Who is your competition?

Marketing Myopia: When Nirma was rising rapidly, grabbing a huge share of the middle-class washing market, HUL did not see it as real competition

I got an angry response to my Tweet. Commenting about an ad I saw in the daily newspapers, I had tweeted: “Launch of Raymond’s Ethnix range of Indian ethnic wear is indeed a good response to the Manyavar threat; may be a few years late.” The person who responded to my tweet said something like “Raymond operates in the men’s formal wear market and Manyavar cannot be a competition to them, ever”. I did not get into a Twitter war with this person but suggested that he listen to the podcast hosted by Anupam Gupta and I, #TheLastBrandStanding #RaymondVsManyavar, and then come back to me with his response. I did not hear further from this well-dressed gentleman.

In a sense the comment he made was pardonable. Raymond makes great quality suits and formal wear. They also own brands like ColorPlus and Parx and hence straddle all days of the week, including #FridayDressing. How can Manyavar, which makes highly colourful kurtas and bandhgalas, be seen as competition? What was I thinking?

In the podcast we point out how Raymond gets a significant share of its “full suit” sales in connection with weddings; full suit sales also have other benefits like stitching charges etc. Not only the bridegroom but his entire family use the occasion to get themselves nice new Raymond suits. The same could be said of the bride’s family as well. With the increasing “Bollywoodisation” of Indian weddings, multiple events are a norm such as sangeet, mehndi, bachelor party etc. Raymond missed spotting this opportunity and allowed a regional player, Manyavar, walk away with the cake. Not only that, of late Manyavar is even ridiculing the custom of wearing a suit to a wedding (“Taiyaar hoke aaiye— get dressed the right way for a wedding).

My little Twitter skirmish with the well-dressed gentleman brought alive the concepts expounded by the late Prof Theodore Levitt in his seminal article, “Marketing Myopia”. Pointing to the American railroad industry, he said that they myopically defined their business as “railroad” and hence they did not see the growth of road transportation. Much to their dismay, road transportation overtook railroad transportation within a decade. If only they had defined their industry as “transportation”, they may have figured out how to either battle the new competition or take a share of the competition. Remember, today in many countries, including India, containers travel in a multi-mode way, part rail, part road, part sea. They had the opportunity to do this in the 1960s. The original article was published in the Harvard Business Review (September-October 1975). Its global impact was profound. By the way, I got exposed to the article when doing my MBA in 1977. And it continues to be a must-read in any Marketing 101 course.

When Nirma was rising rapidly, grabbing a huge share of the middle-class washing market, HUL did not see it as real competition

It is not that the problem of “Marketing Myopia” only affected railways, and in our case Raymond. For instance, when Nirma was rising rapidly, grabbing a huge share of the middle-class washing market, Hindustan Lever (now HUL) did not see it as real competition. In a sense Nirma did have a different formulation. When HUL woke up, it did the famous Lalitaji campaign that arrested the decline of Surf but the real answer was in the creation of a low-cost detergent powder, Wheel. Why did HUL wait for almost a decade to devise the weapon to take on Nirma? Was it Marketing Myopia of a different shade?

Apple watch is today the largest selling luxury watch (if you define a watch selling at over $400 as a luxury watch); the marque Swiss brands did not see this coming. In the US, Blockbuster was blindsided by Netflix. In India Paytm blindsided traditional banks. And we can go on listing instances of Marketing Myopia.

Even a company like Procter & Gamble defined its brand Gillette as a provider of shaving solutions. When the global trend of men growing beards caught on, it ignored it. Remember, we are in the shaving business. If only it had redefined the market as “male grooming”, it may have had a better answer than a late, timid launch of the “Gillette All Purpose Beard Trimmer”.

If global companies are still being caught unawares or not able to define their market well enough, thanks to Marketing Myopia, I can’t possibly find fault with my well-dressed gentleman Tweeter. By the way, Raymond used to have a campaign in the 1970s that promoted it as “The Guide to the Well-Dressed Male”.

The writer is an independent brand coach and a best-selling author. His latest book is Spring — Bouncing Back From Rejection. He can be reached at ambimgp@brand-building.com