Eye2Eye - Startups : Promote brands or Product || Aditya Kansal & Tejal Sinkar || IIM Shillong & Welingkar, Mumbai || August 2015 edition

Startups should Promote Brand  -  Aditya Kansal, IIM Shillong

What is it that you remember after you visit McDonalds, is it the product range or the brand name of burger giant. It’s the name McDonald’s right. That’s the power of a brand. Now considering today’s vibrant world with new startups coming each day you need to carve out a niche for yourself and the way to go for it is through branding. It’s the brand which sticks to the mind of the people. Products produced by a brand are an important, but they need to be aligned with the image of the organization and the branding is the perfect route to success for a new product in the market. In today’s market people associate each product with the value they would get by acquiring that product, branding is that one thing that multiplies value manifold. You need to communicate what you stand for, what you offer and for that the brand is the perfect platform. For instance consider UBER, it offers a product that is a cab sharing service. Now that’s not the complete product range for Uber. They have many specialized services which Uber represents but if it only promotes its products it might not be able to bring the customers onboard. The products are important, no doubt about that but what’s more important is to be known to people and people recall by brands. Take a moment and think, what is it that you remember more, the brands or the products (again by their brand name). So for startups who want to grow need to build a brand for themselves so that people recall them and use their services and products over and over again. In the end it’s the brand what matters to the customer so it’s of utmost importance for startups to create a niche for themselves and build an iconic brand.

Startups should Promote Product -  Tejal Sinkar, Welingkar, Mumbai

The trend of start-ups is picking up in India and is expected to get much
more competitive in the upcoming years. Keeping this trend in mind all the start-ups need a solid marketing campaign in order to gain a strong consumer base. It puts all the start-ups in a dilemma whether they should promote their brand or their product? Before we get into solving this dilemma let us first understand the difference between a brand and a product. A brand is a unique sign, symbol, words, or a combination of these, employed in creating an image and differentiating it from its competitors. Over time, this image becomes associated with a level of credibility, quality and satisfaction in the consumers mind. A product is a good or a service created to serve a need or satisfy a want. These definitions clearly indicate that a brand differentiates a product from its competitors. For a start-up one should ideally promote its product. Let the consumers know what your product is, how different it is from its competitors and the most importantly how does it satisfy their want or need. After a period of time when people have tried your product, made repeat purchases and became your loyal consumers you can then promote your brand. Since by then people know what your brand offers to them. If you start directly by promoting the brand your prospective consumers wouldn’t really know what do you do as a brand? You should also keep in mind “the continuity of positioning” while promoting your product or brand. The consumers associate your product or brand with that positioning and changing it would mean losing a large chunk of consumers. If you take these points into consideration and map a marketing strategy it would hit the bull’s eye.