Brand Makeover: Refresh or Rebrand?

A brand can never be a static entity. Changes in external environment, including but not limited to competition, as well as shift in consumer behaviour make it imperative for companies to keep revisiting the brand, in particular, its strength and relevance in time and day. The change however, can sometimes be from within as well. A firm may choose to change its vision and mission, re-look at its portfolio or expand in different market(s) and consumer segment(s). Obviously, an existing brand (and its associated attributes like identity, essence and promise) may fall short of meeting the expectations of the changing world in and around.

Evolution of the Coca Cola Visual Identity over the years

There are multiple ways in which a brand can be made-over to represent its new-found vision and aspiration. This post looks at two such makeover strategies in particular - Rebranding and Brand Refresh, also because these are probably the most misunderstood and incorrectly interchanged terms.

To understand the two terms clearly, let’s take a short caselet.

There are three brands – Air, Earth and Water. All the three brands cater to young audience between ages 18-35 years and are about 10 years old now. Air and Earth are facing some troubles in their sales cycles as well as customer retention and loyalty scores.

Executives from ‘Air’ found out that their Target Group (TG) isn’t able to relate to the brand anymore. The TG has attributed this disconnect to its visual identity (Logo, theme, colour, design). The target audience claimed that the brand didn’t convey a youthful personality and hence has resulted in eroded association and attachment of the customers towards the brand. It felt that the brand has not kept up with time and has remained stagnant in terms of its expression and what it stands for. Conclusion- The brand isn’t preferred by its TG  for its loss of appeal.  

‘Earth’s executive had a worse reckoning with their TG. The customers claimed that they do not associate with the brand anymore and it is for their parents instead. They further added that the competitor has climbed up the ladder in terms of customer understanding, offerings, communication, engagement and even futuristic concepts for them. On the other hand, ‘Earth' is still stuck with the same Brand Identity and older form of communications. 

Conclusion- The brand is ‘there’, but ‘not there’ for its TG ("Not for me").

‘Water’, was in a different boat altogether. Having done well in existing target market for its products, it now aims to appeal to a much larger segment albeit with a different set of products under its current brand. However, it understands that its current brand identity and messaging will not be able to appeal to multiple segments effectively. So, the brand needs to be acceptable to multiple markets and segments.

Hence, what ‘Air’ needs is a facelift. A visual identity make-up which will make it more appealing to its target audience. The values and vision does not change, but the focus is only on cosmetic changes that would make the brand more appealing and relevant to the TG. ‘Air’ needs a Brand Refresh.

Britannia (2018)

However, it is not necessary that only those companies, which face issues as mentioned above go for Brand Refresh. Brand Refresh is often used as a routine strategy by some companies just to maintain a new visual identity that gives them a contemporary status in the target audience to avoid brand fatigue.

Godrej (2008)

Some of the examples of Brand Refresh globally are Google, Verizon, and Starbucks. Back home, Britannia, Godrej, Star TV and HUL have adopted a simple Brand Refresh strategy. While there may have been associated communication for their brand refresh launch, these were mostly cosmetic changes to be contemporary. 

‘Earth’ and ‘Water’ have bigger problem and opportunity respectively at their hands though. They requires much more than a cosmetic retouching, something which is deeper and affects the core and values of the brand. The change would attempt to make the brand relevant, not just by its visual identity, but with its newly framed (or communicated) brand promise and even culture to the customers. These brands will see a structural change in how they look at the customers, what the brand will stand for and what does it intend to be for its customers. ‘Earth’ and ‘Water’ need Rebranding.

India Post (2008)

Rebranding can occur with or without any name, design or logo change (unlike Brand Refresh). Some of the examples of Rebranding globally are Old Spice (in 2010), Apple (post 1997 when Steve Jobs took over) and Walmart (From “"Always Low Prices," to "Save Money. Live Better" in 2007).  In India, companies like Airtel (To tap a larger audience through their internet services), Hero (Post split from Honda in 2011), India Post (“Giving wings to your dreams” campaign trying to tap youth) and Incredible India(Show India in a different light) have taken the Rebranding route for their respective brands.

