A Brand new game to try your hand at

Through the years, one of the regular standbys at kid's parties was the `Name the Brand Game'. Press ads of groups of products would be mo...

Through the years, one of the regular standbys at kid’s parties was the `Name the Brand Game’. Press ads of groups of products would be mounted on boards with all references to brand names carefully and thoroughly blanked out. The trick was to name the brand correctly. Implicit in this exercise was the premise that the ads were either so very distinctive as to be easily identified with a brand, or, that the ads were so alike that associating them with a specific brand would be difficult. In reality there was a bit of both in the games we played.

These games of look alike ads or can-you-spot-the-brand carry on today, in our very alive marketplace, under much more trying circumstances. For example, a recent report on Diwali shopping noted that there were 233 models (not brands let me hasten to add, but, brands x variants) of refrigerators in the market and — watch out this will really blow your mind — 2,690 models of colour television sets! Just imagine the plight of the advertising agencies’ creative teams whose job it is to develop advertising that will be hard working, distinctive, unique, special, memorable, persuasive and of course associated only with The Brand and/or Sub Brand. Equally stressful is the dilemma facing buyers when making choices from among a variety of goodies, all promising so much more than ever before.

The recent Diwali frenzy of offers and deals and package schemes has perhaps been the most frenetic we have ever experienced. Buyers are now King, Queen and all the rest. The only problem in exercising our rights is resolving the question: How do we cope with the confusion of claims, counter-claims, promises et al so boldly made in the surfeit of advertising, that is such a visible part of this seasonal adventure?

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Well, people now play another game of clipping ads — this time without blanking out brand names but with special features underlined. Some manufacturers help out by presenting comparative tables. Unfortunately, we still suffer from the absence of authoritative independent commentators or reference sources to help us in navigating this maze of merchandise. In other aggressively competitive markets such as the UK and USA several magazines and newspapers report on the comparative value benefits of products. These can range from high ticket consumer durable buys to everyday consumer products such as foods, cleaners, and so on. These reports are based on tests conducted by informed experts whose judgements are trusted and relied upon. Apart from these general media advisories there are also special magazines and institutions that provide extensive and in-depth reports. Examples are Consumer Reports, Which magazine and The Good Housekeeping Institute that awards a Seal of Quality.

Consumer activist groups in India have made some efforts in the past, to establish similar facilities. Perhaps they failed as they were ahead of their time, or, because they tended to adopt an adversarial stance against manufacturers that lent a negative bias to their work. Learning from the lessons of How To Succeed in the Brand Value Assessment Game, perhaps some enterprising folks would get together to establish reliable evaluation resources. Let me caution them that the current approach of relying, to the letter, on puffery handouts from clients or their busybee PR agencies will not work. I am quite amazed at the laziness of leading publications that reprint these company releases with staggering consistency!

Adding yet another dimension to selling and buying in the Indian marketplace are the many dot com sites offering unbelievable opportunities to strike a bargain. Having spent this Diwali in Bangalore, one of the keenest contestants for the title of India’s very own domestic `Silicon Valley’, I have been totally bewildered and slightly bothered by the plethora of web sites playing the game of Catch the Best Deal in Town/State/Country. Almost makes investing in a PC/Internet set-up well worthwhile.

Judging by the crowds at the shops and the heightened pace of competitive activity, it seems that we Indians are revelling in playing the wheeler-dealer Game of Spotting the Best Buy. Happy Hunting!