Political branding has been there for a while in Tamil Nadu. The ruling AIADMK has taken it to unprecedented levels by leveraging Amma as a brand to reach out to millions of people through government schemes.
In the past three years, the Amma brand has covered a gamut of products and services that touch the commoners including children, fulfilling a latent need of the market as a result of spiralling inflation.
“In 2012 and 2013, rising food price was the biggest challenge for many families. It was when the brand Amma products were introduced targeting the commoners,” says a marketing professor from a city based college.
Initially, there were Amma packaged drinking waters for travelling public, then Amma canteens for urban poor which has turned out to be a huge hit, then medicines at 15 per cent discount, then salt and even cement and now baby kits. “[Chief Minister] Jayalalithaa has used the name Amma for a bigger purpose and a wider audience,” says the professor.
“It is a simple advertising strategy to ensure the name of the brand is on top of the consumers’ mind,” says Ravindran Solomon, an advertising consultant. “In this case, it is not a private enterprise that is promoting brand Amma, but the government, and people know it,” he says, adding that it might work among the economically weaker section, looking at the vote bank.
Says Ramesh Jude Thomas, President and Chief Knowledge Officer of Equitor Value Advisory: “It is all about positioning and the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister has positioned herself well [in the same class and durability as Anna Biju Patnaik] against the opposition.”
Brand Amma tries to maintain a constant connect with common man. And so Harish Bijoor, brand expert and CEO of Harish Bijoor Consults, sees the AIADMK supremo as an innovative marketer.
There are sceptics too. “The DMK had introduced Kalaignar Kaapeettu Thittam during the previous rule. In the elections, the party lost miserably. People are thankful for the good services offered by the government at subsidised rates. But it is difficult to predict if it will translate into votes,” says another brand expert requesting anonymity.
