How to Brand in competition

What do you do when your competitor has all the features which you have in your product and all the products in the market have become commodities. At that time it’s only the brand that comes to rescue the product, if you have invested enough dollars in building the brand, more than investing have you made a place in the minds of the consumer. That matters and would help your brand survive the storm commanding a premium.

The above situation is quiet normal with all the products as they pass through the various stages of product life cycle. According to me the imitation happens at three levels

Stage 1-LAUNCH: The marketer has invested huge amount and time in bringing out the product and educating the customer about the new product. In this stage there are huge amounts spent as it’s a new product and doesn’t fly of shelf easily. It has to be pushed for sometime.
Advertising strategy in this stage is mainly concentrated on explaining the benefits of the new product and the focus is on product features mainly rational appeal.

Stage 2 -ATTACK: In this stage the competitor does some reverse engineering and tries to bring in a similar product which is sometimes more better than the former as he knows the loopholes and tries to fill them. In this stage the market is flooded with similar products trying to gain a market share. All the marketers try to spend huge amounts in drawing a difference with their product and end up imitating all the features in their product. Turning the brand into commodity.
Advertising strategy in this stage is to differentiate your offering from the other by hitting on the unique features and communicating this unique difference to the customer

Stage 3 –SURVIVAL: The Market has a slew of products which are quite similar in nature with little or no difference. All trying to gain consumers share of mind and share of heart. In this stage the marketers doesn’t focus on the product and tries to connect the product with the unique experience of using the brand, this is called as emotive appeal
In this stage the marketers try to strike the emotional chord with the customer and try to connect with the heart of the customer.

Below are few advertisements of successful brand which are at the peak stage and trying to strike a relationship with the customer

Coke is trying to differentiate from other fizzy drinks by focusing on the joy of family eating together. In this ad, the focus is neither on the taste nor other benefits but simply on the relationship of a family and the taste of food made by one’s Mother. The coke bottle is placed smartly in between the ad depicting that family enjoys having coke together. When a mother sees this ad she would rejoice about her importance in the family and would subconsciously associate coke with family bonding.



Parachute’s new ad shows the new girl who is responsible and how she plays different roles in her daily life. Even this ad doesn’t show the product or its features, it just emphasizes on women and how responsible she is. When a girl watches this ad the

Will this be an EPIC

EPIC is the latest entrant in the browser market competing with the likes of Google(chrome), Mozilla(firefox), Microsoft (internet explorer ) Apple (safari). Its the first completely built browser from India by Hidden Reflex, an Indian start up and powered by Mozilla, this is positioned as a browser for the Indian net users with options like Indian languages and regional themes.The speed of EPIC is really good, thanks to the mozilla technology behind it. There are many utility apps which function as plugins. Overall a good effort by an Indian firm, now the big question is there a demand for another browser as the internet users already have a lot of choices and a strong base of loyal customers.

Epic is positioned as Indian browser for the emerging intenet market.It is packed with features that suit the indian user needs like language translations, editor, bollywood themes and wallpapers. But the question is whether the newly educated Indian will he be ready to embrace this new browser as indian users are only familiar with internet explorer as it is packed along with Microsoft windows which is the dominant OS in India.

Lets look at the USP of the various browsers.

• Internet explorer is bundled with window OS and has high level of awareness


• Safari runs great only on Apple Mac


• Chrome with its simplicity has attracted every one and has the support of God of internet Google.


• Mozilla Firefox is the fastest browser with huge fan base/evengalists

I tested EPIC, its great with Indian contents and packed with features. Its success would however depend on how well it generates awareness in the market and gets traffic to the website and cater to the international audience and capture a niche segment by catering to a specific need of the internet users rather than fighting for the overall market share and if EPIC wants to tap the emerging internet market in India then it has to first generate awareness of browsers as many peoples think that there is only one way to access the internet and that is through Internet explorer. The E- icon(internet explorer) is associated with internet to many new adopters of WWW

Product review
Design : ***
Performance : ****
user interface : **

Good luck to the hidden reflex the team behind the EPIC browser. You can download it HERE

Supply chain management-The competative advantage

Supply chain management is my bread and butter these days as it pays me at the end of a month. This post is about my new love Supply chain management.

