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In early 2000, toothpaste market leader Colgate looked invincible in India. It had become synonymous with its category and with over 50 per cent share of the toothpaste market, it was ahead of competition by a long chalk.
Then it did something that a leader should never dare: bask in the glory a tad too long.
The result was disastrous. Challenger Hindustan Unilever crept up on Colgate by revving up its gel-based colourful formulation Close-Up to target the youth. The Anglo-Dutch conglomerate followed this up with aggressive marketing for another brand, Pepsodent, positioned on the family-health plank, squeezing the market leader from all sides. Colgate began to slip. Then, it pulled up its socks, and came back into the game with new variants and some hard hitting advertising. While it never really relinquished the market leader's slot, Colgate was scrambling right until 2009 to touch the 50 per cent share mark. In 2012, the brand logged market share of 54.5 per cent: its highest ever in 15 years.
Colgate learnt a lesson the hard way: the fastest way to stagnate - with disastrous consequences - is complacency. But the good thing was it had time on its side to stop, take stock and get down to the brass tacks. Unfortunately, brands today don't have that luxury. With consumers demanding more from their brands and competition nipping away at the heels, brand managers have to be vigilant at all times. If they are not, they are doomed. Raymond failed to refresh its product line in time and paid a heavy price for being complacent. It never really read the signal right - a huge majority of Indian men had stopped wearing tailored shirts in the 90s and wanted readymade garments. It stuck to tailor-mades and over time lost the race to brands such as Van Heusen, Allen Solly et al. Many years later, it tried to put its money behind Park Avenue for ready-mades, but branding experts feel it was too late in the day; besides, the brand didn't have the equity of Raymond and it didn't quite make the cut.
This explains why brands today seem to be in a state of perpetual change. Look around you for proof. In the last two years, Colgate has launched three new variants and has supported each of them with a new ad. Rival Pepsodent has responded with around four ads in the same period.
Luggage brand VIP has been tagged as one for the older age group, with its 'Kal Bhi Aaj Bhi' films that ran for decades. Then, a few years ago, the brand revamped its products and tried to grow younger with the 'Bye Bye' and 'Happy Journey' commercials that ran for two years each. The same trend in visible across categories of products.
Ten years ago, the time a brand had on its side to refresh itself was 3-5 years; now it has come down to two years, sometimes even less. A television serial could rule the charts for six-eight years at a stretch (Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi bahu Thi, Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii, Kasautii Zindagi Kay, for instance, on GEC leader STAR Plus), but now they have to be refreshed ever so often or even be jettisoned if the channel concerned has to hang on to its viewers.
The two key reasons why brands feel the need to change are competition and the emergence of new categories. Fast food retail chain McDonald's had to get into home delivery, thanks to Domino's and most other local eateries that offered such services.
Let's look at Surf: in an attempt to be premium, the brand had never ventured into the compact detergent segment. When Ariel arrived with its compact product, Surf had to bring in Surf Excel - and eventually Surf Excel Blue - to stay relevant. But unlike Park Avenue, Surf Excel had equity from its mother brand. It worked.
The emergence of a new segment of consumers can also trigger fatigue in a brand that hasn't changed itself in a while. Dettol faced this when it began dealing with a health-conscious but comfort-loving generation of youngsters. It unleashed battery-operated dispensers that allowed for the handwash liquid to be released automatically by placing hands under its sensor. On another plane, HUL will soon roll out Surf Excel Liquid to tackle fatigue in a washing powder-dominated market.
When is the right time to inject adrenaline into brands? Is it when you see the sales of a brand flagging or even before?
It is important to note that being 'relevant' is different from 'reinventing'. The latter spells rebranding. "Pran, the Bollywood villain, reinvented himself in films like Zanjeer and Upkaar. Relevance, on the other hand, is how James Bond started off only as a womaniser, but in the last few movies, he became more human and fell in love," says ex-Britannia chief Sunil Alagh, founder and chairman, SKA Advisors.
Several brands have stumbled, fallen and risen again in trying to stay relevant. Coke tried to reinvent itself with the new Coke in the '80s to cater a market shifting towards Pepsi, but the product bombed. Experts say when a brand known to be 'the real thing' offers you an alternative, the tendency is to assume that the alternative is unreal. Coca-Cola switched back to the original Coke and since then, the brand has remained consistent.
