Playing the ponies

Rechristened thoroughbreds stole the show in the 2007 Business Standard Annual Brand Derby.

This year, senior marketing professionals from Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai decided to rewrite the rules of the game. Throwing conventional racing wisdom to the winds, pedigree, or the lack of it, was not considered to be a major factor.

According to these senior marketers who responded to the annual survey by Business Standard, in association with Indica Research Consumer Insights, only 28 per cent of the respondents felt that pedigree was a key parameter to evaluate the success of a brand launch. In 2006, 35 per cent of the respondents mentioned "pedigree" as a key parameter.

Other rules changed too. Punters, horse breeders and even brand managers would consider this sacrilege, but factors like promotional offers, freebies or price-offs, on-ground promotional activities, likeability of advertisements "" the must-haves in any brand launch "" were also given lesser perception points while judging brand launches.

For instance, respondents ranked the likeability of advertisements a shade lower from 66 per cent last year to 65 per cent and on-ground promotions lost a lot of ground among key parameters from 39 to 34 per cent.

Large-format retail was certainly playing a huge role in changing the rules. Visibility of products (in showrooms, on the shelf, on the road) emerged stronger among the key parameters.

An overwhelming 85 per cent of respondents mentioned visibility as a key parameter as opposed to 78 per cent last year. Even other modern retail frills like point-of-purchase (POP) displays have become more prominent.

The other strong point of influence was media pressure. Even as media proliferation shows no signs of slowing down, the ability of new brands to maintain media pressure (advertising presence on TV, print, radio and outdoor), also increased.

Seventy seven per cent of respondents felt that it was a key parameter to judge a successful brand launch, a five percentage point increase over last time.

Despite the scare that punters and brand managers got from the new, improved rules of the game, all was not lost.

This time respondents did not put their might behind new brand launches from any particular category. Rather they gave rebranding efforts the thumbs up.

If the brand transition of cellular services provider Hutch into Vodafone got impressive marks from the respondents, so did other rebranding exercises like the change in identity of financial services brand, UTI Bank into Axis Bank and the corporate rechristening of consumer goods major Hindustan Lever to Hindustan Unilever.

But the winner's spot belonged to Bingo, the snacking brand from hotels to cigarettes major ITC, that set the racing tracks on fire with its impressive performance. It was not a comfortable win, though.

The food brand scraped through in a photo finish that saw mobile telephony services provider Vodafone get dangerously close. While 70 per cent of respondents voted Bingo as a very successful launch, 69 per cent of participants gave the "very successful" tag to Vodafone.

Certainly, spends did equal success. The top three brands in the Brand Derby are estimated to have collectively consumed media worth Rs 300 crore to power their respective launch activities.

Importantly, most of them played it simple and straight. The Vodafone ad campaign ""Hutch is now Vodafone "" could easily qualify to be the most straightforward communication campaign of the year.

Another piece of straight and simple communication, again a rebranding exercise, was that of Axis Bank,which used the story of twins to convey that everything is same except the name.

As if by coincidence, advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather was involved in both the rebranding exercises. It was also the agency for ITC's Bingo. More than one Derby respondent said that "communication of the change was very clear" in the case of Vodafone.

But, it could be said that the Brand Derby was largely a two-horse race. Don't miss the 22-percentage point difference between the No. 2 (Vodafone) and the No. 3 (Axis Bank) when respondents gave their verdict on which brand launch could be ranked as "very successful".

Another indicator that could rankle brand marketers is that only two of the 38 brands that participated in the Derby could get more than 50 per cent of respondents voting for them as very successful launches.

Among other important trends is the continuing dominance of entertainment among top launches. Even this year, two entertainment brands, radio channel BIG FM and television channel Star Cricket entered the top 10.

Meanwhile, automobile launches that used to dominate the top 10 in the past few editions of the Derby could manage only one representation in the top 10 "" Maruti Suzuki's SX4.

Also, while large-format retail is redefining the rules of launching brands in the country, only one retail brand, Reliance Fresh entered the top 10. The surprise packet in the race was i-pill, the contraceptive pill that got the sixth rank.

A couple of new factors also made their presence on the scoreboard. This year, consumer-focused insight-based strategy and word-of-mouth were mentioned by respondents as parameters being used to judge brands. Next year, punters and brand managers might have a new set of issues to worry about.