Value Chain

The value chain consists of the set of activities enabling the firm to deliver the finished product in the hands of final consumer, it’s an integral part of firms daily operations as there's no point in spending huge dollars on your communiqué unless your products are present at the convenience of the consumer. Hence it becomes necessary for firms to work on their distribution systems and get things right. There are various parties which help the firm to pass on the goods to the end consumer and for this endeavour, they charge a fee which adds on the cost of the product also called as distribution costs and the parties involved in the supply chain members are considered as stake holder as they enable a firm to gain a competitive advantage. The firm can benefit from the supply chain both in procurement and also in distribution of the production. In this post I shall discuss of the companies which have gained competitive advantage from their procurement as well as their distribution.

Back ward integration: Amul

Amul, the brain child of Verghese Kurien,is one of the biggest producers of milk and related products in India with product line extending from milk to ice-creams. This success of amul can be attributed to the value chain of Amul. It procures the raw milk from about 2.8 million milk farmers everyday who are registered with Amul Its the largest milk company in India both by volumes and revenues no other firm is now where near as no one else is able to source milk at the same prices which amul gets. Its able to do this as it’s a co-operative owned by these farmers hence procurement becomes easy and a sustainable advantage. Even Itc was able to replicate the success as amul through its ITC e-choupal procuring and helping the farmers to use the best practices in their operations.

Forward integration: Dell

When it comes to forward integration there’s one company which has done incredibly well in managing its value chain and selling its computers directly to the end consumers by reducing the distribution costs it passed on these savings to the end consumers . That’s Dell. Started by Michael dell during his graduation days with a simple idea of building customised PC and taking orders directly from the customer them went on to become a great success story. And computer was an industry which is more of a commodity as the inside product or the chips is more or less similar among all the players. Dell understood this well and differentiated by delivering directly to the consumer.

The firms supply chain can also be the source of competative advantage and thats the reason why businesses all over the world are integrating their systems with their vendors and distributors and no longer call them as vendors, they are a part of the value chain and are called as partners.I think this is the right strategy as business is nothing but delivering maximum value to the customers and to generate this value firms should strive to partner with the various stake holders for delivering this value

Power of Web 2.0

There was a time when artists struggled to make their first appearance and get noticed by the directors/producers. For this they had to go to the city of fame like Mumbai or hollywood and move from one office to another and meet the brokers,agents,producers singers etc. just to get a break in the industry or the other way was to get selected in some talent show, compete with the best and then get noticed.both of these routes were cluttered and making through required luck and determination.

The new generation is blessed with internet and web 2.0. They do everything at a click of a button. just shoot a video performance, upload it in youtube and get noticed. Thats the story of justin beiber who had uploaded his video on youtube, it was spotted by braun who arranged his meeting with usher and there after released his first album at the age of 16 and is ranked #1 on the top charts. Web 2.0 has transfered the power and enabled the common man with tools to reach out the whole world.

The crash of the juggernaut IPL was also due to the 140 characters typed in lalit modi's twitter page, within minutes after posting the news spread like fire on the media bringing him and tharoor down. thats the power of internet. It has transformed the power from few individuals to everyone.

when david caroll was travelling in united airlines his Taylor guitar was broken by the crews mismanagement and he had to wait for 9 months for his claims. unsatisfied by the airlines management. David decided to write a song on his bad experience and posted on youtube within few days it got a million hits and caused a serious damage to the airlines. The airline management responded immediately by apologizing and asking the rights to use the video for internal training for employees.the song was ranked 7 for a week in U S charts.The guitar company which makes taylor guitars gifted caroll two guitars personally as the brand was mentioned in the song. Isn't it amazing ?? Thats the power of WEB 2.0

what this means to marketing managers, is listen to your customer be responsible, humble as the power rests with him.

