Black is the new white! How this traditionally dirty colour is the ‘in’ thing in the cleaning segment.

"Bure nazar walk tera muh kala" is probably the first Hindi phrase we learned in school. Culturally Indian's refer to black as an unclean colour.

For a people obsessed with purity, black has variously represented shame, uncleanliness, ugliness, illegal wealth, demonic roots, inappropriate actions or adulterations in your favorite pulses.

In contrast, "White" has been the standard bearer of being clean.Whether it is the colour of the mythical animal transports of the Hindu pantheon, to the description of your state of mind when your conscience is clean; white is the irrefutable colour of cleansing. From detergents to toilet cleaners, the quest for the "Whitest White" seems to the marketers Holy Grail.

In this black and white world enters a new (more western) paradigm of "Black=Clear".

 If your brand does not want to cheat its customers, then it will be in black. Some of the new platforms for black that are being dialed up include - simplicity and greater potency. 

Here are some examples of the same -
 

The other area where we see a more generous use of black is in the display of colour.

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While one can argue that black is a "macho" colour, you wouldn't readily associate it with candles. While "a light in the dark" would be something that you could also allude to, however, the brand has been overly generous with black, to their credit.

Devatanu Banerjee
VP - Retail & New Media
DY Works

Understanding the health of your social media posts

If you have been using Social Media for business, then your company surely has a Facebook Page. Take a minute to mouse over the statistics of who saw your company posts. You will notice that Facebook classifies your viewers -

1. Organic
2. Viral

Understanding this statistic may help you figure out the health and virality of your company facebook page and your posts.
 
ORGANIC VIEWS
When your facebook post has been viewed by users directly of your company's feed or company page, then it is classified as an 'Organic View'. A large number of Organic views signify that there is healthy traffic on your company's page / feed i.e. People are actually exposed to your content. Having a low Organic viewership means that no one really cares about the content being posted on your facebook page.

VIRAL VIEWS
When your post has been viewed indirectly via your company's fan's feed or page, then it is classified as a 'Viral View'. A large number of Viral views signify not only are your fans seeing your content, but they are passing it along to their friends and popularizing your content. Having low Viral viewership means that your content does not resonate among those who are your immediate fans i.e. not too many people outside your circle are talking about your content.

ORGANIC v/s VIRAL: Which is better?
Obviously both are important, however, to enjoy the real benefits of social  media, you should aim for higher viral views compared to organic views. Organic views signify the fruits of your online efforts to create action among existing fans. Viral views, on the other hand, signify that your fans are working hard to popularize your content. They may even be recruiting new fans on your behalf. Viral activity actually multiplies your own social media effort. Therefore, in my opinion, good marketers should aim for higher viral viewership.

IMPROVING VIRAL VIEWS
More than one social media marketing site points out that talking about your company's products or services does not help virality. Your company's fans respond to emotion better. Here are a content buckets that score higher on virality -

• Showcasing your company as a workplace where employees are shown in a candid and honest manner
• Showing your product or services being used by end consumers
• Humour (related to the product category or the product usage)

Our own experience attests this fact. One of the most viral posts from DY Works was not about our products or service, but a non-commercial creative project taken up by two of our designers.

Hope this helps you tweak the content on your company's facebook page and change the way you approach social media content.

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Devatanu Banerjee
VP - Retail & New Media
DY Works

How far is too far?

The Business Standard - Monday, December 10, 2012

It  is difficult and expensive to build a brand. High media clutter, high shelf-clutter and high mind-space clutter (coupled with ever shortening attention span by consumers) makes for very few successful new brands in the country. It can be argued that apart from a very select handful that includes Fastrack, Café Coffee Day and Big Bazaar, there are no truly successful new brands out there. The lure of brand extensions is understandable as it utilises the current equity of a brand and leverages it for brands to foray in other categories.

Brand extensions fail, sometimes, disastrously. Nirma, a brand synonymous with detergent powder (every time we hear Nirma, the next line “washing powder Nirma” follows tunefully in our minds) launched Nirma Shudh Salt. Does that mean Titan — known for watches – should not enter eyewear?

Titan Eye is, after all, struggling to be profitable. Or that Wipro should be only ‘applying thought’ to their IT business and not to diapers and soaps? Ponds stretched the brand from its iconic Dreamflower Talc to the new age Age Miracle/Perfect Radiance range. The brand has not as much as stretched, but has snapped into two – the two Ponds stand for different things.

So, what are the principles of successful brand architecture? The answer lies at the core of the brand. Tata, for decades, has stood for trust. Since that is at the core, the brand extends anywhere where trust is important. Trust, however, is basic. It works for generic products such as salt but does not work where the consumer seeks more than trust. Tanishq stands for design but the Tata Gold Plus brand stands for trust. As for Rolls Royce, it is the ultimate super luxury car. Does that equity help in the space of aircraft engines? If Rolls Royce had stood for technology or innovation, it could traverse the course to not just aircraft engines but perhaps any high-end equipment; but luxury makes the stretch not so successful.

