DHAN TE NAN

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THE WAY TO ADVERTISE

Early this month a very interesting book was released which caught my attention and really got me thinking. Named “Nobody’s Perfect: Bill Bernbach and the golden age of advertising” this book is written by Doris Willens, a former journalist who looked after the PR division of Bill Bernbach’s advertising agency DDB (Doyle Dale Bernbach) from 1966 to 1984. Twenty seven years after the death of Bernbach, here came a book which painted Bernbach as a blemished, insecure, person who leaned on others work. A man who I hold in very high esteem, a man who features at the number 1 position when it comes to drawing up a list of “Top 100 people of the century in the field of advertising” for he changed the course of advertising history- how could he be painted in such a bad light? Here was a man, who according to the author Doris Willens, was a devoted family man, unlike the many womanizing and boozing admen of those days (and even today!), was creative and disciplined. However, what interested her more were anecdotes of little or no relevance to the world of advertising- things like he recycled speeches, put one of his sons on the payroll unbeknownst to management and was frustrated over not being able to publish his own book. Ridiculous! The man has contributed so much to the business of advertising that these allegations seemed so petty. But they did have one positive influence on me- they made me go back to my old notes, my books to read and understand this genius and many more like him and rediscover the important lessons that their work has taught.

IT’S NOT A QUESTION OF “EITHER”, “OR”

When advertising started there used to be someone who would write lines and then hand it over to someone else who put a picture or an illustration that matched those lines. Bernbach was the first to take a bold step and change this business of making ads. According to him “Advertising is the art of persuasion” and he cited an interesting study by “AAAA” which claimed that 85 percent of all advertisements were ignored by consumers. What was the use of businesses spending so much money when all it caused was boredom? One needed to persuade and persuade hard. This could be done only when every aspect of the advertisement spoke the same language. So he changed the process of making the advertisement. Everyone knew the rules of advertising but they lost it all by working independently. He made sure at every level of ad making the artist and the writer worked together. Now the artist could suggest a headline, the writer a visual and for the first time “art and copy” were integrated as one. Everyone was in sync with each other’s thoughts and the ads worked brilliantly. Now 1+1 equaled 3. DDB’s unique approach gave birth to many masterpieces in the 1950’s. A bargain department store in New York named Ohrbach’s had a small media budget but Bernbach and his agency created a masterpiece for them. His ad without once mentioning prices made an advertisement which gave a clear positioning to the store. The advertisement showed a man carrying a woman under his arm with a caption that read “Liberal Trade-In: bring in your wife and just a few dollars….. We will give you a new woman.” Another in the series showed a well tailored woman flanked by a man shattered into pieces with a caption that explained “clothes that make the woman without breaking the man”. It was a beautiful and relevant combination of “art” and “copy”. It is not surprising then that it’s in the list of the Top 10 advertising campaigns of the century and number 1 and number 10 have ads created by DDB. No one else could get 2 of their ads into the top 10. At number 1, you have the Volkswagen ad with the headline “Think small”, at number 10 is the very very famous advertisement of Avis which had the most iconic headline ‘We are no.2. We try harder”. It was these few words that altered the fortunes of both the companies forever. Bernbach not only made sure his agency did good work, but he ensured that no “good idea” got lost. A lot of people think up wonderful ideas but its rare to find an ad man who can recognize a great idea created by others. His creative philosophy was simple “…indulging in graphic acrobatics and verbal gymnastics is not being creative” you need to create something where every word, line, shadow, makes the ad more persuasive.

PERSUASION- THE ONLY GAME THAT MATTERS

In life what matters most is the power of persuasion and its words, rather the right words that most often determine whether an ad will work well or not. Yes, years ago Confucius did say “A picture is worth a thousand words” but in the business of advertising, a picture without words does not work. After all have you ever seen an advertisement without text? But you would definitely have seen ads without pictures. In fact great genius like Claude Hopkins went to the extent of starting that “illustrations were a waste of space”. May be this was true 60-70 years ago when clutter was less, but what we should not forget is a picture alone- however wonderful can never sell a product. The advertising greats never forgot this. Raymond Rubicam made sure his agency Young and Rubicam made well written ads. He used to say “The way we sell is to get read first”. In order to do that he ensured that every fact about the product being advertised was well researched. He was the first to make research a part of the creative process. Like Rubicam, David Ogilvy too was a firm believer in research for he believed in the power of words to convince a consumer to buy a product. It was the “headline” which could make or break your advertisement. According to him “5 times as many people read the headline as compared to those who read the body copy. So unless your headline sells your product you have wasted 90 percent of your money”!

