Metrosexual Men, eh?!

The Man, The Machine... to The Man, The Mush... Herald the dawn of the new metrosexual man of the country. Indian male once carried the persona of being a hard worker, someone who cared for his family and his pocket but the last thing he cared for was his face. Times are changing, and now the man, who suavely terms himself metro sexual, or at least those who would like to get bracketed into that cadre give great importance to their looks today. To me, it seems sad that people tend to knot Metro sexual status with their looks.

Back to our topic, probably the marketers of various consumer goods companies were running short of ideas, they created a new segment in Men targetting them for fairness. As if asking Indian women to be fair to be beautiful wasn't atrocious, they took it up a step further and are asking men to be fair to be handsome. And who better than our 'I am here for every kind of ad' SRK to promote this nonsense. Probably to cash in on the urban men, they even have a website. I seriously have no clue what it is for! There is none to blame for this phenomenon but the Indian consumer. Ethics and emotions apart, it is an interesting Brand segment to study.

Late back in 2004, HLL(then as it was called) realised 20% of the users of its product Fair and lovely were men, which as per Fair and Lovely's total sale of Rs. 500 Crore amounted to Rs. 100 Crore. That was too lucrative a market not to pay heed to! The phenomenon was observed by other companies like Cavin Kare and Emami too, but it took time to come up with brands and when they came out, they all flooded the market at about the same time.

HLL started thorough market scrutiny for Men's fairness cream market in 2005, which can be found in this report. Finally, in 2005, Emami came up with Fair and Handsome and Kaya Skin Clinic was one of the pioneers in getting men into the fairness circle. Fortunately or unfortunately, my geographical orientations aside, Southern states were the first and biggest markets for these products. Today Fair and Lovely, Fair One included, almost every Indian brand has ventured into Men's Fairness care segment.

Male Vanity hasn't ended at that place, though! Players like Nivea have entered this sector with specialised 5-action fairness cream, and is cashing in on male grooming as a whole. Other players like Garnier and Set Wet are raking in the moolah using the mantra of Male Grooming. Grooming though isn't as pathetic as fairness.

The good and bad aside, one great thing about this phenomenon is that this is the best brand finding I have seen in the recent times. The nascent need of the customer, however justified or unjustified, was always there and the companies realised and are riding high on the boom and setting their cash boxes on an overloading jitter. Now, ethics, emotions and other things aside, this sure is an awesome case of what great Marketing is all about!

For all those men, fair and unfair, out there, watch out... Its your turn to be pampered now!

Brand Brouhaha

To me, Branding is the most important aspect for a product. All said and done, a Brand is a Brand is a Brand as it is often said. There are no two ways about it. We all need brands. Brand is that luxury you would want to have and rest in once you earn high through hard work and persistence. We inch up organisations, our products inch up consumer minds, we want to translate that success into acceptance and the fallout is BRAND.

Many people often regard Branding as an exercise that just happens, and do not give any importance or relevance to it. However, these people are talking of brands, not Brands. To make Surf is one thing, to make Surf a synonym to detergent and erasing the mention of detergent powder in a billion Indian minds is another. Just any name would make a brand, but a firm commitment, belief, trust and faith maketh a Brand. Yet, people think Branding is something very simple and nothing very important.

For all those people, Branding Asia puts things in perspective. The homepage itself tells how rigorous a Brand Building process is, and how objective and quantifiable it is. From building Brand Equity to identifying Reputation Drivers for a brand, the article covers it all and so well. It is a must-read! However, it is their methodology. So dont blame me if you were looking for a generic methodology.

Coming to Brands again, the same site lists down The Great Asian Brands. It is a disappointment to see not many Indian companies in the list. There are many companies from Singapore. Considering many cities in India are larger than Singapore, I think it is high time we realised how important Brand Building is for us. According to me, one factor why Indian companies haven't been too active on the global front, save for a few exceptions of late, is that there are no strong Indian Brands. Today, when Vodafone comes to India, we welcome it with both hands open for we know Vodafone is a reputed brand.

In this list, there are two Indian companies, Wipro and Hindustan Unilever Limited. HUL, as a die-hard fan like me would say, is the mother of all Indian companies in Branding. As mentioned in the same post earlier, Surf is the biggest of all Indian brands according to me. The order of the day needs to be more companies focussing on Branding like HUL, I guess. One look at the businesses of both these companies throws up a good number of common businesses, especially in the initial days of Wipro. So, does that mean Branding is business-specific? :S There is another viewpoint too, and that is the point that both these companies have been in operations for long, and have hit a chord with Consumers through Consumer Goods first. Does that mean time is also a factor for Branding?

Branding now seems like a never ending pot of questions... Try to find your own... Till then, Happy Branding! :)

Communicating a Rebranding...

Bangalore was rechristened Bengalooru, Madras to Chennai and Calcutta to Kolkata. We do not know if this list is saturated. We do not even know if it has crossed the nascent stage. What we know is things have happened, and the transition has been gradual but steady. While we still struggle to acclimatise ourselves to Bengalooru, we are pretty ok with Kolkata, or so is the case with me!

