4-D Branding

This article is about 4-D branding, which also a book is written by Thomas Gad. Let us try to have clear understanding of what 4-D branding is all about as directly from book.

“It is a four-dimensional model for understanding brand strengths and weaknesses. It can be used to create a new brand or analyze the strategic options for established brands. The model enables companies to create their own unique ‘brand cose’ or mindspace’, the unique corporate DNA, which can be used to drive every aspect of a business- from product innovation to recruitment.”

The 4-D model consists of”

The Functional Dimension: it describes the unique features of a product or service.

The Mental Dimension: it creates an individual experience through the brand, as Nike did with ‘Just do it’. It builds value in the mind of users.

The Social Dimension: it speaks about the experience of the consumer as a user, as Starbucks did when it introduced European case culture into the US.

The Spiritual Dimension: it talks about what the brand stands for. The 4-D brand goes right to the core of the customers’ systems of beliefs.

 

Let us take an example of Nike, Social Dimension associated with NIKE is SWOOSH. It is a dream trademark for NIKE. Whether Nike uses its name or not, people can recognize that Swoosh belongs to NIKE. This is a powerful branding and social dimension associated with this small sign.

Moreover it is not always true that money creates brands, if it is to be true then big companies would have always made string and powerful brands. Before making brands the company should be knowing what its brands stand for. While in this case Nike Air, special shoes with special techniques which gives sporty looks and comfort to the user is what Nike stands for. This is a Functional Dimension to that.

One of the small and again strongest punch line in the world is of once again Nike ‘JUST DO IT’. This exactly is what is required to support an individual mentally.

On the other hand, spiritual dimension talks about global or local responsibility of a company depending on the business of the company. As per Nike’s business, Anti-child labours is one of the perspective of Nike.

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In a similar way, we can apply 4-D branding to any existing or new brand. Branding is all about building and maintain relationships with all stakeholders. Great brands touch people directly or indirectly so now

Maggi

According to one article in economic times, What Xerox is to photocopier and Colgate to toothpaste, Maggi is to noodles in India.

Maggi, when we hear this word, the first image that comes to the mind of the people is of 2- minute noodles. In spite of the fact brand is having other products also in portfolio but only Maggi noodles is what customers can recall.

Nestle India Ltd introduced the brand Maggi in 1982 in India. The first product, which was launched in the country was Maggi 2 minute Noodles. When nestle launch Maggi in India that time instant noodle category was not well known in the country. With this launch, entire new food category was created, being first to enter into market, brand was able to retain it leaderships in instant noodles for long period. The tagline used was ‘Fast to cook and good to eat’, the main aim to use this tagline to great awareness about advantage of using it. Maggi is one of those example that are successful in creating high brand awareness and thus in turn helped the company to have high brand value.

Maggi also focused on understanding what consumer wants and then they provide product according to that. Company studied that there was requirement of convenient food and the same time, which allows mother to add her own inputs like vegetables and so on.

Nestle is continuously innovating its product line in terms of Maggi as market is growing more health conscious so company launched new range of Veg Atta noodles. Even basic range of Maggi is being enriched with more proteins and calcium so that primary customers of brand, children get 20% of their dietary allowance from Maggi only. Though in some instants Maggi was involved in some controversy also like it contains additive E627, which is partly prepared from fish thus it doesn’t remains a vegetarian dish despite all its claims

Maggi started getting stiff competition from Top Ramen in 1990s so company introduced new noodles but customers did not like the taste of the new noodles. So in 1999 nestle has to re -launch old Maggi noodles. In the initial phase of its launch in the country maggi was distributed free of cost in schools to encourage trials and today India is the largest market for Maggi noodles.

Maggi is one of the examples that fit into filling the gap, identifying the customers, providing the product, continuously innovating the product and spending huge on distribution network and advertising.

Bisleri

Bisleri a brand name synonymous to mineral water in India. It has approximately 60% market share in packaged drinking water in country. Brand is owned by Parle Company, which bought over Bisleri in 1969 from Italian company. Initially, Bisleri faced the problems of acceptance from consumers. It was difficult to advertise for a company something as a bottled water, which is colourless, tasteless and odourless. In mid eighties company changed its packaging to PET bottles which shows transparency and clear water to consumers. This gave mineral water market a boost.

