On India’s Kingfisher Airlines, passengers get a little more than they bargain for as the aircraft takes off. A video appears featuring Vijay Mallya, the brash 52-year-old who launched the airline amid considerable fanfare in 2005. The self-styled ‘King of good times’ makes a brief greeting to his passengers, before leaving an email address — for future correspondence, one assumes. “If you miss anything,” he adds helpfully, “contact me personally.”
It is a savvy piece of branding, from a man who, you sense, needs little invitation to promote either himself or his company. That the two are inextricably linked is an obvious part of the appeal. Mallya is often photographed cavorting with the models that double as aircrew on his Kingfisher ‘Funliners’. For all of the frivolity, Mallya’s approach is increasingly justified by hard business metrics: in the two years since it launched, Kingfisher’s market share has surged to 10 per cent.
Since he inherited his father’s United Breweries business empire 24 years ago, meanwhile, his personal value has swelled to more than US$1billion — an increase in wealth that is perhaps matched only by his reputation for enjoying the ‘good times’.
In many ways, Mallya’s strategy is merely the latest spin on one of the business world’s most famous: a fusion of personality and brand that has brought remarkable success to the likes of Anita Roddick, Steve Jobs and — perhaps most memorably — Richard Branson. For Mallya, the benefits of such an approach are clear and are rooted in his ability to ‘live the brand’ in a way that few of his Asian contemporaries are able to match.
“People see the individual as having a personal stake in the success or failure of it,” is Y&R creative planner Hari Ramanathan’s explanation for the success that some entrepreneurs have in inspiring brand loyalty. “It’s a very visual demonstration of putting your money where your mouth is.”
Ramanathan identifies a range of qualities that define successful brand pioneers, such as being an upstart, non-conformist or revolutionary. As for the brands, he points out that they are often characterised by an iconic status and rapid growth. Mallya, notes Ramanathan, is a “carefree individual who bucks the trend of the hard-working, family-values businessman.
“People aspire to the brand in a vicarious satisfaction to live life on the edge through Mallya’s exploits, and by association with the brands that are clearly distinct from the establishment,” he adds.
Asia has no dearth of entrepreneurs. But finding an Asian entrepreneur willing to boldly embody the personality of his brand is considerably less common. There is certainly no shortage of theories to explain this, with the most commonly cited reason drawing on the cultural differences between East and West.
“The personalities of individuals are far less edgy in Asia,” says Ramanathan. “These are basically very seasoned financial guys who take a very calculated risk. They are not maverick enough.”
Or, at least, most of them aren’t. One who might fit the bill is Jollibee founder Tony Tan Caktiong, who decided to start a ice-cream shop around 30 years ago and eventually ended up with a brand that — worldwide — remains one of the few local burger chains to consistently best the McDonald’s juggernaut.
Tan’s story is not only emblematic of the upstart ethos referred to by Ramanathan, but also embodies the David versus Goliath mentality that consistently strikes a chord with consumers. It is an approach that has also brought much success to AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes, whose attempts to cast himself as a thorn in the side of Singapore have found considerable favour in Malaysia.
Identifying exactly what drives a brand pioneer can be a tricky business. In the case of Branson himself, one of the more colourful factors that one source attributes to his ambition is that he simply “wants to look cool for his kids”. Perhaps one common thread, though, is basic necessity. Tan, for example, points to the specific Pinoy taste that Jollibee satisfies as a key factor in its success.
“The Jollibee brand is a result of pinpointing what is important and appealing to consumers and providing it sincerely and enthusiastically,” says Tan. “In general, consumers always appreciate the personal touch.”
It is a mindset that was taken to its logical conclusion by the man most often identified as Hong Kong’s answer to Branson — Lan Kwai Fong supremo Allan Zeman. When the Canadian-born businessman first began working in Hong Kong’s fashion industry in the ’70s, it struck him that there were few places which satisfied his particular craving for American food and drink.
“It was either seedy bars or stuffy hotels,” he points out. “By providing the perfect formula, the party people of Hong Kong flocked to the area, spawning a whole new entertainment district.”
The Lan Kwai Fong brand has succeeded at least in part because of Zeman’s personal touch; he is a fixture on the district streets, regularly canvassing customers to “find out what they like and don’t like”. Neither has Zeman over-complicated matters through the use of the myriad consultancies that, one imagines, would give much to work for the tycoon.
Instead, all branding and marketing strategies have always been devised in-house. “It is important to research your target market to know what demand is out there, but I always rely on my instinct to see where the market is going and to be ahead of the game.”
The implication for agencies is clear. The very qualities that often mark out the successful brand icon — non-conformism, instinctiveness — may preclude a heavy reliance on agencies. Where Coca-Cola or Procter & Gamble, for example, base the bulk of their marketing decisions on heavy research, Zeman’s own comments make clear that he is more willing to trust his own instincts.
Interbrand executive director Terry Oliver, however, sees another factor at play. “It could be a financial thing as much as anything,” he notes. “The big, traditional companies use external consultancies much more, but just by being smaller, more nimble, and built around a single person’s decisions, they are less reliant on decision by committee.”
Y&R Malaysia CEO Rishya Joseph, who worked with Tony Fernandes on the AirAsia launch, remembers the experience fondly. “He was not into the details but was very intuitive, and would make the call most times very fast,” he explains.
“But he was extremely ruthless in terms of decision making, and didn’t look for bureaucracy at all. The rules of engagement were very clear.”
The personality-driven approach is not without some significant potential drawbacks. A brand that lives on the owner’s successes, dies by his failures.
There can be no better illustration of this than Livedoor Japan’s CEO Takafumi Horie, whose company’s incandescent surge into the limelight was ultimately destroyed when he was sent to prison after a securities fraud conviction.
“You have to live the brand and as soon as you don’t, or do something that goes against the brand, you are dead,” explains Edelman Asia-Pacific CEO Alan VanderMolen. “It is high risk, high reward.”
Maintaining the pioneer mentality as the business grows ever bigger, meanwhile, becomes incredibly difficult. It can be argued that the likes of McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and even Nike have lost the personality that once defined them. For brands that derive their equity from their founders, any change at the top can have serious implications. Oliver, for example, points to Honda and Sony as brands that have floundered since their founder’s deaths.
“The personalities are so strong it’s probably quite difficult to develop a strategy to talk about succession planning,” he notes.
“There’s always the risk that, once that person is not around, the brand loses its way.”