Interview of Mark Zuckerberg- CEO of Facebook

Soon you would be finding Like icon of your facebook on many of the popular webpages this is the new feature announced by Mark at the recent developers meet to integrate the users taste,choices, content on their facebook wall and share it with their friends. This feature is similar to twitter as most of the websites have their twitter icon which directly posts the link as a tweet. this is beneficail both to the partner site and facbook as it would drive in traffic from facebook page as friends in network come across the like message.

Watch this interview of Mark Zuckerberg explaining the new like feature

Where's the Message

Communication holds the key in any advertisement, not the characters or the medium. It’s surprising how brand managers fail to understand this thing and get carried away by the glamour quotient in the ad. Recently there have been many high budget ads which are entertaining enough but fail to communicate the message to its audience.

The high budgeted ad of actors like John Abraham, genelia d souza, abhay deol in the LG cookie ad try hard to explain the social networking feature of the phone, but the message is somehow fail at it. All you can understand is they are making fun of their friend Abhay. I wonder do the advertisement guys pre-test the ad before airing it. This ad has all young achievers which is in likes of the target market but miserably fails to transcend the message.

Smitten by the IPL almost all the brands have cricketers in it with out any association with the brand. what has yuvraaj to do with classmate notebooks?? Will he ever use it ? This ad is great and fresh but doesn’t need yuvraaj who doesn’t look young unlike the other actors in the ad.

The new TATA DOCOMO ad of VAS reverse caller tune which is on air these days suffers from the same glitch, the ads are funny but don’t carry the message. The ad featuring an interviewer interviewing a young student who is careless and cool is funny to see how he reacts to the questions in a careless way and all of a sudden the person offers him a job ???? Surprising!! The voiceover says “hear what you want to hear” and the audience is lost, unclear of the message.

The previous ads of TATA DOCOMO, animated words and the friendship express had a good liking and were enjoyed by the target group. This new ad is cool but doesn’t explain the benefits of the new feature, this VAS needed explanation as this feature is first of its kind in the Indian VAS market. It should have explained this new feature to create awareness. This ad wouldn’t be bad if it was a reminder ad.

Is Twitter The New Journalism

The advent of twitter has reduced the operational expenditure of the media companies as journalist no longer hunt/run for news to various places, they get their news right in front of their computer on their screens. How ??

Step 1: Open a twitter account

Step 2: Follow all the controversial personalities, corporations and news agencies all over the world

Step3 : search it on the blogs,google and twitter feed and make a story

News comes directly on their twitter page and can easily make an issue of the tweets without sometimes understanding the context in which it has been said. And the most targeted man is shashi tharoor who has been in the news these days for his IPL and modi controversy, the birth of this controversy was the 140 character typed by Modi on his twitter account. The tweet has done enough damage to both tharoor and modi leading to resignation of tharoor and CBI enquiry on Modi and IPL. That’s the power of this medium

Internet empowers the common man as he blogs or tweets the news as an when it occurs promoting citizen journalism. Few issues appear faster on the twitter rather than news channels or any other media. Many events like the death of Michael Jackson, tiger wood controversy, pune blasts etc were first released on twitter as people tweeted and it spread much faster. Corporations these days tweet their financial results first on twitter, both the journalists and common man get access to news at the same time

How twitter has changed journalism

· Journalist directly interact and pose questions to the person/company/government

· Journalist get the public opinion directly from the audience

· Citizen journalist give the latest feed of events and journalist rename it as breaking news

Twitter has actually empowered the common man as he can directly interact with brands, corporation and leaders and news spread much faster on twitter with just a retweet. The media landscape is completely changing and the day is not far when companies will provide news only through tweets or retweets by citizen journalists.

