Advice on Brand Building for IIM Indore EPGP Students at iKon Guest Lecture

The iKon Guest Lecture Series, the first lecture of the academic year 2017-18 held at IIM Indore on May 25 saw Girish Balachandran, Managing Partner, On Purpose Consulting discuss the ‘Future of Brands’ covering relevant issues including creative disruption, fake news, information wars and brand building.

The lecture series, an Executive Post Graduate Programme in Management (EPGP) initiative, provides a platform where corporates from various industries can interact with the students and share their views.

Balachandran’s talk found resonance among all the participants aspiring to specialise in Marketing & Strategy domains, IIM Indore said in a press release.

He began his talk discussing brand building techniques in the era of continuous change in content and context, the rise of fake news, its implications and brand building in the current scenario.

“So, we need to be the brand that inspires. Instead of promoting products, promote emotions that can evoke your product,”

He said as per a data report, 90% of the world’s data has been generated over last two years. “This deluge of content has made content authenticity in the online space a rather challenging task. Combined with constant disruption and innovation, establishing brand authority and brand forecasting is becoming increasingly difficult.

“So, we need to be the brand that inspires. Instead of promoting products, promote emotions that can evoke your product,” he added.

Discussing the rising cult of fake news, he provided several examples of such misinformation that spread like wildfire over the internet in the last couple of months, including some related to US elections, Brexit and Nepal earthquake.

On the factors that drive people to create fake news, Balachandran said, “Fake news are usually based on the trending topics, and hence get millions of hits on the website hosting such news. So mostly, it’s pure economics that drives these websites, rather than social or political agenda.”

He also highlighted the manner in which social media giants analyse content consumption pattern, and customise content that aligns with such patterns, in the process narrowing the perspective with only one type of ideology.

“Being positively sceptical, checking the source, questioning the headlines that make big declarations, looking for validation in the story or confirming with more sources can help us stay authentic,” he said.

The lecture concluded with a Q&A session, which helped the participants learn how to be authentic and have a voice, learn to listen to customer needs, have robust crisis planning in place, respect customer privacy and time and on creating a lasting concept around the brand, rather than selling the product itself.(Image Source:wikipedia.org)