The concept of Brand Essence might seem abstract until you realize the difference in revenues that it

can result in. And that difference separates long-term winning brands from others. And, that difference
is visible in every category and can be illustrated by the box-office returns of the three Khans of
Bollywood.

We have put together the box office returns of the 3 Khans – i.e. Salman, Shahrukh, and Aamir. Guess
which colour is represented by which Khan?

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This was a fairly simple exercise. The blue one was easy to predict since Shahrukh was so far ahead of
his contemporaries in the 1990s and the early part of the 2000s. The others later started delivering
more box office hits than Shahrukh.

While movie business can be a complex one – we are going to look at it from the lens of a Marketer.
And, to evaluate the same box office returns are fairly important criteria. What is it that led to such a
stark change? Shahrukh was so far ahead of his contemporaries.

So, what explains this difference in output?

1. Was it luck?
2. Did their acting ability change?
3. Did the audience’s expectations change?
4. Did it have anything to do with their choice of products (movies)?

Those are some of the interesting questions that can get asked. And, we will address this question in
the latter part of the article.

The secret pathway that has enabled iconic brands to survive over 100 years are the things which will
get them disproportionate returns year-on-year and this is what the session on Brand Essence is all
about.

Before, we go into defining what Brand Essence, we understand why it is important in the first
place.

As humans, we have the ability to evaluate things through a fairly limited psychological mechanism.
For Example, Anthropomorphism and Personification are very common to our psyche, where we
ascribe human characteristics to everything that we see, whether it is a Panda or the Lion King. It also
is manifested in phrases such as – “The Xerox machine threw a fit” or “Arise fair sun, & kill the envious
moon,” etc. This brings us to our first important conclusion -

Psychological mechanisms through which we perceive the faces of friends and brands we
like are the same.

It evokes the same reactions that we have for our friends. Thus, if brands are perceived as friends, we
expect from them what we expect from our friends.
(i) Reliability
(ii) Authenticity
(iii) The feeling that the brand ‘gets’ them and what’s important to them at this point in their lives

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Any inconsistency can result in serious brand damage to the extent that sometimes it can take years
for the brand to come back. To sum it up, There are few things worse than a friend turned foe.
It can destroy the set of people who are unquestionably loyal to you. Thus, Brand Essence is
important because if destroyed could lead to a brand’s death.

This is particularly interesting since things are going to change remarkably post the COVID crisis and
the brands need to adapt to this new reality in their consumer's life without giving up on what makes
them distinctive and loved.

Agenda:
 1. What is Brand Essence?
2. When should you write a Brand Essence document?
3. How to write a Brand Essence document?

Brand Essence

Brand Essence is the DNA of the brand, it is at the heart of everything that the brand says and does. A
brand’s essence is the one constant across product categories and throughout the world.

It is the most succinct definition of what the brand is all about – the first thing that the employee
might say to quickly describe the brand in an elevator conversation. For Example: Dettol is all
about protection, Mercedez is all about luxurious status, Disney is all about a Magical World etc.

The truth is even a slight difference in your DNA can lead to massive changes. A good example is the
fact that some reports say that the difference in gene make up of Gorilla and a Human Being is 1.6 %.

Brand Essence is about strategy and making those choices which impact the DNA of the brand. Now,
every brand strategy can be defined as a good move or a gorilla move. Consider the advertisement
and try to classify it as one of these.

Insert BlackBerry Advertisement

Evidently, BlackBerry is trying to talk to a wider set of audience. However, it is a gorilla move since it is
detrimental to actively disassociate or make fun of the existing audience as the brand will start losing
out on those consumers.

Brand Essence impacts everything from Sales, Communication, People, Product, and the Consumer. To
see how this is paramount, consider the case of Zappos, a company’s whose mission was to deliver
happiness.

In this sense, the Brand Essence would be Zappos is all about Delivery Happiness. Since this was
so inherent at Zappos, the hiring at Zappos was slightly unsual.

CEO Tony Hsieh, said:

“At the end of the day of interviews, the recruiter will circle back to the shuttle driver and ask how he
or she was treated. It doesn’t matter how well the day of interviews went, if our shuttle driver wasn’t
treated well, then we won’t hire that person.”

Hiring wrong people might lessen the chances of Zappos delivering its DNA with Authenticity &
Dependability.

