Brand – Manu Prasad

(In the News) Self Declaration : Advertising in India

manu prasad — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 05:14:34 +0000

Context

The self declaration directive by the Supreme Court has created a mini tsunami in the advertising world. Starting June 18, 2024, all advertisers and advertising agencies have to submit a self-declaration certificate before publishing or broadcasting any advertisement. This includes all media – traditional and digital. To be fair, they had given a heads-up earlier, but that’s beside the point. Brands and agencies are struggling on multiple fronts to make sure they aren’t caught on the wrong side. Meanwhile the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) will submit an affidavit on the matter with the Supreme Court on July 9, 2024. (via)

Perspectives

afaqs was kind enough to quote me on the not-so-little tsunami that has hit brands, marketers and agencies. Essentially, everyone involved in advertising.

A few things I wanted to add as context before you read the article

Philosophically, I think we are all aligned that misinformation, false claims, and not following guidelines in advertising are problems that needs to be addressed. That’s what the Supreme Court was going after, and that’s welcome and commendable. Thank you, as a consumer and as a brand marketer.
However my view is that the consequences in terms of costs of policing and compliance haven’t really been thought through
Specifically, digital advertising, which is 51% of all ad revenue in India, doesn’t seem to have been a consideration. This is what I have expanded on in the article – how the finite number of television ads/radio spots/print ads/OOH and the ‘infinite’ iterations on digital are completely different worlds. Forget things like dynamic display, think of the number of iterations made for a single search keyword! And don’t even get me started on influencers, product placements etc.
Facebook, Google, Amazon all have advertising guidelines. Why not simply review it and ask them to include anything the regulators feel is pertinent to India?
Lastly, while the scope of the article is on who takes the declaration responsibility – agency or client, what about the publisher, who these days is anyway doing advertorials and paid content across platforms?

It also reminded me of something I read recently in a wonderful little graphic book called ‘We, the citizens”.

In the book’s context, it explains how the state has a diverse toolkit to deal with issues, but many a time chooses the wrong measure. As a solution, the book provides an excellent framework to decide the course of action. The axes of the framework are capacity and level of intervention. That’s the image below.

If I apply this to the Supreme Court and self declaration, I’d choose Nudge followed by Marginally Changing Incentive as the direction. For instance, directives to industry bodies to call out violations, followed by prioritising the hearing of cases filed against brands for false advertising, and signalling with high penalties to those who break the guidelines.

Aside: I think this framework can also be used by leaders and managers in organisations to deal with issues. Not in isolation because impact would also be a factor in prioritisation, but broadly to limit intervention according to capacity.

What can marketers and agencies do?

I think planning everything well before time was always a good idea that was rarely seen in practice. Now there is no choice.
Being clear about responsibility and accountability is another thing to do right away.
What’s any post without AI? There are already several agencies which have come up with tools to make the process easier. Maybe evaluate them?

In the meanwhile, here are a couple of documents that should help in understanding this better, and executing it.

FAQs on Self Declaration Certificate

Guidelines for using the portals

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3 reasons why a Fractional CMO for startups is a great idea

manu prasad — Thu, 16 May 2024 06:56:48 +0000

Does a Fractional CMO for startups / startup Fractional CMO make sense for founders? Typically, when a startup has raised some funding, the founder’s intuition, when it comes to marketing, is to hire a CMO, and let her/him build the team. To some extent, it makes sense. But is there a better way? I think there is, and this is my pitch. It boils down to giving the founder/s optionality on three dimensions.

Time

All founders have an idea, actually an ideal, that they would like to hire as their CMO. And whatever the external conditions are, if you’ve ever hired for senior roles, you’d know that it usually takes quite a while to hire that person.

As a Fractional CMO for startups, I am able to buy time for the founder/s while making the choice. They can hire without hurry. That’s because the work in brand/growth/marketing is progressing. In the meanwhile, the founder/s also save time by reducing their number of direct reports in the marketing team. Not to mention mind space on the many micro decisions that need to be made on a daily basis.

