People Would Not Care If 73% Of Brands Disappear: Mohit Joshi

“People would not care if 73 per cent of brands disappeared, so it is important to make brand meaningful,” said Mohit Joshi, CEO, Media Network India addressing the Festival of Marketing, organised by BW MarketingWorld in New Delhi on August 18th, 2023, Friday.

Joshi explained that over the last decade, Havas Media Network India has invested in research called ‘Meaningful Brands Research’ across various categories like restaurants, consumer durables, consumer electronics, automobiles, delivery, home care, entertainment, and more.

He said there are three important aspects of a brand - functional equity, personal equity, and collective equity. Explaining functional equity, he said it’s the equity that defines how the brand is doing its job it is supposed to do.

Speaking about personal equity, Joshi said it helps the consumer to understand whether the brand satisfies its need and makes them happy. Lastly, the Havas CEO said collective equity is about consumer understanding of the brand’s origin.

He further emphasised the two metrics, meaningful brand index (MBI) and meaningfulness scores that are meant to measure the brand’s ranking.

Stating an instance, Joshi explained meaningfulness for brands commenting, “If you were to define meaningfulness for a brand, earlier it was functional equity, for a car, not breaking down, taking you from point A point B, giving you efficient milage, all those things. Then came personal equity, is this brand making me happy, and does it give me satisfaction? Finally, over the years, as consumers become more aware, collective equity. What are the company behaviours that connect at a social level? Is the company transparent, is it ethical.”

Joshi said, considering the changing consumer patterns, some brands have already unlocked the meaningful business. They are significantly outperforming the market on all measures. The most meaningful brands contribute to higher KPIs.

Shedding light on the survey by Havas, Joshi said one in four people report personal challenges and claim to be affected by at least one crisis on an everyday level. This makes them brand-conscious and so the majority of people believe in brand transparency. 

He said, “65 per cent of people are tired of brands pretending to care about social issues when their motive is only money; 67 per cent of people prefer to buy from companies with a reputation for sustainability; and 68 per cent of people will stop buying from companies that do not care about the planet or society.”

Furthermore, Joshi said this year Google, Amazon, YouTube, WhatsApp, and Flipkart were ranked as the top five meaningful brands in India as per Havas's research study.

He concluded the meaningful brand discussion by underlining eight ways to grow the ‘Me-economy. He said firstly it is important to make mental and physical wellness universal. Secondly, people should be enabled to do and feel more.

The third point he said is about respecting and celebrating the difference. For the fourth and fifth pointers, Joshi stressed that joy and a seamless approach are important. His sixth important emphasis was on unlocking accessibility. Finally, the CEO underlined it is significant to develop an efficient platform, and then enabling it to make purpose personal is another important thing.