In India, water is scarce and quality is poor so initially the consumers were only foreigners and NRI’s. Therefore, to increase its customer’s base, company came up with comfortable and affordable price bottle which was a great success and showed 400% growth.

India bottled water market is appox is worth Rs 1,000-1,200 crore (Rs 10-12billion). Seeing this growth over the years, many new players have entered the market. Amongst them Kinely from Coke, Aquafine from Pepsi, kingfisher and now Himalayan from Tata are main players of industry. There are many ups and down in last couple of years but brand recall of Bisleri is amazing which helped company. In order to differentiate form other players company tries to come up with different and new campaigns on regular intervals

In case of food and water, whenever people are suspicious of the quality of product they don’t eat unhygienic food and instead of having non purified water they prefer to stay thirsty. Bisleri itself seems to play on this need for safety, coining the popular tag-line ‘Play it safe’. The advertising helped differentiate the product from its competitors who, more or less, communicated nothing. Bisleri’s seal was also breakaway (hence irreplaceable), even though this manufacturing process of sealing seems to be slow and could clog up the assembly line.

Somewhere along the now that space was occupied by Aquafina and Kinley. The “safe” breakaway seal was replaced by a regular seal, but the change wasn’t communicated and more variants (packaging) emerged. Some of these variants were sold simultaneously. They were manufactured in different parts of Delhi, and one had the website www.bisleri.com printed on it, while the other had www.bisleri.co.in printed.

So, the mistake was a complete lack of communication on Bisleri’s part. Now they have a new product out - a mineral water brand (as opposed to a packaged drinking water brand), and they are advertising it. Still, there are three types of Bisleri bottles in the market in Delhi right now.

Now again Bisleri changed its packaging and came up with a new bottle. It has been general feeling that Kinley’s new packaging is more acceptable by the people as it is easy to grip it. In a packaged water market, where the product is not so differentiated, the company has to constantly innovate new branding techniques, distribution channels, advertising and in fact new packaging techniques.

Hafte ka sabse bada din!!!

Hafte Ka Sabse Sasta Din, a marketing strategy used by Retail chains to attract more customers to their stores. This is to increase the sale of the store during weekday also. Sabse Sasta din- the best bargain day for Shopping- this concept was started by Shoprite, one of the main retail companies in South Africa. This concept was carried in India also. But unfortunately they were not able to carry forward this successfully. This concept was then acquired by RPG group’s Spencer’s and the Future group’s Big Bazaar.On this day the retail stores offer heavy discounts.

Wednesday is promoted as Hafte ka Sabse Sasta Din. The reason to choose Wednesday for best bargain day is that majority of Indians don’t shop on this day of the week. Reports have suggested that on wednesday there are approximately twenty five percent footfalls as compared to weekends. Being middle day of the week, working women don’t visit stores. Major customers of these superstores are housewives. So if discounts are given, footfalls can be increased and that result into more sales for the store. Everyone wants to saves and wants value for money, so customers get fascinated by these promotions and tends to shop more to save.

For companies it’s all in volumes. They play on volume which compensate for the lower margins. In Big Bazaar on the day of Hafte Ka Sabse Sasta din, single store is able to sell 800 kgs of water melon. On a single day store is able to do business of more than 70-80 lakhs. Big Bazaar, in order to get more footfalls on Wednesday invite customers to there stores by sending door to door greetings and taking rally on roads, advertisements on radios etc. Retail chain offers different discount schemes and increase there ticket size by this. Merchandise Presentation is made to look attractive so that customers comes and buys . 

As Big Bazaar Promotes Hafte Ka Sabse Sasta Din as Wednesday Bazaar, Spencer’s had launch ‘Hara bhara Wednesday’ scheme of offering discounts on vegetables. 

According to some customers due to this concept they able to save around Rs 3,000- Rs 4000 a month which means a big amount so they prefer to shop on this day. And for companies it’s a big business day as they able to get volume sales during this day. 

 

Fevicol

Advertisement aims at grabbing the attention of potentional and existing customers. An effective advertisement is one which has a brand recall in the minds of target customers. One of the best advertisement in the country of any product, I reminded of is of Fevicol.

