Let's be real: very few people are willing to be consistent on things that take time before they pay off. Because it takes strength to stay consistent. It really can get boring. Then, you just need to remind yourself that you are not the target audience and your audience is not bored with either familiarity or consistency.
For proof look at IndiGo.
"To do our job of delivering a great customer experience, we decided to move without a vision statement and became consistently boring," said IndiGo Airline's low-profile CEO Aditya Ghosh at a conference organised by All India Management Association in Delhi earlier this month. Such thinking is unlikely to go down well with CEOs, brand managers and authors of various recently published books on 'innovation'. The fact is, IndiGo's success in an industry reeling under the impact of the rupee slide and hike in crude prices is based on three pillars - being on time, on offering low fares and on the promise of hassle-free services. Nothing esoteric about it but as we all know the most difficult thing in life is consistency which is why those who show it typically are the best. .
Data compiled by the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation shows IndiGo has made cumulative profit of Rs 2,200 crore in the last five years while the industry lost Rs 46,000 crore in the five-year period. For 2012-13, the low-cost carrier saw a fivefold increase in net profit to Rs 787 crore. This happened in spite of adverse market conditions. While the rupee weakened 7 per cent, domestic traffic decreased 3.4 per cent in 2012 over the previous year. Also, fuel costs went up by 13 per cent. In a recent interview to this newspaper, Ghosh said the revenue increase is a result of capacity expansion, improved yields, increased efficiency and contained costs.
Most interesting, the company has achieved all this without a marketing department and with a sustained focus on some of the best HR practices in the industry. So when you see the brand's television commercial making a song and dance about being "on-time", it is not just about timely take offs and landings, it equally signifies timely performance reviews and regular promotions for employees. When the Indian aviation was in the thick of trouble and most domestic carriers were handing out pink slips to their employees, IndiGo made no cut-backs - in jobs or in salaries.
When The Strategist caught up with Ghosh on the sidelines of a recent event held in Delhi, he said that marketing as a function cannot be the exclusive preserve of a select few within an organisation. "The brand image must represent the product and nothing else. This is one of the biggest gaps one can see in today's marketing communication. This idea can be applied only when the entire organisation works towards delivering the product or service. So there's no reason why marketing should be the responsibility of a small team of six people only."
Extending that logic "on-time" is not just a marketing promise but a value embedded in the DNA of the company. So it was only as recently as in 2010 that IndiGo first decided to drive home its promise through a television campaign that was backed up with the brand's performance. As things stand, IndiGo gets an aircraft ready for its next flight in 31 minutes compared to 35 minutes a few years ago. This has helped the airline keep a plane airborne 12 hours a day. Its fleet consists of one kind of aircraft: the Airbus-A-320. So it is required to deal with only one set of pilots, spares and engines, simplifying the process of running the airline smoothly.
While the CEO's involvement in every aspect of a business can be frustrating for the senior management of any growing organisation, Ghosh insists on spending as much time as possible in everything related to IndiGo's operations and HR. "If you can put yourself in other person's shoes, you will be able to see things in a different light," says Ghosh.
The moral of this story? Consistency is tough and it can get really boring but it pays.
