chlorophyll recently celebrated ten years of its existence. The branding consultancy, headed by Kiran Khalap (pictured, right) and Anand Halve (pictured, left) used the occasion to launch Litmosi, a corporate alignment tool that attempts to help companies align their corporate values with their corporate behaviour.
Kiran Khalap, founder CEO, chlorophyll, pointed out that the biggest change that had taken place in the last few years was the end of one way communication.
“There is no place for brands to hide anymore,” said Khalap, adding that the Internet had ensured that today, consumers had the opportunity to talk about their brand experience online and to a wide audience. For corporates, it was even more critical to align their corporate values with what they were doing in the marketplace. Khalap pointed out that while companies may feel that there were certain values that embodied their brands in the marketplace, the actual reality of what those brands meant to consumers could be very different.
As Halve pointed out, increasingly companies are realising that the brands that people work for, define who they are. He suggested that B2B branding would be key, moving forward. “Companies will need to take time to define themselves and what they stand for.” Giving the example of Nike, which believes in recruiting people who are passionate about sports themselves, Halve pointed out that there were already companies in India who were clear about what values their corporate brand stood for. “Tata and Cadbury have both practised that well through the years. Infosys also managed to achieve that,” he added.
“Values are the only lasting differentiator. Brands like Zara, Body Shop etc did not advertise in mass media but their corporate stand was well differentiated to consumers. In the case of brands like Body Shop, they were as clearly defined by the things that they did as the things that they did not, such as animal testing etc,” added Halve.
“In the 21st century, the challenge is for companies to be held accountable for the promises that they make, given the vast amount of information available to consumers,” added Khalap.
He pointed out that in today’s corporate environment, given the number of mergers and acquisitions taking place, it was also challenging to bring two sets of companies together that individually stood for different sets of values. “The issue is when there is a belief that branding is a function purely defined by the marketing department. That is not true, corporate branding is something that has to be made clear through each and every function that is a part of the company: marketing, HR etc.”
Litmosi, as a tool, is an attempt to bridge that gap between what companies believe they are saying in the market place and what they are actually practising.
“Litmosi is an attempt towards building the foundation of a durable corporate brand,” said Khalap adding, that eventually customer belief in a company translated into customer delight and over a period of time had a long term effect on the bottom line. The tool is expected to be live from September 15. Khalap also unveiled Ideantity, a book on branding that he described as “a bold, sometimes counter-intuitive, but always factual look at some of the myths about brands, branding, and most specifically, the expression of brands in their identities, or logos.”
