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Posts Tagged ‘brand

For years, Cadbury Dairy Milk (CDM), India’s favorite chocolate brand, has been trying to be the symbol of celebration and expression of every sweet moment in your lives. In continuation of its pursuit, Cadbury Dairy Milk celebrates the beginning of new friendships with its latest TVC, ‘nayi dosti ka shubh aarambh’. The TVC showcases the first magical moments of a blossoming friendship between a young girl and boy on the sidelines of a wedding, an occasion that in itself connotes new relationships.

watch?v=s2jsCGLO56g&feature=player_embedded

The new commercial plays out at a traditional wedding ceremony. A teenage girl and boy exchange notes on how every family has a “dancing uncle/aunty” and an “allergy aunty/uncle”. They quickly realize that the two families have much more in common than they thought. When the girl excitedly asks, Tumhaari family mein mere jaisa kaun hai?” the boy smiles and replies ”Main”. A piece of Cadbury Dairy Milk is exchanged to celebrate their new found friendship and the closing VO states, ”Nayi Dosti Ka Shubh Aarambh. Also, the commercial plays the same jingle which would help establish a strong brand recall.

On Air on July 21

It is set to hit TV screens nationwide on July 21, 2012 and is expected to have a presence in over 70 television channels. To further
strengthen the brand’s digital presence, the TVC was released online on YouTube and Facebook on July 13.

Ad Timing: Friendship Day and College Re-opening

The campaign is perfectly timed to be on-air two weeks before the Friendship Day on 5th August. Also, with most colleges opening in June of the year, it also has good timing with students just starting to make new friends in colleges. CDM wants to be the chocolate through which the students express their emotions of the ‘friendship moments’.

The TVC will be supported by a robust integrated marketing campaign, including on-ground activations in 80 colleges, creative print placements, interesting radio capsules in leading radio stations across many cities and outdoor, to urge people to make new friends and celebrate special “friendship moments”.

Symbol of different things in different contextual situations

Cadbury Dairy Milk is trying to own every sweet moment of celebration and expression in your lives. This is part of the long-term brand building campaign ‘Shubh Aarambh‘. CDM has taken a very difficult challenge  and it has done a decent  job by partly owning the festival and family celebrations with its product line ‘Cadbury Celebrations’. It later built on the valentine moment between a boy and a girl.

It now comes up with this intelligent TVC trying to own the moment of ‘friendship’ with the message and building on its earlier moments – valentine, family, and celebration – with the background of marriage.  This is intelligent, as CDM is trying to become the message itself within different contexts, and bringing all the moments together.

It is very encouraging to see Kraft Foods continuing its strong brand-building activities, despite the inflationary times. With the consumers feeling the price increases on all products, consumers are already decreasing their discretionary spends such as chocolates. So, it is very interesting to see whether this will translate into sales in the short-term or not, but it definitely is going to help the brand in the long-term.  This is a classic example of a strong campaign with a long-term vision for the brand.

The press release for this advertisement has been shared by the strategic communications agency, The PRactice (www.the-practice.net).

During the early 90′s, the brand Horlicks faced a problem in West bengal. Though the brand is well known and the consumers are buying it, the consumers are not buying the 1Kg pack and are repeatedly buying the 450gm size pack. Though the 450 gm size pack helped gain new users (trials), the repeat purchase is still happening at 450gm pack size only. Consumers are not buying the 1Kg pack.

Objective: 

To make the existing consumers to uptrade to 1Kg size, and capture the heavy users of the competitive brands like Complan and Viva.

Promotion Vehicle Chosen: Container Premium

The 1Kg Horlicks was packed in an attractive premium glass jug. The jug decorated with a floral pattern, and had a plastic handle. The lid was embossed with a big logo.

Results:

Sales of the 1Kg bottle in West Bengal increased by 28%  and an increase of 10.4% in the controlled market Bihar.

This is an example of an excellent promotion targeted at housewives. This is a very ambitious promotion as this Horlicks jug involves changing all the existing ground rules. There are a lot of changes required like the factories are requried to fill a glass jug rather than the usual bottle requiring change in production processes. The whole logistics are to be changed as the jugs require larger cases for transit. The jugs occupy more space in the shelf, and has to be negotiated with the retailer.

