Brand Update : Wagon R

Wagon R is one of the largest selling brands in the Indian car market. The brand is currently in its maturity stage and Maruti is all set to put Wagon R again into the growth path. The brand has roped in Madhavan as the brand ambassador . The brand hopes that the endorsement from the star will create a new growth path for it.

Watch the TVC here : Wagon R

Wagon R is a highly relevant product for Indian consumers. I have spoken to many Wagon R users and all of them have high regards for this vehicle. Even though the product is a globally " Outdated" vehicle, for Indian consumers the brand has remained very useful. One of the major factors that drive this brand's sales is its usability. The car is easy to drive and extremely comfortable and is virtually trouble-free thanks to the Maruti Reliability.

When the product reaches the maturity stage, marketers change its marketing mix elements to rev up the sales. In the case of Wagon R, Maruti chose to change its promotions. The choice of Madhavan as the brand ambassador will give an added thrust to the brand equity of Wagon R. The brand is feeling that it is not realizing its potential fully in the southern market. Madhavan is expected to boost the brand sales in the southern markets. ( related report)

It is also interesting to see how the brand has used Madhavan in its communication. Madhavan is being used as a model in the TVC rather than as an endorser. Here Madhavan is being used as a character in the TVC plot. He is being cast as an entrepreneur in the ad.One of the reasons cane be that if Madhavan acts as an endorser, no one will believe that he uses a Wagon R. So it makes sense to cast him as a character rather than as an endorser.

Wagon R retains its core positioning as a smart choice car and has a new slogan " Smart Ideas lead the world " . The brand retains its tagline " For a Smarter Race ".
The new campaign is pushing the idea that Wagon R is a smart choice for the consumers. Indian consumers seems to like that idea.
Related brand
Wagon R

Brand Update : Rin

It has been quite a while since I wrote about Rin. The brand was moving through various experiments in extensions and positioning. The brand merged one of its extensions with Surf Excel and withdrew some others. Frankly it was a real mess.

The brand was also experimenting with its promotional messages. Rin is positioned on its " Whitening " ability. The brand has remained focused on its core brand promise. But Rin was experimenting a lot with the communication of this promise. The brand could not find a tagline that was powerful enough to convey the brand promise.

In 2008, the brand came up with the promise of Double Whiteness. Rin adopted the tagline " Duguni Safedi, Duguni Chamak " .
Watch the tvc here : Rin

The ad was catchy but somehow for me, a connection with the tagline, the theme and the brand was not strong. Rin was trying to ladder up to a higher level need but the connection couldn't be established.

This year , Rin came with another advertisement with a new tagline " Chamakte Rahna " ( meaning Keep Shining).
Watch the tvc here : Rin Chamakte Rahna

The brand has finally found its right positioning statement. Chamakte Rahna is a wonderful tagline with immense potential and possibilities for new campaigns. The tagline has a strong connection with the brand promise and at the same time helped the brand to ladder up . The ad is also very nicely made .
Chamkte Rahna is a tagline that gives the brand new opportunities to communicate with the consumers. The core idea that the tagline conveys is " to realize one's potential " . Rin has already started promoting its new found positioning theme during the Dance Premier League where the contestants are made to say the tagline. The brand is celebrating the tagline quite well.

Kudos for the brand team.

Related Post
Rin

Guru Speak by Gaurav Mishra : The Experience Ecosystem

Marketing Practice is extremely happy to present a guest post from one of India's foremost social media experts -Mr Gaurav Mishra. Gaurav needs no introduction to the blogging community. He authors a very popular blog at Gauravonomics.com. An IIM B alumnus, Gaurav is currently the CEO of a Social Business Strategy firm 20:20 Social. Gaurav was also a Yahoo! Fellow and taught Social Media at Georgetown University. On a personal note, Gaurav's thoughts on social media has always given me new insights as a marketer.

Gaurav Mishra in this post is talking about the new ecosystem created by the social media and its implication for marketers.

The Experience Ecosystem

It’s an accepted notion now that the brand is realized on the Social Web, in conversations between strangers, who then amplify, quash, or otherwise reshape each other’s opinion on the product or service, often based on first-hand experiences. These messages play off against marketing messages pushed by advertising agencies in the mind of the customer, and increasingly, customers are listening to their peers, instead of marketing messages.

The Social Web exposes any misalignment between implicit or explicit expectations set by the CMO in marketing messages and the actual experience delivered by the organization run by the COO. It is therefore critical that the CMO and COO be in absolute alignment, so that the organization (over-)delivers on what the brand has promised, leading to customer delight, loyalty and advocacy.

