A marathon, not a sprint

TCS's chief marketing officer, Ravi Viswanathan, on what it took to become the third most valuable Indian brand

Priyanka Nair
  • Published On Sep 19, 2018 at 07:56 AM IST


On building a preferred B2B brand


While the global digital industry is indeed very fragmented and competitive, over the past decade TCS has quadrupled its brand value. It's emerged as the fastest growing brand in its industry. The TCS brand is valued at over US$10 billion, making it one of the Top 3 brands in its sector worldwide and a leader in key markets like the US, the UK, Europe and India. There are three mega trends redefining the B2B marketing space: Firstly, consumers are empowering themselves through selfservice and engaging with companies only in later stages of the sales cycles. Secondly, they are spending a growing amount of time on social media, increasingly consuming video and even voice over other channels. Third, they have elevated expectations of seamless digital consumer experiences. All of these have led to the "brand" of B2B companies becoming more important than ever before, causing a blurring of lines between B2C and B2B marketing approaches. A recent survey sanctioned by TCS of 500 global business executives conducted by ITSMA, indicated that the single most important element in a technology buyer's decision, for which they were willing to pay a price premium, was the strength of a B2B company's brand and reputation. Companies that will embrace a 360-degree digital strategy to strengthen brand engagement with their clients, are most likely to succeed in today's scenario. TCS has many such initiatives at play to better engage with customers and stakeholders. For instance, the #DigitalEmpowers campaign, which was launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

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Three lessons from the TCS marketing rulebook

The business strategy is organised around the Business 4.0 framework, which outlines the technology and behavioral elements that help corporations succeed in today's digital scenario. Taking a leaf out of this playbook, the company's marketing strategy also dovetails into parts of the framework:

Mass personalisation: Ensuring that customer experiences are highly engaging and personalized. TCS is a major sponsor of the world's leading marathons including the TCS New York Marathon, TCS Amsterdam Marathon and Tata Mumbai Marathon, among others. While these sponsorships are part of a global strategy spanning from Australia and Japan to the US and Chile, their impact is local and deeply personal, engaging mass communities in the cities where they are held. Over 3000 of the company's clients take part in these events, with cutting edge technology activations like a smartphone marathon app, which creates engaging and personalised experiences for both runners and spectators. This has pushed brand awareness to extremely high levels in major cities and business centers across the world. Associating and sponsoring marathons in key markets has helped in significantly boosting our brand image and also provided a great platform for employees and clients to run together and build better camaraderie.

Leveraging ecosystems: The strength of a company brand lies in not just its own assets, but by how it can leverage its ecosystem of partners and alliances. TCS is an engaged strategic partner to some of the leading associations across the world, with a strong brand presence in major forums such as Davos and the European Business Summit. Its own branded forums like the TCS Innovation Forum and TCS Summit routinely engage world leaders, CEOs and sports personalities to deliver value to the client base and to boost brand presence in all regions of the world.

Creating exponential value: TCS has been consistently recognised as the industry leader in Customer Satisfaction by analysts such as Whitelane Research. Client centricity lies at the heart of the company's DNA and clients regularly articulate and amplify the growing business value that TCS is delivering to them. An example is the recent story featured by The Economic Times with the global CEO of KLM, a longstanding TCS client. The company's ability to convert the tremendous client equity it has, to brand equity has been key to boosting TCS's reputation and brand over the years.

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  • Published On Sep 19, 2018 at 07:56 AM IST
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