So far we have discussed the significance of Brand Essence. Let us now try to understand how to
write a Brand Essence Document.

There are two parts to it:

(i) How do we find the essence
(ii) How do we get it to our DNA

Let us take this stepwise and first find out the essence. It comprises of three parts:

Super Consumer: Whose lives does my brand aim to enhance? The intent here is to be as sharp as
possible.

The best way to illustrate through the ads that Thumbs Up does. If you look at these advertisements
over the decades, you will realize that they speak to adventurous and macho image seeking
teens and yet this comprises of 15% of their audience.

The reason that they do it is two-fold. They operate in a highly competitive space and to be
differentiated, they follow a very old Brand Building principle – they aim to delight a part of consumers
i.e., their Super Consumers and satisfy the rest.
To understand why Thumbs Up goes after this particular audience is rooted in the fact that food tastes
are set at an early stage of one’s life and it varies remarkably among different individuals. Teenage
years is the time when they start building their own choices. And, over the course of life, your choices
coalesce with that of your partner’s and it is going to be of the one who is unreasonably loyal to their
brand. Brands are built by their loyal users, which is why we refer to the users as super
consumers.

Let us taken a powerful example:

Dove Video

The SuperConsumer for Dove comprises of “23-36 year old women who value natural, healthy beauty
products. An age that is beyond the point of being extremely concerned with Acne & too young to be
excessively worried about wrinkles.”
Tension: What is the tension in their lives that you intend to address? An easy way to go about is to
imagine the consumers in their worst mental state and decode the things that they would say in that
state. These are the things deep-seated in a consumer’s psyche.

In this sense, the tension that Dove is trying to address is that “Sometimes the pressure to live up to
beauty standards can be too much.”

Trend: This tension is sometimes coming from a global trend or causing a large societal or cultural
trend. For Dove, it can be summarised as “The unrealistic standards of beauty set by celebriries etc
makes feeling beautiful unachievable. While this is now criticized externally but a critical inner voice
developed over the years making women cling to images of female perfection which causes anxiety.”

In the second piece of writing a Brand Essence, we look at the solution part:

Ladder: The first piece is the ladder, here it is about figuring out the product layered up to the
functional and subsequently the emotional benefit.

An easy way to understand this is to look at this communication of Lava Phone.

Insert Image for Lava and Dove

Personality: What kind of person would my brand be? What personality traits show how my brand
thinks, behaves and even talks differently from others?

The personality for Dove would be “Transparent, confident, and inspiring.”

Purpose: Why does my brand get up every day? How will the brand turn the Trend around so as to
resolve the Tension?

The pupose for Dove is “To make beauty a source of confidence, not anxiety.”

Summary Slide Dove

Essence document tends to remain the same for many years

We have a Simple Exercise. Who should Dove choose as its Brand Ambassador?

Clearly, the right answer is none of them. Why should they have a Brand Ambassador in the first place,
since it is so foreign to the essence of the brand.

Now let us come back to the story of the 3 Khans.

Analyzing the Khan’s Story

In the early stage, Aamir used to be like any other actor. He used to do lesser movies than others but
largely used to have the same variety of movies and you couldn’t distinguish him from his
contemporaries in a very substantial way.
The point of discovery for Aamir was in the year 2001 when he had two absolute hits in Laagan and Dil
Chahta Hai, both were fresh and novel stories. Let us try and write down the Brand Essence for Aamir
Khan.

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When he started staying true to his essence, he didn’t give any massive hits but he kept on working at
fresh and experimentative cinema. As the audience expanded, and as people got more used to his
brand of cinema, they started flocking to him in larger and larger numbers.

For average revenues, his numbers are even starker and he is three times more popular than the other
two stars. Even the show Satyamev Jayate that he did was a part of this essence which he wanted to
craft for himself.

Shahrukh Khan found his core essence much sooner than Aamir. Undoubtedly, DDLJ was his point of
discovery. And, later his essence followed by

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Essence of SRK

The fact that Shahrukh understood it well was reflected towards the end of the 1990s when he created
his own production house. He was in tune with what people expected out of him and in that sense he
saw success.

The problem started happening when he tried to redefine his Brand Essence as the audience
expectations started changing and he tried speaking to a larger audience.

He was successful he was a good actor; however, he also started having hits and misses. Eventually,
as people saw better cinema they flocked to it.