These to me are all several cases of Rebranding. To build a Brand is one thing, and to rebrand it is another. It is like rediscovering self. It is like reinventing the basic premise of your product, and communicating it to the customer. The biggest challenge of a rebranding exercise, according to me, lies in the fact that the consumer must be communicated both the things that your product hasn't changed, but its name has changed. The consumer must not just realise this, but the earlier name of the product must be erased entirely from the consumer's mind.

Hindustan Unilever Ltd. did it efficiently for Super 501 and Rin Shakti. Both of them were big brands in themselves, but HUL used its trump card of Rin Supreme to erase these names from the consumer mindspace. But, that is an entirely different thing because Rin has always been lapped up more happily by an average Indian Consumer than Super 501 or Shakti. The garb of Rin Advanced meant Super 501 customers felt they were now buying Rin at the same price, which means a superior brand at the same old price and Shakti was anyway just a tag. Shakti or Advanced dint make quite a big difference to the product. To put it in a nutshell, Shakti and Super were brands, while Rin is a Brand. To understand this statement, you need to read Strategic Brand Management by Keller.

Coming to another end of rebranding, we all know Hutch was a big Brand in India, thanks to its advertisements and the curiosity factor they always maintained. Now, Hutch has been taken over by Vodafone. I would save the acquisition for someone else to post upon, and focus on their rebranding. I always wonder what it would take to reinvent Hutch, what it would take to erase Hutch from the minds of Indian consumer. This is more relevant because Hutch entered Indian markets not just as a telephone operator, but as an aggressive and innovative advertiser. Most of us know and prefer Hutch more for its ads! The Brand Hutch rang in the kid, the pug even before coverage and Value Added Services.

So, obviously when Vodafone wanted to change the name of Hutch to Vodafone, we were all waiting for the huge makeover, and it has finally happened. And how is it? Vodafone has gone on a 'no stone left unturned' effort to make sure Hutch is properly rechristened Vodafone in the minds of Indian consumer. Vodafone might be a great Brand globally, but in India, it is a newbie! To ensure they register themselves properly in the Indian minds, they have done something we have never seen. They have monopolised Star Network for 24 hours with their ads. The rebranding exercise is speculated to last another two months.

Is this costly? Something very much unlike what HUL did with Rin? The obvious answer would have been a Yes. But, according to sources it isn't. The expenditure is announced to be much lesser than the speculated Rs. 500 Cr. Given the multi billion dollar deal, this definitely isnt a big deal for Vodafone to come up with what it wants! The CAS rule that applies to Star Network could also be a reason behind this. Earlier, companies like HUL have demanded upto 35pc discount from Star TV for the same reason.

Now, the million dollar question would be 'Will the overkill of ads kill the brand?' I feared it would. It doesn't seem so. My mom, whose instincts I believe, told me today it wasn't too much of a burden. With her being a big fan of Star Network, am sure many others would feel so too! I haven't watched it on tv, so I cannot comment personally, but I look forward to what people think about it.

I have seen the ad though, on youtube. It seems interesting, and intelligent. If you ask me why, I would say it is because they have cleverly maintained the thread of Hutch in the ad. Hutch entered the market with a pug and a kid, with an orange color logo. When the logo was later changed to pink, the logo was subsided and the kid and pug maintained to keep the brand recall high. Now, to change it to Vodafone, they have maintained the pug, and focussed on it long enough for the customer to realise it is a Hutch ad, and then said 'Change is Good'. To a Manager, this is THE golden gospel. So, my ethics tell me it is good! :P Though the charisma of this ad doesn't match up to older ads, it sure appeals!

To what extent, to how many people and for how long is to be seen. Will the pug turn out to be the 'lambi race ka ghoda' for Vodafone?! Wait and watch...

PS: Will Vodafone cancel all the pending payments customers owe to Hutch? ;) Not to worry though, am a Reliance loyalist! :D

Get Brand-y!

Nope... Don't get me wrong! Am not in a mood to get on a high, am high on life already! :D As has been said, is being said, and will be always told on this blog, Brands are an integral part of life. While we perceive of products as the shapers of our habits, we pursue brands as the reason for crystallizing them!

From our childhood, we have always been using products, but we do not consider each of those products brands. For example, though I buy a certain company's footwear most of the time, I am open to other brands too, for I do not consider it brand enough to woo me, where as, call it loyalty or addiction, nothing out of HUL in Home and Personal Care products for me! :D

So, I am sure each of you must have been influenced by some brand or the other somewhere in your life. Now, please take some of your time, and let me know what are the brands you associate yourself the most with and why? In other words, what is the brand you are most loyal to, and what is it in the brand that makes you so?