An interesting perspective on Rebranding is presented by the 2018 winner of REBRAND  GLOBAL 100 AWARDS, Brand Bhutan. The video shows how a tiny hillock nation is trying to rebrand itself for its products and services, a shift from its earlier branding of a scenic and spiritual country. This way, one unified, overarching country brand has been  developed for Bhutan. Click for more details on the Rebranding campaign -  Brand Bhutan.
  

Finally, Rebranding and Brand Refresh are brand makeover strategies but should not be confused as being one and the same. Brand Refresh is a cosmetic change which essentially deals with the look and feel of the visual identity of a brand. It does not look at structural and architectural changes of the brand and does not affect its brand promise (at least not explicitly). Rebranding on the other hand is much deeper. A Rebranding strategy cannot be undertaken without making structural changes to the brand. It also leads to subtle changes in brand promise and brand identity, which are propagated down to the target audience through cues and messages, implicit as well as explicit.

In the next post, we'd look at what are the other brand makeover strategies and when to use which one?

LIC and Fair & Lovely: Understanding Brand Identity the Kapferer’s way

J. Kapferer in 1986 introduced the Brand Identity Prism to explain the facets of a brand’s identity that play an important role in defining a brand. However, like many theoretical concepts in Marketing, this interesting and multi-faceted model too has been reduced to just another model to read up and then forget. This post tries simplify the model to make it easy to apply Kapferer’s model on any given brand.

But before that we need to understand the difference between two much misunderstood terms – Brand Identity and Brand Positioning. Simply put, Brand Identity specifies a brand’s uniqueness and value, in isolation from competition, while Brand positioning is with respect to the competition (reflecting differentiation vis a vis competition). It is hence safe to say that while Brand Identity is inward-looking (having influence on, and is influenced by, external factors), Brand Positioning is an outward looking concept. So while Brand Identity explains – “Who I am”, Brand Positioning tries to answer – “Why pick me?”.

Coming back to Kapferer’s Brand Identity Prism, It can be understood using two important perspectives. First, from the sender’s side (Brand), it is Identity, which is put forth by the Brand as – “Who I am?”. Second, from the receiver’s side (Customer), it is Brand Image, which is basically, what do the customers feel about the brand. Obviously, Identity precedes Image. The Brand Identity Prism represents six facets of a Brand’s Identity which shows the brand’s tangible as well as intangible characteristics, and draws upon, on the brand’s roots and heritage.

Fig 1: Kapferer's Brand Identity Prism

Brand Identity Prism (Fig 1) is based on the concept that for a brand to become “intimate” to a customer, it must have a unique and impressionable appearance, and a strong character that stems out of inner inspiration and values. The brand should be able to seamlessly bond with the customers, offering them a sense of belongingness, oneness and inspiration. These facet need a little more explanation to set the tone of the applicability –

The first two facets of the prism, Physique and Personality, forms the identity that the brands conveys.

• Physique

Physique is both the brand’s backbone and its tangible value. For example, the colour red and the shape of the bottle contributes to the physique of Brand Coke.

• Personality

A brand, just like humans has a character. It is built over time and reflected in what the brand does. Communication, its tone, its promise and the perceived quality, all contribute to the brand’s personality. Kapferer defines 15 personality traits that could be attributed to a brand as – Dynamic, Creative, Optimistic, Prudent, Hard, Cold, Caring, Rational, Generous, Empathetic, Close, Elegant, Class, Serene, Calm. Coke can be attributed as Caring and Generous due to its ‘Share Happiness’

The next two, or the central facets of the prism, Culture and Relationship, connect the identity (what does the brand want to project) and image (what perception does the customer has about the brand).

• Culture

A brand is born of a culture. Culture essentially means the set of values that creates the ambition and aspiration of the brand.  It can be understood as a set of basic principles governing the brand and its communication. Coca-Cola, for example, stands for the American culture and lifestyle. .

