Spark aims to help you grow brands in an increasingly competitive, market place. It is rich in case-studies of successful global brands like Dove, McDonald’s and Vicks VapoRub, and replete with brainstorming tips and catchy acronyms for developing successful brand campaigns with ad agencies.

1. Spark aims to help you grow brands
in an increasingly competitive,
market place. Rich in case studies,
its written by marketing expert
Paddy Rangappa.
(Paddy is an alumnus of IIM,
Ahmedabad, and has worked in
marketing for more than twenty-six
years.)
2017

2. What is Spark all about?
Learn
o How to find insights for your
brand
o How to use them to develop
powerful advertising
It has three parts:
1. Role of insights and advertising
in brand growth
2. Develop insights through a
structured step-by-step process
3. Leveraging these insights in
powerful advertising

3. Part 1
The Insight to Growing Brands

4. Brand Growth: Challenging
In response marketers are moving away from classical/ mass
advertising, believing that the route to brand growth is loyalty,
retention, e-commerce and brand engagement.
But this belief is wrong! So basing decisions on it is also wrong.
Challenges brands face today -
Highly competitive markets
Precarious economic
conditions.
Busy consumers who spend a
lot of time engaging with the
digital medium.

5. Consumers and Brands: (Myth and) Reality
 With the digital revolution, mass marketing is NOT dying.
 E-commerce, while necessary, is NOT a substitute for marketing: it’s
a distribution play
 Making an emotional connection builds mental availability which is
key to brand growth
 Brand growth CANNOT come by
increasing usage or focusing on loyal
consumers
 Temporary price-discount promotions
DON’T attract non-users who generate
incremental long-term retail sales.

6. Mental Availability and Insights:
The Nuts and Bolts of Brand Growth
It’s important to identify the right physical
assets (logo, colours and so on) through
quantitative consumer research.
While a new innovation can catch consumers’
interest through its functional benefit, an
established brand in a competitive category
needs to rely on making a subtle emotional
connection.
Finding the right consumer insight that
provides a link to the category is a powerful
way to make that emotional connection.

7. The right insight helped Goodyear tyres (“When I’m driving my child’s
life is in my hands”) and Omo/ Surf (“Dirt is good for children to
develop fully”) make a more memorable appeal to consumers.
Developing brilliant advertising requires CRAFT: conviction, resources,
approach, foundation and teamwork.
Mental Availability and Insights:
The Nuts and Bolts of Brand Growth

8. Part 2
The Insight to Connecting with
Consumers

9. Deconstructing Insights:
The Power of a Human Revelation
Finding the right insight―an emotional human revelation relevant to
the category—is critical to making an emotional connection with
the consumer (and thereby building mental availability)
McDonald’s and Dove are two brands that have recognized and
exploited the power of insights. One of McDonald’s UK’s charming
ads is based on the insight “In times of stress, we seek comfort in
the familiar” and Dove’s entire brand strategy is based on the
insight “Many women don’t consider themselves beautiful because
of the false definition of beauty propagated by other brands (and
therefore society)”

10. Do Insights Matter in Today’s Digital World?:
The New Conundrum
In the digital age, customers today are ESCAPE-ing all the time—
engaging, shopping, creating, ascertaining, playing, entertaining.

11. Do Insights Matter in Today’s Digital World?:
The New Conundrum
To capture today’s consumer’s attention and increase the brand’s
mental availability, insights are particularly important.
The McDonald's brand was built by focusing on the insight “In their
hectic lives, people are looking for easy conveniences everyday”
and offering quick, tasty, food at great value nearby. More recently
Uber is leveraging the same insight by providing the easiest to use
transport system. And Apple focused on the insight “People love
technology but find it intimidating” by making intuitive, easy-to-use
technology products.

12. Busting Common Myths:
A Measured Understanding of Insights
 Insights are important not just for both
television advertising but for all creative
campaigns, including digital ones.
 The right insight can shape a differentiating,
long-term brand strategy.
 Big brands have built themselves by staying true to one insight for
many years.
 An insight does not necessarily reflect a deep understanding of the
consumer psyche. It could be a simple observation of human
behaviour.
 An insight need not highlight a consumer problem. It can be a
joyful, life-affirming statement!

