Meera : Healthy Hair for Years

Brand : Meera
Company : Cavinkare
Agency : Bates 141

Brand Analysis count : 336

Meera is a classic example of ethnic marketing in Indian context. Ethnic is defined as that which is pertaining to or characteristic of a people ( group) sharing a common and distinctive culture. Ethnic marketing is understanding those distinctiveness and adapting product and marketing strategies inorder to appeal to that group.

Meera is famous for its herbal hair wash powder. The tradition of using powder hair wash lies in our culture and tradition. Traditionally Indian women relied on powdered herbs to nourish their hair.

Then along with changing lifestyles, new products like shampoos began to take the place of these herbal powders. While hair oils have retained their position in the hair care market, the use of hair-wash powder was reduced to a niche.

It is in this context that Meera as a brand becomes interesting. The brand not only catered to the niche but also has developed this market and evolved to become an umbrella brand for more traditional hair-care products.

Although there was many companies who were selling powder hair wash, most of these players belong to the unorganized sector . Shaw Wallace had a similar product but the firm was not promoting that line. Cavinkare began to aggressively built the brand and Meera became the market leader in that category.
Herbal hair wash product typically consists of powder/essence from Shikakai , green gram, tulsi, veliver, reetha , hibiscus ,feenugreek etc.

When time passes by, these traditional products tend to lose relevance . Traditional products fade from the market for many reasons like
a. Better new products : New and better products make some traditional products less relevant.
b. No marketing : Because of lack of marketing, many traditional products fade from the consumer's mental space.
c. Product availability.
d. Changing consumer preferences
e. Non-viability of manufacturing and marketing traditional products.

In the case of herbal powder market, the products are unattractive to urban market because these are not easy products. Herbal powders are often messy and the user has to spent lot of time in using the product. In this fast life, the urban consumers are looking for fast solutions.

In my observation, consumers with grave hair problems tend to go back to these herbal products because of they feel worthwhile to invest time in using these products.

Meera as a brand has made the choice easy for the consumers. Instead of using unbranded products, consumers trusted Meera since it came from a well known company. The brand also is available in sachets thus making it convenient for the consumer to buy the product in smaller quantities. Meera uses the slogan " Healthy hair for years " highlighting the efficacy of the product.

Buoyed by the success of the hair-wash product, Cavinkare extended Meera into shampoos and soaps.
In 2004, the brand extended itself to the highly lucrative hair-oil market. Indian hair-oil market is worth around 1800 crore.

Inorder to differentiate Meera herbal oil , the company relied on a smart packaging design. The oil bottle had a visibly suspended porous cylinder containing the herbal ingredients and the consumer can see the oil deriving the nourishing from these herbs on a continuous basis. The brand virtually put into practice the dictum - " The differentiation should be observable ".

Meera is a popular brand in South India. Infact in another classic case of localising the marketing /product strategy, the brand launched Meera Chemparathi Thali in Kerala. Chemparathi is the regional name for Hibiscus. Hibiscus powder is used by Keralite as a traditional hair-care solution. Meera cashed in on this and launched the variant.

Meera is a brand which keep the hope of traditional products alive. The acceptance of this brand by consumers also gives a proof about the efficacy of traditional solutions.

With regard to the brand, Meera has extended itself to many product categories where the brand lacked competence. For example in the shampoo segment, Meera does not have a clear differentiation . In the case of soap also Meera does not have a USP. The brand was successful in offering some differentiation in oil but there the competition is huge.

Its a tough choice for a marketer to resist the temptation of leveraging a successful niche brand to mass market categories. But on hindsight, it is always wise to keep niche brand a niche brand.

A Message For Cleveland Readers and Listeners...

