Branding Commodity

Branding a commodity is the biggest challenge and also the principal aim of any brand. Its tough to differentiate as in a commodity the difference is minimal, hence the marketer’s task here is to find out the value add of the offering and try to bank on it. There have been many commodities in Indian context which have successfully branded like Cycle in Agarbathi, Tata salt, Dawaat basmati rice, Century plywood. These brands exist in a market where there are many organised and unorganised players yet they have a significant market and are able to a charge a premium due to a superior brand image.

So how do you brand a commodity?

Primary association: Hunt for the differentiating factor for your product from other brands and position with this attribute. For ex: Tata salt did it through Iodine content in its salt, this is the first step in branding there should be a difference which your firm is offering and this difference should be communicated clearly to the target group

Secondary associations: If there is no difference which you can create or your difference is copied by other players then try to add a superior image or create an emotive appeal with your brand this can be done by celebrity associations, humorous ads or emotional ads.

Step 3: Reinforce your primary and secondary associations to the consumer

ITC has been successfully branding all its business right from Cigarettes (Goldflake), Agarbathis(Mangaldeep), Matchsticks(Aim), Atta (aashirwad), Notebooks(classmate). Notebooks was a market which was dominated by the local unorganised sector and the differentiation was only based on the quality of the paper. ITC took a different approach and differentiated by introducing theme based note books for schools, colleges and professionals these note books were priced higher for the new look. Their new commercial has yuvraj and soha ali khan and the theme of the ad is based on the silence norm which is followed in most libraries. Hence the actors in the ad communicate through the book titles and a jingle is played in the back ground. Soha looks cool in the ad but I didn’t understand why they had to bring in yuvraj as the ad would have done well even with out him,I think IPL would be the reason for roping in yuvraj. The ad speaks about the brand extensions of the classmate brand into other stationaries and the tagline “For the big ideas in you” is nice and would work well with the brand. Overall a good ad and would be liked by the young.