Letting Go of Legends: When Emotions Clash with Business Sense - Bajaj "Scooter", HUL "Pureit" and "Pawan Kalyan Hari Hara Veera Mallu"

In 2005, I witnessed a press conference that still lingers in my memory. A composed Rajiv Bajaj stood before the press and announced the discontinuation of one of India’s most iconic products, the Bajaj Chetak petrol scooter. Next to him sat Rahul Bajaj, crestfallen and close to tears. It was a moment that marked the end of an era.

Hamara Bajaj was not just a brand campaign. It symbolized middle-class India’s aspirations. In the 1980s, owning a Bajaj scooter was a dream so strong that families waited for years to get one. Sometimes, the only way to get a Bajaj allotment was through a foreign relative wiring USD 500 back to India. 

Along with an HMT Kanchan gold-plated automatic watch, the Bajaj scooter was the ultimate wedding gift and status symbol. However, with the arrival of cheaper and more fuel-efficient four-stroke motorcycles, the decline began. Despite its legacy, Bajaj couldn’t keep up with the changing market dynamics. As Ravi Bajaj himself later admitted, letting go of such a legendary product was like losing a family member. That’s the emotional price of being in business. Marrying memories to markets doesn’t always make sense.

A similar example comes from Hindustan Unilever (HUL). The company had a vast portfolio of FMCG products in India. However, Pureit, their water purifier brand, was an exception to the rule. It wasn’t sold through regular kirana stores or supermarkets. Instead, Pureit followed a medical distribution model, marketed directly to hospitals and doctors, with its own separate sales force and supply chain.

In 2024, HUL decided to offload Pureit to A.O. Smith, signalling a smart move to refocus on their core categories. Again, a difficult but strategic decision. Proof that sometimes, cutting emotional ties is essential for future growth.

Even the entertainment industry isn’t immune. The recent film Hari Hara Veera Mallu, with a reported budget of ₹300 crore and over five years in the making, faced a major setback. Starring Pawan Kalyan, the movie received heavy backlash after its regular release, particularly for poor visual effects. As a reaction, nearly 22 minutes were cut from the film post-release. But the damage was done.

The question arises. Why weren’t rational decisions made earlier? Why not test the film with a sample audience beforehand? Why wait for public backlash before making drastic edits? It’s a classic case of creators becoming too emotionally attached to their vision, blinding them to objective feedback.

As the saying goes, common sense is not so common, especially when emotions, legacy, and ambition take over reason.

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Keywords: Bajaj Chetak history, Hamara Bajaj, Rahul Bajaj emotional moment while discontinuing Bajaj Scooter, Discontinued Indian products. Hindustan Unilever Pureit sale, Emotional marketing decisions, Hari Hara Veera Mallu movie failure, Rationality in product decisions, Letting go of legacy brands, Indian business nostalgia

#HamaraBajaj #BrandLegacy #IndianIcons #BusinessDecisions #HUL #Pureit #MovieFlops #NostalgiaMarketing #LettingGo #RationalVsEmotional

Laxmi Bomb Cocks a snook at the digital media! - Smart Thinking or being over Smart!

 

Smart Thinking or is it Cocking a snook at the digital media! Laxmi Bomb, the Hindi movie featuring Akshay Kumar has succumbed to pressure.

Recently movies like Kali Peeli and Sadak 2 had to face the backlash of nepotism charges and got massive negative feedbacks and dislikes on YouTube.

Not wanting to take a chance Laxmi Bomb has dummied the likes and dislikes section on Youtube. Which means that except the producers no one else will know how many dislikes and interestingly how many likes did Laxmi Bomb get from its trailer on YouTube.

My common sense says that if likes are substantially more than dislikes Laxmi Bomb will revert and will preen showing off its likes!

If the dislikes are more, then that fact will be hidden. It is a zero sum game. Shows the low level of confidence of Laxmi Bomb makers about their own product. Also illustrates the power of social media especially, YouTube.

Necessity is the mother of invention - Marketing

 

Always felt that necessity and fire in the belly are the best indicators for learning!

Went to the vegetable shop in the morning and was picking up vegetables. Suddenly the next shop's owner (a kirana shop) came up to the vegetable vendor.

In his hand was a small plastic bag. With. Twinkle in his eyes he said to the vegetable vendor "your five year old son put these brinjals in this bag and came to my shop. He wanted me to take this bag and give him some chocolates".

Everyone present there was stunned. A five year old understanding, learning and trying to barter and learn the tricks of the trade.

I salute the small shops of the India, which are helping us in this pandemic. God bless and may you thrive and flourish!

Watchman advertisement of Star sports for Dream 11, IPL 2020, glamorizing poverty?