Assortment Share or Share of Assortment is the number of SKUs of a brand (or company) available in a store (or channel) as compared to the total number of SKUs of a brand (or company) in the respective category. So, it gives the share of the SKUs of your brand (or company) present in the store as compared to the category. or It is the share of a brand’s (or company’s) SKUs that are present out of all the SKUs available in that category for consumer choice. Marketers track the assortment share across channels and geographies to track the performance and monitor opportunities and losses against competition.

For example, if the assortment share of Fair & Lovely is low in the Modern Trade outlets, may be there is an opportunity to increase the sales from Modern Trade (though there are many factors to consider). So, it along with other factors gives a key idea to the marketer on what is happening in the store.

Mouthwash was relatively a new category and it was primarily driven by Medical Shops channel, as the consumers generally used to use Mouthwash only when prescribed by the dentists for some medical conditions. Colgate being a pioneer of the oral category, had the challenge to create consumer pull to this category and the brand. Colgate used its communication very well to create the pull, and it gained well from the Indian Metro consumer. Following is the TV commercial of Colgate Plax, which is a similar version from that of Australia.

Colgate Plax, Australia

Colgate Plax, India

With medical shops still being a major channel for this category, where brands like Listerine, Hexidine, Betadine are more prescribed than Colgate by the doctor. Consumers may not look at brand Colgate as having that curative efficiency. Also, Colgate being a household brand might not have the equity as being a prescribed medicine, as people may not feel a Colgate product to be a medicine.

The issue here is based on two targets:
1. Colgate wants more and more ordinary consumers to pick its mouthwash from the stores. Here the brand Colgate plays a major role.
2. As the medical shop channel is very important for the category, they would want doctors to prescribe the mouthwash and ideally consumers to not have ‘non-medicine’ perceptions towards Colgate. Here the brand Colgate may not be serve the intention.

The consumers of the same product behave differently in two different channels.This is one of the examples of the complexity created by the mother brand endorsement. Possibly, the way out of this complexity is to develop a new brand without any endorsement by the mother brand Colgate. Pulling out a queue from David Aaker, J&J seems to have adopted a similar strategy where there brands are not endorsed by the mother brand.

The thoughts expressed in this blog are completely my personal views and opinions based on observation and secondary research. The blog does not represent the views and ideas of any organizations or institutions I am associated with. Thank you.

This is a question that all of us ponder on at some point of time. There is one famous answer, which is that the watch-makers want you to smile. They want people to remember that they should smile and look at their watch. I was also quite satisfied with this answer before.

But, the actual answer comes from marketing and branding.

The moment you see a watch, you always see the time and get distracted by the time. So the watch-makers had difficulty to make consumers see the brand, the watch, and appreciate the watch without getting distracted by the time. The watch-makers decided on a time 10:10 which pretty much focuses on the maker’s name. If everybody uses the same time, then the consumer will see the brand, the watch, instead of the time on the watch. It is just to avoid consumers getting distracted by the time.  This is the rationale behing 10:10.

This is one of the lessons of how intensely one has to observe consumers. Thank you.

In order to keep the same identity throughout the world, many companies stick with the same marketing campaign and brand message in every country. However, this occasionally creates difficulties as we see below:

KFC in Hong Kong

KFC’s ‘finger lickin’ good’ is used the world over to highlight the tastiness of the product. However, when the phrase was translated into Chinese for the Hong Kong market, it came out as ‘eat your fingers off’.

Vicks in Germany

Vapour-rub manufacturer Vicks failed to attract much custom for its products in Germany. The problem was that ‘V’ is pronounced as an ‘F’ in German, meaning Vicks sounds like the German equivalent of the ‘f’ word.

American Airlines in Mexico

When American Airlines decided to advertise the luxurious aspect of flying business class to their Mexican customers, they thought it would make sense to focus on the leather seats. So they used the slogan ‘fly in leather’ which, in Spanish, read ‘Vuelo en Cuero’. What the Spanish dictionary had not informed is it also is a slang term for ‘in the nude’.

