Leo Burnett India MD Arvind Sharma

Global recession and changing brand management techniques have contributed to the setting up of a Brand Belief System by Leo Burnett India. The new concept is intended to get more consumers by converting them into brand loyalists by winning their belief in the product.

The agency is investing Rs 20 million over the next six months to implement the system in the country, says MD Arvind Sharma. In addition to training and sensitising of the agency staff to the new system, the investment will cover a minority strategic stake in a new consumer research agency. The agency - Monitoring & Research Systems (MaRS) has been promoted by Raghu Roy, former president of ORG-Marg.

While the concept of Brand Belief has been developed by Leo Burnett over the last three and a half years, MaRS has been working with the Burnett Chicago team to validate their new research tool, Brand Stock, for the Indian market. According to Roy, Brand Stock measures a completely new set of parameters, so far in the domain of 'soft-issues' and could revolutionise the way clients and agencies manage brands. MaRS, says Roy, will be different from traditional consumer research agencies in that it will keep up with changing research requirements of clients and will have a large number of monitoring systems built into it as well.

The Brand Belief System envisages putting the consumer at the center of a campaign, rather than treating him as the end target of an ad, says Sharma. "The only way brands can get consumers to stay tuned in to brands' commercial messages is by making a believer out of them", says national director, brand planning, Rajeev Sharma. Quoting global studies, Asia Pacific Regional Planning director John Woodward says a five per cent increase in consumer retention can result in a 25 per cent increase in profits and often even a 100 per cent growth rate.

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