• Relationship

The strength of a brand basically reflects the strength of a relationship between the brand and its customer. Relationship as a facet of Brand Identity prism reflects the relationship which the brand has with its customers. So when coke says “open happiness”, the brand is communicating about happiness and the relationship it conveys to its customers is to be happy. It does that by cleverly placing Coke in those happy moments.

Finally, the Brand Image is the customer’s view about the brand. This is represented by the Reflection and Self-image.

• Reflection

This shows who the people think are the brand’s client. Essentially, who the people think, is the brand for? So Reflection for Brand Coke means who do people think are the customers of coke or who follow coke? This means that consumers use the brand identity propagated by the brand, to associate it with people, who they think are most likely to be using this brand. So for Coke, people would think that the Coke’s customers will be young, cheerful and adventurous people.

• Self-image

It is what customers believe the brand would make them feel upon using it. Unlike Reflection, which is about “People who use this brand are…” self-image is about “This brand makes ME feel…” It essentially is juxtaposition of the brand on yourself and how does it make you feel.

In the prism, the flow is from top to bottom, where the proposed identity (Physique (Tangible & Exterior) and Personality (Personified Brand) is cascaded down to Brand-image (Reflection (“Those who use this brand are…”) and Self-image (“When I use this brand I feel like…)), with the help of a link created through Relationship (Bond between brand and customer) and Culture (Values and Principles that built the brand).

Below is the representation of two brands in the Kapferer’s Brand Identity Prism (Fig 2- LIC, Fig 3 - Fair & Lovely).

Fig 2: Kapferer's Brand Identity Prism for LIC

Fig 3: Kapferer's Brand Identity Prism for Fair & Lovely

Kapferer's Prism can help in identifying what is self-image the brand is able to create for the customer and is that in line with what the brands wants to convey? In case of gap, the brand will need to rework on its physique and personality while keeping close touch with its culture and improving relationship with its customers.

The utility of Kapferer’s model can be many, but it is restricted because the model is not clearly understood by many. Once the model is formed by appropriately mapping the aspects of brands (through facets of Brand Identity Prism), it can lead to further analysis like –

• Consumer Perception Analysis
• Consumer Motivation Analysis
• Communication strength and effectiveness
• Product attribute acceptance among customers
• Brand Identity up-gradation and Brand Positioning

Finally, Kapferer’s Prism was made with specific objectives of creating, managing and leveraging Brand Identities, and leading to the right Brand Positioning for the brands, and remains relevant even today after three decades since it was proposed first by the author.

Brand Valuation by Royalty Relief Method

Top-10 Most Valuable Brands

BrandFinance released it Global Brand Value report in February 2018. Some of the highlights from the reports are –

• At US$150.8 billion in Brand Value, Amazon is the world’s most valuable brand ahead of Apple and Google in the report
• Apple’s diversification challenges are taking a toll on its Brand Value
• Technology brands rule the roost with all Top-5 brands in Brand Value table are from technology sectors
• The growth of Chinese brands has been phenomenal. Since 2008, China’s share of global brand value has increased from 3% to 15%, growing to US$911.5 billion in 2018

This posts’s focus is to de-mystify the approach adopted by BrandFinance to come to the Brand Value figures of the brands in question.

The approach, also known as ‘Relief from Royalty’ is based on a notion.

Imagine that a brand holding company (For example, Nestle) owns the brand (Maggi) and decides to license the brand to a different operating company (ABC Food Products). This means that Nestle decides, not to sell the brand Maggi itself but to license ABC Food Products to sell the brand. So, ABC Food products will be able to use all the elements related to brand Maggi and generate revenue out of the sale of Maggi.

Now, obviously in return Nestle would expect a revenue stream from ABC Food Products. This revenue stream would be called as ‘Royalty’ which ABC Food Products will pay to Nestle for using brand Maggi for its own profits. This Royalty value is notional, as the value of brand is more conceptual than actual cash-flow at that time (since the revenue will only start coming in future and that too cannot be accurately estimated).