 

The latest advertisement for Star Sports is puzzling, to say the least. I sympathize with Star Sports for all its tension about the conduct of IPL and the delay but the latest advertisement seems to have been executed in haste.

The advertisement features a watchman of an apartment block. He is shown being ill-treated by the residents. Why? No one knows! The watchman is shown talking to his family on his mobile. He tells them, “It is five months since I have seen you and it is not possible for me to come”. The Covid-19 pandemic is suddenly brought into the picture.

A good Samaritan notices all this and arranges for a Star Sports connection, LED projector and a set of speakers for the watchman, Mr. Alok. Alok is about to have his meagre dinner and the entire apartment block suddenly is abuzz with activity. The residents have suddenly become very friendly and start screaming “Alok, Alok”.

Alok watches the Dream 11, IPL 2020 on his newly gifted entertainment set and thanks the apartment block owners with profuse tears in his eyes. How very filmy! And how very crass! 

Poverty is a harsh reality and we need to respect it and it should not be used to create an unnatural feeling of bonhomie and try to score cute advertising points! The advertisement is as refreshing as yesterday's morning coffee, warmed and served hot albeit with sparkling eyes!  

It looks as if Star Sports is making fun of the poor watchman. Why don’t we understand the person, the poor watchman? Is it worth spending 20 to 25 thousand rupees just to promote a vulgarly dressed up commercial product? Would it not have been better to give the watchman the money collected? He might have bigger problems to solve and watching cricket might be the last thing in his priorities.

Come on Star Sports, have a life. We know that cricket is fun but it is not the only thing in life. And the internal bickering is on. Ten sports which is telecasting the England Vs Australia is already proclaiming that its series “England vs Australia is the asli (real) thing” and hinting that IPL is just pyjama cricket. Pyjama cricket was what puritans referred to the cricket series started by Kerry Packer. The world series started by Kerry Packer later led to the popularity of ODI cricket which later gave birth to the T20 cricket!

Sometimes being simple is the most challenging thing in the world - Customer Delight at Starbucks and at a restaurant

.Most people in marketing think that CRM and customer delight is very academic and involves technology and a lot of planning. Given below are two incidents where technology was not involved at all. The service providers provided customer delight because they believed that the job they were doing was not for money or recognition. They loved their job and wanted their customers to enjoy the moment.

The first incident happened when we visited USA in 2008. Padma and I were shopping at Walmart for our daily staples. The Walmart that we went to in Rosewood, Pleasanton was huge. It would be the size of two football fields. We had a pleasant but tiring shopping experience, and our shopping cart was full. We took a pit stop at the Starbucks in Walmart itself.

We ordered coffee and were waiting. The Barista was within our vicinity. Suddenly Padma piped in, "Did you get bread? We have no bread at home". Seeing my crestfallen face, Padma gave out an exasperated sigh. "I knew it. Why don't you go and get it?"

The bull (Taurean) in me reared up its head. "No," I said and dug in. The bull had found its resting place.

Padma had a hard glitter in her eyes (Afterall, she is a Capricorn and the goat too can be stubborn). "Your wish" she shrugged her shoulders "you are the one" she twisted the sword deep into the torso "You and the children are fond of bread. I can always eat rice and be contented".

Hearing all this was the pretty barista. She walked up to us and set down our coffee. She enquired "you missed buying bread?" I nodded my head, slightly irritated. She said, "Enjoy your coffee" and disappeared inside. Within seconds she was out, and she was wearing inline skates. She took two dollars from me and off she went like a silver bullet.

She was back within two minutes and in her hand was a fresh loaf of bread. Without a word, she gave us the bread and went back to her serving station. We were so stunned that we could not even thank her for the service. She took a little more pain so that her customers loved the Starbucks experience. Even though the incident happened over twelve years ago, it is etched in my memory as if it had just happened last week.

The second incident happened to my facebook friend, Rebecca Forster, the famous novelist. Rebecca was partying on 31st December night at Hay 19, Redondo Beach, a coastal city in Los Angeles County, California,

They were at a neighbourhood pub/restaurant. Rebecca and her friends ordered food and our their darling waitress says "it's four hours till we ring in the new year".

Rebecca's group has a hearty laugh and tell her that they are too old to stay up until midnight and the waitress goes away. Rebecca and party had a great meal promptly at nine o'clock the waitress comes charging out of the kitchen blowing her horn and yelling "Happy New Year". Since it was New Year in New York, she decided to bestow it upon Rebecca and friends and in California. Rebecca writes "It was hilarious. She was so cute and made our night. Good food, drink and a fabulous waitress. It's the little things in life, that matter, isn't it? HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE". Wow, Rebecca, she made your day, and you made our day. Happy new year!

