Brand positioning strategy in a highly competitive category

In a nutshell

Axa, the French financial giant and Bharti Group of India came together to form a joint venture asset management company. The company is called BhartiAxa Asset Management Company. Brand Harvest was approached to develop a unique brand strategy for the Indian chapter. The key challenge was to differentiate their offering given that they were the 33rd mutual fund company in the market.

Axa's global positioning was about "Intelligence in numbers". The Bharti Group did not have a defined positioning in the financial sector.

The easiest thing to do was to adapt the global positioning of Axa for the Indian market. We felt however that Bharti's success story and the associated brand equity amongst the investor community must not be wasted.

We wanted to tap this brand equity and make use of Bharti's thorough understanding of the mutual fund investor and their investment behaviour. We commissioned a research study across India in eight representative cities that helped us understand the brand value of Bharti and the investor mindset. The research revealed that a highly emotional platform for the joint venture brand would be advantageous.

We recommended that the company builds its brand through a brand idea rather than just an outward facing positioning statement. Our recommendation was that Bharti's brand idea should be to 'fuel people's ambition'. The creative expression became "Kyonnahi" or "Why Not". The resulting creative work was done by another agency.