Brand Update : Sunlight

It has been a long time since I wrote an update on Sunlight. This brand which is the oldest detergent brand from HUL was witnessing a revival of sorts. In my last post on Sunlight, I had commented that the brand was languishing because of the lack of support from the company.

2008 saw some brand activity aimed at reviving the fortune of this brand. Sunlight is not a national brand. According to news reports, the brand is a leading detergent brand in some markets like Kerala. Hence the brand was not getting enough support from the company in the past years.

HUL was facing the critical issue of focus in the past few years. It had a plethora of brands which had regional presence but no national foothold. Various leaders at HUL had different ideas about such a brand portfolio. Some CEOs ruthlessly cut the brand portfolio trying to focus on certain number of brands while some others believed in market share and volume game. This divergent views about the brand portfolio created a sense of directionless in the marketing activities of this marketing giant. HUL never seemed so vulnerable in the Indian market. The last decade saw the company venturing into confused brand strategies which ultimately helped other FMCG companies to cash in on market shares.

Sunlight was one such brand which lost its relevance in the strategy of HUL. I had commented that HUL is not spending enough for this brand. However, that complaint is now resolved. 2008 saw a campaign for Sunlight's new variant Sunlight Orange.
The brand is running a campaign in most of the channels : Watch the tvc here

I was rather surprised at the campaign because it was an unusual campaign for Sunlight. An animated ad for a detergent brand was something very unique. The ad typically look like that of brands aiming kids. I still wonder the logic of having an animated ad for a product like Sunlight. The characters, the song , everything was ideal for a confectionery or a toy . The ad is for anew variant of Sunlight which is having orange extract which will make the clothes shine better.

How ever, the ad seems to have some sticky factor although the Sync with the brand was less. I guess that this promotion will work in rural markets because of the novelty of the idea. Some campaign is better that nothing. In that sense, Sunlight brand can breathe a sigh of relief.

Related Brand
Sunlight

Binani Cement : Sadiyon Ke Liye

Corporate Brand : Binani Cement
Agency : By Design India Pvt Ltd

Brand Analysis Count : 436

Binani Cement is one of the mid-sized cement brands in the highly competitive Indian cement industry . Binani cements belongs to to Braj Binani group. The group ventured into cement manufacturing in 1997 . Binani Cements is now a 1900 crore company with significant presence in states like Rajasthan ,Delhi, Punjab , Haryana and Gujarat. The company also has presence in foreign countries like Middle East and China.

Indian cement marketers has long been trying to brand this commodity. Binani is one such player who has taken up branding in a serious manner. The brand is relying on the celebrity power to build its equity. Binani Cement used the cricketing master Sunil Gavaskar to promote its brand during the launch phase in 1997. After a long period of silence, the brand began to invest heavily in brand promotion from 2007.

The brand chose the ever green Amitabh Bachchan as the brand ambassador in 2007. There was lot of buzz during the time big B was chosen to endorse a cement brand.

Binani Cement started using Big B in the television commercials in a dignified manner. This is one of those brands that tried to make use of Bachchan's charisma to the brand's advantage. The ads were laden with subtle humor and according to the reports, Binani cement's sales surged during these campaigns.

Watch the campaigns here : Binani Cement 1, Binani Cement 2

The brand did a smart move by taking advantage of the fact that both the brand and the brand ambassador name starts with B. The cement brand began to call itself Big B. While the brand gains by the association, there were many critics who argued that now Big B will be associated with cement rather than celebrity.

Binani cement has the tagline " Sadiyon Ke liye" which means " for centuries ".

Although the ads featuring Bachchan was well made, I felt that it lacked a punch. The brand lacked a powerful message . I would even say that the brand is not able to convey its brand manthra to the consumers. That may be the reason why those ads did not stick with the consumers.

When trying to brand a commodity, the brand should stand for something significant. It should be either strength , quality , trust , heritage, etc. Although Binani Cement has a good tagline, the emphasis was not there on any significant USP. The brand could have done much better if it had focused on a key strength of the brand and used the celebrity to emphasis that strength. For example Gujarat Ambuja has owned the USP of Strength and Ultratech is taking the positioning as Engineers Choice. So when comparing with these competitors, Binani Cement does not have a clarity in its positioning. It seems that it is trying to derive some strength through association with a celebrity. Such a celebrity dependent positioning strategy is not advisable for the brand . Ideally Binani could have identified its strength and used celebrity to highlight that strength.

To be fair to the brand, it has to be highly appreciated to venture into investing money in building a brand in the commodity space.
Related Brands
Ultratech
Gujarat Ambuja

Marketing Strategy : Philosophical Branding

Let me try to dabble with a little philosophy and branding. Branding is all about building beliefs in the mind of the consumers. Brand is a belief . When a consumer buys a brand, what he is essentially buying is a belief.