Branding is never concrete without advertising. They always must and will go hand-in-hand! An ad is a review to the book called brand, and it is reviews that drive people to read books and love them! Hence, I would also like to know what are the advertisements that have captured your attention and enslaved you to the brands? I personally know many people who went berserk over the Pulsar-Definitely Male campaign and bought one! What is your such experience? May it be brush or a BMW, do let me know!

Advertising, when good, can only help a brand in gaining mindspace among its intended audience. But, when it is bad, it gets notorious. It digs a grave, and buries the brand in such case. So folks, also the advertisement that turned you off totally from a product. I am waiting...

To put it straight, these are the three things I am looking for:

• What are the brands you are most loyal to and why?
• What are the advertisements that made you like, buy and idolise a brand?
• What are the advertisements that turned you off totally from a brand?
  

Post your answers as a comment!

I am waiting eagerly, and this is to study Branding and Consumer Behavior. Had been trying to capture this somehow, but never knew the way, until an oracle, a dear friend Arpita Sharma gave me this idea! Thanks to her... :)

RIP Love of My Life

Me: Mummy, Mummy....

Mom: What happened?

Me: There's a good news and a bad news... What do you want first?

Mom: Hmmm... Bad news!

Me: Hindustan Lever Limited is no more....

Mom (shocked): Good News???

Me: Hindustan Lever Limtied is now Hindustan Unilever Limited.

Mom: And the brands???

Me(jumping in joy): Same brands, same brands....

Mom heaves a sigh of relief!

An adaptation of a recent popular advertising campaign by HLL to communicate the change in name of its flagship detergent bar 'Rin Supreme' to announce that Its Official... The Love of my life is no more... It pains and pleasures me at the same moment to announce that my love is no more, it has changed. It has changed.... its name... :D Before you made any conclusions, let me tell you, it is not a person but a phenomenon called HLL that am talking about...

Even before HLL started feeding me, my family earns it dough through HLL, I was fascinated by that green symbol of HLL that used to flash in between all those prime-time song shows that I waited all week for on Doordarshan. I was flummoxed at what that green ball reading HLL was, and what that P&G in a globe stood for. I had this certain animosity towards P&G because they had Gamble in their name, and I was a kid... :P Moreover, the ad of Lifebouy was too good not to like it... It was the jingle of the century... The 'Lifebouy hai jahaa, tandurusti hai wala' one...

Then, once my dad started earning our livelihood through HLL, I fell in love with it all over again. From that day till date, I have always loved HLL like nothing else. The very word 'HLL' brings some unknown happiness, enthusiasm and ownership in me and am sooo passionate about the name and the brand. Today, my dearest name is getting changed... HLL is no more Hindustan Lever Limited... It is Hindustan Unilever Limited now...

In a press release today, HLL announced that the government has cleared its application to rename the FMCG giant to HUL or Hindustan Unilever Limited. For many days now, many people had asked me what the new logo would look like. Though the new logo is something I had been witness to for months now, thanks to U n I and UnIversity programmes of HLL, I never knew that would be the logo of HUL. I loved the way the Ls curled up under the H in the HLL logo. We would miss that L altogether in the new logo.

At the first sight, many would feel the HUL logo weird, for it is just a U with many drawings in it. It has a deep interpretation, though! It stands for HLL's mission of 'adding vitality to life'.

One may wonder how this image, name and brand change would be communicated to the length and breadth of India which recognises brands more by images than by name. But then, we must recall it is HLL we are talking about. It is THE best marketing company in the country. From door-to-door brand communications to online brand communications, it is one company which has mastered them all. For every Project Shakti and Project Bharat, there is a gangofgirls.com and a spillurdil.com!

HLL has always been a great case to study, at least for me! And I have always learnt of HLL not from books and web, but from the company and its operations itself. Probably thats the reason it fascinates me all the more. From a Sunlight bar imported into the country in the 1890s to the gigantic hits like Surf, Rin, Lifebouy, Rexona among many many others to the 30 Power Brands in the 21st Century, HLL has always been a company with a unique strategy and deep penetration into every nook and corner of India.

While people wonder why Rin, almost a synonym for Detergent bar, is erased and merged into Surf Excel brand umbrella, they are unaware of the fact that Super 501, Rin Shakti are all being merged into the umbrella of Rin Advanced. The central idea of HLL probably is to keep Rin close to the masses, while escalating Rin Supreme, which now is the Surf Excel Bar, into the premium end of the market.

While every national giant bit the dust due to the invasion of local markets, especially rural areas, by local manufacturers, only HLL stood like no one else and regenerated its own glory every time there was a threat it would be abated.

No Nirma or P&G can do what HLL, hmmm now HUL, can do... HUL would be the standing testimony of a joint India. No matter what religion, caste, creed, sex, color, region or belief we belong to, we all love Rin, Rexona, Lifebouy, Lux, Axe, Denim, Kwality Walls, Lakme, Brooke Bond, Annapurna, Ponds, Dove, Pepsodent, Close Up (My fingers ache and force me to abruptly end the unending list) or atleast one of them! HUL is truly the identity of India! :)