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| “The process of brand management shares many characteristics with other processes that have been successfully distributed or outsourced. It requires a blend or a combination of three core skills: analytics, mathematics, and aesthetics.” |
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| “The development of viable brand solutions would provide a proof of concept for the notion of a ‘brand as a platform’ and would spur further brand building activity.” |
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that have been successfully distributed in the past:
1 Separability: A key feature of a DKP is that it can be separated from the rest of the organisational activities of the holding entity, conducted at a different location, often by a different enterprise, and then integrated back into the holding entity. If we move away from a product-plus mindset, we can easily think of brand building and management as an almost holistic, independent, and complete process that can be executed by an external provider and then folded back in. In fact, much like a software product, a brand can be fully developed by an external service provider and then marketed to holding entities for merging with a product or product class to create integrated branded offerings.
2 Arbitrage: One of the objectives of migrating processes outside the organisation is to lower the cost of production by taking advantage of specialised, low-cost providers. Brand building and management is a knowledge process that lends itself well to being conducted by specialised entities at lower cost than by holding entities that ultimately deploy these brands in product markets. These entities can therefore take advantage of the lower cost of brand development by specialised entities anywhere around the world and then unleash them in markets where they could be harnessed |
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for maximum value extraction.
3 Leverage: A knowledge process is especially worth distributing if the holding entity can leverage the benefits of superior performance. Processes that have little magnification or leverage effects from improved quality are worth outsourcing only because there might be savings in the cost of capacity. Brands tend to have a strong magnification effect because the market and pricing power they are capable of generating far outweighs the cost of developing or refining them.
4 Scale effects: It is prudent to outsource those processes and tasks where the concentration of capacity, in terms of either the physical assets being deployed or the intellectual power being harnessed, results in significant cost savings. Brand development and management requires the interaction among specialists in areas of analytics, mathematics, and aesthetics and synergies from close interactions among them would result in cost savings from these skills being amassed in centres of excellence.
Developing Brand Management as a DKP
So what would it take to set-up the brand building as a viable and vibrant DKP here in India? First, it would require a change in mindset from thinking of brands as product-plus to that of products as brands-plus. |
