In the name of Social Branding. In the name of Change. Part 1
“We see the society; its people and its government as we wish to see them — in their simplest forms, and in the most convenient definitions.”
Abstract:
There has recently been a growing interest and literature in the application of brand management principles to countries, states, government agencies and political parties. The idea of applying branding to political parties is, however, challenging as political parties have long viewed themselves as ideologically driven. With the ascent of consumerism, which was encouraged by neo-liberal ideologies, the role of ideology has declined in recent years and political parties have become more marketing oriented. Given that brands are part of everyday consumer behaviour, it may be that political parties operate and voters make electoral choices similar to the way in which consumers choose commercial brands.
This paper demonstrates social brand campaigns which are developed by studying, identifying and understanding the needs of the communities as well as the government’s aspirations, has higher chances of success to bring positive changes.
In Bihar, however, it’s been observed that there is a tension for the quality of service delivery (be it health, education or infrastructure) which made the brand development process both critical and tough as any health campaign brand has to live up to its promises. The SRU had worked on the same philosophy and developed an umbrella brand for all the health initiatives in Bihar.
At the final stage of the brand development work for the State Health Society – Govt. of Bihar the team worked on the belief:
A social campaign brand has to be aligned with the government’s aspiration – and should also be community demand driven to bring positives changes in the society. It should also have an objective to ‘drive the market’ (by creating a dynamics) in a way that will support the future prosperity of the state or of the country.
This philosophy helped us to develop an umbrella campaign brand along with a series of sub-brands that would drive sustainable improvement in health service delivery in Bihar.
Acknowledgments
Engaging communities as well as government agencies is a core tenet of social branding for change and one that we embrace in all of our work at the SRU (the state RMNCH+A Unit, Bihar). In developing Branding Bihar – for Social Change (Engaging power and politics in promoting health and public value), our team — composed of Victor Ghoshe – Sr Communication Adviser, SRU; Dr Hemant Shah – Director, SRU – that small because what we were trying to do was something very new in the development scene in India…. and because no one else could imagine what good this would bring for the program and for all the programs to be designed in the future…. but then again the Director SRU and Mr Bhattacharya for the foundation had faith in our collective capacity to innovate.
Though we had worked with everyone in the State RMNCH+A team and with some people in the Bihar Technical Support Unit on this without telling them. we have collected views, downloaded knowledge, understood political interests form many in Bihar. Through continued collaboration with all the Development Partners working in Bihar to better our communities through social change, Officials from the State/District level government, different Communities from different social strata. Every section of people had as many ideas and answers as we did, and for over the initial 100 days or so, we have downloaded and compiled all of those thoughts to keep the branding conversation open and to reach out to a product that suits all and everyone in Bihar.
With the collective power of knowledge from every segment of people, we knew we could communicate well and develop something right for a New Bihar.
From the paper written by Victor Ghoshe on Social Branding in Public Health (Bihar, India context)