At the core of this approach is the idea that conversations are driven by experiences. If you want to drive positive conversations about your brands, you should start by creating an experience that is worth talking about.

The Experience Ecosystem provides the framework for creating talk-worthy experiences. It consists of all the touchpoints between the organization and the customer, including products, services and partners, sales and support channels and interactions, and the values for which the organization and its individual brands stand for.

Working within the Experience Ecosystem, the best way to create an experience worth talking about is to design it collaboratively, with customers, employees and partners. Social Applications for ideation, support and expertise-sharing enable such collaboration.

A collaboratively designed, talk-worthy Experience Ecosystem often results in the formation of communities of customers, partners, employees and even citizens. Community Platforms catalyze such communities and enable them to connect even more closely, ensuring deeper connections and even more widespread circulation of positive conversations.

Deconstructing the Experience Ecosystem

So, the obvious question arises: How do you collaboratively design an Experience Ecosystem that drives conversations and results in close-knit communities?

You start by listening. Your customers, partners, and employees are talking to each other about you, often in public, and their conversations include a treasure trove of feedback about your Experience Ecosystem, along with ideas to improve it. In short, they offer clear signals as to how they will take ownership for the experiences and conversations that will drive your brand.

However, listening is only the first step. You also need to respond to these people and participate in these conversations, not with the intent to direct them in one direction or another, but with the intent to engage them and learn more. Over time, as you track these conversation threads, you should seek ways to build profiles for the people who are participating in these conversations, and identify which conversations, and which people specifically, are the most valuable to you.

Some of these conversation threads will involve responding to and converting prospects who are considering your products or services. Other conversation threads will relate to supporting existing customers seeking an explanation or a solution. Still other conversation threads will be about customers, prospects, partners or employees giving you feedback on your Experience Ecosystem.

In each of these cases, you should use Social Applications -- small, distinct code objects that connect people, facilitate sharing, and enable coordinated experiences -- to tie these conversation threads with other similar conversation threads and leverage the power of collaboration. A prospect considering your offering may benefit from the reviews and experiences of other customers. An existing customer might find that other customers have already shared useful tips on how to solve common problems. Finally, customers can collaborate to find the best ideas to improve your products, services, and sales and support processes, or design entirely new ones.

Once you have collaboratively designed a talkworthy Experience Ecosystem, you should build Community Platforms to catalyze the formation of communities, and transform customers, partners and employees into evangelists.

The Toolkit is Still Evolving

The toolkit to create an integrated talkworthy Experience Ecosystem is still evolving, but it’s already possible to connect the various activities described above, as my colleague Dave Evans recently pointed out in his ClickZ column (http://clickz.com/3635116).

Social media monitoring tools like Radian6 (http://radian6.com) and Techrigy (http:// techrigy.com) already incorporate workstream elements. Not only that, Radian6 connects with Salesforce CRM and WebTrends Analytics, apart from Twitter.

CRM tool vendors are also expanding in both directions and introducing social media analytics and community features. Salesforce (http://salesforce.com) now has a full suite of community features including ideation, support and knowledge sharing in its Service Cloud suite (http:// salesforce.com/crm/customer-service-support) and even connects with Twitter and Facebook. Apart from the integration with Radian6, Salesforce also supports integration with the Lithium community platform and the Parature customer support suite (http://parature.com), amongst others.

At the other end, community platform vendors like Jive (http:// jivesoftware.com) and Lithium (http://lithium.com) are also aggressively introducing social media analytics and social CRM features.

In Summary

It’s more important than ever to create a talkworthy Experience Ecosystem and the tools to enable it are quickly coming together. Organizations that develop the end-to-end view described above will use these tools in an integrated manner and win on the Social Web, while those who implement disconnected solutions on an ad-hoc basis will struggle. Integration, then, is the key to winning on the Social Web.

(Gaurav Mishra (http://gauravonomics.com) is the CEO of Social Business Strategy firm 20:20 Social (http://2020social.com). Previously, Gaurav has held senior marketing roles at the Tata Group, taught social media at Georgetown as the 2008-09 Yahoo! Fellow, and co-founded Vote Report India (http://votereport.in). You can follow Gaurav on Twitter at @gauravonomics (http://twitter.com/gauravonomics) and download the 20:20 Social position paper on Social Business Strategy (http://2020social.com/social_business_strategy.pdf) for a structured methodology for building a talkworthy Experience Ecosystem.)

