Think
of it - what are our best memories in life? A childhood full of happiness and
being carefree. The only tension was getting to school and not coming back home.
Coming back was automatic.
A
beautiful moment in our lives was evening tea with our parents. As children, we were not
allowed the guilty pleasure of sipping tea or coffee with our parents. But we
found a way out - dip the ever-present Parle-G biscuits in their tea and have
the best of two worlds, tea, and Parle-G biscuits.
Parle
G unabashedly is THE INDIAN BISCUIT. It is found everywhere and is the
traveling companion of all Indians who travel a lot. It is available at a very
affordable Rs 5/-.
Parle G would have satiated the hunger of many an Indian who
can't afford to have something expensive when they travel. It is a biscuit available in all nooks and corners of India. It is the, "Biscuit that India
eats".
As
the Management gurus, Al Ries and Jack Trout have said in their seminal book
"Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind", Positioning is the space
that the product occupies in the minds of the customer.
When
asked "First man on the moon" we quickly respond "Edmund Hillary/Tensing
Norgay. " First person to score 10,000 runs in test cricket?" Sunil Gavaskar
would be the quick answer. Who cares about the second person on Mount Everest or
the second person to score 10,000 runs. No one knows or cares. It is the first
that matters.
In
all categories, we have a product or a service in the "Top of Mind
(TOM)". Only TOM matters and not any other Dick or Harry (Punning from the
phrase Tom, Dick, or Harry). If you ask me the best brand in chocolates, I will
blurt out "5 Star".
In the expensive Detergent category, it is, "Ariel", for daily wear clothes
it would be, "Surf" and for washing bedsheets and towels it is, "Nirma".
Occupying the space in the mind is important.
Interestingly
the space occupied by India differs from country to country. USA is the most
inward-looking country in the world. They are bothered mostly about themselves.
When asked about India, most would feign ignorance. Some would come out with Taj Mahal, some with the concept of "Bangalored", some might
associate India with "Bollywood songs" and lately, Indians are being
recognized for their prowess in Software and now India is being recognized for
its food. Indian food is a rage.
Interestingly
in Ethiopia Positioning about India and Indians is quite different. Indians are
recognized and yelled at, "Babuji" a reference to Mahatma Gandhi.
They could also holler "Namaste" as most Indians they would have encountered were teachers who taught in Ethiopian schools and later in universities.
All
Indian men irrespective of size, shape, colour with or without hair on the head
would become "Sha Rukh Kha (Shah Rukh Khan)" and all women would
become "Ranis (Rani Mukerjee)". These were the famous film actors
when we were in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia circa 2002-2006.
Parle
G is a giant and it has crossed US 2 billion in sales only in biscuit sales.
Its name itself was an interesting coincidence. It was started in 1929 in Vile
Parle, a suburb in Mumbai and Parle derives its name from the locality. Parle
added the magic word Glucose to emphasize the product's benefit, Glucose gives
energy and nutrition.
Success usually spawns rivals and Parle-Glucose was no exception. Competitors
climbed on the bandwagon, and everyone started using the same name
"Glucose". This strategy was eating into the sales of Parle-Glucose,
and it had to act fast. The shove became a push when Britannia did a campaign
"Gabbar Singh ki asli Pasand". In 1980 Parle Glucose became Parle-G
and it remained the same over the years.
The
letter G has been used very cleverly by the company. They are already
synonymous with Glucose biscuits, and they need not repeat it ad nauseum in
their campaigns.
Parle
did many campaigns including "Biscuit of India, You are My Parle G,
Nostalgia campaign "things have changed but Parle-G remains the same” etc.
But the campaign that they have stuck all along is Parle G and G means genius
or now being politically correct G mane genius.
The
play is on the word "genius." The positioning is that Parle-G is good
for geniuses (past, present, and future). The latest ads focus more on
the human side of the geniuses rather than on the materialistic end results of
the being geniuses. The girl and the boy ad, for example, play on the genius of the
girl who longs for a toy.
But
it is not for herself. Rather, it is for her brother. That is the genius part
of Parle-G. Similarly, there is another very interesting ad about a couple who
move into a new Mohalla (locality). The lady feels very lonely that she is not
part of the Holi celebrations.
A
teenage girl cleverly (another genius) makes the lady become a part of that
Mohalla and helps her celebrate Holi happily. The positioning tack is slowly
moving from biscuits for the kids to biscuits for everyone. Just like Cadbury Dairy Milk, which went from Cadbury for children to Cadbury for all
ages and all occasions.
I
am totally okay with the campaigns, but the only complaint that I have is that
girls are more in focus in the advertisements, and the boys and men are used as
sidekicks only. Is it because Parle-G has a picture of a girl on its packaging,
or is it because girls rhyme with the "G" of the product? Your guess is good as mine.
Anyhow,
women complain of inequality and not being represented in good numbers. Parle-G
has seen to it and has made girls and women its prime spokespersons!
What’s in a name, everything in marketing, especially brand names. They are the living persona of the products. We swear by them (the brand names) and they add colour and excitement to our life.
Yesterday, I was at a training centre at HPCL, Bangalore and we were served bottled purified water. I took a double turn when I saw the name of the brand. It was “REMINERO”. The name itself was a puzzle, but the name of the manufacturer took my breath away. It was HPCL!!
I often ask my students; would you like to buy a toothpaste named Nirma? Most of them recoil in horror. Some even put up a strange expression as if they had just brushed their teeth with Nirma detergent powder. That is the power of association. Most people might not have noticed but Nirma does have a soap albeit a bath soap called Nima and it comes very close to the word Nirma. Dare I say as close to Nirma as possible but still keeping, a healthy distance.
Similarly, Manikchand Gutkha, famously ventured into atta business and named its brand, what else Manikchand Atta. I am sure most homemakers would not have bought it, atleast initially. A chapatti that gives a healthy high that too laced in nicotine. That would be the mental picture that would have been drawn in the minds of the customers.
The only brand that straddles all the product categories and still does not apparently create any confusion about its core value and promise in the minds of the customers, is TATA.
Tata is in every imaginable product category, Tata salt, Tata Tele Services, Tata BP Solar, Tata Consultancy services, Tata Steels, Tata Coffee, Tata Chemicals, Tata Sky, and many others. Tata has become synonymous with Indianess and it has become almost like India itself and it permeates itself to any product category. Others are not that lucky.
HPCL entering into purified water business is a puzzle. HPCL is an energy company and it is famous for oil based products like Petrol, diesel, Lubes and LPG. Why would HPCL want to enter into bottled purified water business? May be it wants to leverage its SCM (Supply Chain Management) muscle and its very impressive retail outlet base.
Having impressive SCM capability and ability to access and control a large base of retail outlets in the form of petrol bunks are definite strengths, but can a public sector giant like HPCL take on nimble, fleet footed, aggressive and hard as nails private players like PEPSICO, Coca-Cola and Parle in a head-on battle. Only time will tell.
And the brand name itself is quite handful, REMINERO. The marketing pundits might have thought that the product sounds like a REMINDER, or RE-MINED or REMAIN from RO process. Whatever it is, REMINERO is a mouthful and sounds like the name of an Italian man!!! And it is not very easy to pronounce, just like the beauty soap brand of ITC; Fiama di Wills. Fiama Di Wills sounds like the sister of the villainess from the movie 101 Dalmatians, Cruella De Vil.
