautilya, Byzantines and many others, have thought and written about approaches to war for possible advantages and better outcomes. Life, death and the future of entire generations depended on success at war, and these ‘tricks’ were important lessons to be taught and learnt. Business is no different today and knowing the success tricks for business advantages and better outcomes are as important as outcomes of war in the yesteryears.

However, mere use of strategy – the methodical approach towards an expected outcome - is no guarantee of success, for there as many strategies as there are Generals. Most articulated strategies espoused by management gurus have become generalized, clichéd and overused. The imperative of a universally applicable business strategy, one that observes the immediate, is simple and yet strengthens the fundamental building blocks of business is much needed in the complex business scenario of today. The limitation of business strategy templates often comes from its extreme focus on addressing a single business problem or prospect.

Unfortunately, all strategy has high chances of failure due to the lack of a comprehensive and consistent view of these solutions. Aligning and committing long term investments on a new business approach which has as much chance of failing as it does of succeeding becomes the second issue of new strategies. And, the inability to build internal processes and people skills to drive the strategic intent is another uphill task in approach application. Last, and certainly the most important is the difficulty in articulating strategy or its outcome in simple and universally understood ways.

What type of business approach would then overcome the tribulations that face current day stratagems? The four main requirements for any new strategy should be (i) It must be comprehensive and consistent (ii) It must positively impact the core of business, i.e. transaction (iii) It must be able to get the long term alignment of investments and, (iv) It must be simple to articulate, understand and implement.

Impacting brand action and brand communication, the Trust insights are now being used by leading brands to improve their Buying Propensity. Kaplan and Norton, the originators of the Balanced Scorecard method, have said in their book ‘Strategy Maps’ that ‘More than 75% of an organization’s market value is derived from intangible assets that traditional financial metrics don’t capture’.

320 new entrants made it to the list and naturally, a similar number made it out of the list from last year too. There were more shakeups as well. 348 brands fell from their previous years’ ranks with an average fall of 150 ranks, 323 brands rose in ranks with an average rise of 160 ranks and 9 brands retained their previous year’s ranks. Last year 280 brands were new/replaced brands, 365 brands fell (by an average of 172 ranks) and 351 brands rose in ranks (with an average rise of 166 ranks). 4 brands remained unchanged in their ranks last year. The picture is one of change, where, as years pass only more of the same can be expected.

To keep building the propensity to buy for your brand, keep your strategy focused. Keep it simple.

A string theory of brand strategy

Brands exist to meet the needs, desires, opportunities and vulnerabilities that exist in the world, the fulfillment of which results in human gratification. However, the habitat that brands and businesses exist in is visibly and rapidly transforming, as if the brand ice-age were thawing extremely fast. The strategy of navigating the market turf is not easy even in normal circumstances, and when the environment is amorphous and ambiguous, brands often struggle to come to grips with a unifying strategy. The need for a universal approach, which provides options for the diverse stages of brand lifecycle, situations ranging from combative markets to crises, one that works just as well for startups and mature organizations, is perhaps a greater imperative than any other intellectual input needed by the world of brands today.

However, to work universally, such a universal ‘string theory’ of brand strategy must be founded in the elemental ingredients of the brand so that it can address the diverse range of circumstances that the brand encounters. Trust is the fundamental substrate on which all exchanges take place and brands and require different types of ‘exchange’ to nourish them, much as humans require air, water and food. Trust is the force which binds brands to their ecosystem, helping shape its identity and building relationships with all known and unknown stakeholders. Without building, maintaining or refurbishing trust constantly, brands will invariably weaken, wither or fade. From theories ranging from Market segmentation, Pricing strategy, Brand promise, Core competence, Bottom-of-pyramid to Competitive modeling and others, all are well explained in terms of Brand Trust. That the trust matrix addresses these quite ably demonstrates the robustness of the model.

