Godrej revamps brand, strategic marketing

Dubash: We did heavy qualitative and quantitative research that indicated that we contemporise our offering.

Q: Is there anything that you can share with us, which drove home this point to you?

Dubash: Our research throws up that there are a lot of younger consumers who felt it is a well-respected brand, ‘my parents use it and it is not really for us’. So, that led us to sit and decide that we are going to make it relevant.

Q: None of the sub-brands or sub-businesses pay a royalty for using the Godrej name. Is that going to change, going forward?

Dubash: No, we don’t have a plan to charge royalty for what we do. But we do intend to strategically manage the Godrej master brand and have developed this position of brighter living based on heavy quality and quantitative research that we have undertaken across the company and stakeholders.  

Q: Why is there no move in the past or even now to value the Godrej master brands and earn from it.

Godrej: Most of our businesses are private. So, it doesn’t matter where it is funded from. It’s held by the same group and we want to encourage all our businesses to gain from the value of the brand and help create it. Once you start charging people, there is a bit of resistance. To my mind, it’s much better to give than to take.

Q: How difficult is it to communicate this kind of abstract concept to rank and file because that is really critical?

Godrej: It’s not difficult but you have to organise it. We did a lot of research with our employees. We got valuable feedback from our employees and communicated with employees. We communicated with the relevant marketing-oriented employees and got together 7,000-8,000 of our people based in Mumbai. We had a major presentation for them. Involving our employees is very important to project what we want to do to our consumers.

Q: We see the Godrej stamp on everything from chicken to locks to pest control. What will the master brand get interpreted as when you look at all these individual products and services across sectors that the Godrej Group has?

Dubash: We are developing a portfolio strategy, which will categorise the relationship of the master brand with our individual brands into master brand, sub-brands or standalone brands.

Q: How will it unlock value for the Godrej Group that the master brand gets communicated across and through all its individual brands?

Dubash: All our research has indicated that if we show this cohesive front and help our consumer navigate through our offering and have a clear portfolio strategy, all our research indicates that current users of Godrej are likely to increasingly consider us in other categories.

Our brand stands very well for trust. But we can stand for technology, relevance and modernity, as well as trust. So, this will be added to the brand image.

Q: You expect revenues for the entire FMCG portfolio. How much of that will be powered by this entire exercise?

Godrej: A fair part of it will be powered by the brand. But a lot of it will be in execution of those businesses and some of it will be powered by M&A.  Clearly, some of the growth will come from acquisitions.        

Q: What are the biggest roadblocks you came across as you went through this exercise? What is the resistance? What was some of the reactions?

Dubash: Getting the colours right across different applications is a big problem.   

Q: Was it easy?

Dubash: It always became easy when we explained the rationale, our values and have chosen the significance of the colours.

Q: Did you have a block towards it or were you easy to convince?

Godrej:  I had to be convinced to see the value of it, but they did a good job in convincing.

Dubash: I think one of the challenges is that this is the first time we have handled a projects on a group wide basis. I won’t call it a problem but it was a challenge doing that effectively. I am older than 90-95% of Indians. So, it is not necessarily relevant and I must give the decision making to others.

Q: So, what you like doesn’t work?

Godrej: Not necessarily. But I like cricket and it works.

Dubash: So, we have sponsored it.

Q: Are there any expectations that you want to share as an advertiser, as a media and as someone who bought very expensive television time?

Dubash: I clearly hope it does well. Television time is very expensive. We wanted to buy it for the impact, so it’s worth the price.

Godrej: There is a great timing for us. I hope the colours reproduce well on television.

Q: How would the strategic marketing group function?

Dubash: The strategic marketing group is a centralized cell that we recently instituted. I have a team of people working with me on this. We will manage the brand, going forward, and the position and how this brand is used across all businesses.

Q: Would this mean that the brands under these categories would be advertised more?

Dubash: We want to focus more on these categories and businesses and advertising would be one part of that. We want to put resources into these businesses, in terms of manpower. Marketing and advertising would be only one leg of that.

Q: This exercise happens even as the entire country and the government seems to be battling inflation. How is the impact offtake of products?

Godrej: It works in different ways; high inflation always works negatively for the consumers and manufacturers like us. We are victims of international commodity prices. Companies will have to similarly manage. When prices go up, there is down trading and there is also lower volume growth of consumption.

Q: Are you seeing any of that?