Brands are important
We Indians use our hearts to think and not our brains when it comes to shopping therefore most big companies irrespective of their origin whether Indian or multinationals put lot of efforts making us interested in their products. To make us interested and bring us to their stores is called “Branding” which makes a brand acceptable to customers for its popularity, more than its usefulness or price factor other qualities not withstanding although responsible indirectly. A brand that promises 'stars' becomes instant success in Indians. A brand that promises to make us look fairer, becomes instant hit for Indians because we love fair color.
We Indians strongly believe that ‘Fair’ are ‘Lovely’ and others are ugly, so fair and lovely are in big demand. Do you think any other name would have given this product as big a market as it enjoys today? Beauty is associated with fairness for Indians so whoever promises to make us ‘white’ becomes our favorite product. Indians are more emotional than most other people in the world who care for relations more than others so some one comes with a product that promises to keep your joints as strong as your relations do and becomes our favorite product. Your relations with that particular product become as strong as promised by ‘Fevicol’. Brand managers of all products operating in India know this fact and are operating accordingly.
Brands V/S Products
The fact is that actual result wise value of products effects only 7-10% customers, mouth publicity change 30-40% and rest of the customers are influenced by brand’s image. How a brand make is reach within public is directly related to has it been made to reach to people’s heart. How the product’s image takes shape through public’s sentiments is the basic ‘Fundamental’ of Indian market. Products allover the world working on these strategies through different Medias including Internet, electronic, radio and print. The story line is same, public is targeted in a manner that looks real and close to their personal affairs, effecting them directly which create waives in their sentiments and get associated for ever. Surf, Colgate or Dalda are no brands anymore but these stand for washing powders, toothpastes or edible oils for us. We ask shopkeepers to give us products by these names even if we do not wish to purchase these particular brands.
These products have gone beyond their Unique Selling Proposition (USP) level but have acquired the levels of Unique selling Emotions (U.M.E). Let us discus about top products of the world which have entered in our households and become inseparable parts of our life. We can depend on a brand name more than its real values. A brand name is more than a word for us it is beginning of a conversation.
Colgate
One of the most reputed companies in the world, Colgate, now Colgate Palmolive is a story of a company which has literally emerged from zero to touch the top of the world that started almost 200 years before. An ordinary man, William Colgate, born in a farmer’s house in England has shown to the world that it is not impossible to reach to the top of the corporate world. William Colgate started as a trainee in a New York soap manufacturer firm in early 19th century worked hard on his management skills and learned the art of soap manufacturing as he had dreams of setting up his own soap-manufacturing units as early as possible. Meanwhile he kept in constant touch with different dealers in various parts of the US to enter in the business in future.
He started his own small shop of soaps, candles and starch as soon he finished his training. This all was going on during the period when most of the countries in the world were busy fighting for their survival but the United States of America was busy making itself civilized and inventing new ways. William Colgate took the leaf from Americans and expended his business as fast as he could. He even celebrated with Smith to change to Smith and Colgate but later he bought Smith’s partnership and added his brother into the business. He made many basic changes in his business but never forgot the basics of business, quality and value of advertisement and contacts. He released first of his advert in a New York daily that produced good results for his main products of soaps and starch.
Colgate began to diversify into various other products including toothpaste, perfumes and soaps. Colgate also acquired Palmolive and two other companies to expend rapidly allover the United States of America with very little investment. Later Colgate started to market their toothpaste in tube in place of jars which proved revolutionary. Colgate has done wonderfully well ever since thanks to its innovative marketing strategies and constant advertising policies it has become a household name.
Google the Search Engine
Google's motto "Organize the world's information, make it universally accessible and useful, and Don’t be evil"
Google is worth more than one hundred billion dollars, the only brand that has crossed one hundred billion dollar mark. Moreover, the company has achieved this target when the world is going through a serious economic crisis. Google is number one search engine in the world which can search out any information from the internet at a mere click. Incidentally, Google has achieved it by overtaking Microsoft and Coca cola which stands at number three among the top 100 brands of the world. Google is an unbelievable story of two friends Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin and Larry page who were in their early twenties when they first met in 1995 although they did not go well with each other.
However, their friendship flowered due to a computing problem as they wanted to find out exact information from internet and worked on a machine that worked on certain principals. The machine they developed worked on a particular idea – ‘A website is as important as a hyperlink takes anyone toward it’. Brin and Page started working on their projects while they were still in middle of their education. They managed to collect $1.1 million including a cheque from a German computer expert and launched their company on 7th September 1998 and today within 15 years of its beginning, Google is one of the biggest companies in the world.