Belief is a thought repeated often with emotion. When you repeat a thought with lot of emotions, it becomes a belief. In medical terms, these repeated thoughts create neural pathways which later drives the person to a particular action based on that pathway.

So when a marketer wants to build a brand, there are three essential requirements that will ensure success.
1. Create a powerful thought
2. Back the thought with emotion
3.Make the consumer repeat that thought with emotion

First requirement is to create a thought in the mind of the consumer. The starting point of successful branding is to create a valid powerful thought . In branding terms , we call it brand mantra or brand essence. Not every thought will create beliefs. The thought needs to be powerful, relevant and different. Either the thought needs to be powerful or the way the brand thought is expressed should be in a powerful manner.

The second requirement to create beliefs is to add emotion to the brand thought. When the marketers are able to connect their brand thoughts with powerful emotions, then the neural pathways becomes powerful enough to create actions.
The difficult part though is the third requirement - to make consumers repeat the brand thought with emotions. The more the thought is repeated, the more the brand gains its place in the mind of the consumers.

Iconic brands evoke powerful emotions and thoughts in the consumers. Once that belief is created, it will be difficult for the consumer and the competitors to change those beliefs.

Breathe Right : Breathe Better , Sleep Better

Brand : Breathe Right
Company : Glaxo Smithkline Beecham

Brand Analysis Count : 435

Glaxo Smithkline Beecham has launched a new product in the Indian market from its global product portfolio. The new brand launch is Breathe Right nasal strips. Breathe Right nasal strips is one of the first nasal strip brand to be launched in the Indian market. It is a product that Indian consumers have not seen before.

Nasal Strips are a unique drug free mechanical device which helps open the blocked nostrils. These strips are flexible spring-like bands which has an adhesive on the underside . These strips should be placed on the nose and the adhesive will stick the strip to the nose. As the strip tries to come back to its original position, it slowly lifts the side of the nose thus clearing the nasal passages ( Source : Brand website)

The Breathe Right nasal strip was invented by Mr Bruce Johnson. As the story goes, Bruce himself was suffering from blocked nostrils which bothered him very much. One day while driving past the archway at University of Minnesota, he had the idea that these blocked nostrils can be cleared by pulling from the outside ( Source ) .He went to many institutions with his idea but with no success. Finally Dr Cohen of CNS Inc ,which is a US based company ,sealed the deal with Bruce. In 1993, the brand got the FDA nod and by 1998, the brand was worth $70 million.CNS was later acquired by GSK and the brand went to the GSK fold.

The brand is currently launched in the Indian market and is believed to be in testing phase. The brand is currently running a television commercial highlighting the uses of this nasal strips.
Another big advantage of this product is that besides alleviating the nasal blocks, these are snore -relief products also. Since nasal strips are drug-free, there is no side effects .

When I first saw the commercial, I had lot of doubts about their claims. One thought was about the efficacy of the product. How can an external strip open nasal blocks ? Does it have any side effects ? Will it alter the shape of my nose ??? Is it safe for regular use ??

And many of these questions are unanswered and the GSK India website does not have any link to the product or any product details . It is surprising to see many global marketing giants follow a laid-back attitude in updating their websites or providing information about their new product launches. They still does not understand the power of internet as a source to provide brand information. Surprisingly, Hindustan Unilever is one such marketing machine that does to take care of their site seriously. Some of their power brands are even missing from the site's list of HUL brands.

As I understand,Breathe Right is being launched as an OTC product. And since the primary source of information is through ads , the major task for the brand is to answer these critical doubts of the consumers. Many of the potential customers of this brand will consult their doctors before buying this new product and since it is a Glaxo brand, they will get a positive recommendation.

But the brand still have to do a lot of work to educate the customers about this product. The brand will have to use a mix of educative print ads and TVC to get the message across the consumers. Testimonials and celebrity endorsements can help the brand to get consumer trials. I think that even if the Indian consumers will accept the idea of such a product, there will be lot of resistance in trying out nasal strips. In US, the brand used word of mouth, celebrities and sampling to build awareness and usage. In India too such a strategy will yield good results.

Breathe Right is a new product which is not seen by Indian consumer.The brand has the backing of one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. It will be interesting to see the marketing strategies of this brand to crack the Indian market.

Brand Update : World Space RIP ( 2001-2009)

Another brand is dead. World Space satellite radio service is set to shut shop in India on the New Year eve. The brand which brought in the country's first satellite radio will officially laid to rest on that day.

