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Unfair and Unlovely Promises

We learned in Describe and Deconstruct that companies should identify and cater to the need of the customer/and offer a solution to a pain point. In the Indian society (like most societies in the world) beauty has halo effects, and people face real discrimination for not being a certain type. HUL followed the customer needs and saw a real opportunity to make money through Fair & Lovely. My biggest issue with HUL is that they advertised falsehood- skin color transformation that was not achievable or not achievable beyond just removing tan. I do not expect brands to be beacons of social change, but expect them to AVOID ADVERTISEMENTS CLAIMING FALSE RESULTS AND LINKING ASPIRATIONS TO THOSE FALSE RESULTS. HUL changing Fair & Lovely's name to Glow & Lovely was just a sham. I am appalled how the messaging adopted by Dove, another Unilever brand, is in sharp contrast, as it focuses on “Real Beauty.” I believe the dichotomy exists because the company is speaking its customers’ language and creating in-groups and out-groups.

This leads to my second point on the limitations of the dark & Beautiful campaign. A lot of my friends completely loathe Fair & Lovely and demonstrate this hatred on their Socials. The problem is that the rebellion was coming from a group that is privileged to a certain extent to dodge the discrimination. The people, mostly young women and men from lower education and wealth backgrounds who are HUL’s target audience swear by the brand even if it does not do anything. They don’t care about Nandita Das or the Dark and Beautiful campaign. This is because for them the pain is too real, and institutions such as Bollywood keep rubbing it in. It is crazy how Bollywood darkens skin tones to represent the “poor”.  

 There is a campaign by Nandita Das called India's Got Colour-  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_LlWPEvJOY . This campaign calls out the people who make fun of others. BUT THIS DOES NOT WORK MUCH! IT IS NOT SHAMEFUL ENOUGH FOR THE DOERS AND DIMINISHES THE PAIN OF THE ONES FACING DISCRIMINATION. My point is for real change honesty is important. Brands should be honest. They also should gently imbibe confidence in their target audience like the Dove beauty patch ad. I am heartbroken that for a certain audience Unilever is so gentle (with its Dove campaign) and for the other, it just highlights their insecurities. 

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Every Marketer’s Dream Crystal Ball - The Perfect Recipe For Product Adoption

Successful innovation embodies the power to become an irreplaceable part of its users, and this combined with its utility democratizes adoption amongst the masses, making it competition resistant until the next best thing. Innovation Driven Enterprises (IDEs) dream about the hockey stick growth once the product reaches the mass stage. Roger’s five factors of relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability attempt to categorize the innovations that transform human life. However, in my opinion, these factors are incomplete as they emphasize the internal controllable features of innovation and pay no attention to the environment the innovation plays out. It is like saying that the smartphone has all the great features of high relative advantage, compatibility, high trialability and observability, and less complexity. However, its success would not have been as a giant without the high-speed mobile internet. Therefore, evaluating innovations on just these five factors seem necessary but rudimentary.

Evaluating the get-to-market speed of four products mentioned in the case, I believe the order would be Polytrack-the synthetic surface for thoroughbreds, Stave Jigsaw Puzzle, Peanut Butter Slices, and the collapsible wheel.

1. Polytrack

Polytrack stands high on observability (due to the England test), relative advantage (as the horses suffer fewer and less severe injuries, and the tracks are more usable during harsh weather conditions), compatibility (the TV audiences wouldn’t know the difference and the Turfway can be converted to a Polytrack), and has low complexity. However, the trialability is constrained due to the $5 million amount required to convert the Turfway into a Polytrack. I would have to do a thorough cost-benefit analysis to concretely predict the adoption rate, but on a high-level basis, this product seems a decent innovation.

2. Stave Jigsaw Puzzle

The Stave Jigsaw Puzzle as the case suggests is for a niche group of people who feel an extreme sense of accomplishment after achieving something extremely hard (sometimes also exclusive because of the high costs involved). Imagine the people who want to climb Mount Everest. This product exactly fits that customer type. The product has high compatibility, relative advantage, and observability. It has high complexity and compatibility – something that works in favor of this product.

3. Peanut Butter Slice

This product seems pretty useless to me. For a PB&J when the customer is anyway using a spoon to scoop jelly out of a jar, why would they mind doing the same for peanut butter? The sliced cheese is different because it does not have a popular compliment. I am appalled at the time and energy spent to perfect the formulation with no consumer preference research. It fails on relative advantage and compatibility.

4. The Collapsible Wheel

The advantage of a bike with collapsible wheels is transportability. But there are skateboards for that purpose. In case the exercise component of the bike is significantly important for the customer over that of the skateboards, there exists the stationary bike–the Peloton. Also, compatibility and trialability are hampered by the price point of $2000-$6000.

 To rebrand Tinder we would harness the serious relationship observability factor through advertisements promoting this idea. I am thinking of having a feature where users can add the serious relationship badge to show their compatibility preferences. Also, users could star rate this badge for their matches to maintain the authenticity of the badge. Disclaimer: These ideas require brainstorming with my team members and a customer preference verification.