Brilliant marketing or a gimmick! - Free shopping

Brand factory from Big Bazaar has come out with an offer – “Free shopping”. All of us must be licking our jowls, free is the trigger that all of us love. There is no free lunch in this world. There are lots of catches.

“The offer is this - buy goods worth Rs 5000/- and pay only Rs 2000/- and get even that back. Rs 500 worth merchandise, 1000/- shopping vouchers and Rs 500/- cash back from Big Bazaar e-wallet”

Let us remember

Brand Factory is a commercial enterprise, they need the sale and that too they need a profit. So even at Rs 2000/- they will make profit

There is an entry fee, Rs 100 and Rs 250/- so window shoppers are discouraged and that is extra money for Brand Factory

The entry fee will be deducted from the free stuff.

So let us take what we pay, we pay exactly Rs 2,000/- and Big Bazaar expects to make atleast Rs 200/- per purchase (10% margin)

As we can assume that most goods would be over priced by atleast 100% so our goods that we purchase for Rs 5000/- are actually worth only Rs 2,500/-. Brand Factory would also push its in-house brands mark-ups could even be up to 300%. So when we pay Rs 2000/- that goods could be worth only Rs 1500/- to Rs 1600/- to big Bazaar.

What is being returned. Rs 2000/- is already less by Rs 100/- (remember the entry fee).

The Rs 500/- worth merchandise is worth only may be Rs 200/-. Shopping vouchers are for high priced items like a hair salon where it would be redeemed only for a purchase much above the Rs 1000/- voucher given that is could be redeemed if the bill is atleast Rs 10,000 (may be Brand Factory even gets a cut from the hair salon).

The Rs 500/- cash back from the e-wallet is tied up with lots of other payments that we make and I am sure that brand factory will be able to get a loyal clientele and also get commission from the party to which we are making digital payments.

In all it looks like a good marketing strategy from Brand factory let us see if it succeeds or remains a marketing gimmick.  

Polo - Mint with a hole Vs MintO - you dont have a hole in the head ..... Campaign Slug Fest!

Polo is a product in the mint candy category. Polo was launched in India in 1994. The brand name of Polo is said to be inspired from Polar meaning cool as the ice from the Polar region. Polo was famous for its positioning as a "Mint with a Hole" which created lot of excitement for the brand. 

The Polo campaign played on the unique shape as a differentiating factor.  The witty campaign garnered lot of attention and created awareness and brand recall for the product.

MintO from Candico aggressively took on Polo and hit Polo where it hurt the most, its positioning. MintO did a great campaign which said "You don’t have a hole in the head, so why should you have a hole in the mint".

It was implying that having a hole in the head meant a person had very little intelligence. It positioned Polo as a Mint for the unintelligent customers.  It was a classic ploy of positioning against the competition aka Avis who positioned itself as a no – 2 against the no – 1, the market leader Hertz.

Suddenly it was not very cool to  have  a Polo mint.   MintO was positioned as a cool brand. Later Nestle dropped its positioning based on the Hole for Polo.

My 500th posting - Strange and fascinating facts about marketing!

1) Why does a watch advertisement  always show 10:10. All of us have wondered many times why watches and clocks found in product photographs and advertisements mostly show the time 10:10? The main reason is aesthetics. There are a number of visual advantages of having the hands of the watch set at the 10:10 positions.

One is that the hands are kept from overlapping. Having them on both sides of the watch face ensures that the hands themselves are visible and can be appreciated. There is symmetry and beauty in the presentation. The position also allows the hands to look nice on the face of the timepiece.

Another reason is that key details on the face of the watch or clock usually remain visible at 10:10. The logo of the manufacturer is usually found under the 12, and sometimes next to the 3, 6-, and 9 o’- clock positions. Logos found under the 12 are nicely framed or centered by 10:10 hands.

The 10:10 hands look “happy” due to the fact that the hands look like a smile (or like a “V” as in “victory”). Timex once used to use the time 8:20 in their product photos but 8.20 was perceived as a frown, and Timex decided to turn that “frown” upside-down or go back to 10:10.

There are a number of other beliefs about the 10:10 time. Many of them attribute it to a historic event (e.g. Lincoln/JFK assassinations, the dropping of the atomic bombs) but most of the beliefs are unsubstantiated by facts.  

2)  Why a Baker’s Dozen, 13 Instead of 12. There are two main theories for why a baker’s dozen is 13 instead of 12, but most think it has its origins in the fact that many societies throughout history have had extremely strict laws concerning baker’s wares, due to the fact that it is fairly easy for bakers to cheat patrons and sell them less than what they think they are getting. In Babylon, if a baker was found to have sold a “light loaf” to someone, the baker would have his hand chopped off.

