Question

Topic: Strategy

Putting The Cart Befor The Horse

Posted by Anonymous on 7/3/2005 at 2:30 AM ET 500 Points
I have a major client in the toiletries business who after 12 years business and communication now wants to formulate a brand strategy.

The Square Toiletries Limited is a local Bangladeshi company whose fortunes have been dwindling over the last 5/6 years. This mainly due to competion with Unilever Bangladesh and other brands from neighborimg India.

Square Toiletries has a number of brands most prominent of which is Meril (beauty soap, shampoo, body lotion, baby lotion, pertolium jelly, lip gel, meril talcom powder, meril prickly heat powder). There are also other brands like Jui coconut oil, Chaka Deteregent, Chaka Laundry Soap, Chaka Red Laundry Soap ( for value segment). Ther are also toothpaste, shaving , toilet cleaner and sanitary napkin brands. Square has so far tried to emulate Unilever in product decisions.

Fortunately Square Toiletries has now decided to have a real brand strategy aligned with the organization's vision (which also is something we need to formulate). In the consumers' mind its main brand Meril Beauty soap (most advertised brand) has lost its image as against Lux. Poor and inconsistent communication has eroded meril beauty soap's image seriously.

iS THIS BECOMING VERY CONFUSING TO YOU GUYS? Well what I want from you is a way out of this confusion. How can we proceed to organize this mess and how to give a single focus to the whole brand portfolio?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Chris Blackman on 7/3/2005 at 4:17 AM Accepted
    Sounds like a whole slew of different brands... How can you possibly have one focus for them all?

    First, get a corporate vision, some values and corporate-level objectives sorted out. You probably have them already, just get them cleared, polished, updated, agreed and documented.

    Then cascade the corporate vision into a separate set of objectives centred on the core value proposition, for every product, into it's respective key target segments. (different VP for each segment if it is warranted).

    Then develop your action plans for brand value communication and promotion per product.

    Then keep the values consistent, maintain consistent objectives, and analyse everything to keep it all on track.

    You cannot manage a brand portfolio like one single big brand. It isn't, and Unilever, your competitor, doesn't do it that way either.

    You have to win the war one campaign, one segment, one product, one category at a time.

    To look at the big picture, you need to work on assembling all the pixels which comprise it. Look after the pixels, and the big picture starts to look after itself.

    Hope this gets you started.

    ChrisB


  • Posted on 7/3/2005 at 8:52 PM Accepted
    You have the right advice from the experts. This is a situation where you need to build each brand, one at a time, on it's own platform.

    You have the potential to know the consumers better than Unilever, because they're the "outsiders." You're native. You can address needs and communicate in a way that would be much more difficult for the outsiders.

    Start by understanding your brand image for each brand. Find out who your loyal consumers are/are not. Build on the positive elements.

    You'll need a true brand management system if this is going to be done right.

    Good luck.
  • Posted by ReadCopy on 7/4/2005 at 6:22 AM Accepted
    I agree with the general theme from ChrisB and an important question he poses ... "How can you possibly have one focus for them all?" ... more specifically, with the level of competition your under, its important that you focus on what you do best and what will give you the best returns.

    Its a hard task, but I would sprongly recommend that before any major promotional activity, the product manager/prodict development teams understand what parts of the portfolio they need to focus on.

    This should be in two part:

    PART 1
    Product profitability - are all the products profitable, you MUST be absolutely honest with the costs, these include the manufacturing, promotional, sales and admin costs for each product. How much does each product raise in revenues? Are they all profitable? Would the market accept a price rise for unprofitable products or must some be culled!

    PART 2
    List all your products on one axis
    On the other axis, show the market segments that they are aimed at.
    Truthfully, start to fill in the matrix you now have with the contribution (revenues). I would personally go further and add a weighting for short term market outlook. So for example of you are currently looking at developing a ar of soap that cleans by sonic pulses, ditch it ... there is no immediate market for it (OK a silly example, but I hope you understand, that you must weed out poor performing TODAY brands).