The key here is that both of us understand this is not a long term solution. While the relationship is not transactional, it is also my job to help the founder/s get a replacement before our contract is over.

Choice

The CMO is a critical hire, one that if not done right, will give a startup and its founders a lot of headaches, including the time and costs of finding a replacement. That makes it a role that should not be filled in a hurry because there are so many variables involved – a matching worldview, a belief in the business that is being created, the person’s own aspirations, and that ambiguous thing called culture fit.

The early or even mid stages of a startup are almost always full of experiments. A CMO need not necessarily have the expertise, or the inclination to pick up a specific sub domain in marketing if that’s not in line with their career path. And this is pretty difficult to predict earlier, especially at the time of hiring!

As a Fractional CMO for startups, I can manage everything from brand to marketing automation and all that lies in between, with deep dives into specific areas that might help the startup in the short-term. This flexibility, I believe, is critical for startups.

Clarity

The work that a Fractional CMO does also gives the founders an idea and a benchmark based on which they can fine tune their ideal candidate. Depending on the nature of the business, the domain in which they’re competing, the resources already in place, and the results of the experiments I mentioned earlier, the criteria for a CMO will vary.

When I work with the founders and the organisation at large, I am able understand the nature of the job, specific focus areas, and the culture. That, combined with my marketing domain expertise, gives me the ability to hire someone who is most likely to succeed in the role.

Wait, there's dessert

A Fractional CMO does not have a notice period, and the overall cost outlay is going to be much lower than a full time CMO.

In essence, a Fractional CMO for startups provides the founder/s a cost effective way to grow the brand and business without the pressure of making a quick hire, or the worry that a junior team is running marketing without a strategic direction in place.

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Fractional CMO for startups – 8 scenarios

manu prasad — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 13:19:03 +0000

It has now been a year since I began my journey as a Fractional CMO for startups, and having interacted with dozens of founders/CEOs and an occasional CMO/COO (and in some cases worked with them), I have now seen a broad set of use cases for the Fractional CMO.

Advisory

A commitment of 15-20 hours a month for a 3-6 months timeframe

The founder needs help on –

1. Identifying marketing priorities and building a marketing org around it – people, processes, partners etc

2. Mentoring and grooming a promising VP to become a CMO

Sometimes, a founder and/or CMO would like

3. A second opinion on their current approach

4. Help on a specific domain/challenge – brand, content, growth and so on

Strategic

A commitment of 30-40 hours a month and usually requires about 6 months

1. A founder has a mid/senior level leadership but needs help in aligning different marketing teams towards common business objectives (OKRs anyone?)

2. A founder thinks their mid/senior level leadership team could do with some strategic help on GTM/positioning/ or a brand/marketing challenge

Strategic + Team Management

A commitment of 50-60 hours a month and requires 6 months to a year

1. A founder needs help in managing day to day ops of the marketing team to free up bandwidth and so that the team has someone with domain expertise to go to for help

2. A founder needs to hire mid and senior leadership while doing the above

For these projects, I typically recommend my 6 month CMO program, especially if the founder/s prefer/s a structured approach to work.

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In the News : The Uberisation of the Chief Marketing Officer (afaqs)

manu prasad — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 05:38:26 +0000

The basic premise for my ‘Fractional CMO’ pitch has been that in a certain context, renting can be better than buying. Venkata Susmita Biswas (afaqs) has captured this very well, and quoted me in her article on the rise of the Fractional CMO in India. She covers the reason why I use the term ‘Fractional CMO’ as opposed to a marketing consultant, and how it can help brands.

She has also highlighted my 6 month CMO offering, which is a structured journey for a startup to get going on brand and business growth.

You can read the article on afaqs, and drop in here to know more about my perspectives on the Fractional CMO role.

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5 Indian examples of effective brand positioning – Part 2

manu prasad — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 10:41:55 +0000

Continued from Part 1

Brand Positioning Examples

Zepto

The quick commerce brand’s task is unenviable in a market that also has two big players who already have a system in place because of their main businesses – Swiggy (Instamart) and Zomato (Blinkit). And yet Zepto has managed to grab a share of wallet and mind. Since the context is positioning, I will refrain from inflicting any burn comments!

