Tag: Positioning

  • Driven

    Its been a while since 1983. 25 years, and as the car maker which transformed the Indian automobile scene with their very first car in that year, its reason enough to celebrate. And the new TVC does justice to that. From the now almost extinct original Maruti 800, which was a bestseller till 2004, to the Swift, the car with the highest sales figures in 2006, its been a long road, with Omni, Maruti 1000, Zen, Baleno, Alto, Esteem, Gypsiy, SX4, Versa, Vitara and a divestment all packed in between.

    While i partially agree with this – the ‘local’ all encompassing big brand concept that has been used by many other brands succesfully has been used here too, I think the timing could not have been better. With Chevrolet, Ford, Skoda, Toyota, Honda, Renault etc and the other desi Tata, coming out with models and talking about everything from fuel efficiency to attitude, it was time to hit India with something that rarely fails – an emotion packed family drama which would trigger bouts of nostalgia.

    And it does well, with some excellent camerawork that takes you from the modern jet setting India, to a typical, traditional Kerala temple procession scene, complete with elephants, to the timeless ‘papa impatiently waiting at the gate for the daughter who’s late’ and an armed forces mountain terrain scenario, from the usage as the proxy school van to a hitchhiker asking for a lift to reach home in time for Diwali, all with the different brands that have got it a 6.5 million customer base; a really hummable theme music, that I hope they will retain for some time, and a powerful line ‘India comes home in a Maruti Suzuki’.

    In essence, a stance that befits a market leader of ethnic origin with the best distribution and service chain in the country, which has consistently worked on its products and has decided to use a communication that took me back to some wonderful times and trips in a Maruti 800, one that I’m sure would have the same effect on millions of Indians, and who in their next car purchase decision, are sure to remember an old companion.

    until next time, a Capital idea

  • The long tales of brands

    A few days back, I read a post by Seth Godin. To summarise, it was about how people in general, and especially marketeers, put on a show, on purpose. That might be simplifying it, and while he does say that “if you’re transparent about your motivations, putting on a show is productive and highly leveraged”, it doesn’t take away from the fact that the last line in the post is an advice to think about the above, when you’re putting up a booth, answering the phone etc.

    It was a bit disconcerting, because it wasn’t exactly what my notions about social media and Brands 2.0 in general were. After all, how could sharing and collaborating be based on something that’s fundamentally a show? While the audience could accept this in say, an entertainment show, would the same happen when they were dealing with brands and people? Isn’t the ‘brand’ supposed to be a promise to the customer?

    I do agree that it would be naive to believe in an utopian way of functioning, but social platforms and the new ways of communicating could take us quite close to it. Thankfully, i was quite buoyed by another superb post from Chris Brogan. While the post gives more personality examples than brands, it stresses the need to be really ‘you’, and I think, that should apply to brands as well, because in a highly connected world, it doesn’t take too long for the roleplay to be seen as exactly what it is, and the true brand DNA to come out.

    Rather than trying to build a story about a fictional character, wouldn’t it be much better to make the brand’s story interesting with its core characteristics? It is a perspective that would affect the way brands behave, even in a relatively less connected country like ours- the brand endorsements, the blind ‘branding’ without any idea of context, the fine print in communication, the sales guy’s promises, customer service and every thing that creates a brand experience would have to be done keeping the story in mind, and doing it in such a way that the customers believe in that story and communicate it themselves, by choice.

    Meanwhile, less connected we may be, but that doesn’t stop us from having our own brand tags. Do take, part, the results would be fun.

    until next time, what you say can and will be used against you 😉

  • Brand recycles

    The concept of product lifecycles is a pretty old one. I’ve read a few articles on brand lifecycles too, like this one. But something I’ve been thinking about recently is the customer lifecycle. I’ve been googling a bit and found a few notes like this and this, but that doesn’t quite say what i had in mind.

    The thought came to me when i picked up the latest edition of Outlook Money. This magazine has, for the last year so, exhibited an uncanny ability to give me exactly the kind of stuff I’d been thinking or discussing about say, a week before, and everytime i pick up the magazine, I have this ‘Truman Show’ feeling. 🙂 It means that somehow they’ve been able to understand the needs of the reader completely, and build an extremely good mass customised product. Notice that they have been doing it for at least a couple of years now.

    My needs have changed in those years, as have my financial planning, consumption patterns etc. But OM has kept in touch with them correctly. Is it following my life? Okay, lets stop getting personal, is it following the life of the demographic that i fit into, which is also their target audience? If it is, then that’s what i mean by a customer lifecycle, which means that the brand by itself does not have a dna, but follows the needs of the consumer through his life, in the space that the brand operates in – in this case, personal finance.

