Ad czars get innovative about branding

Arvind Sharma, managing director of Leo Burnett, Ashish Bhasin, director of Lintas India, Adrian Mendonza, vice president of Rediffusin DY&R, Ishan Raina, CEO of Euro RSCG and members of the ad fraternity were present in full strength. The agenda for the day was: 'Innovations in Branding'.

"Brands are increasingly moving away from iconography to affinity. They are no longer the perfect stuff that icons are made of and becoming as human as you and me," said Arvind Sharma, revealing one survival tactic which more and more 'serious' brands across the world are being forced to opt for.

Brands such as Ikea, a traditional brand with a long legacy, has also gone in for a image makeover to make it more easy for people to identify with.

Brands are witty, whacky, exaggerated, understand your hearts desire, they don't lose an opportunity to pull a fast one on you and do not stick with any one medium they are everywhere you go, said Sharma.

Ashish Bhasin had his own take on brand innovation, "Extending brands into experiences such as Kodak's moment campaign, creating powerful surrogate brands such as the Balbir Pasha AIDS campaign, where Balbir Pasha not the NGO was promoted as a brand, transforming USP into a brand such as the Sleep Numbers bed where the name of the company Select Comfort was secondary to the name of the product, innovative use of media such as the use of cricket matches in the Britannia 50-50 biscut campaign are some of them."

Mendonza had just one simple principle, single-mindedness. He likened the use of single-mindedness in advertising to the use of the same lyrics and tunes in Bhangra pop numbers which has spawned off an entire industry.

"Make a lot of noise, however, irritating, it will finally have the desire effect. Single-mindedness is the sole key to great branding. Good branding is also like a key it easily unlocks a whole thought process," he added.