To be honest, I quite liked the “India’s last minute app” positioning that Blinkit uses. But I don’t know if it has registered enough. However, the simple, tangible and specific positioning that Zepto has used – 10 minute delivery – does seem to have struck a chord. Even though, as per news reports, the median delivery time is close to 12-13 minutes.

After the original campaign (below) by L&K Saatchi & Saatchi in 2021, they kept the communication fresh through different ways of storytelling – example 1 (feat. Kailash Kher), example 2. The latest set features Jasprit Bumrah, a smart move.

Finolex

Given the nature of the category, one would wonder what exactly to land, and how! But things become very easy when Piyush Pandey is involved. The positioning itself is quite counterintuitive because it not just acknowledges the low recall for the category at large, but finds a way to use it to its advantage.

Using Sehwag was a good touch because his quips on Twitter are quite famous. I found this to be fantastic storytelling – “jo cheez chalti rehti hai, woh kahaan yaad rehti hai?” – in just 30 seconds. The campaign (2021) theme was “Ek baar lagwayyie, aur hamara naam bhool jaayie” and had multiple spots featuring interesting situations ranging from Sehwag’s home ground (a cricket pitch) to the Eiffel Tower to my favourite one (below).

Sebamed

What do you do when your competitors are giants in the industry? Make your launch a litmus test, pretty much literally. And that’s what Sebamed did, pitching its pH level against Dove, Lux, Santoor, and Pears. (ironically something that Dove itself has done earlier in Canada) Of course, it did attract a lot of controversy (free publicity) and a legal case, but by the time it was all said and done, the point had been made.

A year later, they took a less acidic potshot. This time, using a celebrity to point out that celebs aren’t really skin experts, and reiterating the reason to believe – because… science!

BrookeBond Red Label

Tea is so universal and generic (in India) that doing something fresh with it is indeed a difficult task. That’s why I found this take by Red Label – positioning tea as a social network – very refreshing! The campaign, by Ogilvy, was launched on World Social Media Day (June 30) last year.

To be noted that this didn’t come out of the blue. For years, the brand’s storytelling has revolved around tea being the icebreaker for interactions with neighbours, potential in-laws, and those at the fringes of society , among others.

Yes, technically , given that this is a legacy brand, one would not strictly list it in brand positioning examples, but the unique framing that the brand adopted in their storytelling earns it a place in this list.

Colgate-Palmolive

Another legacy brand with a fresh framing that resonates really well. As befits the experience and stature of the brand, ‘The Sweet Truth’, made by WPP@CP, is based on an excellent insight on consumer behaviour – sweets after dinner. But what makes it special is the very quirky way of presentation. Despite an obvious reference to the product category, it intrigues the viewer, and forces them to pay attention.

Again, I list this among brand positioning examples because once the broad narrative of the category has been played out, the opportunities are in the contextual interventions. Unless you want to be Sensodyning all your brand life! #BrushTonight is a great way to ‘land grab’ not just the high ground of ‘oral hygiene’ but also the specific usage of the product.

As with the previous post that featured brand positioning examples from India, these campaigns should have given you an idea on how positioning can create mental availability for the brand, and if done well, can be of great value in building and sustaining businesses.

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Startup Growth: How a Fractional CMO’s full funnel, 4 stage approach can help

manu prasad — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 11:06:36 +0000

While startup growth is a buzzword, different startups have different renditions of it. That in itself is fine, but limiting it to simply say, performance marketing is suboptimal for the business. That’s why startup growth requires a full funnel approach. As a Fractional CMO for startups, I typically view it as a path with 4 stages, in the context of businesses which have digital touch points.

Image via

1. Demand Generation

This is an unfortunate casualty in many a startup growth strategy, as folks simply start from 2. At any point, there are people ready to buy your service/product, but the number of people who could potentially buy your product is usually far more. For these folks, at the very top of the funnel (TOFU, I know I know ), you need to increase awareness and create demand. Before you set about doing it, be clear about the brand’s segments and positioning.

