Biting the Bullet

One of the most difficult tasks for any
enterprise, large, medium or small, is its quotient over the
marketing front with a long-term branding principle. It is here that
entrepreneurs are faced with the most knotty decision, whether to go
for an all-round branding or limit the company to the 'name
principle' only sticking thoroughly to the traditional marketing
and promotional means. However, when it comes to marketing or
advertising, entrepreneurs unanimously agree to the fact of its
necessity to drive their business but often tend to avoid or
altogether sound sceptical when it comes to creating a brand out of
their company. When it
comes to defining the term branding, the American Marketing
Association (AMA) is of the view that a brand is a 'name, term,
sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them, intended to
identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and
to differentiate them from those of other sellers.' Clearly, it
indicates that banding is not only about reaching out to the target
market outbidding competition, but making the potential clients and
the prospects believe in the enterprise as the 'only solution
provider' or identify the same on a scale of long-term set of
intrinsic values. “In the IT channels scenario, it is often noticed
that a marketing campaign or an advertisement series launched by a
solution provider fails to meet upto his expectations or the campaign
has a very short-term result boosting sales for a short duration.
This is particular in times of the festive season in the retail and
mid-market segments,” said Haresh Motiani of SB Data Systems.
Compared to the solutions scenario, often SPs try to outbid others by
offering a competitive edge like post-sales service, price priority
or a bulk offer while competing for tenders.

However, most often, one
thing they fail to recognize, is when a tender is issued, not only a
competitive edge is needed, but long-term market reputation and the
'perceive principle' often play the determining factor for the
issuer. It is here that branding has come to play a major role in the
realm of SPs. However, often, SPs tend to confuse between a proper
branding strategy and outlook and a simple long-term marketing
strategy. “Although, I am not pretty clear about the exact
definition and the principles of branding, I think that branding is
an absolute necessity for us and we need to have an optimised plan in
place. We will be taking up
voracious marketing and advertising activities soon to gain the
competitive edge,” said MS Rana of Sunic Technologies, responding
to the need of having a branding activity in place. Again, the fact
of a dearth of necessary branding activity remains amidst the tier-2
SI space. Explaining the same, Nitin Shah of Allied Digital said,
“Branding is a key principle in the decision making process. One
should be extremely careful in going for branding because once the
customer or the client starts recognizing a company with a set of
principles, the entrepreneur has to be extra-cautious to maintain the
standards.” “This is the particular risk that continues to plague
the Indian SP business. While for marketing edge, SPs often go for an
aggressive ad campaign, there are few players who are ready to opt
for undertaking the risk,” added Ajaya Kumar of Park Group. One of
the key elements required for successful branding apart from a
generic market research and related activities is the principle of
'segmentation.' Segmentation is about identifying groups of
people/client who respond differently to a particular marketing
activity so that the branding efforts can be focused on the most
attractive prospects. Becoming popular in the mid-1970's,
segmentation rose to prominence as the mass brands were beginning to
give way to 'niche' markets and brand extensions. At the same,
time, media fragmentation and new media research techniques were
providing more precise targeting options. Based on this notion of
segmentation and positioning, companies are identified under many sub
categories and sub-heads which particularly most of the SPs in India
try to avoid. “As there are positive notions about every company
and one succeeds in one sub-heading, the case can be inverse in some
other subheads. For example, those companies working closely with the
NeGP or related government deployments may not find a foray into
retail chain deployments or an enterprise focussing over networking
tools in the healthcare
vertical may not win a single government tender,” said MP Kini of
Kinfotech. Thus the question arises, does the SP community need any
branding principle at all?

As a mixed response, Shah is of the
view that branding proposal is a careful consideration and decision
over it needs to be taken at the right time when the company is
confident enough of creating as well as retaining its set of
principles, values, proposition, positioning and ready for the
'take-off stage.' Although the decision over branding is crucial
and needs a lot of dedicated time and effort with the correct set of
marketing coordination and plan, most of the SPs today feel that
branding is an essential component to their survival and growth
in the market.