Why would the bakers give 13 and charge for 12? There are two theories. The first is that bakers would sell 13 loaves to vendors, while only charging them for 12 which allowed the vendor to then sell all 13 at full price; thus, they’d earn a 7.7% profit per loaf.  

Yet another theory is that it was simply a product of the way bakers bake bread.  Baking trays tend to have a 3:2 aspect ratio.  The most efficient two-dimensional arrangement then of loaves/biscuits/whatever on such a tray results in 13 items with a 4+5+4 hexagonal arrangement, which avoids corners.  

It was important to avoid the corners because the corners of a baking tray will heat up and cool off faster than the edges and the interior, which would result in not cooking anything on the corner evenly with the rest.  But this theory doesn’t explain why they’d sell them in batches 13 for the price of 12, but at least explains why they may have commonly made them in batches of 13.  

3) Video games maker EA hired people to accuse EA being the Anti-Christ for the video game Dante’s Inferno as a marketing scheme. Nothing makes news like a controversy to garner additional eyeballs.

4) Jell-O monitored the amount of smiley faces and frown faces used on Twitter. Whenever the national average of smiley faces was more than 51%, Jell-O released coupons to those who recently tweeted frown faces. Talk about targeted marketing!

5) Kraft Foods rotated their square Shreddies cereal 45 degrees, and re-marketed them  as the new “Diamond Shreddies”. The new product showed a large increase in sales and test groups even reported a difference in flavor. This shows us how it is all about how things are marketed to us.

6) Total War-Rome: Rather than use the marketing budget on advertisements for Total War-Rome, the game developers hired a group to create (entertaining) Youtube videos about the Punic Wars and Roman History. They suggested this group not mention or market the game, “Just teach history”.

7) LendUp: It is possible that loans  could be refused in USA if the person is unpopular on the Facebook. A San Francisco based start-up LendUp checks the Facebook and Twitter profiles of potential borrowers to see how many friends they have and how often they interact. The company views an active social media life as an indicator of stability.

8) web app: The web app now pulls data for people on social media sites. It crunches all of the information, highlights topics where people are most influential, and generates a score for everyone between 1 and 100. The higher the score, the more influential a person is. Marketers use these scores to target their advertisements to industry leaders.

9) Pepsi ran an advertisement promising a Harrier jet to anyone who collected 700,000,000 Pepsi Points, a gag that backfired when a participant attempted to take advantage of the ability to buy additional points for 10 cents each to claim a jet for $700,000.

10) Joanne Rowling, better known by her initials J K, does not have a middle name, according to her birth certificate. The use of the author’s initials instead of her full name was a marketing ploy designed to make her work acceptable to boys, who mostly choose not to read books by women.

14th article published in HANS INDIA today (13th September 2014). It is an article titled " Origins of Famous Brands and Products"

14th article published in HANS INDIA today (13th September 2014). It is an article titled " Origins of Famous Brands and Products"

13th article published in HANS INDIA (9th August 2014). It is an article titled "How the Manufacturer Sold tooth powder in the USA""

13th article published in HANS INDIA  (9th August 2014). It is an article titled "How the Manufacturer Sold tooth powder in the USA"

12th article published in HANS INDIA (2nd August 2014). It is an article titled "New Products that did not do well in India"

12th article published in HANS INDIA  (2nd August 2014). It is an article titled  "New Products that did not do well in India"

Osama Bin Laden, Shakeela and Anti Christ - Deadly Brand Names

What is in a name? In my view everything.  Flavor these, Osama Bin Laden, Shakeela, Manavatti (the bride), Kotuvadi (Carpenter’s hammer), Anti-Christ, Ammini, Kanaal Parungi, and Patta. 

In the world driven by imagery and brand names, the above are the names given to illicitly brewed liquor or hooch in the state of Kerala.  The illicit liquor makers are very market savvy and have given very interesting and thought provoking brand names.

A bottle of Osama Bin Laden would make the drinker want to crash into buildings while Shakeela would make the tippler want to go clothes free irrespective of surroundings. Mannavati (the bride) would make a person become tongue tied and as shy as a blushing bride. Kotuvadi (the carpenter’s hammer) would hammer the liquor into a person’s body.

Anti-Christ is the name given to toddy and it claims that a person would need three days to resurrect oneself from its impact. Illicit arrack is called Ammini (a common name for a woman) as women are actively involved in the production and the selling process. The illicit liquor is also called Kanaal Parungi as the medium sized barrels in which the illicit liquor is stored is hidden in the irrigation canals.

The oldest illicit liquors is called the “Patta” as it is brewed in Cinnamon. (Cinnamon is called Patta in Malayalam).   

The illicit liquor marketers are showing us a way to colorfully brand the products and get the eyeballs and the buzz to make the products get noticed and get the top of the mind recall from the customers.