The experience of products in different categories or even within the same category has been different. Brand fatigue as a concept affects a player that has been around for years. This player may even be a market leader and operates in a category where the core messaging doesn't change too often. A mobile phone, for instance, wouldn't qualify as it operates in a technology-heavy category, which spells innovation. A face-wash product, however, may not offer something new every other day.
Clearly, FMCGs are prone to fatigue. A highly competitive category with multiple segments and brands - often 40-50 brands competing for the same consumer - FMCG brands need to constantly refresh themselves. "India is a growing, underpenetrated market. Brands need to expand and innovate. We have to constantly delight the consumer before competition does, to stay relevant," says Sameer Satpathy, executive VP and business head, Marico.
Anand Halve, brand consultant and co-founder of chlorophyll Brand & Communication Consultancy, says that consumers will "chug along merrily" using an HUL face-wash, but if Himalaya comes along, HUL will need to do something to not get dated.
Point noted, but how should FMCGs refresh themselves? Launching variants/flavours, changes in pricing, size, packaging or venturing into related products are some ways of doing it.
Let us take the food and beverage category. There is scope for change everywhere. When it comes to ketchup, India had moved on from pumpkin-based ketchup to pure tomato ketchup and when fatigue set in, players launched green chilly ketchup, garlic ketchup etc. Who knows what is up next!
Even a basic product like salt is offering variants - low potassium, iodised variety, non-hydroscopic packaging. If one looks at a low-involvement category like car tyres, there is scope to avoid fatigue with ideas like car tyres matching the colour of the car etc.
Coming back to food, snacking items like potato chips are impulse purchases and visibility at the retail level should be a priority for brand managers. Ditto for indulgence categories like chocolates and confectionaries where the basic ingredient may not change but new packaging and interesting communication can drive consumption. Soft drinks may not change the product formulation, but the competitive war here is fierce - hence the need for new communication planks every year.
This leads us to an important point: even if the basic product is the same, it is advisable to give it a facelift once in a while with new packaging, added variants etc, else it gets dated. A bottle of Coke or Pepsi sits on college canteen tables competing for consumer attention with other packaged drinks and even snack foods; so the pressure on the brand to change is very high, even if the change is just about tweaking the communication. So, if Pepsi does a 'Bleed Blue', Coke needs to react or its fate will be sealed at the back of a retailer's refrigerator. Perhaps not moving with the times is why Mangola and Goldspot became dated.
Let's evaluate TV shows. If one looks at them like brands, these shows also tend to drag on; the same holds true for some long standing commercials that have lived past their sell-by date on television screens. (See box). Ad fatigue can also set in because of bad media planning. If it is a tactical/topical ad, a brand cannot run it beyond a certain point. For a functional ad, fatigue sets in much later, though.
For TV shows, long-running soaps need to bring novelty in their storylines ever so often, or the consumer gets irritated. The younger generation though, seems to prefer shows that have a finite life and where the gratification is instant like crime, reality or game shows. Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) has managed to transcend generations because of the host's magnetic presence and the show's ability to tweak the format every season. Also, the show is periodically pulled off, to avoid fatigue. One must also not forget that abroad, shows like Friends air once a week which spells 52 episodes a year, versus 260 daily weekday episodes in India for each soap opera. Naturally, fatigue rears its head faster for Indian soaps, and therefore there is a need for complex storylines to keep the plot going. "A butterfly has its own life span, don't make it live a tortoise's life span," Halve says. It is important to know how far you can push the envelope.
Keeping your 'fatigue factor' in check
Clearly, good times don't always last, and any arrogance or complacency can be detrimental for a brand's future. A healthy brand refreshing itself is much like a canny businessman stashing away large parts of his income for a bad day. Mind you, over communication can also lead to brand fatigue. For one, Andrea Godfrey, assistant professor of marketing in the School of Business Administration at the University of California, Riverside, thinks so. A new study, "Enough is Enough! The Fine Line in Executing Multichannel Relational Communication", which she co-authored with Kathleen Seiders, an associate professor of marketing at Boston College, and Glenn B. Voss, an associate professor of marketing at Southern Methodist University, finds that multi-channel communication does not always yield the results marketers might anticipate. In fact, over communication can quickly lead to brand fatigue.
The trick, therefore, lies in effectively allocating marketing resources to get to that ideal level of communication-that gets the message across with unfailing regularity, without turning off the consumer. Simple, really.
