Best Marketing Practice #1 : Creative Lab

Creativeland Asia which is the new generation advertising agency founded by Mr Sajan Raj Kurup is launching a Creative Lab in Kochi. The excerpts of press release is given below

"

While Creativeland has been strengthening its forays into the international/ Asian market with strategic tie-ups with local Asian agencies across markets, it has also been consolidating its presence in India.

Just one year into the business, and Creativeland Asia is all set to open its second and third offices. While the office at Kochi will open its gates in the last week of September, news is still awaited on the other office which is also slated to open in the South. The Kochi office will also host the CLA Lab, India’s first creative laboratory for communication, brand and marketing ideas.

CLA Lab will be a laboratory, a planning space and an ideas library. Exclusively for advertising & marketing minds of Creativeland, its clients and all its Asian partner agencies. CLA Lab will be used as a hub to workshop ideas, test market new ideas and test launch new advertising and marketing concepts and strategies. In addition to the physical space to huddle and brainstorm,

CLA Lab will provide the complete back-end support required for such activities.
Speaking on the developments, Sajan Raj Kurup, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, Creativeland Asia, says, “Creativeland has been looking for the right time, the right way and the right people to expand its business."
"

I think its a best practice because its for the first time where an advertising agency is trying to see creativity in advertising and brand promotion as equivalent of Research and Development (in product development ).

And such a focus on creativity will be a nice playground for the amazing creative talent we have in our country. Right now creative talents are having difficulty in finding the right kind of platform in our country. The recent Cannes is a proof that India has that creative talent to make itself into a leading hub for creative outsourcing for global marketing giants.

Another factor which prompted me to write a post on CLA's new venture is that they are opening this Lab in Kochi ( my place of work ). Kerala is known for its militant unionism and is often not a preferred destination for manufacturing companies.

But the state is known for its consumers. Its a hard core consumer state and a preferred test market for most of the consumer goods . I believe that if a product succeed in Kerala, it has the potential to make it big in India. Hence Kerala offers huge potential for consumer research especially on the youth segment. Its a homogenous market with a high degree of literacy. The media penetration is also comparatively high. Hence a ideal location for any knowledge based venture. ( I know I am biased ).

One thing that used to surprise me is the fact that none of the major advertising agencies have an office in this vibrant market. To my knowledge no top advertising agencies have an office in Kerala except for Mudra & TBWA. The reason is that none of the major clients have their base ( HO )in Kerala.

Having said that , yesterday I visited a textile shop - Jayalakshmi Silks in Kochi and was absolutely stunned by the massive crowd shopping there. This is Onam season and a season where the Malayalees loose their purse strings. According to Malayala Manorama newspaper, Malayalees spent around Rs 5000 crore in this season alone.

The Kerala consumers spend around Rs 45000 crore in an year. This spending is fuelled by around Rs 18000 crore send by Non-Resident Keralites into the state. Hence Kochi makes a fertile ground for exploring consumer behavior through research .

The only issue for any such initiative is to attract and retain talent. Retaining talent in Kochi can be a tricky issue since Kochi does not have the vibrancy of Mumbai or Bangalore.

Brand Update : Horlicks

Horlicks has caved into the temptation for celebrity endorsement. The brand has roped in the young celebrity Darsheel ( Tare Zameen par fame) as the brand ambassador. The brand already has run two commercials featuring the new brand ambassador.

The brand also had made some changes in the communication message in this new campaign. The brand for now has moved away from the famous " Taller Sharper Message ". The new slogan is " Badlo apni bachpan ka Size " .Iam sorry that I cannot translate that to English without losing the intended meaning.

The new ad is truly Hip Hop stuff with a funky rap thrown in as background music. The ad shows Darsheel with his friends questioning old practices and exhorting to change what they don't like. A sort of non-conformist attitude is projected throughout this ad.

According to a report in afaqs, the company says that the new generation is now questioning the age old practices and Horlicks wanted to relate to the new generation.

It makes sense. But my doubt is whether the target audiences will understand the new message ? One thing for sure is that Darsheel and the ad has a sticky factor which will attract young consumers to the brand. So another bulls eye for Horlicks.
Its also a nice extension of the Taller- sharper-stronger positioning adopted by the brand in the past commercials.
I think that Horlicks has not discarded the earlier positioning but used the current ad to create some freshness to the brand communication.

While Afaqs reports that the positioning has changed, I don't think that Horlicks is stupid enough to discard a highly potential platform of " Taller Sharper and Stronger ".