This notional price paid by ABC Food Products (called, the operating company) to Nestle (called, the brand company) is expressed as ‘Royalty Rate’.

Since the revenue made by ABC Food Products by selling brand Maggi is going to be realized only in future, the estimated revenue stream for future must be calculated and should eventually be expressed in its present value form. This is because the value of the brand (Maggi) is to be estimated at present. To find the present value of revenue stream/cash-flow in future, the Net Present Value (NPV) method is used after estimating the future revenue stream or cash flow.

The Net Present Value (NPV), thus found based on all forecasted royalties, represents the value of the brand to the business.

Step by Step Process given by BrandFinance for calculation under Royalty Relief method.

• Obtain Brand specific Financial data
• Annual Revenue, Annual Profits and Profitability (Ex. For Maggi)

• Estimate the demand of the product category and individual Brands including your own Brand as well as the competitor Brands
• Demand Estimation for Instant Noodles, and individual demand estimation for Maggi, Sunfeast Yippi, Top-Ramen and Patanjali noodles
• Estimate the future cash-flow or revenue stream for the brand based on the financial data and category and brand demand
• Future Revenue and profits estimation for the brand
• Let’s say this comes to $ 20 bn (Absolute value, without considering the year of realization).                 

•  Establish the notional Royalty Rate for each brand
• Royalty Rate = (Brand Strength Index) x (Royalty Range)
• Brand Strength Index – A score on a scale of 1-100 based on:
• Marketing Investment – Investment towards brand building in terms of advertising etc.
• Stakeholder Equity – Brand Perception among various stakeholders including the Brand owners, marketing managers, company employees, channel partners and most importantly the customers
• Business Performance – Financial measures representing the status of the brand in terms of price strength, sales volume and trade leverage
• Hypothetically, let’s say this comes to 80.
• Royalty Range – A range of percentage value for a given industry/segment (For Ex. Instant noodles segment) which represents what is importance of a brand for a customer in that industry
• Premium and Luxury (luxury watches, expensive jewelry etc) segments have a high brand importance for customers and hence have a higher Royalty Range
• Commoditised or low-risk segments (steel, staple food products etc.) have lower brand importance due to minimum differentiation and hence lower Royalty Range
• Hypothetically, let’s say this comes to 20%.
• Hence, Royalty Rate = 80 x 20% = 16% (This is Royalty Rate that represents that this percentage of sales for the Brand comes due to its Brand Name)
• Calculate the notional future royalty income stream for each brand.
• Based on the Royalty Rate Calculated, arrive at a revenue portion which is realized due to the brand value 
• Based on Future Cashflow and Royalty Rate, this comes to  $ 3.2 bn (Check table below)

                                         

Estimated Future Cash-flows in $ bn with and without Royalty Rates

• Discount this future Royalty stream to arrive at a Net Present Value (NPV)
• NPV is calculated based on the discounted rate (assumed 6%). In this case, the NPV is calculated $ 2.38 bn

• This is adjudged as the Brand Value of the brand, in our example, for  Maggi.
• Brand Value of Maggi comes to $ 2.38 bn (Based on hypothetical figures taken for Future Sales, Royalty Range and Brand Strength Index, for understanding purpose only)

Clearly, Royalty Relief technique is not only one of the easier techniques for Brand Valuation, it is also a good estimate of brand value since it takes into consideration, the brand’s strength, its financial performance, competitor standing and also its future revenue estimates. Brand strength also brings in the factors like how much the company is spending on the brand building efforts, what is the equity or engagement of the stakeholders with the brand and the actual business performance.

While, this approach does not take into consideration the influence of competitor brands in the future sales and the effectiveness of the marketing spends for brand building, which may have an adverse effect on the calculation of Brand Value, Royalty Relief is still, a simple to understand as well as implement method, to calculate Brand Value for any given brand.