Be it print or television ads, long after you have seen them, it’s the “words” that linger on in your memory. Great punch lines sometimes even become a part of our daily lingo. “Hum Santro waale hai,”, or “utterly butterly” keep popping in conversations like many more such punch lines. “Daag achche hai” made kids lives more fun, with Daddies explaining mommies about the joys of childhood & the stains that accompanied it. Mommies smiled and answered don’t worry “Mummy ka magic chalega”

WORDS ARE ALL WE HAVE

Yes, the one who can master the art of juggling words and getting the right mix is the master persuader and the best salesman. It is not important if your words are technically correct or the sentence grammatically perfect; but the words should work for the brand and make it memorable. What language you speak is also important Ford Icon became the “Josh”: machine in India, Coca Cola associated itself with “Thanda” which colloquially means a cold drink in India. Times of India’s award winning advertisement “A Day in the life of Chennai” used words like “Naaka Mukka” which worked fabulously for it meant “tongue nose” – a Tamil expression using people to let their hair down.

Well worded expressions are always winners. Energizer batteries used the strap line “Never let their toys die”. Pillsbury frosting stated “Spreads as good as it tastes”. Even before one used the product the words already helped you visualize the benefi ts of it. No wonder they could beat competition.

Some words which otherwise would be termed as gibberish seem to have worked well for a lot of situations “Hoodibaba” worked well for Bajaj Caliber. The product may have nor done well but “Wakaw” immediately brings to mind coke’s product: “Vanilla Coke”. Apart from Hrithik Roshan it was the “mast” punch line of Tata Sky “isko laga dala toh life Jhinga lala” which made the brand name popular. These words catch the attention which is the primary purpose of an advertisement. Budweiser used the same trick with its “Whassup!” award winning ad campaign. Sometimes gibberish really works – think “Dhan te nan” the foot tapping number from the more Kaminey. You must be able to think of a “Dhan te nan” headline or punch line for your advertisement to rock.

THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS

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THERE WAS A TIME WHEN BIG MEANT ECONOMIES OF SCALE; BIG PLANES WERE BETTER AND BIG COMPUTERS WERE WOW. BUT ALL THAT HAS CHANGED. SMALL IS THE NEW BIG; ESPECIALLY IF THE GUY BEHIND THE SMALL IS THINKING BIG!!

“If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way,” said Napoleon Hill. This got me thinking about the significance of “small.” It’s the “small things” that have been changing and influencing our lives. Back in the 1960’s everyone was making big long cars. Doyle Dane Bernbach was hired by this company to create a campaign to promote an ugly looking car. It took a small headline to shake up the whole automobile market and changed all the existing rules of advertising forever. The headline read “Think Small”. Bernbach’s “Think Small” advertisement for the Beetle car was actually an exercise in thinking big. This ad catapulted the Beetle into fame and sales of the car (which no one gave much chance to succeed) actually broke all records and expectations. Not surprising then that in the list of the top 100 advertising campaigns, Volkswagen stands tall at the very top with its “Think Small” campaign that Bernbach created in 1959.

In fact, it was the “big” that drove Detroit into a ditch. GM, Ford and Chrysler had been America’s symbol of economic might and prosperity. They totally ignored the small and concentrated on big cars only. But it was the small and fuel efficient cars of Japan that helped them capture the US car market. In August 2008, the American car industry saw a drop in sales by 11%. Japanese carmaker Honda, on the other hand, out performed the sliding US auto industry with its US sales up by 1.2%. In 2007, Americans bought 55 light trucks for every 45 passenger cars. In July 2008, the ratio inverted and so did the fortunes of car companies. It’s the ones who focused on “small” that survived.

Toyota was another company that grew in an unprecedented manner and dominated the global car-market. Its hybrid car model, Prius became a best seller. But today, all is not well at Toyota City in Japan. The company has been hit badly by the slowdown. All eyes are focused on Akio Toyoda, the grandson of Toyota’s founder Sakichi Toyoda. In his first press conference ever, he said that the company had over extended itself in an effort to make big cars for the American market, forgetting completely that it was “small” which was responsible for its success. It’s time the company went back-to-basics and revamped its strategy, he said. Toyota City wanted to become like the Detroit of America – with car sales plummeting and unemployment increasing, the city is scarily coming close to fulfilling its dream.