Public Service Announcement for Clevelanders only: You know how people in this town are always saying that Cleveland is a hole and nothing is good here and all the good stuff is somewhere else in the world and we're all going die fire-y horrible deaths at the hands of our inept city management? Maybe that's just me, but I hear stuff like that a lot. So, in order to combat this general malaise with our fine city, I would encourage all of you in the Cleveland area to go and buy your tickets now to the Paul and Storm/Jonathan Coulton show this Friday, July 11th at the Beachland Ballroom. This is only the second time Coulton has been to our city. I was at the last show, and the attendance was weak at best. If no one shows at this performance, we have no one else to blame but ourselves for this city's lameness. Here's your chance to be at the kind of show that years from now, you'll look back and say "Man! I remember seeing these guys when they are the Beachland Ballroom." You get what I'm saying?

While, I'm on the subject of supporting cool things in Cleveland, you may also want to check out the Mercury Project this summer when they play out at the Ingenuity Festival. Editor's comment: I think the Ingenuity Festival is a great showcase and has a lot of potential to push Cleveland's tech scene into the forefront. But I personally feel a little bit better organization would do that event a world of good.

Anyway, end of rant. See you at the show. If not, you fail. Big time.

Big Fun : Rest- in - Peace

Brand : Big Fun
Company : Gum India Ltd


Brand Analysis Count : 335

Big Fun was one of the hottest selling chewing gums during the Eighties. The brand evokes lot of nostalgia in me and reminds me of the countless fights that I had with my parents to buy this brand.

Big Fun was launched in 1985. At that time the bubblegum market was at the nascent stage. It was this brand which initially created the bubblegum market in India.
Big Fun was also one of the first brands in confectioneries to focus on sales promotion as the core promotional strategy . The brand initially started by offering the pictures of Disney characters to induce the kids . The brand was also harping on the BIG bubbles that can be made with it.

But the real tipping point came with the 1987 Cricket world cup. Big Fun ran a highly successful campaign focusing on cricket. The brand offered a series of collectible pictures of cricketing stars along with the bubblegum wrapper.
Along with the pictures, there was also runs/wickets which the kids would collect and keep score. At the end of the sales promotion, the kids can exchange the scores with some gifts like comics and goodies.

The scheme was a super-hit. More than the goodies, kids started collecting these pictures for the love of cricket. Favorite star's pictures was traded and kids began to buy the product for the pictures rather than the bubblegum.
Those were the days of Kapil, Viv Richards, Holding, Gavaskar, Vengsarkar, Shastri .

Bubblegum during those times was not as sophisticated as today's. Big Fun was hard rectangular shaped with a syrupy taste. One has to do a lot of chewing to make it mellow and also to make the first bubble.


Picture courtesy : Kadalamittai.blogspot.com




I also happen to see the old ad of Big Fun from the blog of Soumya Dip : Cutting The Chai.

The brand was cashing in on the cricket fever during those times. But in the early nineties the brand died . I am clueless on the reasons behind the death of such a highly popular brand. There is a possibility that the company ran into financial trouble and together with the decline of the popularity of the entire bubblegum category may have caused the death of Big Fun. The product also was not tasty enough to sustain the brand once the sales promotions' effect is gone.

I was now wondering why companies were not running such promotions during IPL. If a brand has done similar promotion during this era , will it create the same magic that Big Fun has created 20 years back ?

Big Fun is yet another brand that has faded from the memory of consumers. Another sad story of a home grown brand biting the dust.

Jawbone #212: July 4th With Bill Corbett

"Tonight, on this very special episode of Jawbone Radio..."

Tonight's show is very special. In fact, I would call this UBERSPECIAL! Our guest is none other than Bill Corbett of one of our favorite TV Shows of all time, Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Bill talks a lot of his days with MST, Rifftrax and the movie "Meet Dave" starring Eddie Murphy that comes out July 11, which he co-wrote with Rob Greenberg.

A huge heapin' of thanks go out to Paul Sabourin who was able to secure this interview for us and who brought us that much closer to hitting the trifecta of speaking to all three hosts of Rifftrax. Kevin Murphy, we're gunning for ya! Enjoy the show and enjoy your Fourth, you Americans you!