Cheers,

Blockchain & Its Application in Marketing - Part 3

This is the third and the last post in the series of three posts on Blockchain Technology and its application in the field of Marketing. While in the first post, we discussed the concept of Blockchain in a very simplistic way along with examples, the second post elaborated the concept of Blockchain while also listing the areas in Marketing where Blockchain can be implemented.

This post takes that application scope further and looks at the application of Blockchain to areas which indirectly affect Marketing. As mentioned earlier, these are not the applications for the year 2100, hence may not be fairly imaginative. The idea is to see what can be done tomorrow!
If you have not gone through the earlier two posts yet, please take time and read them before you come back to this post.

First post: Blockchain & Its Application in Marketing - Part 1. Read time is 10mins.
Blockchain & Its Application in Marketing - Part 1

First post: Blockchain & Its Application in Marketing - Part 2. Read time is 15 mins.
Blockchain & Its Application in Marketing - Part 2

So in this post we straight away jump into the applications of Blockchain in areas that influence Marketing in some way or other.

Area	Application
Supply Chain	Inventory Management  What? – Inventory issues like duplication, dead stock, inventory ghosting and incorrect stock update have resulted in lost sales as well as unwanted inventory carrying costs, which inadvertently affect the top-line as well as bottom0line for any company. How? – Blockchain technology, with its consensus based updates as well as decentralized systems ensure that no change can be made in isolation and hence any incorrect manual update is not possible. This would mean that all the involved computers on the system will show the same inventory and there will be no miscommunication at any point regarding the storage, ordering and stock of any product. Also, the transaction trail will ensure that none of the inventory goes unaccounted for. Asset –Traceability in Value Chain What? – Despite all the innovations and development in the field of asset traceability, it is still very difficult to exactly pinpoint the initial source of the product. Issues like in-transit damage or incorrect delivery as well as a precise understanding of the actual location and state of the asset is difficult. For example, where did the diamond that you are going to buy in a ring, actually come from (previous post) and where is a specific diamond you are supposed to receive right now. How? – Each unit of the asset is assigned a traceable ID or identifier and a block (additional piece of information) is added to it as it passes through each step. Also, the Blockchain technology, with its consensus based mechanism as well as decentralized system ensure that no change can be made in isolation and hence any incorrect manual update is not possible. This would mean that all the involved computers on the system will show the same inventory and there will be no miscommunication at any point regarding the storage, ordering and stock of any product. Also, the transaction trail will ensure that none of the inventory goes unaccounted for.                          Blockchain for Asset Management - IBM
Legal	Artist collaboration and Right-Incentivisation What? – Purchase or license rights from content creators (musicians, videographers, photographers) to use their work in campaigns has not been an easy process. It is generally the artists that loses the battle due to difficulty in proving ownership of their work once it is uploaded in the public domain.  How? – Just like a piece of data or a financial transaction that can be tagged with an identified, piece of art like music can also be stored securely. Unlike a centralized system where the powerful parties can manually play and manipulate the system, with the help of Blockchain, the decentralized ledger helps in the record being present on multiple systems and can only be updated through consensus mechanism. This helps artists to be able to claim their work without interference from the industry biggies.  Employee Background Check What? – Background checks of employees is an ongoing process in any organization for all the new employees as well as for the existing ones in case of special circumstances. A lot of money is spent on the process but the information hence retrieved is seldom accurate and as desired. Also, the companies have to go through external agencies and consultancies to be able to manage this essentially internal function.  How? – Blockchain is known to preserve the history of information through identifiers and create a trail for the information by adding ‘blocks’ to make it traceable. Hence, records that are stored and managed using Blockchain technology are easily retrievable and as accurate as it gets. Hence, Blockchain technology will help in making it easy to retrieve correct records and that too in a much simpler way which will be quicker as well as cheaper. The best part will still be the control organizations can have on the process by internalizing it.
Contracts	Smart Contracts What? – Programs that manage and execute an agreement automatically based on certain pre-set conditions and constraints  How? – Blockchain technology brings in security into the traditional contracts and also reduces the cost to verify and execute contracts since its algorithm based which and it aids in automatic execution without any middleman to execute it
Data Security	Identity Protection What? – Identity protection while being a legal and common issue across countries. It does have its implication on Marketing. The fear of data leak makes people aversive towards sharing information and also restricts them to be more open and engaging. That is dangerous for any brand.  How? – If personal data of consumers could be collected, stored and managed in a more secured way that would not only help in enriching the customer profile information, but will also help customers to be more forthcoming. Blockchain technology has a way out. Its distributed ledger makes it extremely difficult for fraudsters to manipulate or steal personal data without leaving an obvious digital trail. The digital trail makes it easy for the network to identify an erroneous record or an attempt to manipulate data. It can them be easily corrected. Hence the record created on the blockchain concept is as good as immutable, securing the data effectively.