With that in mind, your business context, and the resources you have (people, money, time), there are many avenues possible, including traditional advertising – television, print, radio, OOH etc, and digital means – display advertising on Meta and Google properties or even Pinterest/Reddit/Twitter based on your context, content marketing, influencer marketing and so on. If you’re on Amazon, the platform provides multiple ways of finding more audiences. The role of PR is unfortunately often overlooked. (my perspectives here)

Back in 2011, when social media was organically driven, it did a great job for us at Myntra, and we used Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to full effect. At Scripbox, educational content and content marketing did the same in the beginning. Later, we also used an influencer-led YouTube campaign – in my favourite campaigns list here.

2. Lead Generation

This stage is made of people in your audience who are in the buying process but want to know more about what they’re buying. Look at it as a casual exploration of options. Having a clear idea about the brand’s target personas, and value propositions custom-made for them is very important at this stage.

A combination of search (organic and paid), and display advertising (affinity audiences on Google for sure) with a host of custom landing pages did the trick for us in Scripbox. (check out one of the winner creatives we used on Facebook below) Cracking a 40+ audience on digital is not an easy task, and this was a result of a series of experiments and iterations.

You could also use affiliate marketing, as well as things such as webinars and downloads to gather leads. This, by the way is MOFU.

3. Conversion

Once you have the lead (mobile number, email) you have reached BOFU, and the toolkit now expands to one of my favourite components in the game to reduce CAC – marketing automation (an interview about Scripbox’s martech stack). Paid media is also a way to convert – retargeting based on first-party data, or even say, in-market audiences. But if you put in the effort in creating the right segments, and crafting a custom journey, the rates of conversion through this owned channel can go a long way in reducing your CAC.

The channels for deploying this are many – emails, web notifications, SMS, app notifications, WhatsApp, custom banners inside the site/app and so on. By really nuancing segments (demographics, source/campaign, behaviour etc), creating a narrative flow, experimenting, iterating, and tracking results, this becomes a powerful tool.

Even if you do not have a specialised tool for this, you can start small, like say, a WhatsApp community.

Data is important for all stages, but especially so for both 3 and 4. Good data has a disproportionate effect on the outcomes.

4. Growth from existing customers

Another area where marketing automation can really help is increasing revenue from existing customers, and thus raising LTV and possibly reducing the payback period. Once again, segmenting customers is crucial. Go beyond a standard framework, like say RFM, and delve into the various ways in which you can dissect your customers – revenue, order frequency, kind of products purchased, NPS scores and so on.

This also gives you additional material for any loyalty and/or referral programs you might be thinking of. Once you start your experiments, start understanding customer cohorts by preferred channel of communication, it could help your conversion and costs.

I have not mentioned measurement here, but very broadly, at a CMO level, I like to keep things simple when evaluating startup growth e.g. though there are abundant metrics available at the top of the funnel – platform metrics for display, social media reach and engagement, number of PR stories etc, I begin with traffic, cost/traffic, and brand search volume. Ditto for the other stages. This is not to say that the additional metrics are not important, but they are for subsequent analysis (and a different post).

How does a Fractional CMO help startup growth?

By understanding the broad context of the business objectives. In the absence of a CMO, a Head/VP-Brand or a Head/VP – Acquisition/Growth more often than not sticks to areas they are comfortable with. And like I said earlier, that’s sub-optimal for startup growth.

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5 Indian examples of effective brand positioning (and one non-positioning)

manu prasad — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 10:11:02 +0000

There are many frameworks for brand positioning, both in theory…

…and in practice

Getting brand positioning right is not an easy task, ask any brand custodian. But if you do get it right, it can have a disproportionate effect on business growth.

Here are 6 Indian examples from the recent past, where I believe the brands got it right. Predictably, all but one are startups.

Licious

A largely unorganised market, and a product that is not perceived to have a lot of differentiation, but is priced higher. The elegance of the ‘Nakhre’ campaign in 2021, featuring Anil Kapoor and Arjun Kapoor, is that it didn’t just stop at the positioning, but also had value propositions and provided RTB (Reasons To Believe).