Trust erosion in brands occurs as naturally as the death of cells in living things. Some brands face this trust attrition noticeably fast, and the more diligent ones among them seek innovative and dramatic solutions, often reaching out to trust as their answer. In other brands the trust attrition is slower, frequently unnoticeable due to the numerous other eco-changes that distract the brand custodians. In the best of such cases brands tend to use the ‘tried-and-tested’ strategy that reeks of paradigm blindness, and in the worst of cases they employ loosely put together plans that play pretend.

Where this matrix intertwines with the four drivers of a brand, namely, Vision, Values, Culture and Knowledge, a strategic roadmap specific to the brand emerges.

This veritable repository of the brand world can be easily accessed by brands to understand their own and competitive insights that guide brand communication and brand action.

Brands are as precious to the world as they are to the custodians. They are, after all, a tangible manifestation of ideas. I draw from Emerson’s observation of humans: We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state. Quite similarly, custodians must constantly observe the trust their brands command. They must know, understand and analyze the trust quotient of their brand to be able to enhance it with their customers, employees, investors and all those others who impact the brand’s life. With due apologies to the poet, I add, All brands must constantly observe and learn about its’ trust. That must become a brand’s permanent state.

I want to close by thanking all the brands and brand custodians that have placed their trust on us. It is not only because they have supported us, but because they have understood, experimented, believed and now made Brand Trust a part of their core strategy.

Brand Trust is fragile, like a sparrow chick

The benefits of an information connected world have been well experienced by most of humankind. This unbound freedom of expression is giving rise to a new world with information democracy making a compelling impact on the fate of the big and powerful. Governments, institutions, brands and the influential are all being subject to microscopic scrutiny by the masses, armed to unforgivingly ‘Share’ unfiltered individual opinions. Every drop of individual reaction now has the potential to unnoticeably but swiftly swell into tidal wave of mass opinion.

However it may be seen, Brand Trust is fragile, like a sparrow chick held in one’s hand - hold it too tight and you’ll suffocate it, hold it too lightly and it will escape you. The grip has to be just right and to keep the trust bird alive and thriving, it needs constant nurturing. The brand risks associated with loss of trust in our perplexing networked world makes predictable consequences difficult, but most of us intuitively understand that trust must be a constant endeavour for better future.

The world’s biggest and oldest corporates are now faced with new brand risks that threaten the trust they have painstakingly built over decades. On the other hand is the world of start-ups some of which have quickly acquired multi-billion dollar valuations backed by the trust of their investors. In their hurry to grow, a few of these start-ups have lost trust of their consumers due to wrong action, communication, transgression or plain inanity. However, no matter how different, that which went wrong in both the old and the new were the similar issues like security, privacy, caring, transparency, competence, sincerity, social values among others such, attributes that make up Brand Trust. These brands did not lose trust because they had lesser revenues or lower profits, but they lost trust because they failed to prop up the essential intangibles of Brand Trust.

A brand must constantly analyse the brand risks it faces with regard to trust to create and implement strategies that will help mitigate these risks. There will be times in a lifecycle of an company when it may communicate wrongly, make mistakes and its communication may falter, but the risk is not in the fact that these incidents occurred, but instead is resident in how prepared was an organization to mitigate the risks faced and how it reacted to them. Learning from Brand Trust related risks is how organizations build greater long-term or Residual trust.

Trust is like a river in that its different layers of trust move at different speeds akin to the cross-section of a river. The bottommost layer in the river is the slow-moving, more stable layer, which in Brand Trust is represented as Residual Trust, the trust accumulated over time and repeated successes. However, this slower layer too is impermanent and is constantly moving, albeit at a slower speed. The top layer, in both, is the fastest and also the most fleeting. In trust terms it represents anything new - new action, new brand or new communication. Brands must see the top layer of new trust as the seed that grows into the bottom layer of Residual Trust and always act with a long-term, fundamentals-oriented view.

In many cases, many of the stakeholders fail to recognize this basic problem, preferring to stick their heads in the sand. It is such brands that are most vulnerable to eroding their Brand Trust. There are enough cases that surface every week on some company or the other where Brand Trust is visibly eroded amost unexpected times. As some farsighted organizations have already begun, perhaps the time has come for all organizations to create an internal Brand Trust team that constantly evaluates threats to the brand and manages its mitigation.