Like any new technology or invention, Blockchain has its own challenges which need to be addressed for it to be viable, relevant and scalable. Blockchain is a revolutionary technology which has the ability to transform how businesses are done. However, before jumping in to the fan-fare, top leadership at any organization needs to understand the scope and strength of this technology and be able to map its objectives clearly against the adoption of Blockchain.

In any case, we are set to transact, but not notice may be, with lot of businesses in future which will be using Blockchain as the fundamental concept for much of their operations. Behold!

Cheers,

Blockchain & Its Application in Marketing - Part 2

This is the second post in the series of three posts on Blockchain Technology and its application in the field of Marketing. While in the first post, we discussed the concept of Blockchain in a very simplistic way along with examples, the next two posts including this one, are intended to use that knowledge about Blockchain and understand how the concept can be used in the field of Marketing. 

This post will first explain the Blockchain technology again with a little technical detail since we need to know what the technology can bring in for the Marketing areas. Later we bring out the possible applications. Mind you, these are not the applications for the year 2100, hence may not be fairly imaginative. The idea is to see what can be done tomorrow!

If you have not gone through the first post yet, please take time and read it before you comeback to this post. Read time is 10 mins.

Blockchain & Its Application in Marketing - Part 1

In the previous post we saw that Blockchain is a concept which at its core has ability to create, process, store and manage data efficiently. It does this with the help of three of its inherent properties:

• Distributed ledger: Multiple entries across different systems (‘Distributed Records’ across various machines, hence the name)
• Records changed on one system will be easily identified and corrected
• Consensus mechanism: Any update that has to be made to a record must have consensus of all the machines in the network for it to be updated
• The changes cannot be made by any one of the record holder but has to be done based on the consensus
• Decentralized storage that helps in creating an indelible trail of transactions which makes the system transparent, shared, secured and watertight. 
• The ownership of data is distributed among various systems and users

Hence, Blockchain technology (while many argues it is a ‘concept’ not a technology in itself, we would not get into that debate in this post) has ability to manage issues like data security, data transparency, data manipulation, real-time tracking and ownership of data, for any given business scenario.

Without going into much technicalities, let us understand the above points through a simple example:

A data unit is stored on a system under the “Name” tag as ‘Tapish' in a bank.

Case without Blockchain: Someone, by mistake or intentionally writes the name into a document as Tapishh, with an extra h at the end.

Now, the data storage is not on the basis of distributed ledger, hence there is only one data set where the name has been updated as Tapish’h’. After this, nobody knows what was the real name?

Since the updation worked on a non-consensus mechanism, that one person was allowed to change the record all by himself.

Fig 1: Three Blocks of Information

Fig 2: Data Manipulation in Case of Blockchain

The data was kept at in a centralized manner at one place with a clear ownership lying with the bank. Hence, no one but bank can change it again, which gives bank the power to collect, record and store without any restrictions.

Fig 3: Applications of Blockchain in Marketing

Case with Blockchain:  Due to consensus mechanism, that one person will never be able to make change on his own as every change needs consensus between multiple parties.

