Brand : Kinetic Blaze
Company: Kinetic Motors
Agency: Grey Worldwide
Brand Count : 130
Kinetic Blaze is the new launch from the beleaguered kinetic motors. The company which pioneered the concept of gearless and self start scooters are now in crossroads. Kinetic after breaking up the JV with Honda faced tough competiti
on for Honda which virtually wiped off Kinetic scooters from the market.
Kinetic was not able to produce any blockbuster products other than the most popular Kinetic Honda. The launches like K100 and Nova range bombed in the market. Honda while captured and redefined the entire scooter market with its Activa.
2006 saw the launch of Kinetic Blaze. Blaze is the 1st product from the much publicised seven vehicle Italiano series. These designs are bought from the world famous Italjet Moto. The designs are done personally by Leopoldo Tartarini, the head of Italjet Moto.
Blaze is so far the most powerful scooter in India. This 165 cc mean machine is huge and heavy. Blaze was
all set to redefine the scooter market in India. So far so good....
Kinetic was clever in rightly identifying the problem. The brand had took a beating after Honda left.The brand equity suffered a hit after many new product failures.So the primary task for the company was to reposition and rejuvenate the brand and give it a contemporary look . For that Kinetic needed something that could be the talk of the town. So wisely it invested heavily in getting the best designers and conceived the seven series with emphasis on style and "machoness".
But all these efforts went into mud because the agency played spoil sport. The launch ads ( TVC) was nothing but a marketing disaster. The agency just killed the product. The ad talks about Rohit Varma.
We had enough of Digen Varma and Balbir Pasha. Then here comes Rohit Varma jumping from the tenth floor of the flat on a Kinetic blaze and a bunch of cracks(fans) cheering.I wonder how this guy managed to take this heavy thing all the way up. Then the baseline says " Short cut to Fame". It is one of the lausiest positioning statements ever.
Company: Kinetic Motors
Agency: Grey Worldwide
Brand Count : 130
Kinetic Blaze is the new launch from the beleaguered kinetic motors. The company which pioneered the concept of gearless and self start scooters are now in crossroads. Kinetic after breaking up the JV with Honda faced tough competiti
on for Honda which virtually wiped off Kinetic scooters from the market.Kinetic was not able to produce any blockbuster products other than the most popular Kinetic Honda. The launches like K100 and Nova range bombed in the market. Honda while captured and redefined the entire scooter market with its Activa.
2006 saw the launch of Kinetic Blaze. Blaze is the 1st product from the much publicised seven vehicle Italiano series. These designs are bought from the world famous Italjet Moto. The designs are done personally by Leopoldo Tartarini, the head of Italjet Moto.
Blaze is so far the most powerful scooter in India. This 165 cc mean machine is huge and heavy. Blaze was
all set to redefine the scooter market in India. So far so good....Kinetic was clever in rightly identifying the problem. The brand had took a beating after Honda left.The brand equity suffered a hit after many new product failures.So the primary task for the company was to reposition and rejuvenate the brand and give it a contemporary look . For that Kinetic needed something that could be the talk of the town. So wisely it invested heavily in getting the best designers and conceived the seven series with emphasis on style and "machoness".
But all these efforts went into mud because the agency played spoil sport. The launch ads ( TVC) was nothing but a marketing disaster. The agency just killed the product. The ad talks about Rohit Varma.
We had enough of Digen Varma and Balbir Pasha. Then here comes Rohit Varma jumping from the tenth floor of the flat on a Kinetic blaze and a bunch of cracks(fans) cheering.I wonder how this guy managed to take this heavy thing all the way up. Then the baseline says " Short cut to Fame". It is one of the lausiest positioning statements ever.
The product is supposedly good; that is what most of the reviews say. The scooter is huge with the size of Pulsar and wheel base of a Bullet and weighing 135 kg. Hell this is a macho scooter that too with a mileage of around 50 kmpl ( under dream conditions), and look at what the agency has done. No positioning and no creative thoughts only bull shit.The brand had lots to talk about. It was male, powerful, stylish and safe. The TG could have been those who wanted a powerful city rider.Here much more rational communication was needed instead of hyperbole.
With a price tag of Rs.50000, this brand is going to compete with none other than Pulsar. The question is will you opt for a Blaze or a Pulsar? Hence the success of this brand will be heavily dependant on the way the company position the brand. No other bikes have so far being able to dethrone Pulsar , so does Blaze have a chance? With this stupid positioning, I will say No chance.
Blaze was the right vehicle for rejuvenating Kinetic Brand. It could have been a Pulsar for Kinetic had it marketed it right. Pulsar captured the attention of TG with its Definitely Male campaign. But what about Blaze ?
Blaze if positioned properly at best would have been a niche product. The brand would have appealed to people who did not like Bikes. But the current positioning dampens every chance of its success.
Kinetic have to realise that there are no shortcuts to fame.
Source : Businessline,Indiabikes.com, autocarindia, agencyfaqs,kineticblaze.com
HI,
ReplyDeleteI'm Rohit Varma and I deifinitely do not ride THAT. Matter of fact, I am going to write to Kinetic and as them to stop using the name.
Rohit Varma
...and I am rohit too!!!! and know about 3 rohit vermas !!!!