The closer the new product connects with the existing core value proposition of the brand, the more likely it will be able to diversify. For instance, Kingfisher (its current troubles notwithstanding) as the King of Good Times, can expand into different categories such as liquor, airline, calendars and Formula 1; as against Jet Airways that only stands for a ‘world-class flying experience’, and can only extend into air-related businesses.

Over-extending the brand or using it indiscriminately is potentially prone to failure. Take Lifebuoy’s first attempt at launching a talcum power under the same brand. The product was positioned on the family health platform in clear dissonance with the core proposition of the talcum powder category — beauty. The variant was discontinued and re-launched as prickly heat powder, which supposedly resonates better with the core values of the Lifebuoy. Even where the brand name seamlessly extends across categories, it is important to not fall into a ‘click and extend’ trap such as the one Himalaya has fallen into. Himalaya sells a range of herbal/ayurveda product across hair, skin and oral care under one umbrella brand. While it is a great brand extension strategy, there was needed a visual demarcation as the sea of sameness makes it difficult for the consumer to navigate across a shop shelf and new variants invariably vanish without a trace. In such cases design solutions are required to maximise opportunity for the brand.

Alpana Parida is President (alpana@dyworks.in) and Priyanka Shah,  GM - Strategy,  of  DY Works, a leading brand strategy and design firm.

DY Works wins 6 awards at World Brand Congress (Mumbai)

For award wining brand solutions contact DY Works.

Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani

The Financial Express - Tuesday, Nov 20, 2012

There are two different stores for organic food in the 2 km radius around my house in Mumbai. There are more sprouting in Chennai, Bangalore, Pune and more. From Vadodara to Vizag – there are murmurs of local entrepreneurs looking at organic foods as a business opportunity.

Really? Firstly, what is organic food? In India – there is no regulatory body such as the USDA that certifies food as organic. In absence of clear and widely known standards of organic food, there is little agreement on what is considered organic. More importantly, who cares?

For the Indian consumer, his/ her real worries are contaminated / sewage water used for irrigation, high level of pesticides used on the crop and perhaps genetically modified crops (ever since I read about porcine genes used for making fleshy potatoes—I am spooked!). The danger of bringing a foreign concept into India ‘as is’, is this: you can completely miss the real opportunity and can spend decades trying to educate a consumer rather than cater to their specific needs.

The so-called organic food industry would do well to call themselves ‘pesticide-free’ or ‘toxic-free’ rather than trying to force a nation to learn the meaning of organic.

For decades, the industry’s insistence on using the word ‘yoghurt’ instead of ‘curd’ or ‘dahi’ was mystifying. In the last few years, dairy brands have stumbled onto the incredible concept that consumers will be more responsive to the familiar!

But this learning does not seem to extend to the use of the word ‘pro-biotic’. What is it really? Every Indian knows that curd is good for digestion and curd rice is the easiest thing to digest – for babies to seniors. Would not a ‘super dahi’ or a ‘curd plus’ kind of nomenclature demystify this category?

Category after category—we see a rush to bring in foreign categories/ products/ brands to India—with barely a nod to local needs. But imported concepts do not translate into market successes and remain peripheral brands. To grow truly big— in a country such as ours—the answers need to be local. McDonald’s, Domino’s, Lays and others have all learnt the lessons of localisation with local flavours and cuisines becoming part of the local offering.

For others, the global dictates are so strong—that local opportunities are completely lost. For eons now, Harpic has been the overwhelming market leader in the toilet cleaner category. The closest challenger Domex is a distant second. It stays true to its global positioning of ‘germ kill’.

“Germs in the toilet” is not an Indian worry. Keeping it clean is. Preserving the increasingly upgraded bathroom’s pristine whiteness and caring for the marble and fancy ceramic fixtures is. Harpic is acid based. Domex contains bleach. One corrodes ceramic surfaces and ruins expensive fittings. The other maintains them continually. The word acid itself is full of negative connotations (think acid attacks and acid rain) and the other is a super cleaner. Nothing else. The opportunity for Domex to capitalise on its arch rival’s fundamental premise is enormous. Yet, it stands for ‘germ kill’ alone.

Thinking afresh is an imperative for Indian products. We were creating an Indian version of a pasta sauce for Mutti, one of Europe’s largest manufacturer of tomato products. While we ensured that the recipe was ‘Indian’ (higher sweet, salty and sour notes, greater spice levels)—we were assuming that the packaging format to be the same as it is globally—a glass jar. That is, till we conducted an ethnographic study of Indian kitchens and found that everything in jars—whether pickles, ghee or jam—came out by the spoon.

There was no behaviour whatsoever of a jar being overturned for a single use. Overturning a jar gave even the most affluent housewives a sense of over-use. To truly grow the pasta sauce market—we launched this product in pouches and market success validated the hypothesis.