Trust is the substrate of every decision

Trust is the underlying substrate of every decision we take, so much so, that it is evident in everything we do. The more difficult the choice, the more it is pinned on the essential intangible of trust. Relationships, politics or commerce; though the three streams may seem distinct and discrete, the trust (or lack of it) in one, can impact the other, either positively or negatively, depending on the disposition of the person making the trust decision. Contrary to what may seem, and a little counter-intuitively, most trust relationships depend more on our own behaviour rather than that of the environment.

A brand (or a person) may be able alter or adapt to a few behaviours of trust temporarily; but the innate ‘behaviour tendency’, the natural conduct of the brand, becomes an overwhelming factor in the results of its interactions with the world. For a brand to build permanent trust relationships, therefore, behaviour changes must be or become natural to it, blending in as an intrinsic part of its existence.

These four behaviour pillars on which the ‘outlook of brands’ are dependent are the core factors which need attention when dealing with a brand’s intangibles. These are the brand’s Values, Culture, Vision and Knowledge. The outcome of these four also includes trust, though this is not the only result these four come together to create. To understand these four is to understand a brand’s core.

Values are key determinants of attitudes and behaviour of a brand, and are defined by the thin decision-line that segregates its ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. This resultantly also measures the integrity of the brand. The Culture of the brand is demarcated by the brand’s ideas, customs and social behaviour that define its uniqueness and make it belong to a class. Culture is basic to a brand, and develops over a period depending on the emergence of the collective design from individual actions. It can be said to be the ‘pattern of behaviour’ rather than behaviour alone. The brand’s Vision is an articulation of the brand’s larger purpose, one that it should and will pursue irrespective of all circumstances and distractions. It is what the organization, as individuals and as a collective, must strive to achieve in all its actions. Knowledge is the combination of a brand’s self-awareness, self-consciousness, social awareness, environmental consciousness and intellectual capability. This last pillar expresses itself directly in every brand action.

In order to impact the trust of its stakeholders, a brand should adapt its internal factors as much as its external behaviour or communication. However, to be sustainable, these must be aligned with the brand’s core behaviour pillars elaborated above.

It is not just about the trust that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) garnered, but more important is the speed with which it got it. Though the party’s root point of campaign was against corruption, if we look at AAP from a point-of view of the three pillars of trust, we will be able to get insights on how it managed to change so much in so little time.

The three pillars of trust are, Building Capacity to Trust, Showcasing Positive Intent and Demonstrating Relevant Competence. AAP’s first pillar of trust was undisputed. Starting off as an offshoot of a movement against corruption, AAP morphed into a political party against corruption. This naturally gave the voters a high ‘Capacity to Trust’ for AAP. Political opposition only resulted in many more nameless joining the ranks or donating more to the party’s meagre coffers. AAP was the underdog, even more so, the righteous underdog, and therefore has stood very strong on Trust’s first foundation.

Further, the way the AAP speaks, the way its politicians dress, travel, and take consensus, have the markings of a ‘brand’ which was strong in the second trust foundation – Showcasing Positive Intent. With a grounded awareness of its stakeholders, AAP’s decision to form government through ‘Mohalla’ and sms referendums, have given it a further boost of trust by further reinforcing its intent. The din of political voices against their methods was quickly drowned by the cheers of hopeful voters. It is not often that one finds so much communication maturity and proletarian common-sense in a rookie political party.

Now to the third pillar of trust, Demonstrating Relevant Competence - the most important of the three pillars. Even if a brand exhibited copious quantities of the first two foundations, if it was deficient in the third pillar of trust, stakeholder trust on the brand will eventually erode. In AAP’s case, every step of showing competence in delivery will be important, especially since they have positioned themselves as the corruption free, delivery based, political option.