The brand positioning was that people who are particular about the quality of their meat and fish will choose Licious. Great play on ‘identity’ because Licious’ target audience would definitely want to be seen as connoisseurs. Moreover, each ad had its RTBs (like biosecure farms, vacuum-packed etc) spelt out at the end. And the RTBs had their own short videos as well!

In addition, the campaign featured value propositions like widest range and 100% Paisa Wasool (pay only for what you buy), again with RTBs baked in. Great job by Tilt Brand Solutions.

Meesho

Another company that did a splendid job with identity was Meesho, with the #MyStoreMyStory campaign in 2020. Meesho pretty much steered the social commerce narrative in India. At that point, a majority of its sellers and buyers were women, and therefore the brand not only built its communication around women empowerment and their financial independence, but played on the entrepreneurial woman’s need to have an identity that went beyond that of her different homemaker roles.

Meesho has obviously moved on since then, but I think this campaign provided them a differentiated brand positioning, and a strong foundation and community that helped it expand. Well played, Meesho and DDB Mudra.

Jaquar

The odd one out that is not a start up, but is in fact, a very well known brand in its domain – bathroom fittings. So what does it do when it has a lighting division which (probably) has not been able to get out of the shadow of the original brand positioning even after years? It leans into it and uses the association to its advantage. A superbly fun set of creatives from 2022 that is very self aware, uses a character to mimic the audience perception, and sets up the reveal very well.

Humour, re-positioning, and allowing the product to shine – not an easy task with one campaign, but Enormous managed it. I think credit is also due to the brand because poking fun at self on national television is a gutsy thing to do.

The Whole Truth

I have written about this brand in an earlier post – in the context of brand strategy. Do read that to get a slightly more holistic view of the overall play. It is a great example to show how positioning needs to be lived by the brand for the consumer to understand and appreciate it, and thus have a relationship with the brand. Having said that, even a single ad has an impact, especially if it is tagged as a launch communication. And The Whole Truth nailed its brand positioning with this 2020 ad, inspired by the OG D2C brand The Dollar Shave Club.

The ad puts a sharp focus on where it can win – the product – specifically, the whole truth about the ingredients in the products we consume. It uses visuals to maximum effect, and also has a meta touch with the founder himself playing the narrator. WYSIWYG.

P.S. The brand continued the narrative with its take on influencers.

Khatabook

When the product is completely new to the market, brand positioning can be as simple as laying out the benefits very clearly. Obviously, the consumer insights on needs and triggers need to be understood for the communication to resonate. And yes, it is also possible to make a boring product demo when talking about benefits.

But taking a leaf out of the early Flipkart strategy – kidults – in which they used this key visual imagery and humour to make a benefit interesting, Khatabook used Dhoni (also an investor in the company) in three different avatars to tell a very engaging story to its audience. The stories recreated the problems of the audience and presented Khatabook as the solution with features serving as the RTB.

Cred

Now think of an exact opposite scenario when there is no product differentiation. Some would say ‘no product’, but let’s be nice. The entire idea of ‘Not everyone gets it’ played out in the product (credit score based access) and in the communication itself – it was almost a challenge to the viewer (or maybe marketing commentators) to ‘get it’.

While there was no reason given to the user on why they should ‘Download Cred’, the interest was piqued because of the usage of a certain kind of celebrity – one which evoked nostalgia in the demographic Cred was going after. Between that and the audacity of the (non) positioning, it created two effects. Tons of earned media because a lot of people simply had to share it and have a pov. Mimetic desire because everyone seemed to know about it, but not all could get it.

Contrast it to what might have happened if they simply did a benefit based positioning with ‘Download’ as the CTA, and then you’ll see why this was a very smart job.

P.S. I also think that it was also meant for VCs. It’s like the peacock showing off its plumage to the peahen and saying “if I can afford to do this at the risk of extinction (predators), imagine how confident I am”

A slightly more detailed note here.

