Four 'R's of marketing

Repackage, redesign, reposition, relaunch. Okay, just repackage, urge packagers.

Advertising gets the horse to the water, but packaging makes the horse drink it. With the retail revolution in full swing, do marketers agree?

The packaging industry certainly hopes so, and Ravi Chidambaram is sure that this is a realisation one cannot escape as competitive pressures grow.

"The level of development of packaging is directly linked to the level of development of society," says the controller of finance, Paper Products, one of the country's biggest packaging companies.

"Because of the number of products available today," he adds, jumping from the economic picture to the inner workings of the consumer mind, "packaging becomes a key factor when it comes to making a buy decision."

Sujay Nanavati of Yellow, a brand design consultancy that has worked for Godrej and Dabur among others, feels that packaging "" or repackaging "" is a good way to make a product stand out in all the clutter on shop shelves.

"With about 60 per cent of purchase decisions being taken in the store, product differentiation becomes all the more important," he says. Godrej Fairglow and Cavincare's Fairever, done by Yellow, were designed for specific purposes.

"How the product is packaged can make a big difference in terms of appealing to the target customer," says Nanavati.

"Both N-Joi, the milkshake by Parle, as well as Frooti, which had been stagnant for about 12-15 years, have seen an improvement in sales after revamped packaging," says Nanavati, convinced of its power.

Repackaging can also enhance such saleable attributes as safety and freshness, especially for food products. It doesn't have to be flashy, just appropriate. Chidambaram uses the Cadbury example.

After the worms controversy, the new packaging the company adopted was no head-turner, but it did an appropriate job under the market circumstances of the time.

So packaging is priority. However, making the horse come back for more depends on the actual product's ability to satisfy the consumer's needs. The first P of marketing remains paramount.