Adgully Exclusive | It's about connecting brands along with their products to the consumers: Wild East's Sid Shah

In the age of globalization and expansion, companies not only look forward to business expansion, but are keen on venturing into fruitful "brand extensions' as well. Keeping in line with this is The Wild East Group, brand management and business development agency.

In an exclusive conversation with Adgully, Sid Shah, CEO and President, The Wild East Group spoke about the budding concept of brand management and brand extension, key strategies used for the same and the prospects for the industry in India.

Briefing about the company, Shah said, "We started as a brand development and business management agency in India, one of the first. It's a very saturated market worldwide, but in India and China, it's a fairly new concept. In a nutshell, we create and incubate business opportunities for the top brands in India."

Elaborating on the working and functioning of the company, Shah said, "Basically, we start new business opportunities for our clients, who are typically top tier brands, in their respective categories, be it hospitality or auto or media company and take their brand to new areas of business. So if a brand has a core area for business and has built their brand equity as something like "luxurious, elegant, reliable and consistent'; we take those to other new categories that are logical extension of their core business."

Thus offering an "almost customized' positioning done for the company, a lot of brain storming and idea generation is required for each of the company in their varied clientele. "We have a very intensive trademark process, where first we look at the brand we will work on, analyze the brand attributes, what does it stand for, global trends, international competition, who the manufacturers and retailers would, how much would we put in and get in return and know what the consumers think of the brand etc." Adding further he said, "The important criteria that revolve around our discussions are, which of the numerous ideas actually has good retail opportunity and which of them can be a sustainable business and can evolve the brand position. So our basic objectives while doing this are; one, is it revenue generating, and secondly, is it brand building."

Explaining further, he said, "Usually it takes up to a year to get any client. Once we have the client, it takes about 3 ' 6 months to figure out what the new business opportunity could be, with the detailed brand extension plans we do for them. With the detailed analysis done, we push the ball to the client's court. This in a large way is good for the clients, because they can chose to get involved or not to involve in the entire process. Our experience says corporations love to get involved in the process, media companies on the other hand, are usually less involved since they would like to be focused on their core business."

Commenting on the possibility of presence of negative competition, he said, "We do not fear the idea that any client would take ideas and business plans from us and execute from any other agency or do it in-house. We follow a very scientific process for our work and we do not have a hundred clients to work with. At the end of the day, it's not quantity, its quality for us. Our focus is some major categories of working, namely, corporate, media, arts, celebrity, and sports."

Speaking about the industry and its shortfalls in India, Shah mentioned that, "Globally, the industry is about 180 billion dollars, in India, it's about 1%. The reason why this industry in India is still nascent, is primarily because, the organized retail industry is still involving here. Since we work closely with retail, we are also growing with it, step by step. So we work with only a few retailers and manufacturers, who are sophisticated enough to understand the process and that it's a long term plan with lots of avenues; it's not about day one, but about day one and year three."

Some of the clients that The Wild East Group is working with are Hrithik Roshan, Yash Raj Films, Hewlett Packard, Deepak Chopra, Dr. Seuss among others. "In the few days to come, we are announcing about ten new big international clients we shall work with", he added.

Highlighting one of the successful deals in their kitty, he said, "In case of Hritik Roshan, one of the recent deals we did was a partnership with Hrithik and Hot Wheels, and this is very unique and one of its kind, since Hot Wheels has never associated with any celebrity before this. This is a 3-year association that will lead to their 50th year celebration. So creating something like "Team Extreme' that co-relates very well with Hrithik's attributes i.e. young, macho, vibrant, and action-oriented and that's what Team Extreme is all about."

Since "brand management and brand extensions' as an industry and a concept is fairly new in India, it in a large way needs apt exposure and be strategically promoted. Telling us more about the way he is trying to encourage and endorse this new concept in India, he said, "Firstly, I talk only to a few strategic people for my work. It's all about meeting the clients, showing them what can be done with their brand, what are the international counterparts doing in the given space and what can be done with them. Secondly, I meet a lot of retailers to understand what their consumers are looking for and then we try and find a match with our brand."

Any new business venture inevitably has to cross a few hurdles before setting a strong foot hold in its industry. Similarly, speaking about some of the challenges he faced, Shah said, "The first challenging part was, since it's a new concept, convincing people to take a chance with their brand and trust me as the custodian of their brand. Currently, our key challenge is to work with the retailers, since even they are trying to figure out the working of this model."

"There is flood of western brands here, where everyone has access to a Diesel or a French Connection. Consumers are brand conscious and are very different from what they were earlier. There are a lot of products to be sold, and now it's about connecting those brands with the products to the consumers", Shah remarked. Adding further, he said, "There are many channels through which this can be done, one important being retail. We are looking at the e-commerce space because through this we can access everybody in India, as opposed to retailers. Also, setting up your own store in India is an expensive affair, so we are focused on the e-commerce space. We kind of see more opportunities may be in setting up pop-up stores in a high traffic mall".

Lastly, concluding the conversation he said, "I have two main visions as off now. Firstly, I want this industry to become material in India so that global brands have no fear of doing business in India. Right now, everybody is interested in India and China, but at the same time this interest is complimented with very high levels of fear as well. Secondly, I wish the industry to grow at a rapid pace. There is so much benefit for the brand and the consumer that in connecting the dots, we are in a way missing out on opportunities."

Ending on a positive note, Shah said, "Personally with this company, I want this to be "the' company that works with the top global and Indian brands in helping them leverage and extend their brands in to new categories." | By Ankita Tanna [ankita(at)adgully.com]