In AAP, India has not only witnessed a new type of politician, but also a new type of politics. Already the big-wig parties are feeling the carpet under their feet move and the new party is getting voluntary defections from the older political parties. Such is also the case with brands. The promise of intent of the brand is important, but the most imperative hinge of trust is always in its delivery - be it a product, service or an idea. In one sense, trust is delivery of the brand’s promise.

2014 promises to be the year of the turnaround in this decade – of the Indian political environment, economy, global outlook and of brands. Brands which act towards enhancing the value of their intangibles will make big and permanent gains. Brands which only continue to focus on numbers, may survive, but will not come close to making a mark among historic brands.

A room packed full of people

Imagine a room packed full of people, each jostling for space, food and survival. There's a door to the room, but it only works one way - people can come in, but cannot leave. And, the room keeps filling up, cramming more after more. The people in the room face paranoia, fear, aggression and as time progresses and the crowd grows, only one objective remains - to survive. Now, imagine the crowded room to be your mind and the teeming people to be brands that enter incessantly. This, perhaps, is a close picture of the chaotic state of the stakeholder's mind in a brand stuffed world.

Businesses are 'transactable ideas' that need their stakeholders' trust to endure. A trusted idea is automatically an accepted idea and in its degree of acceptance lies its transmission quotient. And so, when a business establishes strong trust bonds with its stakeholders, through its offerings, communication or existence, it automatically reinforces its life-force, its brand. Ideas which contest trust tend to fester eventually getting snuffed by the stronger trust forces. When brands establish trust in those they engage with, they become a very part of the stakeholder's mind, almost reflecting it in their persona.

As hundreds of thousands of brands battle in the stakeholder's mind, one can only imagine the gruesome outcome. Warring brands often take dangerous and undesirable shortcuts, and victories, if any, in such battles are mostly pyrrhic - maiming the victor's brand as much as it does the losers. More than anything, the unfortunate result of negative brand action is that the reward being fought for - the stakeholders mind - also gets injured in the battle. Brands must therefore be very aware of two things; firstly, that they are capable of wounding the stakeholder's minds by what they say and do, and secondly, that the minds of the stakeholders' are already in much agony due to previous brand actions. Brands which tread carefully will help alleviate the pain and find a permanent place with stakeholders, and those that do not, may get noticed, but will be associated by the stakeholder with anguish and grief.

Machavilli's wrote for princes in his book 'The Prince', what seems most appropriate for Brand Trust as well- "Princes who acquire their principalities with ease, keep it with difficulty, and those who acquire it with difficulty, keep it with ease." Drawing a Brand Trust analogy - if a brand acquires Brand Trust with much effort, it will keep it with ease, and if it acquires Brand Trust without much effort, the brand will keep it with difficulty. This, however, is not to say that one must focus solely on gaining trust, for such focus is counter-productive. Instead, it requires the brand to go about its action and communication as normal, such that each such be infused with trust enhancing ingredients.

Trust Research Advisory’s proprietary Trust Matrix measures 61 tangible and intangible aspects of Brand Trust (called attributes), which, combine to reflect the attitudes and deep-embedded associations (called brand behaviours) the brand makes with the stakeholders.

Brand Trust is a universal proxy for all the different experiences that a brand generates.

Rather than significant action, the year gone by has been marked more by Government and industry inaction in equal measure. A lack of government 'empathy' further diminished citizen and business trust. Added to this, missing the predicted growth target also diminished general confidence. Action was taken, albeit late, and though it has begun to change the confidence of brands and people, it will still take time for trust to fully re-establish root. In all this, the only noticeable action was by the 'internet-plugged' generation, which took social action and public activism as its two expressions of dissent. This makes one indubitable point - that it is the 30-somethings have taken on the role of decisive navigation at crucial junctures in our nation. Brands will do well to listen to them.

India must learn to be patient, brands must learn to be patient and leaders must re-focus on the three enduring Brand Trust tenets, namely, Vision, Values and Culture. Trust is central to all decisions without exception, be it for government, brands or stakeholders. Only by building it can we ensure that instead of jostling, pushing and pulling, we are progressing as a integrated community of people and ideas.

