'BAV will be Rediffusion Y&R's ultimate differentiator in India': Arun Nanda

The nearly two decade-old strategic tool of Young & Rubicam, Brand Asset Valuator (BAV), has been re-launched in India after nine years.

Rediffusion Y&R is ready with its first study on Indian brands based on BAV, covering 4800 respondents across 100 categories and more than 1350 brands.

Peter Stringham, chief executive officer, Young & Rubicam Group, said, "The BAV data shows you a brand's health across attributes that the consumers actually value."

BAV will analyse brands across 48 attributes to provide insights on nine parameters: brand health, brand imagery, brand archetype, brand architecture, consumer segmentation, consumer loyalty, category insights, brand partnerships and elasticity.

"For instance, BAV will not tell whether a product is superior to its competition but it will tell you whether people believe your brand is superior than the competitor's. It will identify your brand's life stage, analyse its strengths and weaknesses and suggest a direction in formulating the right strategy," explained Gautam Talwar, chief strategy officer, Rediffusion Y&R.

Rediffusion Y&R has setup a dedicated team of 27 people who have been trained on the tool over the last year and a half.

Arun Nanda, chairman, Rediffusion Y&R, said, "This tool is like having a nuclear missile. It will enable insight mining and give us a tremendous competitive advantage. BAV will be our ultimate differentiator. The research for BAV follows global norms, it cannot be duplicated, and it has proven to be a tried and tested tool in over 50 countries.We will use it to mine data to give competitive edge to our partners for their strategy." 

On the cost incurred on the study undertaken by BAV in India, Nanda said, "It's in multiple lakhs; over a crore (perhaps). I can't talk about absolute figures but I can tell you that it's the most expensive study on brands done in India, and paid for entirely by an agency."

Globally, BAV has invested approximately $150 million in studying 40,000 brands across 50 countries since its inception. Nanda stated that Rediffusion Y&R would invest for research on Indian brands every year. 

On the popularity of the tool, he added, "BAV has been adopted for over 15 years across the world. It has made its way into Harvard's case studies. But it's in its nascent stage in India."

On the general health of the agency, Nanda said the agency had 'more than doubled' its profits in 2011 (over the previous year). He added, "Our target for 2012 is to grow by at least 25 per cent now."