Meet The SHEROES: Susmita Das Gupta

After serving in the industry for a good 13 years, Susmita Das Gupta got upset with the ‘working style’ and decided to sail alone. That is how Smart iDeAS was born. Susmita believes that ideas come in all shapes, sizes and colors--hence the unique spelling ‘iDeAS’.

Edited excerpts from the interesting conversation:

Branding/Brand is an art, but more so a science

Branding has a universal definition, and how an individual perceives it does not matter. In fact, the saddest part is that most people in India do not understand what marketing is and what branding is. They confuse marketing with promotion and branding with advertising.

The brand is nothing but the feeling you get when you experience a product or service. If your experience is good, you will use the brand more, which means you perceive it as a good brand--that means, it fulfills certain value for you. If your experience is bad, then you will consider it bad, and it will have either no perceived value or a negative value to you.

To build a good brand, you need to understand the market, the consumer psychology, competition, etc., and then create a positioning for the brand. The positioning will tell you whether your brand is a luxury, mass market brand, niche or Blue Ocean; and accordingly, you would build the price points, the channel of distribution and marketing communication platform.

Building a good brand, therefore, requires a lot of time and, more importantly, the right intent. The intent is the keyword here because, these days, everyone wants a quick fix.

Shahrukh Khan, Patanjali, Facebook: Brands or modes of branding?

Shahrukh Khan is a personal brand; Patanjali is a corporate brand whose equity comes from another personal brand, Baba Ramdev. Though a personal brand is also built on the concept of corporate branding, it is a little different; after all, it deals with human beings. Personal branding involves an individual’s strengths, capabilities, experiences, and aspirations to meet his/her life goals.

Social media is just another channel of communication for a brand. Does putting an ad in the newspaper make a brand good? No. It’s the same with social media. A good brand has certain inherent qualities, and social media only helps it reach a much wider audience in a more comprehensive manner.

Those adolescent days...

Coming from a family of businesspeople, I consider myself lucky to be exposed to books, music, art and culture in my early life. My father (who was an artist) was awarded as the upcoming entrepreneur, and my mother was a radio artist. I have a diploma in Bharatnatyam, and since I was in Class X, I have been performing on stage with various cultural groups. As a child, I wanted to be a chartered accountant, but I realised that’s not my calling.

As I started college, I did not find much interest in those boring lectures, so I switched to a computer school, First Computers--quite well known in those days--and stood first in their one-year programme. And that’s how I also got my first job--a placement from First Computers.

Does the client’s definition of branding match the universal definition?

Yes and no! We just finished working on a re-branding project, and we were completely on the same page. It was a large organisation with international exposure. While many small organisations/ entrepreneurs come to me for branding, after a couple of minutes of talk, I understand they want us to create a logo.

Earlier, we used to try to educate people on this. Now, we don’t. We use the lingo that they understand and deliver it. So we made the logo for them.

You said “Brand is nothing but how you feel about a product or service”. Could you elaborate?

Feelings are of three types--emotional (E), rational (R), and functional (F). Most marketers focus on only the R & F of it, but we add the E, which is extremely important. Let me explain.

You want to buy a watch. So, you go to a Titan showroom and select a watch, which costs Rs.10,000. The moment you saw it, you just fell in love with it and decided you want it. When you fell in love, your brain was making the decisions for you. It said, “Wow! None of my friends has this design, and it’s also a special edition piece. I will look different.” That’s the emotional feeling.

But then, your brain starts asking the question: “Is it worth Rs 10,000?” And let’s say it says, “Yes, it’s a Titan product and it’s one of their premium watches. But it’s not as expensive as a Fossil, so it makes sense.” This is your rational feeling.

“But how long is it going to last? Oh! It comes with a guarantee, and I have used Titan before; they don’t fail.” That’s your functional feeling.

So, when you make a purchase decision, this chemical locha, as Munna Bhai said, was happening subconsciously. If one of them is missing, you will not buy the watch. So we try to understand what the rational, emotional and functional triggers for a brand could be, and then connect it with the brand. That’s REF Branding.

After serving the industry for more than two decades, what would you say are your biggest personal driving factors and biggest challenges?

My biggest personal driving force is that I should be able to do things as per my schedule. I am still a dancer, and I sometimes take classes on request. I travel a lot. And I also run a tea group in Bangalore--tea being one of my major passions.  So the greatest satisfaction is in devoting time and energy to all things equally. But, it also a challenge.

Your key takeaways?

Do what you are passionate about, and do believe in yourself no matter what; but also know when to call it quits.

The working woman and ‘work-life balance’: Challenges, tips?

Stop feeling guilty about your career and your aspirations. Find people who will always support you, and support them back. There is no benchmark in our country for career women on how to have a work-life balance, so create a system that works for you. Don’t use your neighbour or friend as a case study.

Did you ever face gender disparity?

In almost 20 years of experience, I may have faced it just a couple of times. The first time, it was nothing serious; so I walked out of the meeting and then later wrote a letter to the MD of the company explaining what had happened. He apologised.

In the next case, it was more severe. So I had to take legal action against the company.

Always put your foot down and never let anyone disrespect you in any way. If you accept disrespect once, it will happen again and again. Find your ecosystem, build a support team and take a stand.

The plans?

The immediate plan is to open offices in London and New Jersey. I am visiting New Jersey early next year to meet a few people who have shown interest.

We are living in a very exciting period. Never have you seen seemingly unrelated services coming together to offer one unique solution. Think of Ola, using Google Maps, thereby buying mobile phones, and car sales going up, and tourism positively affected. We are seeing just the beginning of a world which is going to be highly collaborative. All businesses must collaborate, or they will lose the race. At Smart iDeAS, we are putting in efforts to build such a collaborative platform.

Could you tell us about some of your must-haves?

The number one is that whatever service or solution we are offering, or are going to offer, it has to solve a certain problem, thereby making doing business easy for the clients. We always tell our clients, “You concentrate on your core competency--that is, whatever you do to earn your revenues--and let us do for you what we are good at.”

We treat our customers as partners, and would not accept any lesser treatment back from them; therefore, it has to be a mutually beneficial relationship.

As we always prefer to work as partners rather than as some outside agencies, we make sure that we always offer the best of services that we can; and that involves predicting the future and creating and offering solutions for it as well. That’s why Smart iDeAS is ‘Thinking Beyond D’.