She loves me, she loves me not

She loves me, she loves me not. An archaic game played with a flower-roulette, with the last petal pluck predicting the direction-of-desire of the object of affection. Many would have thought this game to have gone out of circulation, but if one studies brands deeply, like I do, you will see the game’s fashionable popularity among brands even today, most playing the game frequently to probe their consumers’ affections. If it’s any saving grace, this game of vanity still gives half chances of succeeding.

To be desired by one’s beloved is arguably every human’s most ardent wish. Most brands seek similar affection, yearning to be loved by their consumers. Wishing and yearning, however, are not enough to beget someone’s liking. It takes much more. Seeking the amorous affection of someone begins with courtship, a process of wooing, often requiring genuine affection, patience, understanding and empathy. Wooing is different, even contrary to the concept of pursuit, and most often people and brands make the same mistake of making the latter their strategy.

To bring out the stark differences between the two terms, I use the help of a dictionary.

To pursue: to follow; to chase, in order to catch, overtake, capture, kill, etc.

To woo: to seek the favor, affection, or love of, especially with a view to a long-term relationship

Many-a-human sees love as a pursuit and unfortunately lose their desired ones in this process, for affection cannot be won as if it were a hunt. Most brands too, only see the process of gaining customers as an ardent dedicated chase, leading to not dissimilar consequences. The language of marketing which includes terms like market-share, share-of-wallet, conversion rate, customer acquisition cost or customer-mindshare, are typical of the pursuit mentality. On the other hand, the language of wooing includes terms like curiosity, cultivating, relationship, caring, intimacy, admiring and doting. Pursuit is the start of a one-sided transaction; wooing, on the other hand, the beginning of a life-long relationship. In a pursuit, one is the object of a chase, while when being wooed, one becomes an object of desire.

Is your brand a chaser, or is it a suitor? Which rhetoric does your brand use? Does your brand see a customer as someone it has bagged, or, does it see the customer as a relationship that the brand will do anything to nourish? To become a desired brand, these are questions that every brand must ask itself.

It lists those brands which have taken the difficult path to woo their customers with a long-term relationship in their minds and hearts. This becomes the metric for the deep-rooted, subconscious triggers of desire evoked by the brand that magnetically pull consumers towards the brand.

If you are a brand custodian in a brand dilemma, the right way to look at your consumer is by asking yourself one question. If you were your own brand’s consumer, how would you like the brand to treat you? Would you like to be pursued, or would you like to be wooed?

That should settle any consumer-related conundrum and encourage you to woo your customer, not pursue them.

Creativity is everywhere

Creativity is everywhere. All species display some level of creativity. However, humans are different possessing higher cognitive abilities – the mental process of knowledge acquisition based on awareness, reasoning, judgment, perception, social intelligence and advanced creativity. Creativity gives the most meaning to our lives and the process of creation, as most would remember from own experiences, is exciting, interesting, refreshing and memorable. Ingenuity invariably gets recognized, rewarded and transmitted, and most successful creations get attributed to the creator permanently giving long term social recognition and rewards.

Among brands, Creativity gets most noticed in its communications. Higher aspects of Creativity are seen when a brand brings out differentiated products – something the category and users remember for long. In the few times when the brand creates a disruptive business, it gets etched with the Creativity ascription and the allure of the brand embeds deep.

However, once recognized that Creativity is an inherently cognitive process requiring reasoning, judgement, perception, its Rational Appeal becomes evident.

Anything new, and in some way valuable, can be termed creative. In brands and businesses, Creativity can be defined as a strategy ability to cope with situations to generate new or better solutions. Creative outcomes are not easy and necessitate combining innovative thinking with high applied effectiveness. When brands display Creativity, they demonstrate an ‘intellectual’ ability to deal with the future better as also to shape the idea to culmination. Audiences don’t just measure brands on a creative scale from a viewpoint of novelty, entertainment and utility alone, but also from a position of future risk amelioration.

