7 posts tagged “brands”

Wow.
   That’s all I can say after the Crowne Plaza’s contact with me yesterday.
   As some of you know, I wasn’t that complimentary about the Crowne Plaza Today Gurgaon hotel during my time in India. The service was a trifle slow for such a top-rated establishment, and I blogged about it, almost in a throwaway fashion.
   Yesterday, two of the staff—Monica, as well as Nitin Sharma, the assistant director of the food and beverage department—called me to apologize. And this morning, I awoke to find a written apology from Mr Sharma, which I have gratefully accepted.
   His words: ‘I would like to extend my sincere apologies for the delay in service at the bar.
   ‘I hope you will accept my apology and give us another opportunity to showcase our hospitality. Once again I am truly sorry for the inconvenience caused.
   ‘I would request to give us another chance of proving the real hospitality of Crowne Plaza.’
   If I wasn’t already enamoured with the high quality of Indian hospitality, I am now.
   Of course I will be delighted to return to Gurgaon and check out the Crowne Plaza Today once more.
   I’ve also offered to write about this in the online edition of Lucire, because the positive side of this deserves a wider airing. Who knew that the Crowne Plaza would make a customer feel this good after a negative experience?
   This is real customer service in the 21st century. It shows (a) consumer power; (b) the fact that brands are now being steered by audiences and that the legal trade mark owner tends to be a steward steering perceptions; (c) that the Crowne Plaza is willing to engage its customers, safeguard its brand, and help steer those perceptions positively.

I was reading Suveen Sinha’s article about the new Suzuki, to be built solely at the Maruti plant in India. He believes that the model will possibly be the only car to be shipped with four names, depending on market.
   I had a think about this and disagreed in the comments. If we discounted the badge-engineered cars from, say, BMC in the 1960s or the American Big Four where models were sold with different grilles and rear ends, I was sure I could think of some with four names. Let’s also discount those that came out of separate factories, such as the GM T-car and various Fiats and Seats. We’ll also not count later incarnations of the Opel Corsa B (still rolling off the lines in South America and Red China), but I think we can validly count the first.
   Off the top of my head, various Daewoos probably fit, plus the Australian Holden Commodore.

Daewoo Lacetti
Chevrolet Nubira
Chevrolet Lacetti
Holden Viva
Chevrolet Optra
Buick Excelle (not counting Taiwan model, now facelifted)
Suzuki Forenza
Suzuki Reno

Daewoo Gentra
Chevrolet Aveo
Chevrolet Kalos
Holden Barina

Holden Commodore
Chevrolet Lumina
Chevrolet Omega
Vauxhall VXR-8
Pontiac G8

Opel Corsa B
Vauxhall Corsa Mk I
Holden Barina
Opel Vita (Japan)

Suzuki Cultus (1983)
Suzuki Swift
Holden Barina
Chevrolet Sprint

Mitsubishi Mirage (1978)
Dodge Colt
Plymouth Champ
Mitsubishi Colt
Colt 1200 and 1400

   I am sure there are more …

[Cross-posted] I would say that the new Tata Nano, the Rs. 1 lakh ($2,500) car revealed by Tata Motors at the New Delhi Auto Expo a few hours ago, exceeds the expectations of those who were predicting something that looked more motorcycle than automobile.
   As we led up to today’s unveiling of the revolutionary small car—aimed to get families out from motorcyles and in to a safer automobile—I had heard all manner of predictions, many of them negative, about the vehicle.
   Yet Tata has come up with a “people’s car” designed to mobilize the masses in India in the same vein as the Volkswagen, Fiat nuova 500 and the BMC Mini.
   It possesses a certain chic with a contemporary one-box design that could have come from an Italian design house. While the Nano won’t make it to too many western export markets due to the perceived lack of safety features, it will start a new trend among cheap transportation, especially in an era of high oil prices. I don’t think it’ll take too long for the Red Chinese to copy it and I speculate that Tata may well plan on creating a slightly plusher, airbag-standard version for export.
   However, as far as Tata is concerned, the Nano meets the requirements of its main market and is safe.
   The car is available in standard and deluxe models. The most noticeable feature of the latter is its colour-keyed bumpers and wheel trims.
   Said chairman Ratan N. Tata, ‘I observed families riding on two-wheelers—the father driving the scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding a little baby. It led me to wonder whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport for such a family. Tata Motors’ engineers and designers gave their all for about four years to realize this goal. Today, we indeed have a People’s Car, which is affordable and yet built to meet safety requirements and emission norms, to be fuel-efficient and low on emissions. We are happy to present the People’s Car to India and we hope it brings the joy, pride and utility of owning a car to many families who need personal mobility.’
   What I would really love to see is a version not powered by fossil fuels—a wish I have had for the car since 2006.
   From a branding perspective, the car represents just how well organized Tata is. The Nano was the chairman’s baby, pushed through by a charismatic leader and its importance stressed by top management. It could well build Indian industry even more than the multi-billion-dollar Tata corporation can imagine. This, and its acquisition of Land Rover and Jaguar, may make Tata the most talked-about Asian automaker in 2008.
   Plus, I love the name. Just as Mini was about as small as people could get in everyday speech in the 1950s, Nano is such a common term in the 2000s that the model name makes perfect sense.