Ready for a new Avatar with Gojiyo

Go-Jiyo is the indian version of the popular Secondlife where the users can create their own avatars and interact with the other users, Gojiyo means go and live, started by the locks to home appliances conglomerate Godrej and boyce to market its products using this as a platform. The site allows users to create their avatars and interact with various products of godrej while they don this avatar.
Second life was successful as it allowed the users to have their own avatars, as well as brands to have their presence in the virtual world, like the real world this had counterfeits of luxury brands as well. in secondlife brands don't come for free they have an own currency which is exchanged by real currency. the game was highly successful as it allowed users to replicate all the things which they did in real world and also it allowed the users to control or do things which they cant do it in real world due to social norms.
Go-jiyo is a good effort by godrej as it has a host of products which can be placed in the virtual world and whether the indians would adopt this or not depends on the user interface and the excitement factor which would bring back the user regularly on the site. Social gaming site are quite famous as they allow users to share and compare their score with others. facebook has successfully tied up with app developers to develop applications for facebook, Zynga's farmville is an excellent example of social networking games. riding high on success of farmville zynga has launched many other games like fishville, mafia wars,yo ville etc. the success of social gaming sites depends on the following factors

1) Uniqueness of the concept : you should be the first one to launch, there is no room for the second player
2)Interactivity : it should allow users to interact with other players
3)Compete and share: This platform should rank the performance of the user and share it with their user.

Integrating Gojiyo with facebook is an excellent option as the user has all his friends on it and can invite and share his ranks with his friends, other advantage would be the user need not register again or log into some other site to play once he logs in through facebook he can play the game.

Website review

The site looks cool and has decent graphics the names are indianised. the major challenge would be to bring in traffic to the website and create awesomeness for the user, only then would he come back to the website. The only problem is the low bandwidth and lack of internet penetration in india would take time for people to don another new avatar.

check out the youtube videos of gojiyo here

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.

Brand Story- Fastrack

Fastrack is one of the best Indian brand I adore, started in the year 1998 as a sub brand of TITAN went ahead to be as big as the parent brand TITAN. Thereafter it was launched as an independent brand removing the Titan tag from the brand name. The brand mantra of Fastrack is affordable fashion for the youth.

It tapped in a market that was fresh and relatively untapped by understanding the right need of providing the youth fashionable branded accessories which wouldn’t hurt their pockets. True to their promise, fastrack has consistently come up with new designs at an affordable price. The success in watches led to brand extension into other accessories market ranging form sunglasses, belts, bags, caps and wristbands and today it’s the largest selling sunglasses brand. Its promos were catchy, the campaigns 'how many you have men" and "move on" tapped the right emotions.

The brand has big plans as it has expanded its distribution network apart from selling through TITAN stores, It now retails through store-in-store models, watch retailers and other departmental stores. It has started their standalone retail shops of fastrack products at all the major cities and aim to reach 50 stores by this year end. This is one brand which has got its STP right. The TG is trendy, ambitious, thinks big and wants branded stuff which their friends recognize and fastrack priced it rightly with watches starting from 699/-

Whats Next ??

Fastrack has excellent brand recognition across all its products and is a cult among the youth, the brand should start a new campaign promoting their website and allow users to build their own communities across all its products. This would serve following purposes

1. Create loyalty for its products and Enable communication of proud Fastrack owners using similar products.

2. A platform to upload their pics on the site (sporting Fastrack products) and allow other users to rate & comment on how cool they are!

3. When the user logs in, the brand can promote its new collection, In this way it can cross sell to its existing base of loyal customers.

Why I chose Jumbo ?

While i was busy hunting for a print out shop near M G road,I came across Kaati zone, Respecting my love for food, I hopped in. Its a Quick serve restaurant serving rolls in Indian style. The store basically serves Indian snacks with a limited menu. The rolls were the main offering and it had roll priced in three sizes. I wasnt feeling hungry but i landed up eating the jumbo roll ?? how ? check out the prices below

• Mini 45
• Regular 55
• Jumbo 65

The difference between the prices of these three was only Rs 10 and this difference was clearly shown in the menu. It was interesting to see how consumers at the counter upgraded their decision of purchase when they saw the difference in prices and everyone almost upgraded to the next bigger size of the roll as the difference was less and greed for a bigger roll dictated their purchase.