Creativity also validates a brand’s high sensitivity to the environment it exists in. It gives the brand an imagery of a pioneer, one willing go into unchartered territories and hazard risks. A brand’s Creativity displays its ability for a new way of thinking, giving it a unique appeal. The benefits of a successful creative effort are for all to enjoy, but if the attempt was to be unsuccessful, the ignominy is only for dismayed creator to bear. Unless lucky, it takes great perseverance and patience for a successful creative outcome, especially because creative failures, if more than the expected few, get treated with disdain and contempt. It is these risk-reward imbalances that are inherently recognized by stakeholders, giving creative successes a magnetic attraction and irresistible appeal.

Successful Creativity places the brand high on the social ladder too, relegating competition to thought followers in users’ minds. A creative brand not only enhances its own value but brings value to society as a whole, helping breed a creative-culture in society, a necessary ingredient in social survival and growth.

Why am I emphasizing so much on Creativity you may well ask? Well for one, it is extremely rare. Most of us are creatures of habit and it takes extraordinary effort to attempt things new. The other reason I stress on Creativity is because of the way our minds function.

The mind, as we all know, is made of the Sub-conscious and the Conscious. Of the two, the Sub-conscious, loosely called the Decider, works on rote action, making automatic decisions which only happens after the Conscious  – the Learner – has engaged and absorbed with the idea. The Sub-conscious Decider is not infallible, and sometimes makes mistakes, because it takes instantaneous, automatic decisions based on the most relevant situational contexts. Many times brands enjoy the benefits of the Decider, as audiences are loath to any type of change. Once the initial investment has been made by the user's Learner-mind, they would rather stick with a brand than not.

To understand how a brand can be creative it is important to delve into the second part of the mind. This Conscious part of the human mind is its Learner but unfortunately, most often a lazy one. The brand-mind, the brand’s Conscious Learner part too, is equally and universally as lethargic. Brand Creativity requires the brand custodians to awaken this dozing Learner in the brand-mind, even though it may come with bruising efforts. When a brand keeps its Learner mind active, learning and unlearning repeatedly, taking risks by trying new approaches – with new extensions, unexplored markets, innovative products or fresh communication – the brand’s successes unleash its creative fire to create a deep and lasting subliminal desire among its audiences.

All custodians want their brands to be much desired for. Being on the Creativity highway is not only compelling for those who work with the brand, but it also keeps the brand relationship with audiences vibrant, interesting, exciting and memorable.

Diversity, conformity and appeal

Diversity expresses variety in thinking, backgrounds, cultures, experiences, choices and world views. It celebrates the individual through their choices, ethnicity, upbringing, social interaction and education. Culture, Values, Knowledge and Vision. The intermix of these four help create a unique being, nuanced with distinctive thoughts, flavors and perspectives in an inimitable way. And it is this interaction of diverse beings that strengthens the core of a community by creating new understanding, building new bridges and creating opportunities for innovation. This is as true for humans as it is for brands.

While diversity is important for the society at large, conformity becomes more important to build and grow the smaller sub-groups of society. Conformity is useful for better organization, communication, hierarchy and control which are very often important for survival and growth of the sub-group. Both Diversity and Conformity jostle displayed in a variety of abrasive conflicts because of divergent objectives - world versus country, sustainability versus growth, living versus winning, community versus commune, family versus individual, to elaborate a glaring few.

Appeal, the magnetic attraction that impacts those beyond the sub-group through the subconscious, is made up of four Appeal Foundations – Emotional, Rational, Aspirational and Communication, with each making a strong case for diversity. The three Demeanors of the first Foundation – Emotional Appeal – are Positivity, Emotional Maturity and Feeds Hope all three of which grow stronger with diverse views and cultural intermixes. With a positive cultural identity of oneself, Positivity grows; acceptance of others’ diversity builds Emotional Maturity and seeing divergent views succeed Feeds Hope in the individual.

Rational Appeal, the second Foundation, is made of Relevant Utility, Conscious Effort and Creativity to each of which Diversity is also a strong contributor. When the utility of any action, product or service is considered for a larger cross-section of diverse individuals, its Relevant Utility value is increased manifold as it becomes more acceptable by a larger and more diverse audience. The Conscious Effort for any action to be successful for a variegated cross-section is far higher than in a conforming group and as this becomes evident to those witnessing this effort, it builds greater allure.

