Brand investment 101

If you asked Aly Khan Satchu what he is, he would probably tell you that he is a wealth manager, or perhaps, an investment advisor.

If you ask me what he is, I would suggest that Aly Khan Satchu is, at his core, a very successful brand builder.

I have absolutely no idea as to whether or not Aly Khan Satchu is Kenya’s leading financial guru. What I do know is that he has done an outstanding job of creating the commonly held perception (i.e. the definition of a brand) that he is.

There are many lessons to be learnt from Aly Khan Satchu when it comes to building and sustaining a brand over time. I think that the most basic of these lessons relates to the importance of investing in your brand.

Aly Khan did not just rent an office and put up a sign on his door. Instead he spent, and continues to spend, significant amounts of time, effort and money in spreading the gospel of his brand. I think that it is important to re-emphasize the words ‘time’ and ‘effort’: it is not just about spending money.

In fact Aly Khan demonstrates very well how one can build a successful brand without having to spend too much money. He was one of the first brands in his industry, and people in his age group, to fully grasp the power of social media. He tweets assiduously, and has built up a significant following. He podcasts daily. He makes sure that he is always available when Al Jazeera need a financial talking head with an exotic touch. He courts business leaders and CEOs, and has identified and built a powerful brand property through his monthly free seminars (the name of which I can’t remember).

The lesson from all this is that one can build significant brand equity purely through the well considered and logical investment of ‘sweat’. It is interesting to consider how much more many of the brands with big budgets could do if they spent some time thinking beyond said budgets. Marketing Directors tend to be told “you have X for the year”, and so they set out to spend X as if doing so was an objective in and of itself, when what it should actually be viewed as is as a foundation upon which to build.

I’m not saying that Aly Khan doesn’t spend any money at all, but when he does he spends it very cleverly. I admire the way in which he dominates the business pages of the Nairobi Star, day in day out, without having to buy a full page. The logic is simple: identify a relevant channel (business pages, uptown newspaper), dominate it efficiently (maximum bang for minimum buck) and stick to your guns (day in day out).

I guess that it makes sense that an investment advisor would understand the importance of judicious investment in his brand. Just like anything else in life, what you get out of your brand is an equal and opposite reaction to what you put in… and just like all living things, a brand needs constant input (food, water, air) if you want it to consistently produce an output.

I have observed a tendency for people to think that the work is done once you’ve launched a brand, run a few print ads and flighted a TV spot for a couple of months. Perhaps the problem is this word ‘launch’? perhaps a better word would be ‘birth’? one gives birth to a brand. One does not thereafter ignore it any more than one would ignore a screaming hungry baby.

The great brand custodians of this world, the P&Gs and Unilevers and Coca Colas, understand very well that brand building is a process of never-ending investment, much like parenthood… It is because they understand this that their brands survive and thrive generation after generation. When we as Kenyan brand builders finally understand that our objective is to build brands that will outlast our lifetimes, perhaps we will finally begin to build brands that do…?