FCB Group unveils Brand Relationship Style Monitor India study

FCB Group unveils Brand Relationship Style Monitor India study

MUMBAI: Cogito Consulting, the brand consulting division of the FCB Group shared key findings from the Brand Relationship Style Monitor Study at a seminar attended by well over 50 marketers and media persons in Mumbai today.

The Brand Relationship Style Monitor (BRSM) tries to understand the nature and intensity of the relationships between a brand and its customers, guiding relational branding and providing insight into how to improve these relationships, brand loyalty and profitability.

 
 

The Brand Relationship Style Monitor has been developed by FCB Worldwide through an extensive study across 342 brands and 45 categories in 7 countries, states an official release. It took over two years and a multi-million dollar investment for the model to be developed.

A rich database of around 163,000 brand customer relationships have been examined to provide insight to several global majors. The studies were conducted in Brazil, mainland China, Germany, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and the U.S. Some of the categories that threw remarkable worldwide insights through the BRSM were packaged goods, food & beverages, computers, communications, financial services, automobiles, healthcare, toys, fashion and apparels and airlines, the release adds.

 

 

The Relationship Monitor model consists of two basic components: A set of 13 relational dimensions connecting customers to brands and a set of 7 relational styles describing the nature of customer-brand relationships

The BRSM in India was done across 1125 customers (users of brands) and revealed close to 2400 brand mapping scores. Done across two cities, the study took over 12 months to develop and fine tune, given the complexities of the Indian market. The initial product categories of the study included automobiles, consumer durables, telecom and financial products.

 

 

FCB Ulka Advertising Mumbai ED & CEO M.G.Parameswaran reckons "The BRSM will be a very powerful tool for marketers to have in their quiver for great brand strategies."

Cogito Consulting COO Kinjal Medh who presented the findings opined that "Indian consumers are very different from the rest of the world, though a bit like consumers in Brazil. Indian consumers tend to gravitate to the two ends of the BRSM namely Consumers in a ‘Perfect Fit‘ relationship with their brands as also consumers in ‘Price- Based‘ equations with their brands. Both styles being highly indicative of the seriousness with which consumers here seek brands, being fairly high involved decisions at the same time being highly price-value conscious ."

Dorab Sopariwala, an eminent Marketing Consultant, said "It is very a useful tool and can be used in conjunction with other brand equity measures".

Brands in categories such as telecom and consumer durables have strong skews towards the ‘Follow-the-leader‘ relationship style. The study also revealed that a few brands among financial products suffer on very important relationship styles such as ‘caring‘ and ‘reliant‘. The BRSM also highlights certain ‘diagnostic‘ measures that can be used for brands to move up the relationship ladder, for better brand equity.

Cogito Consulting is the brand consulting division of the FCB Group. The FCB Group in India comprises of FCB Ulka Advertising, Lodestar Media, FCB Ulka Interactive, FCB Ulka Healthcare, Nebula Films, Cygnus PR, Interface Communications and Procyon Graphics.