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Dreaming little dreams: brand building at the Base of the Pyramid

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Logic suggests that brands have a limited role to play at the Base of the Pyramid. But try telling that to the people who live there.

Dreaming little dreams: brand building at the Base of the Pyramid

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It goes without saying that affordability matters a great deal to consumers who live on less than $8 a day. However, it would be a terrible mistake to assume that it is the only thing that matters. With products asked to perform a range of functional and emotional tasks, there is a natural and hugely valued role for brands at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP). However, those brands must be prepared to develop original, innovative and relevant propositions if they are to deliver against the needs of BoP consumers and become part of an exciting growth opportunity.

Priyanka’s storyTNS uses fictionalised realities, stories compiled from the many different interviews conducted by our researchers, to help bring to life the issues regularly faced by BoP consumers in different markets. Here is one such story.

Priyanka is 19 years old. She lives in a small village near Lucknow in India, part of a family of six that survives on the annual income of $4,000 that her father generates from the small piece of land he owns. Every day Priyanka travels for over two hours to attend

college in the city. She is a bright girl with potential, the local schoolteacher said. Her family had watched stories on the community TV set about girls with college

educations who land salaried jobs in the city – and so they have carefully set aside what money they can to send Priyanka to college.

Dreaming little dreams: brand building at the Base of the Pyramid

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Unlike the more affluent students at the college, Priyanka does not have pocket money – but her parents give her small amounts for transportation and food. For the last month, though, she has gone hungry most days. Hidden in her college bag, a secret from her parents, is the reason: a small tube of moisturiser.

Neutrogena is one of the more expensive moisturiser brands on the market – and when Priyanka bought her first tube from a shopkeeper in the city, she was shocked at the small size of the product she was given having saved up her lunch money to buy it. She decided to try it anyway – and has never willingly used another moisturiser brand since. She loves the way that the cream feels on her face – and she is certain that the soft look it gives her skin helps her to fit in amongst wealthier students. When the shopkeeper ran out of Neutrogena one month, Priyanka tried another upmarket brand. She went back to Neutrogena as soon as it was back in stock.

Although the moisturiser is the only beauty product that Priyanka buys, it is not the only product that she uses. One of her friends has also been saving her lunch

money – in order to buy a Ponds face wash. By sharing the two products, the girls are able to use a full skin-care regime.

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When she returns home from college, Priyanka spends her evenings helping her mother. Dust from sweeping the floor clings to her long hair, which her traditional-minded parents will never allow her to cut. It leaves her skin feeling dry and spotty. If she did nothing about her appearance, she knows she will be ridiculed and singled out as a ‘village girl’ when she travels to the city. She fears that such perceptions will stand in the way of her opportunities.

Priyanka’s mother and father both believe that cutting Priyanka’s hair would damage her prospects for a good marriage. When she asked to wash her hair more frequently, to keep it from getting oily, they worried that she was secretly seeing boys. They would worry equally about make-up or beauty products – and that’s why they can’t know about the tube of Neutrogena. Keeping her family happy is very important to Priyanka. She wants to be accepted in her home village, just as she wants to be accepted amongst the other students at college. She is worried, though, that these two worlds will one day pull her in different directions.

In particular, she fears being forced to abandon her plans for a career if her parents choose to arrange a marriage for her. Until then, though, the secret tube of Neutrogena helps her to balance the two very different parts of her life.

Dreaming little dreams: brand building at the Base of the Pyramid

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Where brand loyalty means moreWe find Priyanka’s story echoed across the lives of men and women in India, China, Latin America and Africa: the regions where the vast majority of BoP consumers live.

This is particularly true of an upper BoP segment, those with purchasing power of between $2 and $8 a day, which TNS identifies as ‘Strivers’.

These BoP consumers are educated, hopeful and optimistic about their future, aspirational, ambitious and confident in their ability to achieve their ambitions. Like Priyanka they value their social equity and seek ways to build it further. But like Priyanka they often find themselves caught in conflict between traditional worlds and new opportunities.

Brands are valued, even loved, as they offer reassurance and certainty in potentially very uncertain lives. Once won over, BoP consumers reward their brands with unshakeable loyalty, giving early movers in this market a strong competitive advantage. However, to earn that loyalty, brands must first craft a proposition that resonates with the multi-dimensional role that they

Dreaming little dreams: brand building at the Base of the Pyramid

will be asked to perform within the BoP; robust, functional, affordable, addressing priority needs and yet also providing reassurance and even guidance. Achieving this often means re-engineering a brand through production innovation, packaging and delivery mechanisms.

People living on less than $8 per day demonstrate a strong and surprising preference to buy a brand over a commodity, provided the brand proposition is relevant, accessible and affordable.

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Dreaming little dreams: brand building at the Base of the Pyramid

Functional, emotive expertiseAny brand proposition for the BoP must be anchored in strong functionality that makes a measurable difference to the consumer’s life. The brand’s products must withstand stress and hostile physical environments, and last much longer than would be expected in other scenarios. And they must address genuine, high-priority needs in order to compete successfully for a share of very limited incomes.

Successful brand relationships often begin with information and education, reasons to believe and reassurance that money is being spent wisely. However, propositions are most effective when they build on this functional relevance and credibility to connect emotionally as well.