Bonus: Amazon

It is arguable whether Amazon’s launch ad (2015) can be called brand positioning. I think it qualifies, because it was a new market with a fairly entrenched competitor in Flipkart. Given that Flipkart had played out the benefits of ecommerce, Amazon had to find a different angle. I really liked the consumer insight that Amazon brought out in this, and even more so because it fits perfectly with what is one of their core strengths – wide variety of products. Additional props for the overwhelming Indian-ness in the ad. Not every brand that lands on these shores manages to bring it out so fluently.

These campaigns give you an idea of how crucial positioning is, and how a great positioning can actually be a moat for brand and business in the long term. You still remember these ads, and that is the proof.

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The Definitive Content Strategy Guide for startups: A Fractional CMO’s 6 step process

manu prasad — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 05:55:54 +0000

A well-thought-through content strategy can be of great help in creating ‘pull’ for a brand. There are three critical points to note though. One, ‘content’, is a very generic term that encompasses a lot of things that sometimes have very little in common with each other. Two, content can be king, but without a strategy that aligns to business objectives, it is very difficult to sustain in the long-term. And three, content creation and marketing are different things, especially as social media is edging towards 0% organic reach!

The difference that a Fractional CMO makes is in the strategy and roadmap. Having done this for many brands that are known for their content (Myntra, Urban Ladder, Scripbox), here’s how I set about creating a content strategy.

1. Why does the brand need a content strategy?

While creating ‘pull’ for the brand could definitely be a very broad objective, I prefer to frame it in a business funnel. i.e is it for demand generation, or lead generation, or conversion, or repeat business? The reason is a very pragmatic one. While it is easy to get early excitement from vanity metrics and anecdotal feedback, if there is no business impact, the effort will have a short shelf-life, even if it goes ‘viral’.

2. Who is it for?

Obviously, the brand’s target audience. But there are nuances. Is there a specific segment the brand wants to pursue for a winning entry? Let me explain with an example. Back in 2011, when e-commerce was just about getting started in India, my brief at Myntra was to ‘democratise fashion’. Remember that this was a time when people bought clothes only on special occasions.

We decided to focus on an audience that we knew would be interested in fashion, with a specific kind of content. That was how our most successful content was made – built around re-creating a star’s look in a ‘just-released’ Bollywood movie, with an ensemble collection from Myntra. As we started becoming the go-to place for this, we expanded into explanations of trends, Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter collections and so on.

Understanding the audience – needs, interests, triggers, and barriers is extremely important for content to do its job. More on that in the next points.

3. What should the brand create?

Continuing from the last point, based on the consumer and competition, target the areas and segments where the brand can be relevant and add value. For instance, in 2015, though ecommerce was gaining ground, buying furniture online was still a new thing, and many people wondered about how it would all work.

At Urban Ladder, we created a property called #ULStories. Completely user generated content. In the beginning, it required a prompt from us, but later, it became organic because people loved to show off their homes. What did it do for the business? Many things. The display of UL furniture in a ‘home like ours’ does wonders to another person’s desire. It also showed that buying furniture online from UL was not that risky, and it was quite easy too.

And when we discovered that a lot of our customers had pets, we made this.

Between keyword planning and speaking to customers, it is not so difficult to create customer personas, and then craft targeted content that they want to consume.

However, arriving at versions of the brand voice, tonality and style that fits the platform, understanding whether an influencer works for the category, whether you need a webinar or a podcast for thought-leadership, should you attempt moment marketing with a trending topic, are all questions a content strategy has to answer.

4. Which platform should the brand focus on?

Back when investing online was still a new thing, keywords gave a clear idea about the kind of questions that customers wanted answers to. That’s how the Scripbox blog was started. This was before social platforms became universal. People did not mind reading long-form educational content when it came to money and investing. This not only created awareness, but did a great job with lead generation too. Later, as video consumption gained ground, we started doing explainer videos on YouTube. And then Shorts.

Myntra’s content play began on a blog, moved to Twitter and Facebook, and then, because the category was so visual in nature, Instagram and YouTube were an obvious destination. Ditto for UL whose first home was Facebook, but then Instagram too. However, the most successful component was the UL daily newsletter. Imagine the kind of content that would make people not just look forward to, and read a newsletter, but even reply?

