`Advertising, promos do not make a brand'

With more Indian companies going global and simultaneously facing stronger competition at home, it is no longer effective to employ traditional methods, such as advertising and promotions, to build brands. "You can't create brands with advertising and marketing alone, instead it has to be the whole customer experience. You have to get customers to like you so that they keep coming back," says Mr David Haigh, Chief Executive, Brand Finance, on his first visit to India.

Mr Haigh feels that India is a country where people tend to learn quickly and so it is better to move in quickly before others do in this area. With barely any exclusive brand valuation companies present in India, Brand Finance recently floated its subsidiary in Bangalore. In the Indian market, it would face competition mainly from the existing international auditing firms apart from Interbrand, the international brand consultancy firm.

Observing the trends in brand valuation in the country, Mr Haigh says that it is in industries such as IT where India has been most successful at building global brands. "I did not even know that Infosys was an Indian brand," he says. While IT may have set standards for global branding, the next industry into which Indian brands can make inroads is pharmaceuticals, according to Mr Haigh. "I can see that pharma going to be big in India. It would be just the question of adding the intellectual property rights and branding it in a certain manner," he observes. Mr Haigh is already impressed with the moves Ranbaxy has made in the global market. Other potential areas include auto ancillaries, leisure, luxury goods, food and even healthcare.

With intentions of getting more business in India, Brand Finance has already undertaken global branding projects for multinationals such as Castrol, Shell and BP. Adds Mr Haigh, "We have actually done evaluations in India but from the outside. These are multinationals within whom India has been treated as a territory."