A brand behaves like human. It has personality, identity, emotion, and life cycle. A brand manager who manages the brand (In my views company and brand manager can’t own the brand; they just own product) is responsible to bring back life into the dying brands.
The customer who owns the brand has become increasingly sensitive towards their brands. If the brand is not behaving the way they want them to behave they simply dump it. The customers want brand to add value to their lifestyle. They want brand to be their lifestyle statement. (Not to forget that gone are the days when consumers had limited choices; today she can choose from competing brands.)
Pepsi and Coca-Cola recognized the turmoil in the Indian carbonated soft drink market that followed the environmentalists protesting against the cola companies, claiming it to be harmful for health. The companies were quick enough to respond through its brand ambassadors. The quick response of the Coca companies help them projecting that they are safe and healthy brand. The cola companies managed to retain the brand health, and brand identity.
The brand slaves – the brand managers and the company – have to work harder to find the ways to retain the brand in the minds of the audience. They can position, reposition brands to match the customers need and requirements.
As the brand traverses through different stages of its life cycle, brand slaves need to transform the brand just not make some aesthetic changes. The Pepsi has positioned itself as a the product for youngistan with disassociated association from cricket and movie, on the other hand the rival camp Coca-Cola seems to have taken the movie and cricket positioning. In both the cases it is complete new brand positioning. In my views the brands stop to capture the minds of the consumer when the brand slaves starts to concentrate on the competition and bring about cosmetic changes in the brand and ignore the brand identity. The Pepsi and Coca-Cola both the companies play intelligently on the reinventing the message and counterattacking the competition on the message.
The cola companies – Pepsi and Coca-Cola – in India have not changed the brand’s core value, which has helped them retain the brand owners’ faith on them. The classic coke case scary result always comes to the rescue of the current generation brand slaves at Pepsi and Coca-Cola and help them not take brand owners casually and playing around with the brand owners emotions.
Braj Mohan Chaturvedi 