Nimish Dwivedi: Marginal marketing

The biggest success stories come from brave leaps of faith

Quick, think of any brand of toothpaste, toothbrush or detergent. You may recall the main brand name but what about its variants? If you can't remember those, you're not alone. Try asking the shopboy at your kirana store "" he's probably not even aware of their existence.

The shop-owner may recollect the names but is likely to politely tell you that they're not in stock at present, or even that the manufacturer has not been able to supply the variations for quite some time now.

It's not just fast-moving consumer goods. Marketers are increasingly facing situations where awareness-building are exercises in futility.

Mass media is no longer "mass", given the level to which it is splintered. Consider the plethora of 24-hour movie, news and music channels with little to differentiate one from the other.

Combine that with an ongoing barrage of movies being telecast by local cablewallahs through hundredth-generation, faded VCDs meshed with the most intrusive advertising by local retailers, and the result is a mind-numbing experience for customers.

An experience where customers remembering a commercial immediately after viewing is itself an achievement; and day-after recall, unheard-of.

In such a situation, how does a product stand out? Most marketers are faced with the constraints of ensuring ongoing growth, that too when some categories are barely growing and they have limited/declining budgets.

Then there is the external environment, made up of benumbed consumers. While a new template that provides an optimal response in this new, much-transformed environment is required, in the meantime marketers are coping with the help of "brand incrementalism".

Brand incrementalism is essentially tweaking and making minor changes in the product or creating new variants with little differentiation. Some of the examples that we encounter on an ongoing basis are:

Packaging modifications: How often do you see products with minor packaging modifications? The impact in terms of enhanced customer benefit may be minimal or insignificant, but it is one way of staying in the public eye.

New and improved versions: Consider the plethora of launches announcing new and improved versions of the product. Again, the enhanced benefits of the new and improved avatar are fuzzy "" making it difficult for the customer to comprehend how this version has made a significant difference to his/her life compared to the earlier version. Brands routinely become "new and improved" or "super powered". The race, then, is to find the least-overworked adjective; even local colloquialisms are acceptable since they impart a local flavour to the brand. In most cases, this brand incrementalism fails to explain what has imparted it with " great strength" and what was added over and above that "great strength" to make the brand the best ever.

Brand variants: New variants certainly help in gaining shelf space, but they also confuse the customer. Most consumers cannot recall the prefix or suffix attached to the core brandname for creating this variant. Nor can most of the standard retailers. That is important, since these brands generally get the maximum throughput from these stores, given the current state of retailing. After all, supermarkets and hypermarkets are still an emerging phenomenon. And at the local grocery store, there is generally not enough space available for consumers to see each of the variants, understand their subtle differences and make an informed choice.

Changes to the core brand: Generally, these are variations or changes created purely as reaction to competition. Consider the battle in toothpastes. Once it was discovered that the germ-fighting property of toothpastes carried a high consumer impact, the quality became a battleground for all toothpaste manufacturers. In the percentages game that followed, certifications by dental institutes from all over the world attested to even 110 per cent germ-fighting ability. And the impact on the consumer? By all accounts, the customer watched from the sidelines as the battle intensified in pitch and tone, and went on to buy his preferred brand anyway.

Such ongoing incrementalism goes largely unnoticed by today's customers. Instead of the routine of brand incrementalism, today brand building and strengthening of brand equity is all about bold, never-before initiatives that make a profound impact on a consumer's lifestyle.

And there are proven instances of brands that have taken bold, innovative steps and stayed a step ahead, not of competition, but of their consumer's needs. A brilliant example of non-incrementalist brand building is Hyundai's approach to the small-car segment.

The Korean car company started with the basic premise that even a small car could provide the same, or even better level of comfort as a big car. That required a design innovation for the Santro "" the unique "tall boy" design.

While the design was successful, it was merely the beginning of a slew of never-before innovations from Hyundai, which completely changed consumers' expectations regarding a small car.

The Santro next came up with never-before driving convenience in the form of the first affordable power steering in a small car. And consumers have no trouble recalling what this innovation was called "" the Zip Drive.

Even as the competition went into overdrive to offer power steering in their vehicles, Hyundai was implementing another radical brand-building strategy "" another relaunch. And this was no incrementalist relaunch, done after tweaking the shape of the tail-lights or the wipers.

The Santro's design was changed in its entirety. This, in spite of the fact that the earlier version was selling extremely well. Another brand name suffix was created that consumers not only remembered but extremely appreciated "" the Santro Xing.

Hyundai is not the only auto manufacturer to behave in such an intrepid manner. Honda took the same audacious route with the Honda City. The earlier design was well established in the premium segment.

But instead of tweaking it here and there and falling into the brand incrementalism trap, Honda overhauled the design and created the new Honda City.

This was a change driven by the conviction that consumer needs have changed and a contemporary, more economical and more fuel-efficient version is what they now seek. Importantly, this was a change that diverse consumer segments have noticed and understood.

Both the Xing and the new City could have been variants that co-existed with their now "earlier" versions and could have been priced accordingly. Such an incremental strategy would perhaps have been incrementally successful and would have delivered incremental results.

But by these brave manoeuvres these brands have enhanced their equity immensely. And that's likely to show up in the brands' impact on customers and stakeholders as well.

Today's rapidly changing consumer and media landscape demands intrepid responses from marketers to make an impact. And the lessons on this are being written by a capital-intensive segment where change is more difficult than in other industries.

(The writer works in a foreign bank. These views are personal.)