"Brand Building" through the power of people

Now here's caution for some of the readers. If you are a staunch believer of democracy, then you may not like the conversation following next. Why I am being so sarcastic, you may ask? Actually time and again, we have seen one fact about brands travelling across those hallowed boardrooms to the hands of the customers i.e. they were built by the customers. Some name it brand, some "My own brand" or some call it their "lovemarks"(Term coined by Kevin Roberts-CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide).

Now explaining my hysteria about democracy for the readers is a simple yet very trivial fact. Actually marketers should keep the philosophy of democracy in the back of their minds while encountering customers more in a country like India. Oh, did I forget to tell you the principles- it's "By the people", "For the people", "Of the people". Now put customers in place of people (though they are the same kind). Now that's why I was cautioning because some democracy fanatic may think that yet another marketer is trying to play some kind of games. Yes that is true. But here it's more of a win-win situation for both companies & the customers.

Now think of any brand, and put it in the democracy framework of "By the customers", "For the customers" & "Of the customers". Now see how your brand shapes up. Now there may be resistance (more in a form of criticism for my above statement) of course. But there are innumerable examples of brands like Lijjat papad (conventional popadum) in India, Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, Hindustan Unilver's project Shakti in India etc.

So brand building should start from the periphery of your marketing strategy where you have to engage your customers in a way that value deliverance is the embedded keyword behind your core strategy whereas leveraging customers' value acceptance is given more priority.