Page 35 - Seniors Today Jan20 Issue

Once Upon A Time | Advertising
When I was growing up we didn’t paint our
faces with the tri-colour while watching a
cricket game but over the years cricket as a
sport stirs up patriotic feelings like no other.
Not surprising, considering cricket along with
religion and Bollywood are the three key hot
buttons for India. Which is why it is so common
for people to paint their faces or wave the tri-
colour in other forms at a cricket match.
If we go back into our past, brands like Amul
(a brand which is a year older than independent
India) stirred patriotic feelings and much
later of course summed up their brand as the
Taste of India. So did Bajaj with Hamara Bajaj
(buland Bharat ki buland tasveer). I think in
post- liberalised India brands still try to stir
up patriotic pride e.g. Tata Salt with Desh ka
35
Patriotism as
Brand Strategy
Patriotic branding can make brands
seem selfless instead of chasing profit
margins, observes Prabhakar Mundkur
Namak and to a lesser extent Tata Tea with
Jaago Re. If you look at Tata as a brand, they are
in the best position to do so being an old, trusted
Indian brand.
I don’t think we have ever had a formal study
of patriotic brands in India, although several
brands have pledged their patriotism, but
in the US where brands are continuously
studied for their degree of Patriotism, brands
like Jeep, Hershey’s, Coke, Levis, Ford, Wal-
Mart, Campbell’s and others have stood out
as patriotic brands. An annual research study
finds out which brands were most associated
with the value of patriotism. Quite often when
we say American icon I guess what we are really
referring to are patriotic brands. Largely, it has
to do with being an American company or really
being made in the U.S.A. In the 2016 research,
a national sample of 4,750 consumers, 16 to 65,
evaluated 248 brands across a collection of 35
cross-category values.
Consumers identified the following brands as
leading the most patriotic brands of 2016. The
individual value of patriotism was indicated by
the brand’s emotional engagement strength. The
percentages indicated the degree of patriotism
associated with the brand.
1.Jeep/Disney (98%)
SENIORS TODAY | Issue #7 | January 15, 2020