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For those interested, I have left my former lobster self in the dust and I have started to Twitter as myself. You may follow me if you get into those type of things.

Brand Update : Onida

Onida has ventured into mobile phones. The brand has launched the phones in the price range of Rs 1500-8000. The brand hopes to cash in on the equity of the brand in the white goods segment.

Onida was facing the issue of rivalry between the brothers over the control of the business. At one point of time, there were reports of the brothers putting the brand on the block .Now it is said that they have reached a consensus and the focus is again on the business.

It is in this scenario, that the brand has extended to mobile phones.The power of Onida brand was visible during the recent spat between the brothers. Despite the management issues, the brand was able to hold on to double digits market share in the CTV segment. During the last year, the brand was virtually silent in terms of promotions and had messed up the positioning by constantly changing the slogans.

Onida mobiles also carry the same positioning of the parent brands . The slogan used in the print ad is " Call Your Other Side ". The brand calls itself " Wickedly tempting" which will bring the spunkier side in you.

I feel that the brand has jumped into this category too early. The brand although enjoys a good equity has not been nurtured in the past couple of years. So without nurturing the core brand, any extension is going to have a negative impact . On the other side, the extension can also bring freshness to the core brand . Onida may be hoping that the extension can rejuvenate the brand.

But the issue is that mobile phone market is a highly competitive market with Nokia ruling the game. Almost all consumer durable majors have their line of mobile phones and almost all celebrities are booked by different brands. The latest being Samsung endorsed by Aamir Khan.
Hence to get eyeballs in this category requires hell lot of investment. And I bet Onida may have to compromise on other categories if they want to seriously enter the mobile segment. The brand may be hoping that the noise made in this segment will also have an effect in other categories also.

Second is the huge investment needed in product development. The models in this segment has a shorter product lifecycle and Indian consumers are now learning the habit of changing mobiles every year. Again more money to be spent on R&D and less money on brand building .

Song Fu Challenge VTAW's

So, there are some perks to being friends with Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm. One of the perks is that I sometimes get to hear songs before the general public does. As is the case with the Song Fu Challenge that is happening over at Quick Stop Entertainment. These guys are the Masters in the challenge and for Round 2, they upped the ante for the creative. Each Master was to write a song in the style of their competitor. So, essentially, Coulton would cover P and S and vice versa.

I was a bit afraid that that the competition would turn ugly. It's a very thin line between paying homage via parody and mocking someone's creative style. I, for one, didn't want to see my friends come to fisticuffs over a silly little contest. However, I felt torn to honor both their songs without favoring either.

So, I've heard both songs ( and you can too!) and I have to say, they are both brilliant in their own ways. Earlier this week, I posted the image I created for the "Super Secret Song" by Paul and Storm. The song is called ""Live" and it is a syrupy-sweet take on a Dr. Frankenstein type who builds his girlfriend/monster out of spare parts. Out of all the Visual Things A Week I have ever done, this has to be one of my faves. It comes pretty darn close to exactly what I saw in my head while concepting. That's a rare thing for me. So I'm especially proud of this one.

Coulton's take on Paul and Storm is so very over the top, I felt that it needed a equally over-the-top image to go along with it. I'll let you hear the song on your own, suffice the say, it's pretty sophomoric and full of intestinal distress humor. The art was inspired by Mad Maddest Artist, Don Martin, (whose treasury I just read through a few weeks ago and which I highly recommend) and the original Ren and Stimpy Art by John Kricfalusi. I had a lot of fun drawing this one and this too came pretty close to my vision - minus some female fans who were to be placed near BDF's rear end. I think it's better without them.

Overall, the songs are wonderful, completely different and fun. And I think it's pretty neat that I was able to create two distinctly different visual images that match each song pretty well. I feel that fans will have a hard time deciding who they will be voting for in the Master Round of this challenge. In any event, I want - scratch that - I NEED to hear both artists do their own versions of the songs. That would rock.