Nokia

Unilever

Brands must combine affordability with robust quality. Nokia’s brand reputation as a lifeline for rural Indians and Africans rests partly on its products’ reputation for being kicked, thrown, dropped, ground into the dirt – and still working. Perceptions of quality and expertise are as important in the BoP as in more developed market sectors, building trust, visibility and reassurance that consumers are getting the best that their money can buy.

Unilever’s Lifebuoy brand commands a premium in rural India by delivering germ protection that has saved and changed lives. Its credibility is built on more than a protection product. Lifebuoy has successfully established itself as a protection brand that champions the cause of health and hygiene, educating over 70 million Indians on the importance of germ protection and featuring as one of the country’s most trusted brands year after year. Like Priyanka’s tube of Neutrogena, Lifebuoy delivers emotional support through the trust it engenders as well as the crucial role it performs.

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Dreaming little dreams: brand building at the Base of the Pyramid

Emotional resonanceAcross markets, we find a range of emotional themes resonating with BoP consumers in this way – and providing reassurance, support and even guidance:

EmpowermentThe sense of a brand enabling and empowering, either oneself or one’s family, is particularly powerful. Brands that have successfully leveraged this emotional value include Nirma, now valued at $500m, which started life with a promise of ‘affordable whiteness’ for low-income consumers, distancing them from the brown colours that symbolise dirt and poverty. Priyanka’s tube of Neutrogena also stands firmly in this category.

FortificationFood brands that promise immunity against sickness or an improvement in reproductive health resonate strongly across the BoP, as do nutrition solutions that can help to make children stronger and better prepared for the future. Danone’s fortified yoghurt product, Shakti Dohi helps to ensure that children in Bangladesh,

one of the world’s poorest countries, get the micro-nutrients they need. Danone’s scientists worked to create a product that strips away all unessential costs without compromising on nutritional quality and the company partnered with the Grameen Foundation to establish an innovative community distribution model. Shakti Dohi is marketed door-to-door by Grameen ladies, who also help to educate and raise awareness.

PleasureDespite, or perhaps because of their many pressing life concerns, BoP consumers welcome brands promising special moments of cheer. SAB Miller’s Chibuku beer is one such proposition: engineered for those who cannot afford bottled beer (the majority of the population in Botswana, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe where it is sold), Chibuku is brewed from sorghum and corn and sold in paper cartons and plastic containers. The brand proposition: Shake Shake, builds an identity around the need to shake the cartons before drinking, to mix the separated ingredients.

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Dreaming little dreams: brand building at the Base of the Pyramid

Assertiveness Themes of excellence and success can also resonate amongst BoP consumers, provided they focus on relevant needs. Brands have found success with promises of mastery over budget, admiration and envy of superior homemaking skills, enhancement of social stature and parental pride and ambition. Priyagold, a biscuit brand in India, challenged the market norms and the market leader by introducing a range of indulgence biscuits. Until then, the only biscuits that were accessible to lower income consumers were the cheaper energy range. Priyagold’s ‘demand with entitlement’ proposition instead asked: Why should the good things in life be denied to you?

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Inclusion not exclusivity: some potential traps for global brandsIn developing emotive propositions, brands must take great care not to apply developed market themes that have potentially negative connotations amongst BoP consumers.

Although international brands have aspirational appeal amongst the emerging middle class, that appeal has far less resonance for BoP consumers. Functionality, quality and the ability to satisfy emotional needs must be established on the ground, within the audience’s own experience; they cannot be imported from elsewhere. Local brands are often the ones to thrive within the BoP – and global brands looking for new growth opportunities can gain valuable insights by studying their success.

Brand-building the old-fashioned wayThe key to crafting a winning BoP proposition for global brands lies in a willingness to re-engineer product and brand infrastructure to craft an affordable, quality proposition. However, it also requires a will to go further: to develop emotional engagement and to fulfil the role of reassuring, trusted advisor that BoP consumers actively seek from their brands. For marketers, the BoP provides an opportunity for good, old-fashioned ‘brand building’ – and an environment ideally suited to building meaningful relationships

Rebelliousness and exclusivity have no place here; meaning and purpose are everything.

with consumers. With $5 trillion of spending power currently residing within the BoP, the rewards for investing in these relationships are substantial.

If a brand issues a challenge then that challenge must relate to real needs or changing unfair practices, not self-indulgent, edgy rebelliousness. Superiority must be directed towards a goal, never towards ego satisfaction.

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About the authorPoonam Kumar is Regional Director in TNS’s Brand & Communication bringing more than 20 years experience in brand development, brand strategy planning, ethnography and consumer insight to her role. Poonam has specific expertise on marketing to the Base of the Pyramid, and on motivational research and market segmentation and is a regular presenter on BoP consumers at ESOMAR and other industry events. Poonam holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from a premier Institute (IIT Chennai) and a post graduate degree in Management from a top management school in India (IIM Calcutta).

About Opinion Leaders Opinion Leaders is part of a regular series of articles from TNS consultants, based on their expertise gathered through working on client assignments in over 80 markets globally, with additional insights gained through TNS proprietary studies such as Digital Life, Mobile Life and the Commitment Economy.

About TNS TNS advises clients on specific growth strategies around new market entry, innovation, brand switching and stakeholder management, based on long-established expertise and market-leading solutions. With a presence in over 80 countries, TNS has more conversations with the world’s consumers than anyone else and understands individual human behaviours and attitudes across every cultural, economic and political region of the world. TNS is part of Kantar, one of the world’s largest insight, information and consultancy groups.

Please visit www.tnsglobal.com for more information.

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