Challenger Brands - The Rule Makers

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!

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