ReplyDeleteas for the post by harish b, what's failed? don't believe me just walk down the roads and see the number of Blaze's Kinetic has put on the roads, especially here in Bombay, and they have only a few dealers here but the waiting period is one month!!!
I loved the commercial myself and checked it out. Nearly bought one but for my wife who's petrified of 2-wheelers.
As for the rational positioning; when was it most effective? The only cases I can think of are complete new product concepts or discount / price players - CeaseFire then Vaccuumiser and more recently Big Baazar kind of brands.
2 wheeler marketing in India has moved from the rational Fill-It-Shut it- Forget it days to even the most basic bikes and scooters being sold on "aspired" values". Check out the Bajaj Platina, The HH SPlendour and Splendour Plus, TVS Star and Star City.
And at 50,000 the Blaze is surely far, far more aspirational.
Personally, the dramatisation simply makes for interesting presentation of a bike like 2-wheeler.
But then I suppose Plusar DTS-i campaign of doing wheelies wasn't something that Harsh B would seen as anything else but "dangerous".
Infact the press communication (which actually was seen in Bombay before the TV ad) present's the "rational facts so interestingly within the brands promise of "short cut to fame" that the TV ad actually just took the Blaze's appeal far far higher... and that I must applaud Kinetic (or the agency) for.
Thank You Rohits
ReplyDeleteI saw a couple of kinetic blaze in cochin too. I am happy seeing brands succeed. My contention is that Blaze could have better positioning..because the company depends heavily on this series to stay afloat in the market. I appreciate your viewpoint also.
Well kind of late in the day; though Blaze & Kinetic no longer exist... i must say the vehicle had some appeal though expensive at that price point. I agree with your analysis Harish that even if they had got the positioning right... it still would have been very niche.
ReplyDeleteI follow your blogs and i must compliment you for the efforts that you have put in for this project. I don't know of any other blogs that cover Indian brands in such detail. Thank you for this blog!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSeeing the comments now as I am working on an MBA project for the revival strategy of Kinetic Blaze... Hats off to Harsh B for predicting it right!!
ReplyDeleteHello all.
ReplyDeleteI know I m very very late on writing this. After all its almost 8 years since this post was written. Presently the blaze is gone and so gone is Kinetic. This is just exactly what happened as predicted by Harish B. Coming to the topic what I see here Harish is not criticizing the Blaze but the TV advt. Although the TV ad spoke of everything that the tagline had to tell “-shortcut to fame” but what the heck that paan wala was doing there in front of a lavish bungalow? More on this later!
First about blaze Blaze was a total DIFFERENT concept, 165cc spitting out 16 odd BHPs!!! Thats a hell from a scooter! The deal was to revive the kinetic brand and Blaze was the right thing but somewhere something went wrong. Sadly. But looking upon this I have a few questions raised in my mind? What according to Harish B was the right positioning for Blaze in Kinetic’s bag? The Blaze was a lot whole different thing. Where did it stand amidst the Kinetic Honda, Kinetic 4s and the underperforming bikes Boss and velocity in Kinetic portfolio? There was no such appropriate place for a scooter of that kind. You can not rival a bike with a scooter! Harish B is talking about rivaling pulsar with Blaze. TVS Apache was launched at the same time as the Blaze. Sure it fetched impressive number of takers, did it rivaled the Pulsar? Look the Bajaj Pulsar still stands un-attacked here in 2014! With many macho machines lying here around Like CBZ/EXTEREME, Hunk, Yamaha FZ, FZ16, R15 to name a few! Pulsar still outsells all of them! So taking down pulsar is not the game in the first place.
But again, what Harish B told about Blaze to be a ‘niche’ specific product stands cent percent justified. The blaze was indeed a very very specific product with a very exclusive Target Group. IN MY OPINION the blaze was a product before its time. Just look at the Honda Dio and Yamaha Ray for instance both a selling in pretty good numbers presented as a power scooter than a girlish thing these two darlings have attracted quite a youth. The Dio has a MotoScooter badge on it but what about the performance, with 108CC and 8 BHP on tap it trembles to reach a speed of 80km/h. Think what speed we could have done with the Blaze with 16 bhp!!! Once I knew a guy with a Red colour Blaze, he had “Catch Me if You Can” written behind his ride! And boy the machine performed just as it boasted! The pickup, the grunt! Leave alone the bikes, even the cars were unable to catch that thing. Really Quick!! Had we the blaze lying around (ofcourse with cosmetic updates) it would have beaten the Soul out of Dio, Activa125 and Ray!
Now coming to the TV advt. First of all, scooters don’t jump that way! Agree every one? It was just so impractical thought. The paan wala looks so out of place with all those Flashy and Trendy youth. Just think how many youth chew beetle nuts now days? These two alone ruined all the appeal of the machine which was indeed a very very special thing. The one of its kind. The Advt. creative group had so much to boast about the scooter like: the Sheer Power it had, The speeds at which it able to cruise, the pickup, the cool macho styling, capable highway cruiser and a bit of Racer too! But they missed it all and made the thing jump out of balcony! Poor Blaze was in the hands of such ignorant, lowly creative and ‘Blah’ thinking people. The advt. was a bit entertaining but it did little good for the scooter. May be the crowd shown the advt. film show a scene of finish line where the Blaze would beat motorcycles and scooters to race to victory with Rohit Verma riding it? Guyz what say?
Vaibhav Sunny