It’s time to turn to “small” to survive. For that’s the way Ford has been able to survive. It’s the only US automaker that has not filed for bankruptcy because among other things, the first thing it did was sell off its big nonprofit table cars Jaguar and Land Rover to Ratan Tata. Alan R. Mulally, Ford’s CEO knew that the future was “small” and with this sale, Ford secured its future. In July, its sales rose 2.3% from last year, thanks to the increase in demand for small, fuel-efficient cars! The news made Ford the first among the major American carmakers to report a sales increase in the US this year. Small creates big impact – remember the atom bomb and how it altered Japanese and world history forever.

SMALL MONEY BIG DIFFERENCE

“Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies,” believed Mother Teresa. It is this faith that led this company to raise millions of dollars annually for children around the world. Since 1991, this small idea has helped this company raise over $70 million. Yes, it’s the UNICEF’s “Change for Good” campaign that was started with a simple premise that people who travel and have left over foreign coins or notes would probably never use them again. This way UNICEF found a way to turn this normally wasted money into millions of dollars for helping the underprivileged children. All that travelers were required to do was to give their spare coins in an envelope to an in-flight personnel on their way back home. Flights distributed promotional materials showing celebrities supporting UNICEF in this initiative. Till today, this small idea of small change continues to work, making it one of the world’s best known CRM campaigns.

More than charisma, it was a steady flow of funds that was responsible for Barack Obama’s victory. He used the Internet to raise money like no one could ever imagine. He turned his campaign website into a 24 hour deposit box that filled up slowly but steadily as “small” donation trickled in. He raised half a billion dollars online with 90% of the transactions coming from people who donated $100 or less, while 40% came from donors who gave $25 or less. No other campaign in the world has managed to create an impact as big as this one.

It was Muhammad Yunus’ “microfinance” and small loans to poor farmers that helped fuel his big dream of changing the fate of the poor and perhaps someday make poverty history. In 1975, he realised that by giving a mere $27 he could change the lives of 42 people of a village. He started the Grameen Bank that gave small loans to the “poor-uncredit-worthy” and changed the fortunes of one village after the next. He and his bank today have loaned more than $100 million and changed the lives of thousands forever. As the artist Van Gogh said “great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”

SMALL IDEAS BIG RESULTS

This man started a trend of sorts at Harvard. Everybody now wanted to find an idea and drop out of Harvard. Marck Zuckerberg founded Facebook while he was studying at Harvard in 2004. He never knew that a small university project could cause such an explosion and ‘blow away’ every youngster’s mind on this planet.

Many big businesses started as “small” projects. Bill Gates did it in the 1970’s; Sergy Brin and Larry Page started Google as a project in Stanford; Yahoo and Cisco System too were Stanford projects. Seeing the potential of “small” beginnings, in 2007 Harvard discarded its ancient rule of prohibiting students from running companies from their dorm rooms. If you know where you are going it is of no significance how small your start is. As Fidel Castro said, “I began a revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I’d do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and a plan of action.”

It started with a $5,000 loan, that helped him lease a garage and a copy machine. Today Paul Orfalea has converted it into a business we all know as Kinkos – with more than a thousand business centres worldwide.

A piece of paper, pencil, some imagination and a small loan of $500 was how this company started. Walt Disney, inventor of Mickey Mouse, built a huge empire that today is one of best and oldest standing companies in the world. Don’t forget, it all started with a mouse.

SMALL STARTS SOMETIMES FINISH BIG

Wal-Mart started in a small town in Arkansas in 1962. It was this novel idea of opening a department store in a small town, when everybody else was rushing to open shop in the big cities, which led to the tremendous growth of this retail giant. Big cities were crowded, expensive, had tougher competition and were running out of good real estate options.

In contrast, small towns had none of the above problems, besides also having consumers that were delighted to find someone who cared enough to open a departmental store in their otherwise boring town, and especially one that was comparable to stores in bigger cities.