13. 5 Steps to Developing Insights
Any brand can develop meaningful
insights by following a rigorous five-
step process:
1. Articulating the business challenge
2. Compiling all the data relevant to this
challenge (internal and external)
3. Distilling the data into useful ‘nuggets
of knowledge’
4. Writing insights based on these
‘nuggets of knowledge’
5. Building full-fledged action plans
based on the insights
Brainstorming begins at step 3!

14. Part 3
Creativity That Drives Brand Growth

15. Insight-driven Advertising and Brand Building:
The Growth Guarantor
 Short-term promotions, especially
price discounts, do not help
brands grow sales in the long-
term.
 Further, short-term promotions
erode profits.
 Good advertising that is based on
strong insights—relevant, visual
and likeable—can lead to long-term
growth.

16. The Craft of CRAFT:
A Five-pronged Model
 The CRAFT model covers conviction,
resources, approach, foundation and
teamwork.
 Both leaders and organizations can
benefit from this approach.
 Following the principles of CRAFT has
made leaders like Sir Alex Ferguson,
manager of the Manchester United
Football Club for 26 years, so successful!
 Marketing practitioners can learn a lot
about CRAFT in action from P&G.

17. CRAFT’s Conviction:
The Cornerstone of Creative Excellence
The first tenet of CRAFT is conviction.
You have to believe it in its power to connect with consumers.
Click on the image above to watch the ad on youtube.
(you would need an internet connection to view this)

18. CRAFT’s Approach:
Getting the Process Right
Every company should follow a formal
creative development process that
includes:
– Identifying the business challenge
– Developing the insight
– Writing the creative brief
– Evaluating the creative idea
– Executing the campaign
– Measuring results

19. CRAFT’s Approach:
Getting the Process Right
For the process of creative
development, there are three
vital ingredients:
– Manage time: Between strategy
and implementation.
– Hop and stay on: Be a part of the
process from beginning to end.
– Ensure the process suits your
business.

20. CRAFT’s Foundation I:
Insight-driven Briefs
To evaluating a creative presentation from
the agency:
– Understand the creative idea and your
gut reaction to it.
– Use the 4E framework to evaluate the
idea— effectiveness, engagement,
execute-ability and extension.
– Follow three key principles while
giving feedback:
A) Put yourself in the receiver’s shoes.
B) Avoid the agency ‘dread list’.
C) Use the brief as a springboard, not
a filter.

21. CRAFT’s Teamwork:
The Glue That Binds
A solid partnership between client and agency is critical for developing
consistently good advertising and for brand building.
The four key elements of this teamwork are trust, respect, the right
attitude and friendship.

22. CRAFT’s Resources:
You Get What You Put In
 Clients get the advertising they deserve!
 Great clients display courage and take responsibility; trust the
agency; and don't dictate the creative.

23. A Few Words in Parting
 Don’t think of digital marketing as
something detached from general
marketing. Focus on getting the
attention of today’s digitally-
immersed, ESCAPE-ing consumers.
 Look carefully at the data in your
market before deciding how much to
advertise in traditional and digital
media. Evaluate reach, frequency and
cost efficiency, focused on the target
audience.

24. A Few Words in Parting
 Pursue e-commerce and SEO,
but not at the expense of
insight-driven marketing and
advertising.
 Go ahead and invest in an app
that delivers an everyday utility,
but fund it correctly. (For
example, a delivery or e-
commerce app should be part of
the sales or distribution budget.)

25. Appendix: an excerpt from the book
Myth #1: Insights have a role only in television advertising
In March 2013, Coca-Cola performed an experiment called ‘Small
World Machines’.
They installed 2 hi-tech vending machines in crowded malls, one in
Lahore and another in New Delhi. Words on its 3D screen in India
said ‘make a friend in Pakistan’ and vice a versa. When you
approached the screen, through the glass you could see the
person approaching it in the other county.
Instructions on the screen then urged you interact by tracing a
smiley face or peace sign, to dance, to share a Coke… and in the
end, to simply connect as humans do.

26. The activation ran for three days and resulted in more than 10,000
cans of Coca-Cola being consumed. But more important, it
created a mood of friendship and optimism in the people who
participated and, in over three million others who have
watched it on YouTube.
One of the participants in Pakistan said (and I translate), ‘It’s great
to connect with the average Indian who probably knows
nothing about the average Pakistani’.
Why did this activation resonate so strongly with people? Because
it was based on a very powerful insight: What unites people is
stronger and more meaningful than what separates them.

27. Get your copy of Spark here
amzn.to/2rm9dEY