Bloodlines and breeding

As with horses, past performance and pedigree matters with brands, too - for proof, turn to the 2006 Brand Derby.

They don't admit it. When asked, less than half the respondents of the annual Business Standard Brand Derby said they assess a brand based on its pedigree. Fewer still (35 per cent, to be precise) set store by the performance of similar brands from the same stable.

Yet legacy factors, umbrella brands and previous brand associations all played critical roles when it came to picking winners of the 2006 Brand Derby. Never mind the effort marketers put into making their new offerings original: as with horses, bloodlines and breeding matter for brands, too.

In the money this year are brands with huge past history "" and all of it positive. Two of the year's biggest blockbusters are spin-offs of previous hit movies "" both Lage Raho Munnabhai and Krrish made it to the Derby top three "" and Nokia's overwhelming dominance of the Indian handset market influenced market sentiment for the technologically advanced Nseries as well.

A staggering 97 per cent of the respondents considered Lage Raho Munnabhai successful, while 89 per cent gave the thumbs up to the Nseries. Meanwhile, Krrish found favour with 84 per cent of Derby respondents.

Legacy issues came into play even in the case of brands that didn't fare as well. An often-repeated comment on Godrej Yummiez, for instance, was the mismatch between the Godrej group's extensive experience in soaps and its foray into foods. Mitsubishi Montero has to contend with unfavourable comparisons with the Pajero "" also a Mitusbishi product.

Speaking of automobiles, perhaps the racehorses in our lead visual should have made way for Formula 1 cars. Seventeen of the 44 brands surveyed in this round of the Brand Derby were from the automobile sector.

Despite that stiff competition, the winning brands of 2006 are from the entertainment and telecom sectors and ironically, eight of the 15 not-so-successful brand launches are from the auto sector. Needless to say "" the exclusion has become routine for the Brand Derby "" traditional brand incubators such as fast-moving consumer goods and durables are nowhere in the reckoning.

For the 2006 Brand Derby, 103 marketing professionals in five cities were surveyed and their opinions sought on 44 brands. As always, respondents were shown a list of brands and asked to rank them as "very successful", "successful" and "not successful".

They then selected the brand they considered had fared the worst from the "not successful" brands and explained their choices. In addition, this year, respondents were shown a list of factors determining brand performance and asked to pick the most significant factor.

What is the best measure of brand success? Leading marketing thinkers have different views. "A brand's performance should be judged on whether it has added value to the underlying product or service," says V "Seenu" Srinivasan, Adams Distinguished Professor of management at Stanford Graduate School.

Graham Hales, managing director, associate markets at leading global branding consultancy Interbrand, has a different take on the issue. "The ultimate determinate of a brand's health is to measure its economic value to the organisation," he says.

The Derby respondents haven't quite followed those guidelines. What matters most to them is visibility "" 78 per cent of those polled said the prominence of the brand on road, in showrooms and on shop shelves was the deciding factor in determining its success or failure.

Next in importance, for 72 per cent interviewees, is the degree of media pressure "" advertising and promotion on television and radio, in print and outdoors.

Lage Raho Munnabhai and Krrish can't be faulted on either count "" both films advertised extensively, while merchandising deals and co-promotions with other brands ensured high visibility and recall. The Nseries launch, too, was an exercise in slick packaging and focused promotion.

The multimedia handsets are loaded with cutting-edge features that will appeal to gizmo addicts everywhere "" so much so that Nokia calls these "mobile computers", rather than cellphones. Of course, that only made them seem even more cutting edge and upped the desirability factor.

But if Derby respondents are on the ball with their assessments of the winning brand launches this year, their choices of also-rans could be open to question. The interviewees didn't hesitate to dub Mitsubishi Montero and Godrej Yummiez as 2006's poor performers, with 42 and 39 per cent, respectively, declaring them unsuccessful.

The biggest grouse with the Montero was the price-value imbalance (it costs upward of Rs 30 lakh, which is steep for a sports utility vehicle) and a perceived absence of brand building. That's not quite the case, as our story inside shows: the Montero has been promoted, but not as extensively as such a big-ticket item perhaps deserves.

With Yummiez, the problem is one of name. "The brand needs a peppier, more modern name," commented one respondent, while others felt the Godrej tag didn't help. Again, we're not so sure: Godrej isn't a spring chicken when it comes to the foods business "" in poultry itself, the company's Real Good brand is fairly well-known.

Still, although the highest percentage declared these brands unsuccessful, they are not at the bottom of the pile for everybody. In both cases, 4 per cent of those polled felt the brand was the least successful launch of the year.

PepsiCo India's sports drink Gatorade, in contrast, had 8 per cent declare it the least successful launch, while 29 per cent felt it was unsuccessful. Looks like the Pepsi pedigree helped "" but only up to a point.