Despite being populated with innumerous product categories, the Indian FMCG sector has invested dramatically in promoting creativity to ensure a distinct brand imagery that has broken the clutter
“How can FMCG product categories create a unique brand promise when they are promising the exact same thing to the consumers?” questions Neeta Walia, Director, Brand Talk. “But they can certainly communicate it differently so as to create a distinct brand image in the minds of the consumer,” she adds.
Most FMCG products are low-involvement products and are required by consumers on a day-to-day basis. The buying pattern is more habit-led as compared to high-involvement products whose purchase requires more research. And hence, within a 30-second spot on TV, the advertiser previously was more concerned about communicating the functional benefits of the product, which left a minimal scope for creativity and therefore led to a fatigue in advertising. However, since creating a unique brand promise was/is difficult (considering that most of the products in one category provide more or less similar functional benefits), advertisers since then have gone radically ahead and created unique brand imagery, in fact moving away from the actual qualities of the product.
Take the case of Tata Tea’s Jaago Re! campaign. The Indian tea market has been predominantly captured by HUL with its brands Brooke Bond, Red label, Taj Mahal and Taaza. In an endeavour to replace HUL from its leadership position in the tea category, Tata Tea launched a disruptive insight and generated the big idea in the form of ‘Jaago Re!’ deduced from a research of young Indians over their perception of ‘waking up’ – considering that tea is essentially a wake up drink. A breakthrough integrated communication strategy helped Tata Tea’s volume share grew by 2.5% over HUL’s entire tea portfolio with over 50% market share in each of its variants. A recent ad by Emami for Boroplus decided against using the cliched style of communicating soft and beautiful skin and instead cast men who fall short of words to describe the skin of women in their lives and metaphorically (by comparing the skin to flower petals) explain their emotions.
Re-positioning of products has also led to the creation of some creative masterpieces, the classic example being the re-positioning of Perfetti Van Melle India’s Happydent chewing gum. First launched as a teeth whitening chewing gum, the product positioning failed miserably as Indians could not accept the brand. The product was then re-launched and re-positioned with the breakthrough commercials such as the Photographer Flash and the Palace ads. The Happydent Palace ad went on to win EFFIES Gold in 2007. In fact, a cursory glance at the winners of EFFIES in the last 2-3 years reveals that FMCG product categories have invariably ruled the charts. In 2009, as many as 10 Consumer Products won EFFIES – the maximum in all other product categories.
“How can FMCG product categories create a unique brand promise when they are promising the exact same thing to the consumers?” questions Neeta Walia, Director, Brand Talk. “But they can certainly communicate it differently so as to create a distinct brand image in the minds of the consumer,” she adds.
Most FMCG products are low-involvement products and are required by consumers on a day-to-day basis. The buying pattern is more habit-led as compared to high-involvement products whose purchase requires more research. And hence, within a 30-second spot on TV, the advertiser previously was more concerned about communicating the functional benefits of the product, which left a minimal scope for creativity and therefore led to a fatigue in advertising. However, since creating a unique brand promise was/is difficult (considering that most of the products in one category provide more or less similar functional benefits), advertisers since then have gone radically ahead and created unique brand imagery, in fact moving away from the actual qualities of the product.
Take the case of Tata Tea’s Jaago Re! campaign. The Indian tea market has been predominantly captured by HUL with its brands Brooke Bond, Red label, Taj Mahal and Taaza. In an endeavour to replace HUL from its leadership position in the tea category, Tata Tea launched a disruptive insight and generated the big idea in the form of ‘Jaago Re!’ deduced from a research of young Indians over their perception of ‘waking up’ – considering that tea is essentially a wake up drink. A breakthrough integrated communication strategy helped Tata Tea’s volume share grew by 2.5% over HUL’s entire tea portfolio with over 50% market share in each of its variants. A recent ad by Emami for Boroplus decided against using the cliched style of communicating soft and beautiful skin and instead cast men who fall short of words to describe the skin of women in their lives and metaphorically (by comparing the skin to flower petals) explain their emotions.
Re-positioning of products has also led to the creation of some creative masterpieces, the classic example being the re-positioning of Perfetti Van Melle India’s Happydent chewing gum. First launched as a teeth whitening chewing gum, the product positioning failed miserably as Indians could not accept the brand. The product was then re-launched and re-positioned with the breakthrough commercials such as the Photographer Flash and the Palace ads. The Happydent Palace ad went on to win EFFIES Gold in 2007. In fact, a cursory glance at the winners of EFFIES in the last 2-3 years reveals that FMCG product categories have invariably ruled the charts. In 2009, as many as 10 Consumer Products won EFFIES – the maximum in all other product categories.
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2010.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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