If you are a Marketing Director and/or CEO of a consumer goods company, do you think a Brand Manager with experience in White goods (for instance) or any other branded product/ service management will fail to manage FMCG products and vice versa? Is that Brand Manager totally unsuitable for this type of job openings? Is a Brand Manager solely responsible for brand’s management and survival, or the marketing strategy and tactics are more responsible for a brand’s life-cycle?
While going through an opening for Brand Manager on web, I have noticed such requirements that led me to start thinking about the rational and irrational aspects of Brand Management.
What is a ‘Brand’ after all?
“A brand is a name that stands for something positive in the prospect’s mind”. For instance, the famous cars like BMW stands for ‘driving’ while Volvo stands for ‘safety’. Further, Google stands for ‘search’ (on Internet) and Twitter stands for ‘tweets’.
– Al Ries & Laura Ries
· Is Advertising Synonymous with Selling and/or Brand Building?
· Does Advertising sometimes generate Repulsion?
In India, it is usually thought that heavy mass media advertising is essential to Brand Building, Managing and achieving sales targets. That’s the reason why we find too much cacophony of noise on Indian TV channels for every damn item. Besides there are local businesses operating in the cities and towns. Many of these individual businesses advertise on local TV channels – imitating the national brands without any strategy. By doing so, these local businesses manage to get some responses from local customers. Furthermore, just recall the TV ads by local jewellery showrooms which are either operating in a single city or at the most in 3-4 cities. But these jewellers advertise on national TV channels – a clear example of waste of funds capriciously with no planning. But merely by advertising on TV or print media – either locally or nationally does not turn a product or service into a brand unless it is backed up by a strong marketing strategy and value creation. Further, there is no surety that enormous spending on mass advertising (as every company and every brand manager’s notion) will establish a product as a distinct brand or extend its life-cycle. Just by advertising traditionally on TV channels, can a company turn its product/service into a brand? Not really. For every 100 products/services advertised on TV channels and/or print media, how many become successful brands? Or, just by copying a media strategy and trend of the established brands (advertising on TV and/or print media), could new products/services become successful like them? Not possible. In the recent history (past 20 years) of liberalized Indian market, I recall “Cease Fire” which spent massively on TV advertising with 60-second or longer TV ad campaigns that were not only captivating but also played on fear psychology – somewhat like life insurance products. Yet its ad spending became liability due to failure of ‘Cease Fire’ in the market. Another such example in 2000 was a laundry powder (from a company in Rajasthan) that advertised at least 3-4 times in every commercial break on each TV channel throughout the day for several months. But nobody (including me) is able to recollect even its brand name today, in spite of its excessive cacophony of noise and the most advertised product at that time. Perhaps it advertised excessively to wipe out established brands like Surf and Ariel. But this laundry powder has soon become extinct from retailers’ shelves. In the year 2000, I just wondered how that company would survive if its laundry powder failed in the market. As is evident, it might have gone bankrupt.
Dirty Commercialization: Today the TV audiences are forced to witness the dirty ads – especially of consumables. For example, detailed demonstration of various brands of sanitary napkins bombarded in every commercial break. Similarly, more and more male body sprays which are shown as irresistibly compelling for young women to shed their clothing and grab the man who has just used the body spray. Indian TV advertising has crossed the borders of decency to become ugly and repulsive for any civilized society – irrespective of Eastern or Western culture.
Is extending an established Brand a winning strategy?
Cosmetic giant Pond’s extended its brand to Pond’s toothpaste thinking that it would survive in Indian market. But the extension (toothpaste) miserably failed. Today hardly anyone knows that Pond’s ever had any toothpaste. Similarly, an Indian company DCW of Gujarat launched ‘Captain Cook’ salt that was very much successful. Captain Cook salt even outperformed Tata salt in many regions. Then DCW went on to launch its brand extension ‘Captain Cook’ flour (Aata) in mid-1990’s with vast advertising. Despite its better quality compared to its existing rivals and the then existing trend of unpackaged open flour available through neighbourhood flour mills, the extension ‘Captain Cook’ flour had a short product life-cycle. DCW’s pricing strategy to keep it under the premium category was also responsible for its failure. This shows that advertising neither ensures to insert a brand’s name into consumers’ minds nor compels them to buy the product. In some cases, it succeeds but in many cases, it fails. Besides, advertising cannot even make a customer ‘loyal’ to a particular brand. Loyalty comes when a service factor gets associated with the product or retail outlet (as explained in the next section) to differentiate it. There are many TV ads that capture viewers’ attention and are interesting to watch but when it comes to brand recall at the point of purchase, a buyer’s brain fails to recall its name and sometimes even its product category – due to factors such as too much ad noise, ad clutter, limitation of consumers’ memory, unimpressive or boring ad, copycat product, wrong choice of product name, non availability of advertised product on super market’s shelf or nearby grocery (kirana) shop, and so forth.
