Jonathan Copulsky has been with Deloitte for almost 30 years and has dedicated himself to developing and growing profitable customer relationships. He also chairs Deloitte Consulting’s Marketing Council. Early this year, he released his new book, Brand Resilience: Managing Risk and Recovery in a High-Speed World which talks about the crucial need for brand defence and brand resilience in today’s world. He was in India recently to speak at the World Brand Congress. FE ‘s Payal Khandelwal caught up with him to know more about his book, the concepts of brand resilience and brand saboteurs, the boon and bane that social media is and the most important challenges for today’s marketers. Edited excerpts:
You have often said that marketing is no longer about building the brand. It is about brand defense. Could you elaborate on that?
The argument that we make in the book is not that people should abandon building the brand but they should compliment the activities around brand building with activities around defending the brand. The book talks about what kind of activities people can take to defend themselves against brand saboteurs-individuals or organisations who either deliberately or unintentionally can hurt the brand. We teach them about putting defences in place so that all the hard work that companies have invested in brand building doesn’t get waste.
What are the broad categories that brand saboteurs can be divided into?
In the book, we talk about people who are inside your borders which include employees, senior executives, value chain partners, providers or just general suppliers; all those who have certain affinity towards the brand. They could be brand saboteurs. On the outside, possible saboteurs could be customers, competitors, individuals who write on blogs or newspaper reporters, and sometimes they could be third party organisations.
On the outside, possible saboteurs could be customers, competitors, individuals who write on blogs or newspaper reporters, and sometimes they could be third party organisations.
Does brand resilience have to be proactive?
I usually use the metaphor of a burning house ? when your house is burning down, you call the fire department. That, to me, is what often happens in crisis management. I think most companies at this point have reasonably good crisis management programmes. A number of PR agencies
and ad agencies have the ability to deal
with crisis management. What we talk about in the book is that you certainly need to do that but this is more about planning and preparations so that you are ready to deal with the situation or alternatively, be pre-emptive so that the crisis never happens.
In today’s economic scenario, what are the most important challenges for marketers?
Challenges are different in different markets. We, in the US , look at India and say that there may be economic challenges but they are small and puny as compared to the challenges in the US . For marketers outside India , the challenge is how to tap into local emerging markets such as India , China , etc., and for marketers in emerging markets such as India , the challenge is how to build strong brands which they can defend against global brands. One of the other challenges is recognizing the evolution of social media, particularly with mobile devices. Another challenge is how to balance this with traditional media.
How do you pull consumers into introducing them to new innovative ideas, is also a challenge. The lifeblood of some of the brands is the next big idea. How do you develop those? The big opportunity for innovation is in finding products to sell to consumers, which often means the low end of the market. So for a number of companies, not in India , the opportunity is to develop devices and products where the economics is interesting in terms of being more efficient and affordable. For example, for products such as Nano, my prediction is that some version at some point time would come to more developed countries.