Branding through means of mass communication was something unheard for companies primarily in B-2-B transactions. Their limited and almost predefined customer base made it unsuitable and unworthy to resort to such exercise. Rather their advertising campaigns were limited to having stalls in ‘meets’, promotions at related conferences, ads in business magazines and pink dailies and direct mailing to selected potential customers. Nothing much has changed till date. However, suddenly there have been quite a few advertisements of some B-2-B transactional corporates. Though there aren’t pouring cats and dogs at the time, they are significant enough to indicate a trend, if not to reach a conclusion. Birla Group ads have been quite eminent across channels since last few months. Recently, Jaypee group and HCL are flooding the channels. (Though I personally find HCL’s adv. very unnerving. There is a thin line between self esteem and ego, and the commercial to a greater extent tends to be on the wrong side of the line ). L&T’s Imagineering campaign posters had occupied significant space in the print media and on hoarding in metro cities, though they haven’t raided the TV media after their highly emotional ‘ yeh mere papa ne banaya hai’ campaign. There are many other corporates who have resorted to such mass communication in the past one year. But in terms of creativeness, freshness of concept and subtly putting the message across, I think Accenture steals the show.
The core question for crore is then, why are companies involved in pure B-2-B transactions resorting to such full scale public advertising and that too through means of mass communication. Having worked on detailed financials of two major corporates purely in B-2-B transactions, I can safely assert that the proportion of advertising expenses to sales weren’t more than a quarter of a percent about a couple of years back. The same I assume would traditionally be the trend across all sectors and B-2-B companies. May be, the brand awakening and brand building is going to set things to change. However, such corporates aren’t much benefited by brand building if their ads are being viewed by non target customers. Their advertising and marketing campaigns were always deeply influenced by segmentation theory and would remain the same for years to come.
A closer look at the corporates meting out these ads would make you understand that almost all of this have a diverse customer base across sectors, and it would therefore not be absolutely out of place to use mass advertising as a tool to open up new potential customers. Though there are corporates purely in B-2-B transactions, which have thought otherwise. No means to know, whether they are more wise.
However, I feel the real reason lies somewhere else. A booming economy and a talent crunch have resorted corporates to vie for the available talent. A better branded company would find it easier to retain and attract people, other things (i.e. Location, salary, profile, company size) being same or equivalent. People would prefer working with say, Punj Lloyd (their adv. Stinks) than with Patel Engineering (nearly same sized companies). A brand name of a company also commands more loyalty from its employees.
A subordinate reason may be the effect a brand recognization of an organization has on its share price. (For its assumed that brand recognization leads to sustained monetary benefits in the long run). In the race to uphold shareholders’ wealth, several indirect measures are being resorted to ( and why not !) and addressing masses through advertising could be one of the motives.
The core question for crore is then, why are companies involved in pure B-2-B transactions resorting to such full scale public advertising and that too through means of mass communication. Having worked on detailed financials of two major corporates purely in B-2-B transactions, I can safely assert that the proportion of advertising expenses to sales weren’t more than a quarter of a percent about a couple of years back. The same I assume would traditionally be the trend across all sectors and B-2-B companies. May be, the brand awakening and brand building is going to set things to change. However, such corporates aren’t much benefited by brand building if their ads are being viewed by non target customers. Their advertising and marketing campaigns were always deeply influenced by segmentation theory and would remain the same for years to come.
A closer look at the corporates meting out these ads would make you understand that almost all of this have a diverse customer base across sectors, and it would therefore not be absolutely out of place to use mass advertising as a tool to open up new potential customers. Though there are corporates purely in B-2-B transactions, which have thought otherwise. No means to know, whether they are more wise.
However, I feel the real reason lies somewhere else. A booming economy and a talent crunch have resorted corporates to vie for the available talent. A better branded company would find it easier to retain and attract people, other things (i.e. Location, salary, profile, company size) being same or equivalent. People would prefer working with say, Punj Lloyd (their adv. Stinks) than with Patel Engineering (nearly same sized companies). A brand name of a company also commands more loyalty from its employees.
A subordinate reason may be the effect a brand recognization of an organization has on its share price. (For its assumed that brand recognization leads to sustained monetary benefits in the long run). In the race to uphold shareholders’ wealth, several indirect measures are being resorted to ( and why not !) and addressing masses through advertising could be one of the motives.
Anyways, how successful this advertising campaigns have been would not be very discernible. So, just admire Tiger Woods forgetting to consider the rotation of ball(Accenture), enjoy the cuteness of the little boy impressing his baby 'girlfriend'. by operating the Hydro Plant(Jaypee) and helplessly watch the idiotic 'computer guy' talking crap till the innocous investment banker decides to buy out his firm (HCL). :)
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