How often have you heard a marketer complain that his/her category is low-involvement, has matured and is declining, all ideas have been tried before and so on and so forth. It is like saying give me the ideal conditions of a new and exciting category, which consumer is keen to utilize and then I will justify my MBA degree and high salary by showing you profitable growth. The moment you tell yourself that my category is on death-bed is the moment it goes on the death-bed. It is this conversation in the mind about the category that needs to be killed because it has the potential of truly killing the category, way before its time has come.
What stops most marketers from seeing the exciting possibilities that inherently resides in every category? What stops marketers of steel getting excited about the construction possibilities in Steel or doing designer products (like Magpie), what stops tea marketers from making it as exciting as coffee, and in fact I would go a step beyond and say why not make even an atta or a detergent as exciting for the consumer to get involved in.
I am always inspired by two examples from India which demonstrated the amount of life residing in a category long after the market leaders had given up on it.
Rekitt Benckiser had been selling powder blue for over 5 decades and enjoyed a 90% of share in a Rs. 50cr. Category. Consumer on the other hand had no choice but kept putting up with the patchy bluing that Robin Blue offered. In comes Ujala- a liquid blue which spreads evenly and delivers a higher degree of whiteness. Moreover it shows great gumption and bets the company on this product by spending more than even the colas on advertising it nationally with its legendary jingle ‘Aaya naya Ujala, Chaar Boondon Waala. And you have the category expanding to Rs. 300cr. With Ujala commanding a 70% share of this expanded pool. A rare example of an Indian company showing an MNC the way to market.
The second example, that most of us are familiar with- Scooters. Long after Bajaj gave up on Scooters,
Honda launches Activa and sells over a million scooters in 4 years. Couldn’t Bajaj have exploited this potential almost ten years ago had it not chosen to be wedded to its archaic Chetak brand of scooter-making?
What stops most marketers from seeing the exciting possibilities that inherently resides in every category? What stops marketers of steel getting excited about the construction possibilities in Steel or doing designer products (like Magpie), what stops tea marketers from making it as exciting as coffee, and in fact I would go a step beyond and say why not make even an atta or a detergent as exciting for the consumer to get involved in.
I am always inspired by two examples from India which demonstrated the amount of life residing in a category long after the market leaders had given up on it.
Rekitt Benckiser had been selling powder blue for over 5 decades and enjoyed a 90% of share in a Rs. 50cr. Category. Consumer on the other hand had no choice but kept putting up with the patchy bluing that Robin Blue offered. In comes Ujala- a liquid blue which spreads evenly and delivers a higher degree of whiteness. Moreover it shows great gumption and bets the company on this product by spending more than even the colas on advertising it nationally with its legendary jingle ‘Aaya naya Ujala, Chaar Boondon Waala. And you have the category expanding to Rs. 300cr. With Ujala commanding a 70% share of this expanded pool. A rare example of an Indian company showing an MNC the way to market.
The second example, that most of us are familiar with- Scooters. Long after Bajaj gave up on Scooters,
Honda launches Activa and sells over a million scooters in 4 years. Couldn’t Bajaj have exploited this potential almost ten years ago had it not chosen to be wedded to its archaic Chetak brand of scooter-making?
The moment a marketer gets into a complaint about its business, rather than feeling passionately for it, it is the beginning of the end. When we become less involved in the business, it becomes low involvement for the consumer, when we stop innovating and improving the delivery of the benefit our product embodies, it stops growing, the day we conclude that just because an experiment failed in the past, it will never work in the future, we have limited the potential of our impact. Most FMCG marketers and even some in durables are caught in this vicious cycle of inaction due to a complaint and that inaction perpetuating the situation for the marketer to turn back and say, I told you so.
Now, will the real marketer please stand up!
Now, will the real marketer please stand up!
Posts
