Tarun Chauhan, Management Advisor, Wonder Cement.
Consumer will not take you seriously if you are not there during his pain points. Your relationship with the consumer cannot be merely transactional but you have to be involved with him, says Tarun Chauhan, Management Advisor, Wonder Cement. Excerpts from the interview..
Could you spell out your perception of branding?
A consumer consumes a brand and values have to be built around it. It?s is a long and continuous process. Look at mobile network. A network is a network, however, sale experience with every network is different; service offered is different. So you need to build a story around a brand. Wonder Cement being a younger player is creating ?wonder? as a powerful brand.
What do you think is the best and most effective medium for building a brand?
We have to tell the consumer why are we there and celebrate it across the mediums. We are on TV because we have to be there. But our focus is social media. We are a young brand in the fabric of Rajasthan, and on the ground level we connect with communities with different programes. For example during Sankranti festival, we campaigned for the birds which were getting hurt during kite festival. It was very successful and played a vital role in creating brand awareness.
Tell us about your brand positioning.
We promote ?wonder? as a brand. We have many relationship programs like mason relationship program, engineer relationship program and we also focus on individual communications where we prefer to create one to one relationship. Communication has a major role to play.
How do you differentiate the campaigning for rural and urban markets?
Consumer will not take you seriously if you are not there during his pain points. Your relationship with the consumer cannot be merely transactional but you have to be involved with him. Brand idea is the core and it is uniform for both urban and rural, it will not change. But the activation programs for both urban and rural are different.
Which characteristic feature do you try to emphasis?
Today everybody talks of strength. No doubt, the inherent attribute of cement is strength. However, we do not talk of strength. We say the strength is given. Wonder celebrates the association with core consumer. When you are buying cement for your own house the life starts with that. If you start well it will end well. It?s where we chip in.
What about CSR as a branding exercise?
We have painted hundred plus vans going around the region with Wonder as a brand. We conduct health care activities, participate in local melas. Presently vans are used to distribute drinking water where there is acute shortage.
How do you assess the future of branding in the cement industry?
Cement industry should start investing in brand collectively, we started investing in brand. Give it a personality, it does not mean making advertisement but giving an insight to consumer. The brand should start fetching premium for the product.