Branding: Strive for excellence

Deepak jain

The key to building a successful brand is to strive for excellence endlessly, says a teacher of a North American business school.
"Emerging companies should strive for excellence endlessly. It's a habit to make a difference, and work towards delivering the promises. Because, branding is not just a set of promises, but also the delivery of that promises accordingly," says Dipak C Jain, professor of
marketing at Kellogg School of Management in the US.
The product should have consistency in delivering the quality, he says. "For example, if you go to McDonald's anywhere in the world, the French fries taste the same. And that's the key of a successful brand."
Jain was talking to The Daily Star on Saturday. He came to Bangladesh on a two-day visit, and was a speaker at Leadership Summit 2010 organised by Bangladesh Brand Forum at Radisson Water Garden Hotel in Dhaka.
Jain thinks leadership is a very important element in developing a successful brand, and the leader has to be a creative thinker and a person who cares for the simplest things.
"The focus on innovation is indeed the foundation for a Quantum Leap. Also, a successful brand needs to be down-to-earth to reach its consumers."
Here, the marketing professor finds academic learning is extremely helpful for fostering the growth of local enterprises and thus the national economy eventually.
"What we teach in academic institutions is how to put a structure on a unstructured problem. And, the learning is not only applicable to a single product, but also to diverse products and sectors," he says.
This is why, Jain says, the business leaders are increasingly going for academic degrees in business and applying those in real life.
But apart from the classroom experiences, a programme like the leadership summit also helps disseminate knowledge among the business leaders, he says.
"Coming together and sharing lessons from successful entrepreneurs can immensely benefit an emerging company to develop an incredible global brand, like Coca-Cola or McDonald's."
Jain says the most strategic strength of Bangladesh is its untapped population, which will make a difference in business by inculcating unique human values.
"It's not very easy to fight against a flawed old system, but the young generation is coming fast to take over and make a difference," he says on an optimistic note.
"Now, every year lots of business students are graduating in Bangladesh, and they are increasingly joining corporate houses and giving a boost to the country's economy," he says.
The government needs to take initiatives that will encourage more entrepreneurship, and this would be a good way to accommodate those business graduates who fail to join any corporation, Jain says.