Today notifications go viral, and WhatsApp groups are a great way to build community. Remember to understand the audience’s usage of media platforms, and the kind of format they prefer for consuming information in the specific category.

5. How does a brand go about production and promotion?

Creating an account on social media is the easiest thing to do, but having an editorial policy, defining content pillars, and a publishing calendar, evaluating tools, incl Gen AI, which can help in publishing, monitoring, responding, and measuring, and understanding what content to repurpose and how, making sure the team has a process for moment marketing- these are some of the things that take some planning and effort.

The era of produce and forget is long over. Content marketing is crucial in ensuring customers actually see the content, in their digital journeys. Finding internal, and customer champions who can help distribute it, exploring ways of seeding the content, maybe finding a budget that allows for some initial boost, are all things to think about.

6. (How) should we measure it?

As I mentioned earlier, once the initial charm of vanity metrics have disappeared, content production and promotion resources have to be seen as contributing to the overall business growth. When the content strategy has been built with business objectives in mind, mapping platform metrics to brand and business metrics from Reach and Share of Voice to CAC and LTV will start becoming possible. And that in turn, will help sustain the activity for a longer period, which is absolutely necessary for success.

As you’ve seen, under the broad umbrella of content is a dynamic set of components which need to function like well-oiled machinery. That is what a content strategy does, and getting it right will provide you an additional engine of brand and business growth. The Fractional CMO adds value by understanding the context of the business, consumer, and competition, and crafting a content strategy that meets brand and business objectives.

P.S. Related Post: An interview with Pepper Content on my content strategy journey

Need help with your content strategy?

Brand Strategy for startups : 5 ways a Fractional CMO can help

manu prasad — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 06:57:49 +0000

Many people equate a television ad, or social media content, or even a tagline for a brand strategy. While all of these are possible elements, you still need a structure that binds all these if you want to create and maintain a perception in the mind of the customer. The italicised part is what I believe is the most concise definition of a brand. So, how can a Fractional CMO help a startup create a brand strategy, and how different is it from doing it through a set of specialists in brand, or content or social media or performance marketing? Here are 5 ways.

1. Connecting business context to brand strategy

I believe that one of the key tasks of a CMO is to convert the business strategy and metrics into brand and growth strategies and metrics, without losing the essence of any of the three. In one word, alignment. In the absence of an experienced CMO, a Fractional CMO for startups is able to utilise his/her learning from previous experiences to complement the customer understanding of the leadership/in-house team, and frame the context of the business in terms of the consumer, competition, and the company’s vision. More on this in Point 5.

2. Crafting the brand narrative

The brand’s business might not be unique, but its story should be. And the story can be derived from anything – a customer insight, the origin story, or a distinctive way of presenting itself. Anything that helps you create a compelling, sustainable differentiation.

A good example from the recent past is The Whole Truth. Built on the premise of ‘bringing truth back to food’ by busting the selective truths that big food brands were telling to suit their convenience, backed by products that were transparent about ingredients (see image below) and a content and communication strategy that sold told the story in an engaging manner. (A great deep dive by Winner Brands)

A Fractional CMO, through sheer experience and expertise, can reduce the learning curve on a bunch of things – from GTM to agency briefing and evaluation.

3. Building a brand identity

As important the narrative is, it needs to be complemented by a strong and sustained brand identity. Because this is what the customer sees around, it has a strong influence on creating and maintaining perception. As the image below shows, it has many components, which work collectively to create a distinct perception in the mind of the customer.

For example, in the early days, Flipkart’s Twitter handle did a fantastic job of using relatability and humour, and endearing itself to customers. A strategy followed by Dunzo in recent years. Think about it – Dunzo and Grofers and Swiggy Instamart practically do the same thing, but which brand would you say has an identity that influences you? (for a minute, forget the business model)

4. Aligning stakeholders for a seamless customer experience

The above two can also be done by a brand specialist, but the customer perception doesn’t stick to silos. Everything from a tweet to a payment gateway failure influences it. There are many common examples. Creatives used for performance marketing not aligned to sustainable brand growth. Yes, maybe business requires discounts, but you can do storytelling on that too. Or the tonality of the content on the website, app, or social media. Aligning these different folks is something a Fractional CMO can do very well – simply by virtue of stakeholder management skills, and objectivity.