Due to it being distributed ledger, any change made on data on one system which does not reflect in other systems, will not be accepted.

Since the data is decentralized, the bank does not have the authority to unilaterally change the data hence democratizing the right for updating information.

Now we quickly see the concept on which this works in a very simple way. The core of this concept is how the data is stored and managed. The data is kept in a block. Each block or data set has three parts:

• Data: Any piece of data unit. In this example, a name, Tapish
• Hash: Identifier of the block. In this example, AB12
• Previous Hash: Hash: Identifier of the previous block. In this example, For Block 2, Prev Hash AB12 , is actually the hash of Block 1.

As you see in the second picture, an intended manipulation in Block 2 (From Tapish to Tapishh) has ended up changing the Hash of Block 2 since the data is not the same anymore as it was. It is Tapishh instead of Tapish.

The moment this Hash changes, there is a mismatch between the Previous Hash Value of Block 3(CD34), which was nothing but the Hash Value of Block 2. Hence this change has been identified as being non-consensual, and is not reflected in various ledgers.

This manipulation can then easily be pointed out and corrected with Blockchain concept, which would either be impossible or difficult with high cost involved in case of earlier concepts without Blockchain.

Now, when we know of the clear advantages that Blockchain technology bring to the table, let us jot down where in the field of Marketing can this be used?

We now look at some of these areas where the introduction of Blockchain has the potential to bring phenomenal change.