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Learning to brand through wine and dating

 As I reviewed the case of Concha y Toro, I was immediately reminded of my first class of Analytics Edge. As a diligent learner of analytics I would like to bring back that story and try to juxtapose that too branding and more concretely to perception. In March 1990, Orley Ashenfelter, an Economics Professor at Princeton laid claims that analytics/ math can do a better job at predicting wine quality than real experts. He didn’t taste wine but used linear regression model, a technique student at MIT nowadays may consider too basic, to predict prices. In response Robert Parker, and expert and in his own words, “he the world's most trusted authority in wine for over 30 years” furiously called Ashenfelter a fraud and claimed that Ashenfelter has a Neanderthal way of looking at wine. He also compared Ashenfelter to a movie critic who never goes to see the movie but tells how good it is based on the actors and the director. Eventually however, Ashenfelter model’s accurately predicted the quality.

About how much of wine consumption is perception versus reality, I believe a perception plays a hefty role in wine consumption. The case Concha Y Toro demonstrates how “influencers” such as wine critics, advocates, and collectors influence the perception and the price of wine. It wasn’t surprising to me that in 1976 critics couldn’t distinguish French wine from the California wine, and that put the California wine on the map. Similarly, the Chilean wine got debased as safe and boring, and after many years in 2004 it gained some glory in “Berlin Tasting” when it was compared to French wine.

When the market is as fragmented as the wine market and consumers have no way of accessing quality, capturing the volume of consumers is not the right approach. It is then a price game that ends in price = cost. Due to the packed market, consumer perception, and market dynamics, Concha y Toro should position itself as a super-premium Chilean brand. It can also leverage the poor market conditions to acquire small wineries that are producing high-quality wine.

My learning about nudging from last class and about perception management from the case, spotlights our project choice of transforming Tinder’s image for an app also for long-term relationships. In my opinion Tinder’s brand messaging can be evolved to show how this is where long-term relations happen through authentic stories of its users. Additionally, when people sign up they can be asked to fill a short survey about the quality they desire in their ‘forever’ partner. User engagement methods such as push messages can incorporate nudges such as, ‘your life partner is waiting’.

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Sony - Time to rebrand?

Sony had a strong presence in the electronics market in the late 1900s. However, since the 2000s it is facing the struggles of a fading brand image. When Americans are asked about Sony, more often than not their response circles around the PlayStation. Sadly, Sony’s other electronic offerings don’t see the PlayStation glory. Sony’s challenges began with its inability to keep up with the transforming changes in the industry and were only intensified by its inconsistent brand practices. Historically, Sony built social equity as it redefined the consumer electronics space and its ability to leapfrog innovations before consumer needs. It now lives on its residual brand image. 

High-end smartphones are now dominated by Apple and Samsung, and Sony’s Xperia is almost an unknown in the American market. Samsung dominates the TV segment and there are brands like LG that also have a significant presence, undermining a clear play by Sony. If there is a video called ‘Sony- Bigger Than You Know’ with the tagline ‘Sony is known for making the PlayStation along with televisions and audio devices but there's other parts to their business that we may overlook.’, we know there is a problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpMVGJlWnNk

To access the major issues with poor consumer perception, I believe qualitative interviews with a fluid set of questions would be helpful. The approach would allow the respondents to talk freely about their perceptions and feelings about the brand. The downside of this approach lies in the extensive time and the skill of the interviewer to interview and interpret required. I’d expect to surface problems and opportunities. 

Another technique useful in the Sony rebranding exercise would be the experiments. Experiments can be a tool to access awareness, association, and perception and to fine-tune advertisements. After all, it is hard to imagine that a basic t-shirt with possibly the most basic logo could be such a rage. But there is Supreme which is undermining our hunch. My conclusion is that we cannot anticipate how the consumer will react unless we ask them or observe them under a treatment group. Facebook ads are emerging as a popular way of experimenting with different messaging and positioning. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5VTZnhX5WU

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More power to the power tools - Naman Galhotra

In 1991, Black & Decker’s competitor Makita Electric of Japan had practically taken over the professional power tools for tradesmen. While B&D maintained the top market share position in its Consumer (growing at 7%) and Professional-Industrial segments (almost stagnant), in the Professional-Tradesmen segment (growing at 9%) it held only about 9% of the market. This was primarily because of poor brand positioning and brand perception. As more home users believed in the brand, the less it was perceived as a serious work tool. The home-use perception was bolstered by a lack of aesthetic differentiation of the product lines. B&D power tools lacked any of the bright distinctive coloring used by the competitors, reinforcing the image of B&D power tools as inferior products not suitable for job-site work. 

B&D can perform better in the Professional- Industrial segments as distributors consider the objective criteria of cost, quality, and performance over the brand perception. The quality of the products lacked recognition from the tradesmen segment because of their bias and “system 1” thinking about purchasing decisions. 

 A breakthrough in the tradesmen segment will come from dropping the brand name from the segment as it creates a distance from B&D’s home consumer-oriented perception. This strategy also limits any risks to the Professional-Industrial and Consumer segments. A bold coloring choice has the potential to both attract the segment and divert their attention from older brand attributes. I can think of the red KitchenAid stand mixer as a perfect example of an all-segment kitchen tool that is out there for everyone to notice and put to test.

 Since B&D power tools have quality on their side a 5-7% price premium over the current price can signal the quality. I would also suggest blind use tests and customer trials as a way of engaging the tradesmen segment. Many brands that balance design and functionality such as Apple for their MacBooks have powerful interactions with their customer base, continuously reinforcing the capability of the products. Patagonia’s status symbol and selective co-branding earned it the nickname PataGucci. B&D could also leverage tradesmen influencers and create a perception of exclusive, high-end, quality products with the new bold branding.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfsM2bP64-k