Product-sell or brand-sell?
Just as there’s a time for every season under heaven, there’s a time to do product selling and a time to do brand selling. The wisdom lies in knowing the difference. Time was when brand-sell was product-sell. Years ago, Hindustan Lever launched branded, packaged vanaspati (hydrogenated oil) under the brand name Dalda. (It was also the product for which India’s first ad film was made.) Today, Dalda has become a generic name.
“Xerox this for me,” someone tells you. What they mean is, “photocopy it.” But photocopying has today become synonymous with Xerox. Take Formica – yet another example. A brand name used by almost everyone to mean decorative laminates.
In a market where a brand is the forerunner in that category, it’s a state of bliss. But when a brand starts doing product selling in a competitive environment, it could spell disaster for the brand. It would, no doubt, be doing a great deal of social service for the other brands in that category, but in the process, would the ad spend justify its own market share increase (if at all)?
Take the case of the ‘one black coffee, please’ Ericsson ad which sells all mobile phones rather than its own brand. Or the suiting ads where the well-dressed guy in a suit wins all – the plum jobs, the fair maiden, the accolades. Or the soap ads. There was a time when only Lux had film star endorsement. Today, so many other soaps do, too. It’s easy when the brand comes with an inherent product attribute that no other product in the category has. This could then be converted into a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) in the advertisement to make it stand apart. When Liril was launched, it was the only soap with the ‘freshness of limes’ and the advertisement made you ‘come alive’.
Today, in a cluttered market, it has become more and more difficult to find a product USP for every brand. So one has to create advertising USP. This could be a slogan, a character or a mnemonic. The Chocos bear, the Kit Kat break, the Mirinda men, the Top Ramen smoodle….. the list goes on. Each one leaves a distinct impression on the mind about the brand, going beyond the product.
At times of course, it pays for all the brands to come together and grow the market. In the UK twenty years ago, this was done with a great deal of success with milk. From ‘Drinka Pinta Milka Day’, it progressed to ‘Gotta Lotta Bottle’. Or, take the ‘Eat more eggs’ campaign in our own country ten years ago. Or the recent Smart Milk campaign from TetraPak promoting hygienically packed milk that doesn’t need to be boiled. When it comes to growing the whole market, product or generic selling is the name of the game. When it comes to selling a brand, it has got to be different. It has to tell the customer why Brand X is better. Otherwise he or she might just watch your ad and go out and buy Brand A, B or C. Wouldn’t it have been better not to have advertised at all?
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