We all have heard/studied/read about the Product Lifecycle(PLC).The concept says that Product like a human being has a finite life.It grows, matures and then dies.

Lets take an example.Floppy Disk is no longer available now but it was a hot cake at one time.Even till 2001-02 floppies existed in market.The product just died.

Brands on the other hand don’t exactly follow a life cycle.Brands can be immortal unless they commit suicide.Brand and product are closely related.A brand is nothing without a product or service but brand can evolve over the time.

Continuing with our floppy example,Sony,Seagate all had their floppy disks,but the brands didn’t die after the death of floppies.

Sony today is preparing market for BluRay.Seagate is a market leader in hard disks.

The brands lived.Coca Cola is a brand that is immortal.Brands who realized that they need to evolve survived, rest have died.

There were brands in India like Campa Cola,Gold Spot etc,today they have died and are no more.

Either they were killed by the bigger brands or customers rejected them.If Campa Cola could have gone into a slightly different beverage market,they could have survived.Parle did survive as a brand.Today its a big brand.

Thums Up as a brand could not be killed even after Coca Cola tried its best because the consumer demanded the drink.

Some years back,there was a series of TV commercials in India for a brand called Home Trade.The ads featured Sachin Tendulkar,Shah Rukh Khan,Hritik Roshan but the brand was never heard of after the ads.The brand died instantly.

So do brands die ?

Yes and No,Brands are not created by TV commercials or campaigns,they are for the consumer/customer to test and trust.Once a name is in customer’s mind,its a brand.But the life of the brand would be decided by the fact whether customer sees the brand as a friend or a foe.

e.g. Whenever Maruti comes out with any new car,people accept it and trust it because Maruti as a brand is a friend to many target customers.Same is the case for Apple as brand.

Many would argue that once a brand is established,its immortal.But its not the case.Luna was a brand which was highly valued and popular, today the moped is no longer in production nor any other vehicle is produced with a Luna logo or brand.

So Luna is alive in history and not in reality.

Brand unlike a product can live for ever,if managed properly.Here comes the role of Brand Management.

Brand can undergo a physical change too.Like many brands keep changing their color,the look,the identity or image.This ensures freshness and long life.

Coca Cola,Nike,Adidas,Google,Microsoft are kind of brands which will ‘never’ die(hopefully) because they have evolved over the time,adding more products to their arsenal.

If a brand keeps evolving,it will never die,It can’t.

But it can commit a suicide.

What Say ?

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© 2010, TMSBee. All rights reserved.

Coca Cola,Pepsi,Parle Agro all have jumped in the pool with brands Minute Maid Lemon,Nimbooz and LMN respectively.

Nimbooz was the first brand that was launched in market which was positioned as natural lemon refresher.I was positioned as asli indian,asli nimbu(Real Indian,Real Lemon).

Then came LMN,from the house of Parle Agro,which also positioned it as lemon based refreshing drink.

Now few days back,Coca Cola too entered the battle with the lemon flavour of its brand Minute Maid which was available in Pulpy Orange flavour.

The positioning is similar.They claim it to be Ghar Jaisa(Home Like).

Lets have look at the 3 commercials doing rounds on the television.

NIMBOOZ

LMN

Minute Maid Lemon

LMN wins on the commercial but in positioning i think Minute Maid is the best.

But why suddenly lemon has become the hot favorite ?

From what i understand is that most Indians have grown up with two beverages

1) Home Made Lemonade

2) Sugarcane Juice available in market

Indians love these two flavours.From North to South,East to West,these two drinks are well known and enjoyed with ‘delight’.

The problem with Sugarcane commercialization is that it is tough to process it and package it.But lemon based natural drinks are a lot easier to produce.

Shikanjavi or Limboo Sharbat(Lemonade),call it anything,whole India loves it.

Lemon as a flavour has been popular from long time.Coca Cola and Pepsi have their lemon flavoured soft drinks(Fanta,Limca,7up,Sprite) but none was natural(just flavoured).

But now things have changed,’actual lemon’ is the center of attraction.People have actually started to like them.In my institute itself i have seen people carrying pet bottles of one of these 3 rather than the black or orange colored drinks’ pets.

Nimbooz and Minute Maid are rising real fast as brands.LMN is not that much visible in the market.

Regarding flavour,they are good and quite close to the home made lemonade.Minute Maid comes quite closer to the real thing.

But i was thinking the other day ? Should i spend 15 20 bucks on something like this or rather buy two lemons and squeeze them to make my self a king size glass of the real lemon drink.The original shikanjavi(Lemonade).

So has lemon got its due ? Or still long way to go ?

What Say ?

© 2010, TMSBee. All rights reserved.

TATA hai to achcha hi hoga ! (If its TATA,It would be good).This is general public perception about TATA.

TATA is built on trust and quality.

Now yet again TATA has diversified and stepped into a new market (where trust is paramount ) i.e. Cold Beverage market.They have a new offereing called TATA TiON.The market is not exactly cold beverage but non carbonated and natural cold drinks to be precise.

TATA TiON is a branded,packaged and flavoured Iced Tea.Iced Tea as a refreshing drink has become quite popular in recent past.But mainly Iced tea was not branded and packaged per say.It was available as an option at vending machines at McDonalds,Subway or Nestle vending machines installed at various places.

Its priced at Rs 22 for 400 ml which is quite competitive if we see the simlar offerings in the segments such as Real,tropicana,Minute Maid etc.The Iced Tea which i normally have at outlets are also costlier than this.I remeber paying even 15 -20 bucks for a small glass(150 ml approx) so Price is not at all an issue for TiON.

I would definitely prefer a Ice Tea rather than a coke or a pepsi if it available at such a good price.I have not seen it in Mumbai yet.One of my friends in Chennai told me about it.In Chennai it has been launched with OOH campaigns.