BEST DEALS COME IN SMALL PACKAGES

It was Chik shampoo that first introduced India to sachets in the 1980s. Earlier shampoos were available in large bottles. A change in packaging increased the market size dramatically. It worked especially well in the rural market – a market that is growing faster than the urban one. Every multinational that wants to grow is repackaging its goods into smaller units. If Colgate has its toothpowder in a 10gm sachet, sugar is now even available in a Rs.2 pouch, jam in a 10gm sachet and just 2 slices of bread are now sold in a single pack. Marketing them in small sizes, increased their market.

The magic of small was understood best by Estee Lauder. She did not have a huge advertising budget usually required to sell cosmetics. So she decided to package her cosmetic items into small size packs and distribute them as gifts to potential consumers. Not only did she manage to capture a huge market share, but also started a totally new trend in marketing.

Try sleeping with a mosquito and you will never underestimate the power of small things and the big differences they make. Napoleon was the greatest French Emperor and he was short. Kylie Minouge is not too tall either, but has done the biggest music counters. And it is not the big, but the small screen that worked wonder for Ekta Kapoor and her saas- bahu serials.

Frustrated by the high cost of film production, some Nigerian filmmakers turned to making home videos taking advantage of the affordable digital filming and editing technologies. Suddenly, movie making became affordable. Today, all films are produced using digital video technology. Colloquially known as Nollywood, Nigeria’s film industry is the second largest film industry in the world in terms of number of films produced per year. They churn out 200 videos for the home video market every month!

Small things do great things. A small leak can sink a ship, a small invention like the TV remote can change life forever. When phones shrank to mobiles and skirts shrank to minis, many swore that the world became a better place to live in. So if you want to go far and make it big, master the small first.

Forty years ago, on 20th July, humankind landed on the moon. It was Neil Armstrong’s one small step that changed the world. A journey, however long, starts with a single small step. Don’t undermine the power of small. And to really succeed, become the god of small things.

SRK India's Biggest Brand

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Entertainer, brand endorser, producer, businessman, cricket club owner or the ever-friendly neighbourhood guy Rahul... brand SRK ROCKS!

“Come to IIPM, I’ll see you there,” says Shah Rukh Khan with that famous smile of his. And even as the big day nears, the excitement at the Indian Institute of Planning & Management (IIPM) is fast turning into a frenzy. The man, who is famous for his unlimited energy, seems to have infused some of it into the staff and students too, for no one seems to be going home (or sleeping) for days now! It’s work, work, work everywhere – every detail being looked into, everything being checked twice, just to be sure there are no goof-ups on D-day when the business quiz would be held and of course, no one is complaining!

SRK is someone who features regularly in Bollywood discussions, and also boardroom discussions, for a simple reason – the man is not just an actor, but an intelligent actor. He is not just a brand ambassador, but an intelligent business man (probably the economics background helps!). Every word, every statement, every comment is well thought, well reasoned and most of all, well worded. He is one of those rare celebrities who can never be outwitted! Not surprising then, that he features regularly in my write-ups and lectures in advertising. What is it that makes SRK such an interesting case study for MBAs! Let’s explore SRK, the brand.

ART OF WAR

There is a world famous book by the same name written by Sun Zi in the 6th century B.C. A book so old, yet imparting wisdom as relevant and useful even today that helps leaders and managers workout their business tactics. A famous quote from the book goes like this, “Know your enemy, and know yourself and victory will always be yours.” SRK seems to have understood this pretty well and has fought all his wars successfully. Of course, we are not taking about the Amitabh-SRK spat or the Salman- SRK imbroglio or even the Vidhu Vinod Chopra-SRK duel. We are not even referring to the Aamir-SRK face-off or the war between producers – distributors and multiplex owners that Shah Rukh helped put an end to. We are talking about the brand wars that he fights regularly and wins almost every time.

In 2005, ITC Foods announced that Shah Rukh Khan would be the brand ambassador for its flagship brand Sunfeast, endorsing the entire range of snacks under the brand umbrella. In 2003, when Sunfeast was launched, no one in the industry thought that the brand could make any major dent in the market share of its competitors’ – the old and mighty Parle and Britannia, who had dominated the country’s biscuit business for years. But ITC played its cards carefully. First, it brought in the world’s most revered cricketer Sachin Tendulkar to endorse their biscuit. “Sachin’s fit-kit” was an amazing idea and a surefi re hit. Next, the company roped in the evergreen charmer Shah Rukh Khan. Biscuits mean children, but SRK’s presence meant not just influencing children, but people across age groups. ITC Food’s strategy worked. According to A. C. Nielson’s retail sales audit of March 2006, both Britannia and Parle started losing volumes significantly. A worried Parle hastily roped in Hrithik Roshan to endorse its “Hide & Seek” brand. The move did not work. SRK won the hearts of consumers and the sun began truly shining for Sunfeast.