The brand which came to India in 2001 was supposed to create ripples in the Indian entertainment market ( atleast I thought so). The brand was launched in India with a preposterous pricing soon realized that India needs a new set of marketing mixes if it wanted to succeed . In 2005, the brand came back with a reasonable price-value proposition. The new pricing helped the brand to earn large number of subscribers to the tune of 4.5 lakh customers who was willing to pay about Rs 1800 per year for music. This is no small feat because in India, it was unheard of a practice to pay for a radio service. The brand also got a boost with the tie-up with Airtel digital TV network. According to reports, World Space India contributed 90% of the subscriber base of its parent.

But luck was not in favor for World Space. In 2009, the parent company World Space USA filed for bankruptcy protection . That was the beginning of the end for World Space India. There was talks about a possible sell off but that too did not materialize.

The failure of World Space India was largely contributed by the bankruptcy of its parent but there are lessons to be learned from the mistakes of the Indian arm also. The first mistake was done during the initial launch when World Space charged exorbitant prices for its receiver as well as the service. The Indian consumers quickly rejected this aggression. The company did not correct this mistake for two years and when they corrected it, already a perception was created in the mind of the consumers about the service being expensive.
The second mistake was regarding the pricing of the receiver. World Space should have concentrated more on selling subscriptions rather than the receiver . It could have come out with receivers with rock bottom prices ( Say below Rs 1000) and aggressively sold subscriptions. Remember mobile services became popular largely because of the low cost handsets . Had the handsets cost more than Rs 5000, the penetration could have been much lower.

The third mistake was the business model. Although the brand did right in the advertising front by roping in the brand ambassador AR Rahman, the field level promotion was hopeless. This product could have done well with a direct marketing approach. But the channel partners of World Space did not bothered to aggressively push the product. They were all waiting for the consumers to make the first contact. The ideal strategy could have to set a subscription target of say 1 million customers and once you have it, then try to upsell premium subscriptions to them.

I don't think that the brand could have still survived if it had followed the above said strategies. Indian market still has not open to the concept of a Pay- Radio. The brand was in the wrong place at the wrong time...

Related Post
World Space

Brand Update : Horlicks

I was shocked to see an ad in todays newspaper announcing the launch of a noodles brand by Horlicks. I was wondering how can a company like GSK mess up a power brand like Horlicksby launching a totally unrelated extension ?

Horlicks has launched a new extension in the noodles category . The extension has the brand name Foodles and is endorsed by Horlicks. Foodles is positioned as a healthy noodles. The brand has launched two variants of noodles. - Regular and Multi-grain The main USP of Foodles is the " Health Maker" sachet which comes along with the noodles pack. The health maker sachet contains the essentials of 5 vitamins.

Frankly , this is one brand extension which I cannot understand.Theoretically Foodles by Horlicks cannot be termed as a brand extension. In this case Foodles is the main brand and Horlicks is the endorser brand. But for all practical purposes, Foodles is going to impact Horlicks just like any other brand extension.

Horlicks off late has been on a extension spree. It recently launched the Nutribar snack bar with an aim of transforming Horlicks in to an umbrella brand for launching health related food products.

My first contact with Foodles happened last week when my wife tried to trick me with Foodles instead of Maggi. I hated the taste of it and wondered whether Maggi changed the taste of its noodles again. It is only then my wife revealed that she tried to make me eat " healthy " noodles.


What can be the possible logic behind Horlicks trying its hand into launching a noodles brand ?

One reason or argument can be that Horlicks is only an endorser brand . Once the brand is accepted in the market, Foodles can remain as a standalone brand.

If that is the logic, then has the marketers thought about the brand equity dilution of parent brand? Horlicks in no way can be associated with noodles category. Noodles is perceived to be unhealthy , junk food and by associating with this category, Horlicks is definitely going to dilute its core positioning of a health drink.

Secondly, why should a multinational giant like GSK launch a brand with an endorsement from its power brand ? What is restricting the company from launching a new standalone brand ? Only reason seems to be the lack of confidence of the marketer or the search of a short cut to market acceptance.

Has the company thought of the impact of Horlicks if Foodles fail ? If Foodles succeed, does it add value to Horlicks brand or will it dilute the core proposition of a health drink ?
What is Horlicks now - a health drink for kids, health drink for adults, health drink for women, a snack brand, a biscuit brand and a noodles brand .... where is the connection.

Foodles is not going to revolutionize noodles market in India. All the noodles brands are now on the health plank and having a vitamin sachet is not going to do big things for Foodles.

Earlier, my students used to ask me about my favorite brand and I would tell them it is Horlicks because of the focus and smart marketing moves. Now I would say that Horlicks 'used' to be my favorite brand.