5. Measuring what matters

Too often, stakeholders get caught up in metrics that matter to them, but not as much to the larger objective. The Performance/Growth Marketer would claim great CTRs, and the person taking care of CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) would claim low quality traffic when asked about conversions! Closing the loop on the very first point – connecting the business context to the activities of team members is crucial for alignment. This gives them direction, and ensures they’re contributing to an organisational goal while working towards their own KPIs/KRAs. This is something a Fractional CMO is well placed to carry out because of their non-partisanship to any particular team.

A brand strategy, when planned and executed well, delivers disproportionate returns for the business. It is important to start on that as early as possible because getting the engine going does take a little time. A startup, even if it does not have the resources to hire a full-time resource, can get started with the help of a Fractional CMO.

3 things to understand before running that startup marketing plan

manu prasad — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 06:44:38 +0000

Many founders end up executing a startup marketing ‘strategy’ based on immediate circumstances. This could be a preference for performance marketing based on a desire to show immediate revenue, or a penchant for creating content to educate the customer, or quickly doing PR or influencer marketing to get quick visibility, and because it seems to have worked for a competitor. While none of these are wrong per se, it might be a sub-optimal strategy if your plan is to build a brand for the long-term.

If you can manage to take half a day out, and dwell on just three things (by yourself and/or with your marketing team), it can not only give you a coherent marketing strategy that will help build a brand, but also save you time down the line when you have to take decisions on marketing. So, what are these three things?

Before implementing your startup marketing plan

1. Understand yourself

This is only semi-philosophical, but it has less to do with you, and more to do with the brand and organisation you’re planning to build. why are you doing this – what is the problem you’re trying to solve? And how do you plan to do this? Maybe you’re clear in your head, maybe you only have a few vague thoughts on some parts of it, but whatever it is, document it.

What are your belief systems – the way in which you think business should be done in your category, how will you help your customers in a way that is different from other brands? What are the values that you think your brand should have? A simplistic way to start – three words you would want your customer to associate you with.

And maybe, just so we keep metrics in mind, if you’ve done your business plan, also form your perspectives around the CAC and LTV you’d like to drive.

What are some of the insights you have gathered? Are there those who seem to have immediately grasped what you’re trying to do? What do you think are the similarities among these people? What are the other brands they prefer? Is there a common value system you share? What are some of the other character traits they have?

Based on these conversations, take a shot at how you would segment your customers. Think a little beyond simple demographics like age, gender, location, income and so on. The image below will give you an idea. (via)

Then, within the segment, try creating a few buyer personas. Here’s an example

3. Understand your business context

What is the business context you’re operating in? Is this a new category you’re building, or are you going into a well-established and competitive category, or is it somewhere in between? If it’s the first, you might have to do the hard job of category creation – educating the customer and simultaneously making your brand synonymous with the category. If it’s one of the others, do a deep study of your competition across all their touch-points. Website, emails, app notifications, customer outreach calls, stalls, social media channels, PR. Is there something that is obviously working well for them? How can you be different from them? Do you have product differentiators? Or does the brand have to do the heavy-lifting? How do you build credibility? These are some of the questions that you will need to answer.

Once you’ve done this, get started on your startup marketing strategy. What’s your story? How will you position your brand and effectively communicate it? What is your visual identity, colours, and tone? How can you efficiently reach your target audience? What are your personas, and what are the features you can leverage as benefits and value propositions? How will you measure success?

Remember, at this stage, startup marketing is all about iteration and experiments. Everything in the paragraph above has to be kept a little fluid. What works for your first 10 customers may not scale to 1000 or a million. Let it evolve into its defined state as you grow.

All the best!

In case you need help on this,

Brand – Manu Prasad

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3 things to understand before running that startup marketing plan

Before implementing your startup marketing plan

3. Understand your business context

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