Often you see a great brand trying to come up with an extension and fail and some great brands extending their brand successfully. Maggi is a good example for successful brand extensions and Harley Davidson is a great example of brand extension failures. Let us see the hows and whys:

Maggi is a brand which has high brand equity and enjoys a great number of loyalists. It is a great product and is an established player in the market. Maggi trying to expand the market and its market share has launched different variants and has entered into categories like soups and sauces. This has been a great success with high brand equity for the brand ‘Maggi’ and is the in-home product in every Indian’s house. Maggi rightly understood the core values of the brand and came up with supportive and rational brand extensions that go in line with the customers perception of the brand.

Harley Davidson, one of the greatest motorcycle brands of the century also enjoys high brand equity and loyalists. Harley Davidson users just love the brand. The company decided to capitalize on this high brand equity and started to sell branded merchandise – Harley Davidson T-shirts, socks, cigarette lighters, aftershaves, and perfumes. Clearly the Harley Davidson loyalists are not happy with these introductions. This diluted the brand too early in the case of Harley Davidson because it enjoys a much focussed group of extreme loyalists to the brand. These people don’t like the brand to be freely available to every Tom, Dick and Harry.

The lesson learnt is the rules are always not the same to everybody. One should really understand the customers and their perception of the brand. Marketers should understand the core values of the brand and then come up with strategies around the core values. Just because your brand is great at tough shoes doesn’t mean it can be extended into leather with that perception of toughness and masculinity.

What is a Brand?

The names Tata, Nokia, Google and many others are one of the biggest brands in the world. So what really is the name Tata or Google is? Is it just a name or more than that?

I define Brand as ‘a network of experience’. Let us understand brands with the example of Google. If I ask you to write a phrase that describes Google, most people would say innovation, technology, cutting-edge research, great brains, great technology, information to the world etc.

Take a moment and think why we say those phrases.

  1. Because we experience the innovation of Google.
  2. Because we hear people experiencing the innovation of Google.
  3. Because we hear the aspirations of Google
  4. Because we see such brains at Google
  5. Because Google says so

and some other reasons.

If you observe carefully, what we said is what we experienced. A brand is an experience, in fact, it is the perception derived out of the experience. Suppose you used a Tata car for some years and your experience is as follows:

Experience: The car gives good mileage and requires minimum maintenance.

Perception: You automatically create a perception that Tata cars require less maintenance and have great mileage. Wrong!! You will actually think ‘Tata’ gives great mileage and requires less maintenance. This is the trick, what we experience is not exactly what we perceive. Why?

When we experience the car, we realize this is something good for us. When we see the name on the steering or anywhere on the car we see ‘Tata’. So whatever good experience we had, we immediately map it to the name ‘Tata’ because that is what we see.

The brand ‘Tata’ is created!!

The qualities of a product are perceived to be the qualities of the name present on the product. Simply, people perceive the qualities of the product to be the qualities of the brand name. Why? Because that is the only way they can distinguish between the products. Later, any product coming out of that brand, we associate the qualities of the brand to the product. It is:

Product Qualities à Brand Qualitiesà New Product Qualities

So remember that brand is a perception. Perception is the result of something. Perception cannot be created but can be influenced.

A brand is what your product is, how your product behaves, the experience of everything, the perception of the product, etc. So, marketers use all these techniques to influence your perception of the brand.

Creating a brand is all about creating a unique experience, which is also called differentiation. Remember this differentiation need not only come from the product, but from any experience.

So when people perceive Woodland shoes to be tough, people perceive Woodland to be tough. So marketers will look for category opportunities where this perception can be leveraged like leather bags, etc.

Once you have a perception. You may

-          Look for opportunities to leverage this perception (Woodland example, Tropicana as breakfast)

-          Change the perception into something else

-          Strengthen the perception and grow into areas which strengthens the brand perception

-          Come out of the perception totally

-          Leverage the perception across other categories and to enter new markets

So, the perception may be the country of origin of the brand, the visuals used, qualities and almost everything of everything can be used to perceive. So, all these are elements present in brands and branding.

Remember every business action results in a perception, and perception creates your brand. Branding is pretty much the affect and how you influence/manage the affect by using the parameters of perception.

