Sunday, September 12, 2010

The Emami Way

In their 1981 book, Positioning: The Battle for your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout described how positioning is used as a communication tool to reach target customers in a crowded market place. They claimed that the easiest way to occupy a consumers mind is to be the first and much more difficult to remember who is second

Emami, once small-time manufacturer of ayurvedic medicines and cosmetics, is doing just the same. it is making a habit out of entering small, niche segments, developing them into lucrative business propositions and subsequently, spending big on advertising and marketing to retain a substantial share of the market in the face of growing competition

Let’s talk about some emami brands that created niche categories which turned out to be :

Fair and Handsome: The brand created a segment in Rs 1,400 crore fairness cream market. Fair and Handsome has become a Rs 100 crore-plus brand with 84 per cent share in the Rs 137 crore domestic men's fairness cream market, according to Emami's annual report.

Navratna Oil: It is Emami's largest brand that is positioned as a 'therapeutic cooling oil', the company has followed a similar paradigm of developing a niche segment . Launched in the early nineties, the brand continues to enjoy around 48 per cent market share of the Rs 550 crore 'cool oil' category.

Boroplus Antiseptic Cream: Flagship brand of Emami, Boroplus, now marketed as 'India's No. 1 antiseptic cream', accounts for about 74 per cent of the Rs 269 crore boro creams segment in the country

Taken together, these three brands – Fair and Handsome, Navratna Oil and Boroplus Antiseptic Cream - contribute about half of Emami's total revenues

The strategy of creating a niche segment and being the first mover have really paid very well for Emami because MNCs don’t to enter small or non-existing segments or until the segment gains a certain size and seems profitable to enter.




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