Area	Application
Advertising	Delivery and Engagement Verification       What? – There is significant fake inventory that eats up major advertising dollars via domain spoofing. An estimated $16 billion of advertising dollars have been spent in 2017 on fraudulent sites. Brands are usually dependent upon a host of middlemen for making their product available to customer’s door through online channel. Then there is also a lot of opaqueness on whether and how many of the audience actually saw the ads and for how long.        How? – Blockchain can allow resellers to label their inventory as legitimate with public Blockchain (Public Blockchain are created when the data need not be private and cane viewed by others), that means it is easily verifiable and near impossible to fake. This is possible through decentralization and identifier tagging aspects of Blockchain technology. It can also allow to add information blocks to the specific ad piece with the audience information which will be then stored through decentralized system to various systems making it virtually un-hackable.  Partners Incentive Management         What? – Incentives to partners for advertising efforts is a key area in the advertising domain. To ascertain the attribution and its magnitude, in order to incentivize the partners and vendors, a marketer requires data on the performance of the advertisement. This could be a running ad or a campaign, and any leads or conversions it generates. However, this can be done only if there is sufficient integration and cross-platform collaboration across platforms and channels. This level of data is hardly available and even if it can be weaved together, requires expensive efforts and time with limited assurance of accuracy. It is often not clear as to who owns the data and who should be incentivized.       How? – Blockchain with the help of its identifiers (block added with every piece of data for every change made creating a chain of blocks, hence ‘blockchain’) helps in creating a trail of events which can be easily tracked for each source and each destination. So the advertiser/publisher knows which agency/middlemen should be paid what.
Consumer Engagement	Loyalty Program Management What? – Poor loyalty program integration not only costs companies dearly but they also are wildly unsuccessful in their single point objective of engaging with customers. This is caused by poor integration of reward programs, inflexible reward structures & lack of visibility of the transactions for the company as well the customers. Also that the loyalty programmed are company specific and at best alliance specific. This means that customers are bounded in terms of engaging only with the limited and pre-defined companies through the loyalty program.  How? – Blockchain with the help of its identifiers (block added with every piece of data for every change made creating a chain of blocks, hence ‘blockchain’) helps in creating a trail of each transaction and event(occurrence) which can be easily tracked for each source and each destination. So the advertiser/publisher knows which agency/middlemen should be paid what.  Customer Experience What? – Customer reach-out, engagement, relationship and bonding are some of the areas which have a strong need of record keeping of customer data which is not just collected and stored in a secured location, but can also be processed and managed to create real-time insights. This in turn should lead to positive customer experience. However, more often than not, companies find themselves in a tight spot while dealing with customers, some of them being associated with the company for a long time. This is due to poor record keeping, incorrect records and highly centralized information storage. How? – Blockchain with its impermeable record keeping mechanism with the help of identifiers, and its decentralized ledger helps in keep data not only up to date but also accurate resistant to any erroneous update. Each record is saved with an identifier block which not only stores the changes made to the data but also keeps the history of the record. Decentralized ledger help in maintaining the sanctity of the information with the help of consensus mechanism.
Influencer Marketing	Reach and Engagement Verification What? – Influencer marketing in the age of social media has adopted a whole different meaning. We have seen the rise of many influencers across the globe pan social media platforms who engage with their audience through their content. Brands piggy ride on their popularity, to achieve a ready-made set of target audience. However, there are various difficulties identified in this alliance such difficulty to ascertain if the claimed reach and engagement levels of an influencer are real. Is your dollar tagging with the right influencer? How? – Blockchain’s decentralized ledger would help in storing the correct information about the influencers and will also store all the related information like content publishing and magnitude and intensity of engagement with audience. This will not only bring out these details for each influencer in public, hence ensuring right fit that brands could find with influencers. This can also help in arriving at precise incentives that could be paid to the influencers. Authenticity of Followers What? – Bulging one’s audience list through unscrupulous measures including having bots as followers are some of the ill practices on social media platforms. In a list of thousands to millions of followers it is virtually impossible to find out how many of these followers are bots and how many are real. This has an effect on marketing strategy and marketing dollars that are paid for the influencer marketing, hence plays a critical role for the marketer. How? – Here again the decentralized ledger of Blockchain helps in identifying and segregating the genuine users from the bots. It is done by scrutinizing the activities conducted by the bots on the social media, which is identified by the means of the block or the identifier that is attached to it for every transaction or event. Consensus mechanism helps in ensuring that manual intervention is not possible and hence accurate details about bots is made available.
Sales	Online Sales What? – Brands are usually dependent upon a host of middlemen for making their product available to customer’s door through online channel. While online and direct channels have their own advantages, the overall management of the online channel is highly depended on the access, security and storage of customer and product information. Frequent data security thefts have opened fissures on this much touted channel of marketing.  How? – Blockchain will help companies manage a one stop solution for its product with secured document trail and integrated functions. Its consensus based decentralized ledger makes it virtually impossible to erroneously or otherwise manipulate the records making the online trail very secure and convenient. Sales Process What? – Companies and executives spend a lot of time in segregating leads and creating a historical data base for right focusing, which is still erroneous due to lack of veracity of data How? – Blockchain can ensure that the data available is verified and has a genuine source of each bit. This will help in reducing time in cleaning data and poor sales effort RoI.
Channel Management	Claims and Refund Management What? – A significant time of company executives and channel partners is lost in trying to resolve unsettled claims and refunds which are usually buried in tons of emails and excel sheets which are difficult to make sense of . These often lead to conflicts and poor performance and deteriorated relationships between the organization and the channel partners. How? – Blockchain with its strong trail mechanism with decentralized network architecture would ensure that all involved have the same information at all the time which is not only accurate but also consensual. Sales and Partner Incentive Management What? – Schemes and trade discounts are effective ways to push sales and increase channel demand. This also comes with a huge effort in terms of managing historical incentive payments, defining incentive payouts and managing records of all payouts. Many times this lead to issues and conflicts due to lack of transparency. How? – Blockchain technology will allow to store and manage the historical performance and payout to channel partners while also recording the transaction wise history of schemes performance, hence making it much easier and transparent for everyone.

That’s it for this post. However, we have just discussed a handful of areas here and pretty sure you can think up of a lot many if you have understood the basic concept of the Blockchain technology and where can it find its application. 

In the next post, we see some more applications of Blockchain technology which are indirectly related to Marketing, like Supply Chain, Legal Contracts and Identity protection for Marketing.

Cheers,