Does advertising create Brand Loyalty or is this a myth?
If advertising bombardment stops on TV, people won’t stop buying products or consuming services. The advertisers may argue that advertising helps generate ‘brand loyalty’. This is again a myth which can be easily understood by the following examples. Every Indian consumes several cups of tea daily. Does s/he demand for a particular brand? Not even once in a week or once in a month. Further, if you consume brand Y of tea at home and your kitchen stock has exhausted, won’t you buy brand Z if brand Y is not available at your nearby grocery shop? Certainly. You won’t stop drinking tea just because brand Y is not available or you have seen a TV ad bombardment of brand X of tea. So, to get brand X at any retail shop of your city, will you go on searching several shops to show your brand loyalty? Certainly not. The same principle applies to other consumables like soap, laundry powder, talcum powder, etc. Furthermore, in our daily life, we routinely buy and consume many unbranded and unadvertised products such as sugar, pulses (lentils), eggs, vegetables, etc. In Business-to-Customer marketing, the brand loyalty is very low. It is, however, higher in B-2-B marketing. The customers are not even loyal to organized-sector branded retail outlets — leave aside the brands. The loyalty fluctuates with factors like ‘facility’, ‘attraction’ or ‘convenience’. For instance, when a brand throws a sales promotion offer like ‘buy-2 get-1 free’, the buyers are likely to shift their choice from their routine brand to that offer (an attraction). Similarly, when someone like ‘Big Bazar’ retail offers a discount sale (an attraction), a temporary loyalty can be seen among the buyers. But why customers are loyal to a nearby grocery store over a branded retail outlet or super market? There lies two basic reasons:
1) the grocery store (Kirana shop) offers monthly-credit ‘facility’ which branded super-markets do not (the latter offer only credit card facility!),
2) its location lies close to the residential area, so it not only saves buyers’ buying time but also offers ‘free home delivery’ services to regular customers (dual ‘conveniences’).
When I went to live in New Zealand, the brands available at super markets or superettes (nearby dairy stores), were not only unfamiliar to me but I was also exposed to so many product categories which were neither found nor usually available in Indian market in 2008, such as mayonnaise, salad dressing, goat milk, peanut butter, brown rice, brown sugar, various grades of branded flours, ham soup, rice bran oil, olive oil, a variety of clean & canned fishes, different types of cheese, toilet paper, etc. There was no TV advertising like we see in India for each and every product. Despite this difficulty, I was able to choose the food products which were closer to my taste and convenience and friendly to my pocket – although initially I required several visits to various super markets and grocery shops to familiarize with the brand names. Besides, if I was not satisfied with the pack size, taste or price of a product, I had at least one or more choice or option to switch over. Thus it could be inferred that the main driver to losing brand loyalty was consumer’s unhappiness or dissatisfaction. The latter cannot be generated by bombarding with any amount of advertising or ad claims (such as recommended by every 3 out of 4 doctors or used/preferred by 10 million customers). During his India visit in 2006, marketing Guru Philip Kotler supported this in his seminar lessons: “While the aim of business is to create satisfied customers, the truth is companies continue to lose unsatisfied customers”.
The bottom-line is advertising has a nominal effect on the low-involvement products (FMCG, consumables, etc.). Many such products are bought whimsically, called ‘impulse buying’. It is usually the high-involvement, high-value products where advertising (TV or print media) plays some role to help in the decision-making process. These are mostly various categories of durables such as automobiles, white goods, kitchen appliances, cell phones, laptops, or certain kinds of services such as mobile telephony, dish (direct to home) TV, insurances, banks, investment products, etc. The right sort of creative advertising is required that can clearly distinguish a brand from its rivals and position it strategically. However, in spite of peak level advertising in print and TV during October-2011 the festive month of Dashera and Diwali, when the media too accelerate people’s buying decisions by news, articles and special TV programs, the average sale of consumer automobiles (a very important sector of high-involvement category) fell down to 36% (source: CNBC-Awaaz). What does this demonstrate about efficacy of mass advertising? During his India visit in 2006, Philip Kotler also noticed the flaws in the marketing style of Indian managers and commented on advertising:
· “It has become a one-P discipline. Selling (Peddling)”.
· “Marketing professionals lack accountability and hence take short term decisions”.
· “Instead of reducing marketing to advertising and selling, it makes sense to stick to research”.
It is quite surprising that even after more than 5 years of Kotler’s serious comments – which meant that marketing is restricted to advertising only – whether it induces selling or not, is secondary; Indian marketers have not changed or are not ready to change their mentality.
~Gunjan Gupta, Esq.
Continued in Part-II
Continued in Part-II