Clean & Clear : Clean Clear and Confident

Brand : Clean & Clear
Company : Johnson & Johnson Consumer products
Agency : DDB Mudra

Brand Analysis Count : 344

Clean & Clear is the skin care brand from the house of Johnson & Johnson. The brand was relaunched last month marking the foray of J & J into the highly competitive skin care market in India. Clean & Clear is a global brand of J &J with a presence in over 41 countries.

The brand was initially launched by Revlon in 1957. The name was chosen because the products had no fragrance and dyes and left no residue after rinsing ( source : wikipedia). In 1991 Revlon sold Clean & Clear to J & J.
J&J repositioned the brand focusing more on acne control.

The brand was existing in India long back ( I don't have the launch date). But the brand was languishing because of the lack of support from the company. Infact I have never seen this brand before.

The company has rejuvenated the brand and ads are now running in many TV channels.
Clean & Clear is targeting the teens. The brand has launched a series of products like cleansers, oil and acne control creams. etc .The brand is using the cleansers as the flagship product to attract the consumers. ( source : campaign India)

Clean & Clear is being positioned as a Teen Skincare expert . The campaigns are more functional oriented and the endorsement by Johnson & Johnson further strengthens the brand positioning.

The brand has the tagline " Clean Clear and Confident " which I feel has potential and flexibility for creatives to work on. Infact confidence is a virtue that will attract the attention of Teens. Teenagers has a view of themself as adults. So confidence can be a platform to attract these young minds into this brand. I remember the ad that enabled Lifebuoy 's repositioning where the young girl says " I don't care " ( about my skin ) which is a show of confidence.

Indian skin care market is huge and lucrative. Its estimated that the market is worth around Rs 2000 crore. But the market is crowded with local and global brands. So its not easy for Clean & Clear to break into this market.

What Johnson & Johnson has is the enormous brand equity it has in the Indian market. I would say that the company has not quite leveraged the brand equity to other products. It had earlier burnt its fingers with the brand Savlon which may have prompted the company to focus on the babycare and female hygiene products.

With regard to the Clean & Clear, the brand should associate itself with the core brand values of the parent brand. But have to be careful about not being perceived as a baby's product.

When I visited a supermarket, I found Clean & Clear bottle along with other J & J baby products and not in the personal care section of the supermarket. I think its suicidal for the brand to be kept alongside baby products. In this era of competition there is no space for such mistakes. I had to spent considerable time checking whether the cleanser is for baby or for grown ups . What ever promotion is done, all of which will be useless if the product is not placed properly in the retail outlets.

Marketing to youngsters is a different ballgame. The trick is to induce the trial first. Compared to the Point of Purchase displays of brands like Ponds and Lakme, Clean & Clear is almost invisible in supermarkets. In this market half-hearted efforts will accelerate failures.

J&J has the money , distribution and brand power to make it big in the skin care segment. The brand has done right in identifying teens as the target segment. But its marketing effort is not aggressive enough to push it through the clutter.

Brand Update : Tata Indicom

Tata Indicom was one of the first telecom operators to offer CDMA mobile services in India. Launched in 1996, the brand is the youngest of the lot. Infact it was one the first brands to be analysed in this blog.

In my post on Tata Indicom, I was talking about their launch of India's first prepaid plan with free incoming calls. I was lambasting on the poor campaign promoting the brand.

Indicom has come a long way since my first post on it. Now its one of the major players in the CDMA space with a market share of around 9.1 % in the highly competitive telecom market.

Last month the brand undertook a major repositioning exercise and is trying to position itself in an emotional platform rather than a functional one.

Tata Indicom has been positioned earlier using the " Do more live more " platform. The brand has been investing heavily on this platform with high decibel advertising featuring Bollywood stars - Kajol and Ajay Devgan.

Watch the old campaigns here : Tata Indicom Old

Most of the initial campaigns was of bad taste with unnecessary dramatics and substandard humor. Later the brand mellowed down to a " let me tell you the benefits " approach with Kajol acting as the brand expert. According to Afaqs, the first change in positioning was a result of the change in the ad agency from Mcann to Draft FCB Ulka.

This month Tata Indicom has launched a new campaign and a new positioning.
Watch the new campaign here : Indicom new ad

The new ad is also a result of change in the advertising agency. The account has moved to Contract Advertising.

The brand has now taken a more emotional platform to promote itself. Its a sort of laddering up. The brand is following the strategy of Airtel which has perfected the art of laddering up.

The new campaign of Tata Indicom now talk about " Listening to your heart ". The new campaign shows a small town girl making it big in athletics.

My initial impression about the ad is positive. Its a well made ad and its nice to watch. But when I watched the ad first time , I had a feeling that I had seen this somewhere before.

The concept of Rags to Riches is has been one of the most used positioning platform worldwide. It does strikes a chord but when every other brand tries the same chord, the chord gets broken.