The story of Fevicol began in 1959 when the Pidilite Industries decided to enter into adhesive or white glue market in the country which is primarily consumed in woodworking. The USP of brand is ease of applying it. Company decided to enter in to retail market with the product and for that, they come up with collapsible tube. Company came up with different packaging in order to cater to different segment of customers

The company has become identical to adhesives and bonding agents. The punch line of company Building bonds also talks about this. According to sources, approximately 60 percent of market share in the overall adhesives market in India is owned by the company. Major sales are driven by carpenters who use Fevicol in woodwork. For this company always tries to support carpenters in some ways like initiative of Fevicol Champion’s Club helps carpenters to increase their social contact, improve their lifestyle etc. due to such initiatives by the company , carpenters have develop a feeling of belongingness.

The origins of ideas are from day to day observations, which is presented in innovative and unique manner. Some of the famous punch lines are pakde rehna chodna nahi , aise jod lagae acche se accha na tod paaye and lagake haisha jor lagake haisha. The brand portfolio has been handled by O& M for a number of years now. O&M has employed creative strategy to make bonding a Fevicol attribute. A Fevicol advertisement overcomes all barriers of region and language as viewers can relate with them easily. For its adverts O&M won the Campaign of the Century Silver at the 2000 Abby Awards for their Fevicol adverts. Fevicol also won them a Lion at the Cannes, which is as good as the Oscars for the moviemakers. Some of its award winning TV advertisements include showcasing an egg that won't crack because the hen that laid it was eating from fevicol tube (1988) to more Indian specific ones like a creaky bus carrying an unimaginable number of passengers glued together because of a Fevicol signage ad (2001).

The brand has built strong brand equity over the years and is able to achieve so much success due to its consistent quality, efficient distribution network and CRM practices by the company.

Co-Branding

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Co-branding is a marketing approach that seeks to associate a single product/service with more than one brand name. Often one of these brands is the principle producers, with the other brands ‘endorsing’ this brand or otherwise embellishing it. The purpose of such co-branding could be varied – the aim could be to transfer the secondary associations of multiple brands, to borrow goodwill of multiple brands, increase the premium consumers are willing to pay, etc.

Types

There are several forms of co-branding in vogue. Four of these stand out and they are:

• Ingredient Co-Branding: This co-branding involves participation by brands of the ingredients/components of the end-product. An example of this could be an ad by, say, Maruti that says that its cars use MRF tires. Another example would be ‘Zenith PC, powered by Intel Centrino’.
• Same Company Co-Branding: Here both the different brands that are being used for the co-branding exercise belong to the same company. An example of this is ‘Titan, from the house of Tatas’ which uses both brand Titan and the parent brand Tata.
• Joint Venture Co-Branding: Here two or more companies form a JV to jointly come up with and sell a product that will bear the branding of all the participants. An example of such a co-branding is the recently terminated JV between EIH Hotels (of the Oberoi Group) and Hilton under which opened a number of hotels under the brand of ‘Trident Hilton’.
• Multiple Sponsor Co-Branding: Here there are more than two brands lending themselves to the new product. This is common in the credit cards space: The ‘ICICI British Airways American Express Card’ (a bank, a product and a payment service franchiser) is an example of the same.

Besides these broad categories, there are other forms of co-branding too. Project Drishti, which saw P&G and National Association for Blind participating to donate Re. 1 for each pack of Whisper purchased by the customer, is an example of a corporate house co-branding with an NGO. Often the co-branding does not take the form of a single product, but of a package of products – like a combo-meal advertized as containing Subway’s ‘6-gms-or-less’ subs and Diet Coke.

Ensuring the success of a Co-Branding

In an earlier post I had elaborated on secondary brand associations. A co-branding exercise essentially is one of adding the secondary associations of the associated brands to the co-branded product. And just like secondary associations need to be relevant, appropriate and believable for a product, so does the co-branding. Some extra care that needs to be taken with co-branding include:

• Associating brands need to match with each other and with the product. If they are two different and have little in common by way of values and purpose, a co-branding would be reduced to a mockery.
• Parent brands’ value should not be adversely affected by the co-branding. Getting Mercedes to endorse your premium cycle may be good for your cycle, but will be disastrous for Mercedes. One should ensure that the co-branding does not spoil (if not strengthen) the brand value of the associating brands.
• The co-branding must be understood by the customers. ‘Zenith PC powered by Intel Centrino’ is easily understood – one instantly knows where Intel comes in. But a ‘Whisper-National Association for the Blind Initiative’ is not. Giving laborious explanations for such an association takes away from the efficacy of the partnership.