Panel Discussion: Creating and building brands in the digital world

Societally speaking, there has been a sea shift in the basic driving ideology behind marketing, especially advertising. Marketing, has become more about a purpose - what the customer wants can simply no longer be confined to positioning, it has to be about a specific purpose. Mr. Aswath Ganesan, National Strategy Director, Social@Ogilvy, Ogilvy&Mather, pointed, "The desire of all brands is to be long-lasting, like Superman. However, as time progresses, brands have to realise that they have move from an image [positioning] to an idea [purpose]."

Brand creation is not just about the market, it is also about how those brands affect people's lives. In order to create and build sustainiable brands, it is important for the forces behind these brands to understand that the current social media vehicles are an easy doorway into what people want, what their motivations are as opposed to simply having a social media presence. "Social media is more about social sciences of culture than social technology", said Mr. Atulit Saxena, COO-Brands, Futurebrands.

There are a lot of peripheral factors associated with brand building. Brands, in a more digital sense, are what they are perceived as. No brand in the current scenario can survive in its communication without being perceived as valuable, especially by the target audience. Mr. Varun Gupta, Marketing Manager, Dharma Productions, said, "Even with everything else remaining the same, brands survive on their perceived value by the TG."

Brand building is essentially very experiential - brands are built on user experiences. The very process of brand building is continuous and cyclical in nature. Digital media enables marketers to get in touch with the emotions of the customers constantly and evolve the brands with changing times, it is here that the real potential of digital media lies.

This post was written by Jayesh Surisetti, PGP 2013-15. He can be contacted at pgp13082.jayesh@iimraipur.ac.in