This is a smart tactics employed by Kaati zone to lure customer to upgrade their purchase. In marketing terms its referred as psychological pricing, Means adopted to maintain the price below the absolute threshold level of the consumer. Here the threshold was Rs 10, had the difference in price been above the threshold of the customer ? he wouldn't buy the bigger size as its expensive. Bata has mastered the art of psychological pricing in India with its prices like 549, 689, 999. The reason why this works is due to the way human brain reads numbers. The human mind processes the digits from left to right . so when the customer checks out that the first digit is lower than what the normal or expected price Is. He would psychologically buy in the idea that its cheap.

Review of kaati Zone

The Food Klub guy outside my college makes better rolls than kaati Zone :)

The New Identity of India

Having made one of the biggest software company employing more than 100000 lakh employees or providing new identity to one billion citizens of India...whats the biggest achievement of this man ??? you're guesses are right. Its Nandan Nilekani this corporate honcho leading the Unique identification program, is all set to revolutionize public distribution system with his unique number which he intends to roll out before 2012. This man was specially appointed by the Manmohan government because of his IT background and one of the man behind creating Indias biggest software firm infosys. no one pointed a finger when he was appointed as the chairman of UIDAI as people trusted in his capabilities, Nilekani represents the new India which is Smart and has a unique place for itself.

Had UIDAI been headed by some other politician, no one would have believed in the idea as most of our politicians( people's representatives) are dropouts or have been the head of labour unions not knowing the basics of economy or business. Most of the ministries in india are headed by people who fill in their own pockets rather than taking care of their positions, take for instance A Raja, the telecom minister is still inviting applications for rolling out 3g when countries like japan are celebrating their decennial of launching 3g. Its really impressive the way Mr Nilekani is carrying out the work for this project unlike the way government does for its project. he is doing it in his own style and has made most of the things transparent, all his steps or future strategies for UID are made public. The revenue model, the marketing strategy, the execution everything is planned the way it would have been done in a private sector and there would be a branding campaign soon to explain the benefits of this project. They are finalize on the name for this project, the three name which have been shortlisted are asmita, aadhar and abhigyan and soon media agencies would be rolling out campaign with a brand ambassador.

The UPA government made a smart move by roping in Nandan Nilekani as he is a successful brand who symbolizes trust, innovation, and commitment where all the other politicians score in negative. UIDAI leverages heavily on the brand Nilekani and this man is living upto his promises and soon would be giving us a new identity, i mean a new number

I-PILL Success Story

Not many know what an emergency contraceptive pill is, but ask what an i-pill is ? you'll possibly get a reaction, now thats the kind of brand recognition i-pill has crafted for itself in India ,the brand from cipla which exited from the OTC (over the counter) business to concentrate more on the prescription drugs which is Ciplas main business.I-pill was sold to Piramal health care for a whooping 100 crores, an amount paid for the superior brand image.

Piramal's other brands are lactomine, supractiv Complete, Saridon and polycrol antacid all are otc(over the counter) drugs which are sold mainly through pharmaceutical shops and the latest i-pill would fit well in piramal's stable of brands benefiting from the existing channels as i-pill is an OTC drug and sold through the same channels which piramals products are sold. I-pill was instrumental in creating a new category for the contaceptive market and had campaigns and BTL advertisements to promote the brand and they were quite successful at it. i-pill was able to create a market of 100-150 crores within few years of its launch with an annual growth rate of 250%.