Vogue India cover

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[Cross-posted] As someone who has long championed the Asian subcontinent—and Lucire has been linking Indian and Pakistani sites as they came to light over the years—I was happy to see that Vogue India has made it on to newsstands. The new magazine is a milestone in the rise of the subcontinental fashion industry, which arguably has had a longer tradition than anything in the occident. It also signals a rise in global luxury brands entering India—something which I hope will soon be more of a two-day street.
   The cover, too, addresses concerns that I expressed in a blog post last week, on the ubiquity of the white model on catwalks. There has been some chatter about why Gemma Ward, a blonde, blue-eyed model, occupies a third of the cover, but the answer is fairly simple, I thought: Vogue India is evidently a magazine that appeals to the global nature of the Indian consumer. Her presence suggests that in a shot. But the international girl is usually quite desirable from a publisher’s or licensee’s eyes, too.
   As a man, I have to say that my eyes went to the other models first: Bipasha Basu, Priyanka Chopra, Monikangana Dutta, Preity Zinta and Laxmi Menon grace the cover and gatefold, photographed by Patrick Demarchelier. Perhaps it is the ubiquity that I wrote about, but the south Asian models are stunning.
   The domestic cover girl is very important, as we learned with Lucire Romania. The original cover girl—Karen Carreño—made less of an impact than the first Romanian to appear, Monica Gabor. 
   South Asia is a region that I am keen on getting in to with Lucire. My best wishes go to Priya Tanna and her team at Vogue India.

I was honoured to be interviewed by Uduak Oduok, lawyer, fashion model and journalist, for Ladybrille. Lucire readers may remember Uduak as the writer of a piece in an earlier issue on a fashion show in Nigeria, and I was honoured to be her subject this time.
   Years ago, I was inspired by Simon Anholt’s Brand New Justice, a book that emphasized that brands, not monetary hand-outs, help poorer nations out of their predicaments and allow them to raise their incomes. Simon’s viewpoints have held firm and many from his research found their way into the Medinge Group’s first co-authored book, Beyond Branding.
   By this time, I was heavily in to branding and CSR, and I attempted to set up a forum that would connect first-world advisers with entrepreneurs in less wealthy nations. Sadly, we never got proper first-world support—not enough people willing to give their time—and I admit it was one of the things we didn’t look after properly while we had some difficult staffers at Lucire creating internal problems.
   It was very much the third world’s loss as we had a few entrepreneurs sign up. But I have always taken the opportunities to extend some of those early-2000s ideas and appearing on the Ladybrille blog–zine was an ideal way to help specifically African businesspeople involved in this rather crazy fashion world. I hope I have contributed to helping them with my interview answers.
   Most importantly, the Ladybrille site attempts to do what I could not do with my forum: provide intelligence for entrepreneurs so they can raise their businesses and communities toward greater incomes, addressing this planet’s rich–poor gap. It is a noble goal that Uduak has set herself—and she has the courage and passion to succeed.
   The interview was done piecemeal since I could not spare a solid time period to answer Uduak’s questions, so please excuse any changes in expression or style. The URL is ladybrille.blogspot.com/2007/09/lucire-magazines-jack-yan-offers-tips.html.

It’s so hard finding New Zealand-owned juice at supermarkets. Just back from Pak ’n’ Save and New World in my area, and mostly it was Citrus Tree and Keri (French and American). Fresh-up, Just Juice: also French. New World at least had a few Pam’s three-litre juices left, which I paid $4·85 or thereabouts for—and Pam’s was, once, the poverty brand. Where are the Kiwi juices that are also good value for money?
   Speaking of which, I now buy Hong Kong-made blank CDs and DVDs that appear to be marketed by a domestic firm, and they come in cheaper than the regular brands at Corporate Consumables. What the brand is, I can’t recall. But I will with a few more repeated purchases. (OK, just checked: they’re called Zone. And they are ink-jet safe, and I haven’t experienced any difference in performance between them and the Japanese and Korean branded stuff I normally buy.)
   Interestingly, the checkout girls are getting more multicultural. I had an Indonesian and an Iraqi serve me. The latter joked about being from Baghdad. I said, ‘Must have been a nice looking city when you were a kid.’ Her reply: ‘Not any more.’ But it sure is nice to be an émigrée, I’ll bet, away from the crap going on back home. I feel the same way (but as an émigré).
   Also bought Andrew Niccol’s Lord of War DVD, going for $15. Can’t wait to see what this Kiwi writer–director cooked up. I remember talking to his Dad about it when he was still writing it.

Do you buy products made locally?  Is there anything made in your area that you love?

Almost always, I opt for not only locally produced, but locally owned. I try to understand the parentage of the brands. Therefore, I don’t buy Eta, Just Juice or Citrus Tree (French), Wattie’s or Thexton (American), Griffin’s (Australian) or even the New Zealand Listener (Irish) and others masquerading as domestic. I always seek out the local equivalent, though when they are unavailable, I buy Australian. Therefore, Pam’s gets some business from me, as does Whittaker’s, and other less-known ones. If anything, I take an anti-brand approach to shopping.
   For those who wonder whether I get as much variety in my groceries, the answer is that I get more. Local producers, especially the less known ones, really surprise me with their inventiveness, if only we gave them a try and shut some silly ads out of our heads.