Aseem Puri, Asia Brand Manager - Unilever, Delivers Speech at Sydenham Institute, Mumbai

Aseem Puri, Asia Brand Manager - Unilever, Delivers Speech at Sydenham Institute of Management, Mumbai

"Wake up to a great day with Starbucks coffee." As Mr. Aseem Puri, Asia Brand Manager, Laundry Segment, Unilever, delivered his speech to a packed auditorium, statements like this punctuated the three-hour long interactive discussion session on "Building Powerful Brands" at Sydenham Institute of Management, Mumbai, on the 19th of August.

Mr. Aseem Puri, an alumnus of IIFT, Delhi, now a Brand manager at Unilever, is looking after the laundry segment, specially Surf Excel, in Asia.

The discussion centered on the pivotal theme of building powerful brands. Mr. Aseem Puri gave the students an insight into how a brand is conceptualized, nurtured, marketed so as to make it a success story. Students were also given some general knowledge gyaan when questions like - which is the oldest brand in the world - were asked. The whole session touched the theoretical aspects of branding as well as the practical aspects. Mr. Puri emphasized on the definition of a brand as a bundle of benefits that are unique and relevant to the consumers, which leads to a long lasting relationship with them, and made it clear to everyone that any brand survives in the market when it meets the consumer expectations and when it develops the emotional attachment with them. Examples were given of companies like Harley Davidson, Starbucks, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Google and many other winning brands. Golden Rules on building great brands were laid out, where it was dissected into five components - Insight, Benefits, Target, Values, Identity. These five components were shown to be the ingredients in formulating the Proposition, Essence, Positioning, and Associations. Examples of Johny Walker, Ponds and Surf Excel were given in this regard. The finer aspects, like why a Johny Walker is suited to specific segment of customers and why some prefer Kingfisher, were discussed. In the same way, why some prefer Dove and some go for Ponds, were brought out.

As regards to Brand Building, five steps were pointed out, which included: -

Scanning the market,

Finding the position for the needs,

Developing the brand for the chosen position,

Developing and innovate for each position, and

Communication and activation of the brand.

Any company when it wants to succeed needs to win new customers who would add to their customer base. As regards to this, the importance of a brand in such circumstances were given in the form of a graphical chart which showed different aspects like -

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Contributed by -
Rahine Bose,
MBA - Final Year,
Media Committee,
Sydenham Institute of Management, Mumbai.

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