Take the laptop market. HP roped in Shah Rukh to endorse its range of brands from Compaq to sundry printers, with the famous tagline, “The computer is personal again.” This caused a flurry of high profile branding in the PC segment. Lenovo roped in Saif Ali Khan as its ambassador. Acer got Hrithik. Yet, SRK ruled this market. Interestingly, when it comes to being a pioneer and offering consumers the latest technology, it has always been Acer that has come up tops and with the most unique offerings. Think of it, Acer was the first to launch a Ferrari laptop range, a gemstone range designed by BMW designers and many such innovations. However, with SRK endorsing Compaq, Acer did not stand a chance. People perceived Compaq to be a better brand and HP held on to its market leadership. When the Badshah enters, you stand no chance.

OF BUILDING BRANDS

Every marketer knows how tough it is to build a strong brand and how long it takes. Yet, there are some who make it seem like a cake-walk. It’s common knowledge that when SRK entered Bollywood he knew no one. In fact, he knew nothing except that this is where he would rule one day and so he did. Today brand SRK is so powerful that anything it touches turns to gold. When India was introduced to the world of club cricket, not many thought the Indian Premier League (IPL) would work. It did. However, it has worked better for some, as compared to others. Yes, you guessed it right. It has worked best for SRK. In May this year, UK’s Intangible Business released the IPL Brand Value Scoreboard 2009 that measures the strengths and weakness of the eight IPL Franchises. Shah Rukh Khan’s Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) topped the charts with a Brand Value of $22 million followed by Delhi Daredevils. No team excites the audiences more than Kolkata Knight Riders. Even when it loses a match, it doesn’t fail to excite valuers. As per Richard Yoxon, Director, Intangible Business, “Winning games is not enough to build a successful sports brand. Teams need to engage the local community, attract star players who inspire a wide audience and develop a strong marketing communications programme.” The various factors that it measures to determine a brand’s strengths include popularity of team, loyalty of supporters, owners equity viz. a measure of the impact the franchise owners have on the brand, brand awareness, et al.

KKR beat all its rivals and reserved the top slot for itself, despite a dismal performance during IPL Season 2. Look at the team’s partners. Hyundai (the country’s second largest car manufacturer) is the ‘Traveling Partner’ of Shah Rukh’s team; Sprite is the ‘Pouring Partner’, Nokia may have cut 1,700 jobs worldwide and is supposedly still on a cost cutting spree, yet this year it went all out to associate itself with KKR. After all, Nokia has been voted as the second most visible brand during IPL last year next to SRK’s KKR. Guess it just made good business sense to associate with a winning brand then. This time round, Nokia even decided to pack in more KKR value added services, like cricket scores, player interviews, games, et al. It is the dynamism of this one man that has made KKR such a big brand in a short span of time. Not surprisingly, Kolkata Knight Riders have also become the favourite brand ambassador of a lot of Kolkata based companies. After all, how long could they manage with Mithun da and Saurav Ganguly. SRK has managed to charm his way into the hearts of a lot of Bengalis and brands don’t want to miss the wave. Kolkata based Rs.190 crore Linc Pen signed up SRK in Dec. 2008 and renewed its contract immediately. SRK gave them likeability in the market. After all, if people associate with SRK, they would automatically do the same with this brand.

ONLY SRK WORKS

When Fair and Handsome, the fairness cream for men, was launched, Emami knew that the only person to play the role of brand ambassador effectively for an innovative product like this, could be Shah Rukh Khan. There is no shortage of brands today and no shortage of celebrities. Yet, very few associations seem to work. Many a times, the celebrity in question tends to overshadow the brand. It is indeed quite common for people to remember the celebrity, but conveniently forget the brand. In an oft-quoted survey, when people were asked which brand of suiting did Nawab Pataudi (you may now know him as Saif’s father) endorse, almost every respondent said “Raymonds.” After all, Pataudi was the complete man, a positioning that Raymonds had carefully crafted for itself. But Pataudi’s bill had been in fact footed by Grasim! Now think of the “Sunshine Car”. I bet that the first name to pop-up in your mind would be of Santro. The second? Shah Rukh! Be it Sunfeast or Santro, SRK always brings the sun out for brands. So when Sona Chandi Chyawanprash wanted to take a bite from the Rs.130 crore chyawanprash market in India, it found Dabur (with 60% of the market share) blocking the way. It was going to be a gigantic fight and a giant was precisely what Sona Chandi needed to tide over its worries. They got in SRK, knowing that only he could trigger their sales and they were right. The brand saw a 28% increase in their market share soon after.

