Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

We don't need no ads, dude!

What's that longevity potion that keeps some old brands alive and kicking without big publicity glitz, wonders BAGESHREE S.

Shanta discovered her first cosmetic aid in her teens, when her uncle brought her a translucent blue bottle with a fragrant snow-white cream in it. Appropriately named Afghan Snow. In her life of 60 summers, Shanta has moved from a small village to a small town to now a bustling metropolis of mammoth shopping malls which sell a mind-numbing number of face creams. But the only cream she has ever put on her face remains Afghan Snow.

After a brief cream-free phase (when the brand disappeared from the shelves) Shanta was overjoyed when the good old "snow" came back to life in a new bottle — an all-white plastic container with the trademark figure of a woman in a Fifties hairdo intact. You may not have Aishwarya Rai endorsing it, but Afghan Snow has surprisingly survived in the obscure corners of at least some supermarket shelves.

It's a brand loyalty of a higher order that drives Ramani. Unmoved by tablets and balms that promise cures for headaches within split seconds, she has bought nothing other than Amrutanjan ever since she can remember. In fact, she buys a bottle of the bright yellow balm along with her monthly groceries and rubs it on her forehead every single day whether or not she has a headache. The vapours of the balm that always hang around her have earned her the moniker "Amrutanjan Ramani" in her circle of relatives.

No ads at all

Afghan Snow hasn't advertised in decades — no wonder Gen Y hasn't heard of it, with the possible exception of Shanta's granddaughter. And Amrutanjan doesn't invest a fraction of what its much savvier competitors do on advertising. But these brands and many like them — from Waterbury's Compound and Woodward's Gripe Water to Nanjangud tooth powder and Samrat shikakai powder — do carry on, banking on those intangible attributes of customer trust and loyalty.

Some of these products come with interesting bits of history. The Brasso metal polish you rub on that hideous vase in your house, for instance, was first made in Hull in 1905. It was part of every soldier's spit-and-polish regime for a century. The two World Wars did much to prop up this brand.

R. Sridhar of Brand-Comm says the first product that comes to his mind when he thinks of a super survivor brand is Chandrika soap, now marketed by Wipro. "One of the big things about the soap was that it lathers even in hard water. The sort of thing that's passed on from one generation to another." The greatest survivors of this kind, Sridhar points out, are those which have managed to become generic names. For instance, think silk and you instantly think Nalli. Adds brand domain specialist Harish Bijoor: "Look at an MTR. It hardly does anything in terms of advertising for its restaurant. The queues are never ending, though. You will give your right arm for a butter masala dosa!"

But Sridhar would argue that even brands that are assured traditional customer loyalty would do well to invest in publicity of some kind. "At a time when we are increasingly moving towards nuclear families, the mode in which loyalty gets passed on is no longer assured," argues Sridhar. "You may not want to invest big time, but you can build on what's already a product's strength."

We have, in fact, many companies cleverly turning their antiquity and trust into a USP. That's when dadima becomes a hip brand ambassador or four generations of women asking "Woodwords kotya?" when a baby cries at home becomes a hit ad line or Amul becomes the "taste of India". It's interesting how butter produced by a farmers' co-operative at once becomes a brand smart enough to be owned by the new kid on the block even as it thumps its chest and declares its desiness.

Closer home, we have recently had the 90-year-old The Government Soap Factory (established by the Maharaja of Mysore the late Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar and Diwan Sir M. Visvesvaraya) making some unprecedented moves.

Roping in Dhoni

The government-owned company's yearly advertising outlay of Rs. 6 crore is nothing compared to the Rs. 400 crore to Rs. 500 crore of the other soap giants, but it has roped in the flamboyant cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni to be the brand ambassador for it flagship product, Mysore Sandal Soap. It has also acquired the Geographical Indications (GI) protection under the Indian Geographical Indications Registry, which safeguards quality and originality and prevents unauthorised use by others. Together, the two steps ensure the product retains its traditional associations even as it reaches out to the younger buyers.

Does this mean traditional brands which don't brace up and do something to turn market savvy lose out in a matter of a generation or two? Not all think so. Bijoor, for instance, believes completely to the contrary: "There comes a time in society when only the brands that are not advertised are trusted the most." He believes that intense competition and advertising overkill will be counterproductive in the long run. "This goes on till advertising reaches ridiculous levels in society... And then society tires of it all. Society begins to trust brands that do not advertise at all. And that is the day and age of the No-Brand."

This is, perhaps, already happening in some consumer segments. We are, surely, beginning to reach for that homemade jam in a staid-looking bottle and shunning its preservatives-packed rich cousin.

But, as yet, it's hard to imagine a time when the rotund tender coconut will give the sexy cola bottle a serious complex or when Shanta won't get her Afghan Snow because it's all sold out.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail