Brand extension – a few recent examples in the Indian market place

I am sure many won’t agree when I say commercial breaks between Television programs are quite interesting. Commercials aired during these breaks help me in being aware of various brands and their recent marketing maneuvers in terms of new launches, price and promotional moves et al.

In the recent time, a number of commercials on television space caught my attention with one similarity in them – a known brand was extending it self in hitherto unchartered product space. While writing this, I recall the effort to imbibe the concept of ‘Brand Extension’ as introduced by Dr Ratnaja Gogula in one of her marketing lectures during the management graduation days. Back then, it remained merely a theoretical concept and now, with a few years of professional experience, even while at leisurely activity of watching television the concept gets registered and analyzed without any special effort. And this makes me agree with those saying ‘best learning is the practical one’. I hope readers especially those currently attending marketing lectures are listening and may find this useful piece of advice.

Let me return to the focal point here – brand extension. Though in the recent time there are quite a few incidents of brand extensions around us, the one that I recollect to have noticed first, through TV commercials, was Paras Pharmaceuticals’ entry into personal-care product space with ‘Set Wet’ and ‘Zatak’ brands. This move seemed to have opened floodgates for others to follow the suit. Mankind Pharmaceuticals’, with a number of established OTC products including Prega News (an easy-to-use pregnancy detection kit), Don’t Worry (a sanitary napkin brand) etc., have already introduced a male deodorant/perfume brand – Addiction. Company roped in a young bollywood actor and a heartthrob Nil Nitin Mukesh to feature in their advertisements. Spurred by the early success, the company has launched a deodorant brand for female – Kustody – endorsed by Bipasha Basu as seen in the already-on-air commercial for the past few days. The latest to join the band wagon of Pharma-to-personal care firms is Elder Pharmaceuticals with its male deodorant brands ‘Fuel’ and ‘Octane’. Company also has a range of other consumer products but deo brands remain the most widely advertised ones. Within pharmaceutical sector, brand extension is not only limited to the personal care space. Zydus probably is the fist to create a niche food supplement Nutritional Health drink ‘Acti Life’ targeted at grown-ups.

Not only pharmaceutical manufacturers are unshackling their limits to explore the benefits of brand extension, even the health drink market has many recent examples worth noticing. An easy-to-make glucose-based beverages’ space, a space ruled almost for several decades by the Glucon-D brand by Heinz, is now witnessing entry of consumer product giant brands such as Dabur, Boost (GSK) and Rasna etc. Dabur has been fighting to enter into this space since as early as 2002 and even stopped by law in as recently as 2007 now introduced several variants – Glucose-D, GlucoPlus-C in orange and lemon flavours. GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare has also extended its already established boost brand to introduce a glucose based beverage – Boost Glucose. Similarly Soft-drink concentrate maker Rasna has also recently launched a variant – Rasna Glucose-D.

A sleeping giant and a known brand in almost every Indian household, Parle, woke up after a long to spread its presence to snack segment with its unique ‘Smart Chips’. This time Parle showed its seriousness by getting its product endorsed by a serious Amir Khan and has challenged the reigning emperor Pepsi foods’ Lays brand and various others. Similarly, in the coconut hair oil segment the long standing sovereignty of Marico’s Parachute brand is recently challenged by Emami’s Navratna brand as it has now introduced a Navratna’s coconut hair oil.

In an another incident of brand extension, after making their presence felt by drafting a batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar as their brand ambassador for their inverters, Luminous has now introduced mobile batteries.

As brand extension is neither a new concept nor it is explored for the first time, only time will tell how far these moves will succeed!