    You should be left with a matrix, which like it or not, shows you exactly what focus on, and what to remove your focus from!

    Good Luck
  • Posted by Mushfique Manzoor on 7/5/2005 at 6:37 AM Member
    hello ahab

    i am from Bangladesh and i have seen the growth and decline of Square as a consumer.

    first, some stroll down the history lane. Square group first became a household name in Bangladesh as a pharmaceuticals company, Square Pharmacueticals. they achieved a reputation of producing quality medicines which were the TOM brands with the physicians who prescribed to patients.

    then Sqaure Tolietries was launched and they started off with a, IMHO, fantastic campaign leveraging their brand reputation achieved in pharmaceuticals. the campaign very simply said "Square, Jibon Bachate ebong Jibon Shajate" meaning "Square, to save lives and to enrich lives". That campaign really leveraged the brand equity and touched the consumer's emotional cord. Then what Square also did, which IMHO, was a mistake, was to extend brand Meril into too many products without really building a strong base. another mistake ST made was to loose touch with the consumers and thus not delivering what consumer wanted. Square's Jui coconut hair oil lost its dominant share to Parachute just because of this.

    now, IMHO, the necessary steps that Square should take....

    1. like you mentioned, they really need to define what they want to be, they really should set a vision of the future as well as a mission. this vision will help in determining the marketing strategy as well as brand strategy and will trickle down to all levels of organization.

    2. regarding their huge brand portfolio, it will be naive to try to develop a common brand strategy for the diverse products. they have to build one brand, one product, one segment and one market at a time.

    3. i would suggest you to seriously analyse the brand and product portfolio and divide them into 3 categories
    a) Core Brands/products, which you currently have a stronghold or no. 1 or 2 position.
    b) brands that have potential to be strong
    c) those brands that are marginal players in respective maket, can be for any reason other than competition.

    now for div (a) and (b) you will invest more money to maintain and build those brands, while you serious look into the business of div(c), and what will be the marginal loss of revenue if you withdraw those brands. example how Meril Medicated Anti Dandruff shampoo is different from H&S or Pantene? is it worth having this business? Rather than spending money behind this, if you spend that amount Meril beauty soap what will be incremental revenue generated?

    but how will you decide which brand in which category? you have to analyse the market as well as the brands/products in details.

    4. you have to differentiate, the USP has to be different from other brands/products. i agree with you that square copies Unilever, that strategy worked 10 years back but not now. I would suggest to do some serious research (like U&A study) on the product positioning and consumer perception of that positioning. honestly, Lux in consumers mind is unique as opposed to Meril and all local brands. how is Meril different from Keya or Lilly let alone Lux? all these have become generic while Lux is brand. based on the U & A study you develop the strategy.

    also if you have to develop a reall strategy, you have to develop all the core brand values, extended brand values which are important for communication and developing the brand equity.

    5. Keeping a close contact with the target consumers. consumers still prefer the brand that meets their unmet/untapped needs first. You should develop a customer contact program and gather data, do FGD on a regular basis to keep information inflow running. Be the first to give what the consumer wants. Example, Senora sanitary pads were introduced by Square long before Whisper or others came into Bangladesh market, still you could not introduce a Wing Sanitary pad to cater to consumer segments needs and you lost market share.

    6. you also have to study every segment of every market of every product thoroughly.

    7. your brand communication has been most inconsistent and without any plan. You have used models who have aged and who were once model for Lux in their youth. This sends a very wrong message to the consumers. All the brand communication must be inline with the brand strategy and brand values. Another reason is that you are not that much present in front of consumers.

    8. you have mentioned that main brand Meril Beauty Soap has lost image, so you have to build this first, then you can think of all those other products that are extension of Meril Beauty Soap. your situation is like you have to do what you did 10 yrs back, you have to rebuild Meril Beauty Soap and then extend and leverage that brand image.

    hope this helps, i just shared my ideas, may be i am wrong as i have less experience and there are far more experience experts in this forum. if i can help you please feel free to contact me here or through my profile.

    good luck
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