Some people think that Google is no better than its competitors like Yahoo but due to its reputation among the user, it has left all others far behind to emerge as world power in the world of internet. Google started as a search engine has spread its wing in various fields including e-mail, music, photo, video, maps, mobile phones and many more services. All these services are free for the users but Google’s source of revenue is invariably from the advertisements that it gets from different commercial companies for running their ads on its pages. According to Brin, co-founder of Google, Google has a clear mission of providing every available information anywhere on the net through its search engine. ‘We used to search 30 million websites in the beginning when we started in 1998, today we are searching couple of billions websites to provide information.’ People have started to believe that Google is fast becoming a world power with no control whatsoever. Some others say, though jokingly that Google may declare itself as god soon who knows all.
According to a famous writer who has done lot of research about Google ‘whenever we are using services provided by Google, it is collecting our private information without our knowledge. For example whenever anyone is providing his answers regarding his choices of music, place of birth, hobbies etc on Myspace or Xing computers of Google keep busy collecting data from our computers activities. They know in detail about every activity we make or every page we visit. Google knows everything about us to bring us to pages and make more money. They are interested in us because we provide them opportunities to earn with our various activities. The services considered free of cost are making them richer by way of advertisements by companies paying them for providing information. There are companies who pay up to $80 for a single click to Google to their advertisements. However, the truth is we cannot imagine our life without Google today.
Fevicol
Fevicol has proved beyond doubt that a good and solid joint is need of any one including human relations and that is the theme of the company- ‘Fevicol the unbreakable joint’ It can work anywhere, in your home, office or industry. Fevicol an Indian product now available in more than 50 countries of the world is the only brand that sells without any competition, thanks to its aggressive marketing policies which tell consumer that only Fevicol is able to provide them an adhesive that keeps joints together. Anyone, marketing experts or the ones with basic marketing knowledge will agree to the fact that there are two types of consumers in the market, one- who are known as loyalists or the others who keep switching brands.
Indian consumers are considered Brand loyalists who stick to a particular brand unless something goes wrong seriously. However, Fevicol stands perfectly okay on Indian and international consumers’ expectations because Fevicol has a product for every need. Fevicol can fix everything including doors and windows to ceilings, painting of walls to fixing of papers, this synthetic glue can fix anything successfully. Popularity of Fevicol can be understood by the fact that if customer is offered any substitute product by shopkeeper the customer would prefer to leave that shop but he must get Fevicol.
Nokia – Phone
Nokia has such a good reputation in the mobile phone world that it has become symbol of the best, the unbreakable phone. In India, they say that even if falls down from rooftop it does not break. Some people even used to say jokingly that if you find yourself surrounded by goons, you could use you Nokia phone to hit them to save your life. Jokes apart, there is no doubt that the phone has certain good features besides having a battery that lasts longer than most other phones which could well be the single reason for having it. The best part of the company’s success lies in the publicity it gets through its customers more than the company does itself. I think most of us are unaware that Nokia used to be a small paper manufacturing company prior to entering into phone manufacturing.
Nokia- Transformation
During the 1980s, telephone and television were the most sought after items in the world. The markets were doing okay and world was almost peaceful expecting to witness new technologies eager to welcome a new era. Nokia saw their opportunity in electronics and digital technologies. The company hired the best engineers with best salaries and benefits from around the world for its different units and purposes. Nokia also acquired more than 20 smaller companies with expertise in their fields including Salora and Luxor to set up a strong infrastructure. Nokia came up with Nokia DX 200 a digital platform for telephone exchanges that made the switching job easy and easily manageable. There is still no substitute for this product which gave Nokia a very good break in telecommunication’s field.
During this period when other big companies were trying to manufacture television, Nokia entered into mobile phones.
They started with Nordic mobile network which connected Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. The network which started in 1981 proved a turning point for Nokia. Meantime Nokia acquired Mobira and produced first compact phone. Although Nokia faced tons of problems due to very limited networks and costly technology which even forced its CEO to commit suicide. The new CEO tried his best but there were too many setbacks which kept them busy sorting them out. However, they never looked back and kept trying. By the year 1995, the Nokia turned into a profit making company. If Nokia is known as market leader in mobile phone segment it is due to their hard work toward customer satisfaction policies, which help them gain best mouth publicity.
Nokia India
Nokia came to India 1995 and during these 13 years, they have done wonderfully well remaining on top as the market leader in almost in all segments. Nokia who reached to the poorest and richest of Indian consumers alike made itself as good as an Indian company. Nokia considers India as its three top consumer countries with its 700 million plus consumers with almost 30-40 % market share. Nokia added a manufacturing unit in Chennai in 2006 and also established Global Network Solution Center providing a top platform to IT experts of India. Nokia with Most respected Company, Most Trusted Brand, Number One Telecom Vender and Golden Peacock award is considered one of the best companies in corporate sector of India.