The baby’s smile was “a Kodak
moment.” The “Nike Swoosh” was every athlete’s dream. Every child of the 80’s
and late 70’s had “bhool na jaana phir papa” Norris song on their fingertips,
or the notoriously cheesy, annoying advertisement of “Dentonic – twice a day,
especially before going to bed.” Brands like Kodak, Norris and Dentonic; so
beautifully and intricately help in defining the times of our lives. What is it
that gave brands like Coca-Cola, Tapal, Toyota, Xerox and Dalda an edge over
the others, and made them reach their zenith?
Such brands have not become
success stories by accident. These companies allocated time, budget and teams
of people to strategize and develop the best campaigns to build their brand. In
today’s highly competitive marketplace, it is the brand of a product and what
that brand means to the consumer that helps determine which product the
consumer will buy. Some marketers argue, that “people don’t buy brands, they
buy products, and therefore the focus should be on the product.” Others argue
that yes people do buy products, and how they make that decision of which
product to buy has a lot to do with how they feel about the product, or the
brand. How many of us as kids or even our parents ever tried or used Dentonic
Powder. It was the highest selling toothpaste powder; its sales were higher
than that of Colgate toothpaste when launched in Pakistan. The toothpaste
powder was most used by the rural, semi-urban population, people who would
migrate from the rural areas to come to the big cities. It was a product targeted to people who were
new to the concept of using toothpaste, or aural hygiene. Even though as kids,
we would watch the advertisement at least 20 times a day, with its music
embedded in our souls, we still never used the product. The product was not
directly targeted towards us and even as kids we were never inclined to use it.
Imagination, innovation, quality
and style had a lot to do with giving that extra push to these great brands the
name locally and internationally. How important is brand image? It is what
people remember, if they remember anything at all. With advancements is
technology and quality manufacturing, products have become more similar and differences
that used to help consumers distinguish between them have lessened. This has
given rise to more and more challenger brands to enter the market by storm. Not
much of the purchase decisions have to do with the brand. Whether the product
or service has global market potential or specific to a local region, customers
will choose to purchase the product and service in much the same way they
choose the large brand names.
A product’s position is defined
by consumers; the place the product occupies in consumers’ minds relative to
competing products is the textbook definition. But, in reality this does play a
role in our consumers mind. The Pakistani cooking oil industry was dominated by
ghee which comprised of 70 percent of the total edible oil market, while
cooking oil comprises of 30 percent of the market. The market had been forever
dominated by Dalda – positioned as “maternal love”. Breakaway or challenger
brands while entering the market, could not play the pricing war game, but had
to discover new points of differentiation. Therefore, when challenger brands
like Habib Cooking oil entered into the market, their main positioning was
“kyounkey yeh dil ka mamla hai”, it was positioned as a heart-friendly oil. It was
no longer the mother’s choice, but for the health conscious consumers. Same
goes for Soya Supreme, "UHT treated” – Healthy cooking, in refined cooking
oil. Habib Cooking Oil wanted to break through the Banaspati and Edible Cooking
oil market, thus gaining almost 40 percent of the market share. With a basic
positioning change, they were able to enter the hearts and minds of the
consumers. A constant push strategy with a whole new avenue of consumer promotional
activities led them to attain 80% of revenues that the firm enjoys. This gave
room to other Cooking Oil brands to enter the market catering to consumers with
a different mechanism. The product was improved upon with the innovation of
blended oil, which helped to break through the edible oil market, and
positioning of a healthy life to convince consumers to switch from banaspati to
soya cooking oil. Once the brand paved its way through the hearts and minds of
people, their advertisements and promotional strategy was then uplifted towards,
family ties a concept close to the hearts of Asians.
Sometimes brands truly do
permeate and become so familiar that they become synonymous with their product
category to the point when they are associated with their genre. Such was the
case with the detergent industry of Pakistan, with Surf Excel being the market
leader for as long as we can roll back our eyes. Surf Excel, was not only
associated with its genre but, was a rough and tough product perfect for
consumers in this part of the region. When Ariel was being launched, there were
a number of question marks that needed to be answered. Especially changing
mindsets, pricing issues, and a market which not many had anticipated (soap
users). But Ariel was a family brand, with a gentle approach for all kinds of
special cloth types. They launched with an advertising campaign with comments
from rural women, which back fired as a poor promotional campaign with little
or no brand recall. The brand faced a lot of problems at launch time, but infused
a change in strategy to serve customers, to communicate stability, and expanded
an untapped market where no other detergent had dared to enter, the rural
segment of our population. The brand created a strategic shift, and later
combined Ariel promotional activities with giving back to society as a CSR
activity. The brand not only gained recognition, but value in the eyes of its
customers. To wage the erratic price war, they came up with varied sizes of
detergent packets for big, small, and single person use, catering to different
price ranged customers. Thus, not only expanding the detergent market but also,
creating new categories for their product. So much so that Surf Excel, had to
change its strategy and positioning to “dirt is good”, in order to gain their
market share back.
If marketers were to examine any
industry, they would only find such challenger brands enter the market, and
turn the rules of the game around to their own benefit, as “rulemakers” and
leading brands become “ruletakers.” We have seen many such examples in the
beverages industry, when Pepsi Twist was introduced, creating a new segment of
the market. We saw a company and brand enter our beverages called “sunsip” with
“limopani” introducing a new product, a solution used by all, but giving it a
product form. It was a huge success. Bigger brands like Tang etc. were jolted
to advertise other flavors than Orange and Mango.
If we look at our dairy milk
industry, it has grown tremendously. From consumers who use open milk, to tetra
pack advertising, to Nestle which took advantage of an open health conscious
market. Little did anyone imagine that its competitors would storm into the
market with advertising and positioning strategy according to the different
uses of milk, in our cultural sweets. This was the advertising headed by Good
Milk, along with a catchy jingle which sticks to you till you grow tired of
humming it. This was also the same time, when Olpers had launched their milk,
along with flavored milk. Currently Olpers leads the market, with, Nestle as
the second market leader followed by Good Milk. Olpers, and Good Milk did not
enter to take the crux of the market share away, but to add more variety and
choice to a sound industry.
Consumers are looking for
something that has lasting value. There is a quest for quality, not quantity.
Creating a successful brand is not always depended on luck or being in the
right place at the right time. But, is a systematic approach to changing
strategies with time, which can give a new meaning to a brand, and to value
success regardless of the size of the company. Solid focused strategies are the
one that facilitate building a brand that thrives over time and succeed in the
competitive marketplace.
The Edited version of this article was published in the Marketing Review for July Quarter. It can be read from Here!
Your Comments and Feedback as healthy criticism is appreciated.