The drink is available in 3 fruit flavours which gives consumer the much needed choice.

“This is a defining moment in the history of Tata Tea as it symbolises the transformative change taking place in the company,” Tata Tea, executive director Sangeeta Talwar said in the release.

The competition includes Nimbooz,Minute Maid,Tropicana,Real,LMN,Frooti,Slice and even Red Bull as you would notice later in the post.And yes the usual suspects,all the aerated drinks would definitely compete for their share.

Would people prefer TiON over normal soft drinks ?

TiON takes the question and answers it too on the label as

“It is a fact of life. You can’t let go off the new T!ON. Why? It’s delicious. It’s refreshing. It’s absolutely buzzing with active energy. And, best of all, its good. Na, good isn’t good enough. It’s good 3 times over. With 3 good things – tea extracts, fruit juice and ginseng. That’s (count them) 1. health, 2. nutrition, 3. energy. All in one bottle. The new T!ON with 3 good things. So why let go!”

One thing which i noticed in the above copy was the word Ginseng.On googling i came to know that its a plant that is useful in Stress Relieving,But not without some Side Effects and concerns but overall its a friendly substance.

Even HUL is coming up with its own Lipton Tea Ice Tea variant and they also are stressing on a chemical called ‘Theanine’ to appeal to working professionals.

Theanine is known to increase alpha brain waves associated with “relaxed yet alert” state of mind and the ability to focus attention and stay sharp, HUL said.

A new competition is about to begin where a chemical(or biological) warfare would be used for the first time in the field of marketing.

Ginseng vs Theanine

Both are supposed to be Stress Releasing substances but i wonder what would be the stress levels of the professionals involved in the launch and marketing of the products containing them.

The competition in the beverage market will only become fierce with the entry of such natural and health drinks.Pepsis and Coca Colas of the world are definitely feeling the heat.

What Say ?

© 2009 – 2010, TMSBee. All rights reserved.

It was always said that animation is cheaper in recession as the actors,models and brand ambassadors incur a huge cost.

But now comes the fusion.Aamir Khan in his new Coca Cola ad is animated as a Video Game Character.

He came first in Ghajini the game as an animated character Sanjay.Now this new animated avatar.

Here is the Ad

The Making of the above ad can be seen here.

Coca Cola is trying something new here.Pepsi have always been associated with the youth(youngistan etc) but first time now Coca Cola has tried to take on this area with this new ad with Aamir Khan.Coke’s main focus was always on Brand Ambassadors may be it was Sourav,Jadeja,Hritik or now Aamir Khan and a simple and funny storyline.Aamir has given them some cool ads in the past which people still remember today.But there was no brand association with some attribute ever.

e.g. Pepsi associated itself with Youth,Thums Up with adventure,Sprite with cool attitude(seedhi baat no bakwas Clear hai ?) but Coca Cola main focus was never based on some attribute unlike its global Avatar where Happiness is the attribute with which Coke associates itself.’Open Happiness’ is the tag line but in India it never was used or it never clicked with Aamir’s last campaign for them but this time things are different.

Gaming,Animation and Coca Cola together might just click with the youth and help Coca Cola to take on Pepsi.

It also has an interesting tagline ,”Bulbule jab bhi gungunayenge,Log Paas ayenge’ and same is shown in the ad.

The Ad is good and and has some comedy quotient and can make you smile.There is just one shortcoming in the ad.Animation is excellent and professional but the character not quite looks like Aamir.When he transforms into Real Aamir then only i realized that he was Aamir Khan.

And one more thing is that ad is too lengthy.Its unnecessarily stretched with an absurd ending.

This new campaign  might take the Coke as a brand to a height where it deserves to be in India.

In India Coca Cola India’s brands such as Sprite and Thums up have always been on top but Coke as a brand never got established as it is in countries like US or UK.

So lets wait and watch.

What Say ?

© 2009 – 2010, TMSBee. All rights reserved.

When speaking Spanish, especially with an Argentine accent, people tend to say “Pecsi” instead of “Pepsi”. They have said it like this for years, and Pepsi has responded by launching a campaign changing the second P to a C, believed to be the first such change for the venerable brand.

According to a recent survey, 25% of the population says it that way. So BBDO Argentina (ad agency) came up with the idea of simply making “Pecsi” the spelling and launched an integrated campaign to support it.

The motive was clear, get closer to consumers, by including those who weren’t pronouncing the name of the brand correctly but also by focusing on saving and standing by consumers’ sides in a time of crisis. In Argentina, drinking a Pepsi costs one peso less than drinking a Coke. The message: If you drink Pepsi, you save. If you drink Pecsi, you save as well.

The bottle

The commercial

The Coca Cola had also done something similar in China.The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means “bite the wax tadpole” or “female horse stuffed with wax” depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, “ko-kou-ko-le,” which can be loosely translated as “happiness in the mouth.”

Ko-Kou-Ko-Le

Coca Cola has to do it to suit the local flavour and especially the name to make some sense(or no nonsense) but what about Pepsi’s (or Pecsi’s) campaign ?

On one website i read an interesting quote ,”Whats next Pepsi ? A “bebsi” for Arab countries?”

or may be Papsi(with Accent) for India.

One more strong argument against this is that 75% of the crowd has no issue in pronouncing Pepsi as Pepsi( and not Pecsi).So is this campaign just for the 25% ? Or it is an emotional branding for the rest of other 75 % too ?

What ever the reason apart from Consumer Connect Pepsi(or Pecsi’s) campaign seems to generate a lot of interest world over and surely it will help the sales team.

Argentinians also pronounce Pizza as Picsa so whats next Picsa Hut haan !

Comments Please !

© 2009 – 2010, TMSBee. All rights reserved.