Global products need to truly Indianise. Not just in terms of creating a local version of the same ads— but finding a deeper relevance for the Indian consumer in terms of positioning, naming and building in cultural cues that make the products relevant to India. The market size for “pesticide-free vegetables” is exponentially larger than “organic produce”.

The author is president, DY Works. She can be reached at alpana@dyworks.in

Indian homes: Shanti Nivas to Casa Grande

Alpana Parida, October 13, 2012, Times Crest

Not just names, even the way Indians view their homes has changed. It's no longer the place where we let our masks slip but an avenue for showing off our international tastes and aspirations.

Homes used to be the very definition of our roots - and our current home was to be clearly distinguished from our 'ancestral home' or 'native place'. The women in the home were exalted as grih laxmis and this was a sanctified place that was not to be desecrated. Liquor was consumed outside, perhaps in the verandah or terrace and in vegetarian homes, the non-vegetarian indulgences - if any - were outside.

Homes were unsullied by the external world, they were havens that protected us not only from the elements but from the sullying effects of alien cultures. They were also places where we could let our masks slip. We spoke in our mother tongue, ate with our hands from stainless steel thalis and threw mattresses on the floor for extra guests - who were both frequent and many. They were spaces that were shared with no concept of personal space.

Our homes were where we stored everything and threw nothing. Mismatched curtains and sofas, the totally inappropriate machine made carpet (woolen in Mumbai?) and the Eureka Forbes vacuum cleaner (bought but never used), to say nothing of the bric-a-brac in show cases, the souvenirs from foreign trips and the sundry kitsch that defied provenance;all jostled for space.

Our homes were called Shanti Nivas, Gauri Sadan, Upasana, Diwan Shree, Kanchenjunga, Usha Kiran, Sah Jeevan and such like. They rooted us and we built our lives around our homes. Kids grew up and left - but the homes remained, often sprawling, unmanageable properties - with the ageing parents who stayed on as caretakers of a home that no longer was suitable for their life stage. Selling the home was never an option.

So much has changed about the way we view our homes now. For starters - the names have undergone a total transformation. Now we have Palm Springs, Miami Vista, Silver Oak, Hamilton Court, Bellissimo and Casa Grande in not only the metros, but in smaller towns like Kochi, Vadodara and Ranchi. The real estate industry is selling maximized spaces with minimalistic dêcor. Pristine white leather sofas and wooden or Italian flooring have become de jure. Interior decorators have mushroomed and coordinated walls and curtains have become a necessity.

The homes themselves appear international. A cursory analysis of real estate advertising throws up properties with views - both the interior and the exterior, that could be anywhere in the world. There is little of India that you see. The lure is that of an international lifestyle with jacuzzis and swimming and/ or plunge pools, rain showers and fitted kitchens;the new world is the promise of an escape. Exemplified by the hiding of all ugly things - the functional - the wires, the flush tank, the switchboards - and keeping only the aesthetics.

In less than a generation, we are living international lives. Our homes are no longer the place where we celebrate our traditional lifestyles, the one refuge where we can be ourselves. They are places where we flaunt our international tastes and aspirations. Where no mismatched dêcor exists and our interiors are as much statements of style as our clothing is.

Our need for making the indulgent, the everyday is now a necessity: the occasional indulgences of the past have become a way of life today at so many levels. The entertainment - which used to be the eagerly awaited Chitrahaar, the Sunday movie and the few English serials have given way to a 24-hour bonanza of channels and programs. The rare dessert or soft drinks that were the highlights of festivals or weddings, reside in our refrigerators and have inundated the everyday - chocolate has become the daily meetha. From at most twothree pairs of shoes/chappals - we now have a countless array. There is nothing occasional about anything in our life anymore.

In such a scenario - the occasional foreign trip, the stay at the luxury hotel or resort are no longer sufficient as rare indulgences. We want the experience everyday, just as we want 24x7 entertainment every day. We want our homes to become like the luxurious and sanitized world of hotels.

The aspiration of the foreign was always a promise of a better world. From hankering for brands/products that visiting relatives would bring in, we have tasted the foreign shores ourselves. We no longer are the recipients of others' largesse. We travel from Pattaya to Patagonia and eat pasta and paella. We shop abroad and take gifts to the same relatives who had brought us the coveted Yardley perfume and the microwaveable popcorn. We tell them to not bring anything because "Now you get everything in India".

In this taking of control of our aspirations, is the key to how we look at homes today. We are no longer content with morsels of the good life. We seek it and acquire it. The rise of the new "gated communities" is due to the fact that they create a bubble, a haven that we can escape to. It is the formation of a community where we belong, we trust and we celebrate.

The discourse of homes today is that they are as symbolic of an "escape from" as they are of an "escape to". They are as much a seeking of an international, luxury experiences as they are of escaping the current breakdown of communities.


Alpana Parida is President of DY Works (alpana@dyworks. in), a leading brand strategy and design firm. The article has inputs from Snehasis Bose, Senior VP, strategy

Cuticura soap structure and carton design done by DY Works

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