    One advantage I can immediately think of is that the customer’s bonding with the brand will definitely be very high because it never loses relevance. The brand can then decide to either start another version of itself targeting the next generation (Outlook starts a sub brand for the younger set after say, 5 years, when the needs of the original and the new set can be clearly defined and are distinct) or if you’re say a Beverages brand or Apparel brand then you create sub categories (like you already have Coke Lite). So in a sense, the brand gets recycled all the time in an avtar thats always relevant.

    Do you have any more examples like Outlook? Do you feel there’s potential for some brands to work this way?

    Meanwhile, there’s this excellent brand tag experiment being done. I thought I’ll replicate it here at first, but since people answering me here are too less, it really didn’t make sense. But do try it out here.

    until next time, recycle anyway

  • Brand new lock

    We’ve seen Vodafone going through a massive exercise, we recently saw Ceat going through a painful exercise, and softly, quietly, like the brand its always been, Godrej has unveiled its new look recently.

    Godrej, Can I Win My Ex Back for me, has been about locks. That’s the product in which I’ve seen the logo the maximum number of times. Although Cinthol happened to come a close second. (Cinthol has also gone in for an entire rebranding exrecise, about which i wrote earlier.) The Godrej TVC is decently executed, with the brand shown as shaking off a stern fuddy duddy image and moving onto a more ‘likeable’ and trendy avtar. The total spend on this exercise seems to be in the tune of Rs.30 crore. But are they making better locks now might be a badly timed question, i guess.

    I’ve always wondered about the kind of money that brands spend on such exercises. The attempt is obviously to change the perception about itself in the consumer’s mindspace. But how much care do they take to ensure that the attitude change percolates down to the lowest level, and specifically the departments that interface with the customer? And as a customer, do i really expect the Vodafone employee to suddenly become chirpier and more pleasing in their interactions after their new customer care ads? The other point is that I rarely have that interaction because i can do all the things that needs to be done through the net. Similar is the case, with say, financial products.

    When i see a Shoppers Stop, a Megamart, all changing their colors/looks/shapes and going for a complete overhaul, and spending massive amounts of money and energy on these efforts, I always wonder whether the end customer really cares about it at all. Is ‘rebranding’ an exercise that’s done when brands get tired of the % off, new schemes and other tacticals and have no more stories to keep themselves relevant in the mind of the consumer? More importantly, in a constantly changing landscape, where one wrong YouTube video can wreck your brand’s image , should you be putting such a lot of eggs in one basket? Shouldn’t the focus be on customer touchpoints, be it real or virtual?

    until next time, kuch to log kahenge, logo ka kaam hai kehna 🙂

    Can I Win My Ex Back

  • Born tough, but advertising ruined me

    Change. Thats exactly what I’d like those Ceat guys to do about their campaign. After their TVC started airing, it took me this post to understand exactly what they meant by the ad, because I was too busy trying to figure out what was happening to notice the logo change. Also happened to see more from the same family like this, this, and this. Just because change is a constant does it mean you have to force it to happen? Couldn’t see anything wrong with a positioning like ‘Born Tough’, unless of course they either hired a new marketing head or a new agency, who, by now would wish they had the original rhino’s thick skin judging by the reviews I’m reading online.

    I wish someone could’ve explained by now what exactly has changed and why, because if i happen to see that guy on the road, I just might dip my hand into the wallet and offer him some….. change. I wonder why they didn’t tie up with TOI for their Chennai launch, after all the campaign said ‘Next Change’. The possibilities just go on – the guy sitting on a beach and the super going ‘Sea Change’, CEAT changing the model, and the old guy walking with a tee saying ‘Ex-change’, and so on.

    For a product like tyres, wouldn’t it be better if they concentrated on the product, retail and distribution, and talked about its benefits rather than talk about change. After all, the category that the brand operates in should be kept in mind before deciding on communication strategies. This kind of stuff begs something similar to that old KF-Jet-Go Air jpeg that made its rounds. In this case, MRF coming out with something on the lines of ‘No Change. Still the best’.

    Oh damn, now i can see the banner ads on rediff too!! Like the author of the post i mentioned earlier suggested, by this token, a tee should end all concerns regarding a brand’s identity change. And continuing with his take on ambient ideas, here’s one, while driving on a mountain road, you see a theatre playing ‘Darr’. A little way ahead, you see another theatre, guess what movie is playing there?

    until next time, tough luck