The Departure We were running the series on Indian brands named ‘Brands of India’. But suddenly this departure! It is definitely justified if it raises some questions in your mind. But hey, don’t worry! ‘Brands of India’ will continue after a refreshing break! The New Course Now, coming to this out of course article – Sept. 17, 2009 was an important day for marketing people worldwide. [...]

Heard about competition? Obviously you have. And, advertisement? What a silly question to ask! Of course, you did. So, may be now it’s time to learn a little bit about ‘competitive advertising’. This is how a dictionary describes the term: “a commonly used type of advertising that communicates the unique benefits of a product, differentiating it from the competition”. So, it’s basically [...]

Launched in 1888, Sunlight is Unilever’s oldest brand in India. Initially Sunlight became popular as a laundry cake. But with changing consumer preference – powder detergent became more popular. As a result over the years the importance shifted to other HUL detergent brands like Surf, Rin and Wheel and Sunlight received a step motherly treatment. When HUL faced the competition from Nirma – [...]

Dove is the HUL soap brand for the ‘Affluent’ or the premium segment. Though internationally it was launched in 1957 – it was available in India for the first time in 1995. Dove stresses on the point that: ‘beauty is not simply about how you look, it is about how you feel’. Technically Dove is pH neutral whereas other soaps are alkaline and hence Dove is mild on skin. From the beginning of [...]

Classmate This brand caters to stationery products, an industry that ITC entered in the year 2002. It offers products like notebooks, long books, drawing books etc. The target segment for ‘Classmate’ is the ‘school goers’. Recently the brand extended to launch a new range ‘Classmate Fun N Learn’ which targets the children segment. Recently under the classmate brand ITC has launched branded [...]

Launched in 1902 Pears is positioned as a ‘pure & gentle’ soap which is good for the skin. Please find below some vintage international pears ads. These indicate the targeting of the brand to be children as well which goes rightly with its mild image. But contrasted to this in India the targeting of the soap was and is mainly limited to women especially middle aged mothers. Consequently in [...]