| In the past month and a half, we have seen four brands acquire brand new looks. Crores of rupees have been spent on making and announcing changes that are not just skin deep.
One of the first retail chains in the country-Shoppers Stop has gone posh; the over century-old Godrej has new colours to get in step with the times, CEAT has butted out the rhino to live up to its mantra ‘change is good’ and there is Arvind Mills saying ‘Call it just Arvind’.
Imagine being saddled with the same logo for more than a 100 years. What some may call brand heritage others may call just dreary, but the Godrej Group’s decision to repaint Ardeshir Godrej’s red signature into a multicolored hue had less to do with aesthetics and more to do with strategy. The Group wanted to signify its growth beyond core businesses and establish its hip credentials with the rising young consumer class.
“There is more than just trust that a brand can stand for. Our brand stands very well for trust, but we can stand for technology, for relevance and for modernity. Some of these things we don’t do as well as we do for trust,” said Adi Godrej, Chairman, Godrej Industries.
So, Godrej is splashing over Rs 100 crore in marketing across the group this year to communicate just that.
As for 17-year-old Indian retail pioneer, Shoppers Stop decided to start something new. So, a new logo, an aspiration to the luxury tag, and here it is again, reconnecting with the young consumer.
“We always wanted ourselves to be in the age group of 30-years, but we have to ensure that we are able to relate to the 18 as well as 45. So, our group is 25-45 and we welcome 18-25. We found that they are emotionally connected. They like us but when it comes to association, they feel that this is a place where their parents go, which is 30-35 years. If this is happening today, what would happen after 10 years? So, it was important to start looking at bringing down the average age of the customers,” said BS Nagesh, MD & CEO, Shoppers Stop.
It's also a need of the hour for Shoppers Stop, as it concedes it has lost ground to second movers like Future Group and Raheja's Lifestyle.
While market realities may prompt rebranding exercises, sometimes a brand that is performing above expectations may also need a sleek new look. The "Born Tough" CEAT brand posted its best results in the last 50 years in this fiscal year with a turnover of nearly Rs 2,600 crore. So, out went the soon to be extinct macho rhino in its logo and in came what CEAT hopes is more androgynous, consumer-friendly logo and tagline.
Change may well be good, but can you have too much a good thing? Who got it bang on and who needs to be nailed for getting it wrong?
Shripad Nadkarni from Market Gate and Anand Halve from Chlorophyll make their case for their favourites;
“I think Godrej worked for two reasons: Godrej as a brand has stood for trust. They had become staid over a period of time. I don’t think people knew much about the group beyond their core products like Godrej Locks or Godrej cupboards and toiletries. When you do a rebranding, you do it to signal a change. Godrej has done that really well. Second, whenever a change is signaled, you need to not only communicate the changed identity but what that change means to a consumer and not in their changed identity but through a lot of stuff that they are doing with their individual brand verticals. The overall impact is that it is undergoing a metamorphosis for the group,’ said Shripad Nadkarni, Director, Market Gate Consulting.
“Chou Enlai was asked almost 200 years after the French Revolution about the impact it had had. He said, “It is too early to tell”. So, a month or six-weeks is really far too early. But the difference between Shopper’s Stop and Godrej is that Godrej is attempting to redefine itself across a whole host of categories. Brighter living, the cheerfulness of new colours and all that will work if Godrej Almira stops looking as if it was designed 50 years ago, which is how it looks today. If it continues to sell the humble hair dye and does not abandon that, it will not live up to this whole newness. So, Godrej has much more to prove that across categories, across a vast area of products, they have fundamentally changed. Shoppers Stop is doing a very simple job. They are saying retailing has changed. We were the first guys. We just needed a fresh lick of paint, come and take a look,” said Anand Halve, Co-Founder, Chlorophyll.
Excerpts from CNBC-TV18’s exclusive interview with Shripad Nadkarni and Anand Halve:
Q: You are saying Shoppers Stop worked but you have reservations about Godrej.
Halve: Shoppers Stop has a more limited objective and is more likely to be able to pull it off.Q:
What do you think of Shopper’s Stop?
Nadkarni: It is a nice visual change but I don’t get the underpinnings of what that change signals to me as a consumer. There is no functional underpinning of what that change is. Why should I start something new if it is not signaled? It remains like a vacuous advertising plan.
Q: You are saying it seems cosmetic in that sense?
Nadkarni: Very cosmetic.
Halve: Sometimes one needs only a cosmetic change. I don’t think Shoppers Stop is saying that they are not going to suddenly start manufacturing refrigerators.
Sengupta: But these guys are spending huge amounts of money. None of them have disclosed really how much they have spent on these exercises. But between getting in consultants, foreign help and then going out and spending big money to communicate the change, is it okay to do cosmetic changes? For example- Godrej is one of the associate sponsors of IPL. That is big and that must have cost them a bomb.
Halve: That is what I meant about how quickly do you arrive at a judgement. If over the next three-months, Shoppers Stop tells me that here are these new ranges of clothes that I have produced, all that a retailer needs is a set of offerings to bring in the people. After that the merchandise and the pricing will takeover. That is all that Shopper’s Stop was attempting to do.
Q: One common thread seems to be this youth focus; to be contemporary and modern. Youth seems to be the Holy Grail. All marketers are in the quest of the youth market. Are they overstating the case because we know that there are big numbers but those numbers don’t translate into purchasing power?
Halve: You are right. This so-called democratic dividend has been overdone. What is true is that youthfulness is now a characteristic throughout your life and if you appear to be not in pace with today, then you will lose. But youthfulness does not mean catering to the adolescent in every single category and that’s the risk.
Q: Different brands, companies and areas in which they function, how do you think they would be evaluating? What are the internal checks that they must be doing?
Nadkarni: There are several parameters in which one could evaluate this. One is appealing to a certain target segment, which is a shift from your older one. There are several parameters- imagery parameter and bonding parameter which come into play to see how one is doing. So, that’s one obvious check.
In a product like Godrej, which is across categories, the inherent value, which the new campaign is trying to create for its users, is a very critical part of how one evaluates. The users segment typically is 90%.
Fair & lovely, for example, talks about women but users are across the country and men are 33% of it. So, it is important not only to evaluate against the communication target but the user targeted.
Q: How difficult is it to go in for a change like this? Is it very difficult because we saw Godrej. It is a 100 years old diverse group. They are even in real estate and locks and chicken in between somewhere. So, how difficult is to embark on an exercise like this? Does it require a lot of courage?
Halve: It requires commitment more than anything else and that is what I meant about Shoppers Stop being a much easier case.
Q: How much does all this really matter to the consumer?
Nadkarni: It matters a lot. It has been proved time and again that if the owner recognizes the value of the brand, then brand strategy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, if you really are committed, it makes a huge difference and which is measurable by brand value.
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