The advertisements were crafted carefully as pregnancy and abortion are sensitive issues in India. The advertisements used fear appeal and mainly targeted the young couples in the age group of 24-35 who feared getting a child and those who fear of unprotected sex. The advertising was done through tv, print and outdoor publicity followed by an interactive website 'ipillcipla.com', to educate consumers about the product. But the company had to fight many allegations as the age group of 18-24 were increasingly taking this pill for other purposes, following this news many trust wanted to ban this drug claiming that it was being misused by many. Brushing aside all these allegation supreme court rejected the petition to ban these drugs.




The success of i pill can be attributed to the advertisements and an integrated marketing campaign with a strong distribution network , they had their STP and consumer insight right which made i-pill a category and a generic name for contraceptive pills in India.

Services Marketing and Customer Delight

Last year i had been at the SDM-IMD, mysore campus for their annual All India B School fest. Naissance was a three day affair and was one of the best fest's i have attended. The whole management of events was perfectly organized and the hospitality team did an awesome job they had allocated two people to take care of our team, The students at the campus were so friendly and right from waking us up in the morning to ensuring that we had our meal they were with us through out the event making our stay at mysore memorable. In marketing terms they exceeded our expectations and as a consumer we were delighted with their service.

The reason why they exceeded our expectation can be explained by the concepts of services marketing, in the marketing mix of services the people and process are very important along with the traditional 4p's

People SDM-IMD students as volunteers did an excellent job in hospitality and their service delivery exceeded our expectations

Process The whole process of welcoming teams allocating rooms and conducting events was planned and executed well,leaving no room for error.


This year i was called by their representative for conformation for the team from Alliance and as the event coordinator was speaking about the event, interrupting the talk i said her how wonderful our last year trip was and we'll surely communicate and send the team this year too. thinking about the trip it self excites me and my perception about SDM-IMD is excellent and as a delighted consumer i share my experience with others.


I wish i could attend Naissance this year too, but mind is pre-occupied with something else.

Good luck Naissance team.. !!!

Jo Dikhta Hai Wo Bikta Hai

It fizzy and It Sucks ! ! !were the words of Varun after he had the first sip of the bottle.

How did Varun decide to buy Orangeon ?

Browsing through the store a unique bulb shaped bottle caught his attention.Varun was more excited about the new drink than the producers of the Drink . It was priced high compared to other drinks in the shelf at Rs 30 ,,later he realised it was made out of the orange peel, reluctant to abandon it Varun suggested everyone on his way for a sip and every one had the same reaction as of his...

In the refrigeration shelf of the store there were many drinks both national and regional brands battling for consumers attention. Strategically located where the drinks from the two Major brands Coke and Pepsi. But there were many regional brands out there which the retailer was selling, Brands which never heard of like Bindu jeera Masala soda, Rani,Sip on etc

Bindu Jeera Soda and Sip On are brands from the Shankar group. The group is into the beverage business and has mineral water,milk shakes,aerated drinks,and soda in its product line. Many in the campus have tried Bindu jeera soda. reasons are the unique name of the drink. The name is funny to many and jeera soda is a traditional drink Indian drink loved by many, Bindu is the first packaged jeera soda and the marketing wing of the group has done a smart thing, Instead of using traditional media like the mass media which many cola companies do, Bindu jeera soda is not advertised any where instead the company concentrated on the 3 P i,e PLACE (Distribution) they have a strong distribution network, they have flooded every shelf in the retail store and they are tapping the channel partners to sell these products. and if you think why will the retailer sell Bindu jeera soda, when he has brands like pepsi and coke which provide the refrigeration equipment and also manage regular stock.. The only reason is better Margin, huge cola brands cut on the retailers margin as their brands have a better pull (demand)from the customer. this is not the case with Bindu jeera soda as they are paid better.

The group has leveraged on the Bindu brand and has made extension into mineral water and other product. Distribution networks/ channel members are very important for a brand success as they influence the decision of the cosumer and research tells that 1/3 of the buying decision are made inside the store.hence most of the regional brands use this 'P' place to sell the products of the shelves and Bindu is such example of it.