The third Foundation of Attractiveness, Aspirational Appeal has Self-Control, Social Maturity and Winners’ Attributes as its behavioral areas, for which embracing diversity is not just supplementary, but essential. The ability to balance the instinctive impulses of Conformity with the urge for the larger good through Diversity gets well reflected in Self-Control. The aspect of Social Maturity, or the ability to blend better into society, is nothing without Diversity. The third Demeanor of Winners’ Attributes which is enhanced through actions like self-belief, team work and work ethic are all based on accepting ones’ own diversity and that of others.

The fourth Foundation that builds appeal or attractiveness is made of three Demeanors - Trust, Oration and Charisma and embracing Diversity plays a positive role in building Attractiveness through these. Trust, the umbilical cord of all human connection is shown through shared interests, empathy and a non-threatening ambience with audiences. Oration, the ability to communicate with grace and control requires one to be sensitive and relevant to audiences, showing the essential nature of believing and accepting Diversity. The last of the Demeanors for this Appeal is Charisma which requires one to understand contexts of culture, generation, community and region – all of which are core ingredients of Diversity.

I have written about the socio-psycho-cultural need for Diversity, elucidating why it is necessary, but even if this analysis was not done, the value of Diversity is innately understood by most. However, in situations where sub-groups are facing economic, emotional or psychological strain, it is possible to convince them that the survival is at stake because of Diversity, making them act in a jingoistic and tribal manner. It is important for audiences to analyze and realize this and it is for brands to be conscious of any divisive causality of their action.

Diversity can meet you in different forms - color, size, ethnicity, choices, habits, class. Brands will be tempted to use these; Indian versus foreign, black versus white, thin versus fat type of communication with their audiences, unsheathing their ill-conceived ‘masterstroke’. But in the long run, and to a larger audience, such brands will become unappealing and unattractive. Accepting Diversity and using it to your strength will probably play the most significant role in building your brand’s Attractiveness Quotient.

The magnetic pull of a brand

As most humans would like to believe, love or attraction is a poetic, magical thing that occurs because your perfect partner, the person created just for you, meets you at the perfect moment. Well, if you believe so, sorry to burst your bubble. Love is far less poetic, and it is much more a scientific process, a result of the brain constantly evaluating and the senses are collecting data when potential mates meet. Though there are no formulae for love, roughly stated it has higher chances of success if the first step, the visual parameters are met, the sight of someone who seems pleasurable and desirable. However, as simple as this may seem, even just this first step brings in many parameters which are deeply coded - part genetic, part cultural, part environmental and part psychological. A rough edged pass-mark on these measures, allows the suitor to make further explorations.

At the next levels, at least in this example, supremely fast and deeper calculations within the brain occur with each interaction fed through cognitive and sensory inputs as each person investigates cues for health, fertility, social status, economic ability, success, emotional maturity and charisma among others. Each of these criteria and more are pre-coded in our complex mind-matrix of attraction. As the fitment betters, chances of attraction success increases more and more. I can almost visualize an equation of love that can be applied to any two people, with the outcome giving an attractiveness quotient between a potential couple based on many social, cultural, psychological and genetic parameters.

Many brand traditionalists like to believe that the attraction generated by the brand is also poetic, much like human love, as if the customer and the brand were made for each other - for eternity. Nothing, unfortunately for the brand, is further than the truth. The love generated by brands, or Brand Attractiveness, is not any different from the complex calculations that human minds do when seeking choice of a mate. There is one big difference though, and it is that brand is always the suitor, continuously always sending signals, cues and information that to get the affection of the customer. The customer (roughly called this, but applies to all stakeholders - employee, partner, investor etc.) on the other hand is constantly evaluating the brand, and is calculating if that is the best available choice in that circumstance. If the available choice changes, or the circumstances change, chances are so will brand attraction.