This is the brief introduction about Brands and Branding. Thank you

Brand Positioning and Product Positioning

Brand Positioning is the perception of the brand, and Product positioning is the perception of the product. Your product positioning may or may not influence a change in the brand positioning. Example: Tata Nano is the product and Tata is the brand. The perception of the brand ‘Tata’ changes due to the launch of the product Tata Nano. Similarly, Tropicana positioned as a breakfast drink. Here we are trying to change the perception of the usage of Tropicana (banking on the health perception of the drink) which is a product positioning. There is no change in the brand positioning, however, the brand will be more seen in the household and there will be some affect of this product positioning on the brand.

Similarly, sometimes a change in brand positioning is required and is achieved by new product launches and price modelling etc. Example Van Heusen wants to be seen as a youthful brand, so it launches or comes up with promotions in that line to influence the perception of the consumer.

Fair & Lovely is a fairness cream of Hindustan Unilever. It is a 1,100 crore brand from the FMCG giant and is one of the largest selling brands in the world. So, what is the big deal about it? The big deal is: Fair & Lovely is going to change its position in the market from fairness cream to clear & flawless complexion.

Brand Renovation

The new tagline is gorepan sa kahi zyaada, saaf gorapan. Says an HULspokesperson, “Brand innovation and renovation is core to our business. Brand renovation is aimed at constantly renewing the product equity with the consumer by making it current and contemporary. We have attempted to do that with Fair & Lovely.” In my view, the renovation was required as the competition seems to get heated with CavinKare and Garnier. Garnier always positioned itself with both fairness and clear complexion, whereas Fair & Lovely positioned as a fairness cream alone.

It seems that research done by HUL suggested that women need more than just fairness. They need clear complexion along with fair skin and the renovation strategy is to meet the needs of this segment. It is true that the products should evolve in their life cycle meeting the changing needs of your target segment and acquiring new segments. Fair & Lovely is the market leader in this segment with competition from CavinKare’s Fairever and Garnier products. But it looks like HUL is considering renovating its personal care segment as Sunsilk, and Dove, two other big brands from HUL, also went through some heavy marketing and renovation.

So, lets see how well Fair & Lovely performs in meeting the new needs of fair complexion.

Perception may happen in many ways, communication is just one way to perceive something. The difference between perception and communication is: Perception is the subjective feeling that comes as a result of the objective communication.

Communication is objective, whereas perception is subjective. Perception depends upon various factors such as background of the individual, psyche, economic and social factors and a lot others. Though the brand communicates the same values to all the people in a target segment, the values are perceived differently based on various factors of an individual. For example, a school boy on his way to school is given a Frooti daily by his mother. This boy when he is grown up will have a biased loyalty to Frooti, though there are better brands in the market. It is not about the objective value of a drink, it is about the subjective emotion that the boy perceives in Frooti.

A great brand strategist understands the perception of their target consumers. He makes them perceive what he wants them to perceive, and he brings out an emotion in them. One of the best examples for this is the choclate Kit-Kat. Kit-Kat in Japan means good luck. The Japanese kids felt that Kit-kat brings good luck to them and it soon became a ritual to eat Kit-Kat before an exam. There are similar examples such as the number eight in China, people sitting in a Volvo car when they feel insecure, and many others.

You are a brand, people perceive you.

Suppose there are twins for one of your friends, and it is absolutely difficult to distinguish between them. To make matters worse, they have the same name and they are always dressed in the same attire. It needs some effort to understand who is who in such a case. Now, imagine that one of them has a lot of interest in Mathematics and he always wears a t-shirt that has equations printed on it. This time it is easy to distinguish among them. This is what is called creating a new category.When you create a new category, you become the first and you will have an opportunity to become a leader in that category. So, when people find difficult to perceive your brand, you need to do something to help them easily distinguish your brand. Your brand should stand for something different from the competitors. You need to find something that people associate your brand with.

As time progresses, people start associating that kid with mathematics the way Volvo is associated with safety. It doesn’t matter if Volvo is really safe or the kid has lost his interest in mathematics, people will always associate him with mathematics because that is what with which he helped them perceive better. What matters is what you make people feel and associate the brand with, creating a Brand Identity.


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