So no Big Idea from Tata Indicom. Its the same bollywood formula in a new bottle. According to Afaqs, Kajol will be used in urban markets while this campaign will be used across the markets. The brand has identified ambitious youth in small towns as the TG. Its a good news since one of my major criticism for Tata Indicom was its inability in identifying the TG.

Rags to riches, defying the odds, David beating Goliath, Small humbling the Big .... These are sure shot recipes to impress the audience. In the execution of the idea, the agency has not let down the brand.

Branding has become an important element in telecom marketing in India. Now we are seeing a standardization of tariffs. Marketers are now trying to retain the customers through emotional connection with the brand. The war is now on two fronts . On one hand, the brands are trying to offer value added services to customers . Alongside the brands are investing in building a connect with the customers.

Tata Indicom was struggling to find a right positioning platform so far . Now they have a reasonable platform to work with.

Consumer Insight #3 : Value

I was at my doctor's clinic when I noticed a quotation by John Ruskin . I was amused because it was different from the usual quotes displayed in a place like a clinic. You typically expect a health related one. But quite the contrary this quote was on marketing.

John Ruskin was not a marketer. Ruskin ( 1819-1900) was an artist, a writer ,a poet, a social critic and a writer. ( source:Wikipedia). I bet he is a enlightened consumer too.

What Ruskin has written about value is no-brainer.
Its pure commonsense but as a consumer we tend to forget this principle.
The quote goes like this
"

It's unwise to pay to much... But it's worse to pay to little.When you pay to much, you lose a little money... that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot.... It can't be done.If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run.And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better."

He adds

"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper. And the people who always go for the cheapest are this man's lawful prey."

















Although I am a marketing professor, I am a lousy consumer ( my wife's opinion ! ).

I see my self as a bargain hunter and most of the time I have burned my fingers looking for better bargain ( call it price) .

I blame it on my middleclass mindset for being so called value conscious.

But I think its the case with many customers. We tend to make mistakes by not understanding the true nature of value.


Its often greed that camouflage as value or bargain.

In the highly insightful book " It happened in India " by Kishore Biyani ,he says

" There are a couple of emotions that determine shopping behavior. The fundamental of them are greed, altruism, fear and envy. Greed drives a customer to purchase more than what he or she needs. "

What Ruskin says is perfectly true. Its not possible to less and get more... It does not make business sense. But customers lured by never-heard-before offers fall for it. The need for instant gratification is so huge that customers give in to the temptation.

It takes some patience to buy the best quality product because it costs more. Marketers of low priced products make their kill by instilling fear of a possible price hike among the customers .

We see messages like this all the time...
Limited offers !
Buy before price hike !
Offer to close this sunday !
Buy now or regret later !

Going by my experience the additional money (premium) you pay for getting the best product will compensate by giving you the peace of mind..

The doctor charged me a very heavy consulting fees... but I am not complaining.......

I think I am on my way to become a better consumer.

Brand Update : Rexona RIP ( 1947-2008)

So its official, Rexona will be laid to rest. I recently saw a TVC where the ad says Rexona is now Hamam. First I couldn't believe it. Then I searched for the news but there was no information anywhere about this possible brand migration.

Just now I got an sms from my journalist friend that Rexona soap is going to be migrated to Hamam.

The brand was in the life-support for quite a while. The first attempt to kill the brand was during the power brand strategy where Rexona was planned to migrate to Lux. At that time Rexona was launched with Lux milk cream. But after some time, HLL decided not to migrate Rexona. Then I thought that this brand will be rejuvenated. But now is has been confirmed that Rexona Soap is now history.

As a customer I am sad because it was a nice soap. As a marketer, I am upset because such a good brand is being killed. For HUL , the reasons can be many. In this era of cut throat competition, it does not make sense to have too many brands. So the logic is to put your money into those brands which are powerful. Rexona has never been a volume/revenue contributor for HLL.

Another reason is the existence of Rexona deodorant which had a different image compared to the soap. Its in India that Rexona exists in soap category. Worldover Rexona is famous as a deodorant.

It is more difficult to kill a brand compared to launching a new one. There can be issues of managers getting emotional about the brand . Another difficulty is to handle the existing customers of the brand. HUL is hoping that Rexona customers will migrate to Hamam. As a customer I will not migrate because I have a different perception about Hamam.


Rexona deo will be given more focus by the company now that there is no soap variant. HUL has been using imported International commercials of Rexona in India. Its sloppy marketing to import global campaigns into a diverse market like India. HUL had the resources to do it by itself but its trying the short-cut.

So in the FMCG kurukshethra one more brand has been killed. This time by the own company.

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Rexona
Hamam