It is therefore very important to understand this dynamic entity called Brand Attractiveness, the inherent magnetic pull that brands exert (or not), at a fundamental level and through a scientific method. A counter-intuitive observation - in most cases, customers have a standard evaluation system, differently calibrated for each, because desire and attraction is based on very strong basis of four not easily altered aspects of culture, values, knowledge and vision. If this be the case, how are brands wrong in saying that Brand Attractiveness is immutable and permanent?

This is largely on account of the fact that the customer-brand attraction is largely a best-fit-under-current-circumstances type of adjustment (not unlike humans in love). And the customers are constantly scouting, searching and evaluating for better fits. Sometimes, competing brands make better alluring offers that are often too enticing for the customer, and tug at his heartstrings. Sometimes the customer has new information on the brand that he was so far unaware of, which may shake the held belief which attracted him to the brand in the first place. Sometimes, of course, the customer outlook changes and impacts the brand-customer relationship.

What then is the answer? What must a brand do to keep its appeal? The first step is to know what the customers want in the relationship, what it is that they find so attractive. The second step is to send evocative signals and messages that are not aligned only to the brand, but also to the needs and desires of the customer.

Such scientific approaches have strengthened these brand relationships with their stakeholders, giving them better quality of association with better predictability. On the other side, the brand-customer relationship is the basis all commerce, and if this is strengthened, business is strengthened.

In the journey of Brand Attractiveness, there are no easy paths, only right paths.

The innate appeal of brands

All brands have an intrinsic, innate appeal, a magnetic force that pulls at those that it interacts with, through an attractive force, weak or strong, depending on the way brands behave, act, communicate and think. The attractiveness of the brand is more than a sum total of how the five senses of the perceiver relates to it, and is also deeply impacted by the brands’ vision, and its subtle emotional and cognitive states.

Often, the term ‘Attractive’ is seen to have a meaning of ‘alluring to the senses’, though attraction visibly occurs for reasons deeper than just external appearances. The seeming strangeness of some paired human couples, only goes to show that attractiveness has as many different implications as there are people.

The context of the times we live in are changing fast and the last internet decade has seen humans connected to more humans, brands and ideas than the eons before it. However, extending the classic Dunbar argument to brands, there is an increasing likelihood that there exists a maximum limit to the number of stable relationships (brand + human) that a person can maintain. While on the surface, these brand and human interactions have increased exponentially, the increase in numbers is definitely at a cost of the relationship depth.

If the above argument is true, then what does it imply for brands? And what should brands do to stay attractive to their stakeholders in an increasingly transient consumer mind.

The concept of Popularity is an extension of Brand Attractiveness. While having a high AQ shows that the fundamentals of the brand are well aligned to the magnetic pull, for it to be converted to Popularity, the brand must have a significant following based on aligned principles. While easily said, getting a ‘significant following’ without distorting a brand’s core tenets is one of the most difficult tasks for any brand. Most brands begin with a surmise about what their brand is, and then begin to understand what the audiences feel about the brand. In a changing world, the opposite is more relevant – to develop the brand’s personality based on the brand owners, its consumers. The custodians must be just that, custodians, and allow the brand to evolve and morph as the owners choose. Such an evolving brand is constantly vibrant and stays in touch with its audiences’ changing choices, and therefore stays attractive to its stakeholders.

Some extremely attractive brands have been a victim of circumstance and have fallen from the pedestal build over decades in the ready-to-cook noodle segment, a food that almost everyone is redolent about. However, in a few months, the brand bled from a thousand cuts, which could have healed with good communication and action. Unfortunately, both were found severely wanting. Similarly there is a mobile brand, the business which the company sold a few years ago, but finds that its brand in the mobile space endures. Maybe these two phoenixes will rise again. The life of brands is tumultuous, but equally great is the tenacity of these brands.

We also have a slew of new brands which have made an entry into this prestigious list within just a year or two of their existence. To end the dilemma of brands on longevity of attractiveness, I often say, ‘Do not ask not how much; ask how far.’