Brand Update : Kingfisher

It is very rare to see Indian brands being mentioned for its service excellence. Today I was fortunate enough to to read one such story about Kingfisher Airlines. The story becomes more interesting because it is from one of the renowned management gurus of our times -Tom Peters.

Read the story here : Tom Peters Blog

Kingfisher Airlines has very cleverly used " Moments of Truths " to differentiate itself from the rest of airlines. Infact, the brand took extra care to treat the customers like real guests. The above said story also reveals another lesson - little things matter most in customer service. The biggest job for the service provider is to find out those little things which can create a " WoW" factor. Kingfisher created lot of goodwill when they appointed Ushers who would help carry the luggages of the customers. It could be done by any airline but it was Kingfisher who first thought about it.

A sincere smile, genuine care and happy employees can create a powerful differentiator.

Kudos to Kingfisher Airlines Team.

Brand Update : La Opala

It has been a long time since I wrote an update on La Opala. There was nothing special that was happening about this brand till recently. The brand has been very consistent in its brand promotion focusing mainly on the print media.

Recently La Opala has roped in the Bollywood Diva Bipasha Basu to endorse its premium range of Opalware " Diva " . The brand is currently running a TVC featuring the brand ambassador. Diva is a brand for those consumers who are aware of the need to add style to their kitchenware. The brand has the tagline " Fine Art of Dining".

Watch the TVC here : La Opala

This is the first time that a crockery brand has roped in a brand ambassador. The new range " Diva " is a light weight crockery targeting the SEC A & B segment.( Source)

La Opala as a brand is trying to position itself as a lifestyle product rather than plain crockery ware. All its brand communications has been focusing on the " Style " factor. This has made La Opala ,a leader in the Rs 500 crore luxury crockery market. According to news reports, La Opala has around 25% share in the crockery market. Crockery accounts for about 25% of the Rs 2000 crore luxury utensils market.

The presence of a celebrity will definitely increase the brand recall for La Opala. The brand is operating in a market which is dominated by unorganized players and also cheap imports. In such a scenario, any investment in increasing brand recall and share of mind will not go waste.

Related Brand

La Opala

Pediasure : Complete Nutrition , Complete Peace of Mind

Brand : Pediasure
Company : Abbott Pharmaceuticals

Brand Analysis Count : 422

Pediasure is a leading global brand in the pediatric nutrition segment.The brand is owned by the pharmaceutical giant Abbott. Pediasure was launched in India way back in 2000. But it is only recently that I noticed an ad for this global brand.

Pediasure is a food supplement for children aged 2-10. The brand is fighting for its share in the Rs 0.56 billion pediatric nutrition market in India. But compared to other competitors, the brand was virtually silent in the Indian market.

There is a reason behind this very soft marketing by the brand. Pediasure is basically a therapeutic supplement.According to the brand site, Pediasure is a food supplement for those kids who are picky eaters and those kids who are suffering from some diseases. This is a highly recommended supplement for those kids who are malnourished because they refuse to eat. So most of the sales would have happened through suggestions/prescriptions from doctors and also through word of mouth. A google search indicates that the brand has lot of equity among the consumers.

But by limiting its promotion, the brand had severely undermined its potential to become a popular choice among mothers. The brand has been perceived as a solution for those kids who have chronic problems thus alienating other consumers who are in need of a nutritional supplement.

The brand may have realized the potential now and have started advertising. The ad is projecting Pediasure as a supplement for all those kids who does not like taking food.The current strategy for the brand is to appeal to a larger section of mothers who feel that their child is not getting enough nutrition.

What will be a problem for Pediasure is its price. The brand is priced at around Rs 399 for 400 gm which is almost double the price of brands like Horlicks and Boost. Infact I did not buy this product for my kid ( not malnourished !!!) because of the price. The price is going to make this brand unaffordable for many middle-class customers. The brand could do well if it launches smaller SKUs of 100gms at a reasonable price point .
But for a parent whose child is severely malnutritioned , this price will not be a major issue because of necessity. I recently talked to my newspaper agent whose child was prescribed Pediasure by the doctor . The poor guy was lamenting about the high price of this product. For such consumers, smaller SKUs will make life little more easier.

The price problem becomes a sumbling block when the brand tries to get into the larger market of ordinary consumers. The brand's strategy as of now may be to explore the premium segment of the market.