At a time when companies are dropping their celeb endorsers (Tiger Woods recently ended his 9 year relationship with GM) to save costs, some companies know they cannot do without their brand heroes. A good marketer knows that it’s not just a good product, but good perception about the product in the minds of consumers, which makes all the difference between success and failure. And SRK has perfected this art of making himself and the brand likeable.

Marketers know it, which is what makes SRK not just the king of Bollywood, but also of endorsements. With 39 brands in his kitty, he was the highest endorser (in terms of number of brands) for 2008. But the count does not seem to matter for SRK. Rather, he believes, it’s better to burn out than to rust out! Over 39 brand endorsements, 1 billion fans and 1 highly valued cricket team... guess it all adds up to 1 fact – SRK is the biggest brand in India!

Nothing is permanent

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Conventional wisdom says ‘entry barriers’ should prevent new players and brands from upstaging their older and more established rivals. Yet, the marketplace is littered with example after example of new brands that have successfully climbed Mount Everest. How do they do it?

Nothing is permanent-in life, relationships and business! This eternal truth is brilliantly demonstrated by the rise, fall and rise of brands in the marketplace. Leaders of yesterday have become laggards today; and might become leaders again tomorrow or even disappear altogether. Students of economics and management are taught that every market has ‘entry barriers’ that make it very difficult, if not impossible for new players and brands to compete with and outperform older and well established rivals. But, what fascinates more than the so called entry barriers is the frequency and intensity with which new brands conquer more established rivals across the world. There are literally hundreds of such examples across sectors, geographies and segments. What makes the new entrants overcome formidable entry barriers and beat market leaders at their own game?

In contemporary times, technology and innovation play a key role in transforming late entrants into global power houses. Back in the early 1990s, when I was a management student, Microsoft was the unchallenged global leader. The advent of the Internet saw Yahoo first challenge the supremacy of Microsoft. Back then, nobody had heard about a word called Google. And yet, it is Google that is the undisputed and virtually unchallenged global brand in the business today. Bill Gates and his team at Microsoft have poured billions of dollars to create a search engine that can beat Google. No luck so far. And of course, it does appear as if the once powerhouse Yahoo is gently fading into history. And who knows, the rate at which new technology is evolving, the next generation might see a brand bigger than even Google!

Technology has played a key role in one of the biggest brand wars of the last decade or so. Going back to my days as a student, Motorola used to be familiar and awe inspiring brand name. Telecom was then – it still is – the market with the biggest promise and potential. But, we had only vaguely heard of mobile phones and Nokia was of course a name that probably only a few hardy souls in Finland were familiar with. The company was originally involved in manufacturing paper, pulp and rubber! But now, Nokia is the undisputed mobile phone and telecom global brand leader while Motorola is struggling of stave off bankruptcy. Quite clearly, brand Nokia has been more successful in harnessing mobile handset technology than Motorola, despite the huge head start

Technology and successful marketing of the consumer benefits delivered by the new technology can also explain why a relative newcomer dislodged an iconic brand in India as the unquestioned market leader. Back in the 1980s, Bajaj Auto ruled the Indian two-wheeler market. The Indian market was then overwhelmingly dominated by scooters with motorcycles coming a distant second. But that was the time Japanese two-wheeler brands like Suzuki, Yamaha and Honda made an entry in India. The Hero group tied up with Honda and launched the Hero Honda motorcycle. It was arguably the first ‘fourstroke’ bike in India and delivered superb fuel efficiency. The early Hero Honda ads brilliantly sold this value proposition to Indian consumers with the now legendary tagline – ‘Fill it, Shut it, Forget it’. Last year, Hero Honda sold more motorcycles than Bajaj and TVS together and is perhaps the largest motorcycle company in the world now. Sometimes, established brand leaders are demolished in the marketplace by new rivals because of sheer complacency and inability to move with the times. I will give one global and one Indian example to show how pervasive this tilt towards complacency is. Once upon a time, General Motors (GM) – along with Ford – virtually ruled the world of automobiles. Brands like Chevrolet and Pontiac had become gold standards when it came to customer loyalty and brand equity. By the time Toyota started selling its cars in the United States, the giant GM did not even deign to acknowledge the potential new rival. After the oil shock of the seventies, Toyota focused increasingly on fuel efficiency and smaller sizes while GM continued with gas guzzlers. The result: GM had to eventually fi le for bankruptcy in 2009 while Toyota is the gold standard today when it comes to quality and customer satisfaction in the automobile industry.

