Draftfcb Ulka's Cogito brings Prof. Kevin Lane Keller in India to talk on new brand imperatives

The concept of brand management is still not so evolved in India. Various B-school of the country provide the theoretical knowledge, but what is needed is the new breed of managers to be ready by the time they enter the market.

Cogito Consulting, the Brand Consultancy division of the Draftfcb Ulka Group recently organized an exclusive talk by the internationally acclaimed marketing and brand management guru, Prof. Kevin Lane Keller.

Prof. Keller needs no introduction to the business world. He is the E.B. Osborn Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. His book Strategic Brand Management is the most widely used text book on the subject. He is also the co-author (with Philip Kotler) of the all-time best selling introductory marketing textbook, Marketing Management.

Several of his articles have also appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Marketing and numerous other reputed journals.

As one of the world's leading academic thinkers and top industry consultant in marketing, Professor Keller provides best practice, leading-edge strategic guidelines and tactical insights to help create strong brands in a fast-moving, competitive economy.

Talking to a select audience, Prof. Keller, who was in Mumbai, talked about the on "The New Brand Imperatives.'

Prof. Keller explained the need for the brand marketers to stay close to their customers to get a better purchase.

"Brand marketers must strive to stay close to all customers and understand what they know and like about brands and what they don't know or don't like," Prof. Keller explained.

"Brand marketers must increasingly utilize functional and aesthetic design principles and techniques, as well as understand the duality of rational and emotional dimensions of consumer's relationships to brands and how the two can interact," he added.

Prof. Keller stressed on the point that brand marketers should be able to assemble the right brand architecture so that the market reaches its potential.

"Brand marketers must think holistically about how marketing communications efforts work [or don't work] together," he said.

"They should take a long-term perspective as to what is good for their brand, as well as what is good about their brand.

"They should be able to understand the market and justify their marketing investments by employing a set of models, tools and perspectives that fully illuminates how consumers and brands are affected in the short-and long-run by any marketing activity or programs," he added.

Prof Keller's talk was attended by a select group of 150 senior executives and leading academics. It was presented by Cogito Consulting, with SIMSR [K J Somaiya] as the academic partner and Pearson Education as the publishing partner.

The event is one of the many initiatives undertaken by the Draftfcb Ulka Group to celebrate its 50 years of its operations in India. In line with the Group's philosophy of Building BrandWealth, the talk by Prof. Keller aims to help managers navigate the new challenges of brand management through key branding imperatives.

The day will remain etched in our memory in the years to come since on this and around the time the discussions were happening Sachin Tendulkar scored his hundredth ton.