Let’s now go to the once Imperial capital of the British Empire, Kolkata in the early 1980s. Investors had already started fleeing West Bengal and the city was in seemingly terminal decline. The unchallenged brand leader in the newspaper market in Kolkata was The Statesman, which was the favourite morning tea companion of Kolkata residents for decades. The Ananda Bazaar Group took a huge gamble and decided to launch The Telegraph to compete with The Statesman. Before the latter could shrug off complacency, The Telegraph had used contemporary style, design and better coverage to emerge as the number one newspaper brand in the city. Today, Kolkata has even The Times of India and The Hindustan Times; but it is The Telegraph which is the brand leader while The Statesman is an old and ageing relic of the past.

Sometimes, changes in societies and lifestyles can cause seismic changes in brand hierarchies. For decades, Adidas and Reebok ruled the global sports footwear market; with virtually every athlete participating in the Rome Olympics in 1952 sporting an Adidas. In the United States, Reebok had emerged as the favourite. Then the ‘cultural revolution’ swept across America in the late 1960s and the baby boomers of America started becoming very ‘sporty’ and health conscious. In came an unknown brand called Nike that brilliantly rode this new found American love for fitness, jogging and health. Without any doubt, Nike – with its now famous Swish – is the undisputed brand leader in the world. Both Reebok and Adidas have struggled and even merged back in 2005 to be able to compete more effectively. But Nike has not budged from its position as the number one.

Many such brand conquests can also be ascribed to the relentless leveraging and use of one of the key elements of 4Ps – price. In the early 1960s, Bentonville, in the state of Arkansas (the state that gave Bill Clinton to America!), was unknown to most Americans. That was when Sam Walton was quietly fashioning the ultimate retail revolution. Since the early days of Sam Walton, Wal-Mart has relentlessly focused on low prices as the key strategy to lure customers and keep them loyal. When Walton started his legendary career and Wal-Mart, now one of the largest companies in the world, the brand leaders in retail were giants like Sears Roebuck and JCPenney. By the time Wal-Mart was quietly capturing suburban America in the 1970s, Sears Roebuck was attracting attention by building the then tallest building in the world in Chicago in 1975. Today, Sears Roebuck and JCPenney are fading relics of American capitalism while Wal-Mart continues to ruthlessly – and often controversially – use low prices to remain the brand leader.

Back in India, two relatively unknown and unrelated companies too used price as a fabulously successful weapon to frighten and dislodge existing brand leaders in the 1980s. Surf was the reigning brand in the Indian detergent market and had demolished virtually all rivals in the marketplace (P&G entered the Indian market much later in 1992). In came an unknown brand called Nirma that was single mindedly focused on low price. The massive success of Nirma frightened the living daylights out of honchos at Hindustan Levers who fought a rearguard action by launching low cost Nirma rivals like Wheel. Around the same time, an entrepreneur named Gulshan Kumar and his brand T-Series were giving music lovers in India a reason to hum in contentment. The then market leaders HMV and Polydor were used to charging exorbitantly for LP records and cassettes. T-Series sold cassettes for Rs.10 when HMV was selling them for at least Rs.40. T-Series hasn’t looked back since.

Of course, there is that rare occasion when a once formidable brand slips and tumbles and is written off as history – only to re-invent itself and re-emerge as a global powerhouse. You guessed right! I am talking about Apple that was the darling of computer and software lovers and geeks in the 1980s. Apple virtually died as a brand in the 1990s. And then came the iPod! The message is clear for entrepreneurs. You can beat formidable brands. And you can even revive them!