Is disruption a necessity for brand stability?

Recently, WPP's research firm Kantar Millward Brown released the BrandZ Top Indian Brands 2019 report. It has many interesting opinion pieces on the theme of 'Stability and Disruption', in line with the mood of the economy and marketing industry today.

I wrote the below piece in that report, on the topic of 'Is disruption a necessity for brand stability?'

 
“Relax! Nothing is in control.” Maybe you’ve seen this motivational quote. While it is supposed to be liberating – advising us to be detached from the failures and unpleasant aspects of our lives – it ends up being scary, too, by making our successes and glory inconsequential.

A similar kind of ambivalent feeling is shared by those of us in the business of building brands. We want to disrupt something in the market to our advantage, but we want everything else to be stable. Success lies in pushing past this discomfort and uncertainty to find an optimal balance between stability and disruption.

Stability and Disruption: Two sides of the same coin
Apple built its success by disrupting every category it entered – from personal computers, MP3 players, and smartphones, to its later forays into content subscription plans and digital wallet services. But all these disruptions are based fundamentally on the stability of Apple’s closed, protected ecosystem. Because its users are willing to pay for simplicity and data privacy, Apple can continue to provide more and more services at an additional fee. Even with newer technologies and VC-backed investments, start-ups will find it difficult to “disrupt” Apple’s dominance.

This is true with everyday products and categories too. Patanjali and Sensodyne rocked the Colgate boat for a while with their herbal and sensitivity-solving toothpastes, respectively. But Colgate came back eventually with its own variants, and continues to dominate oral care in India.

How should striking the balance between stability and disruption work for your brand? Here are a few lessons that we have learned working with our clients.

Identify what makes the brand stable.
All efforts to define your brand’s essence should be directed at this goal. Once a stable brand core has been identified, the brand is free to disrupt other aspects of its business.

For example, when the Savlon antiseptic liquid and soap brand looked to expand its portfolio, it decided to pivot around the brand promises of providing protection to mothers, and of making healthy habits fun for kids.

With this brand essence as Savlon’s core, its expansion into hand wash was by unlocked with the idea of making hand-washing fun. Ideas like “Healthy Hands Chalk Sticks” and “Id Guard” not only broke through the protection category’s typically serious marketing codes, but also led to stronger behavior change in the long run. The brand’s moves into hand sanitizers put similar tactics to successful use.

Over-invest in disruption to invest in long-term stability.
Pidilite’s brands Fevicol, M-Seal, and Fevi Kwik have been adhesive category leaders for decades. To maintain this leadership, the company has had to invest in multiple new products and consumer segments, sometimes without getting results.

Fevicol struck gold with Fevicol Marine, a variant that promises stronger bonding even when wooden furniture is in frequent contact with water. Not only did Fevicol Marine unlock growth in a new segment, it reinforced Fevicol’s leadership and got the brand firmly entrenched at its core promise of “Ultimate Adhesive.”

On the other hand, M-Seal’s launch of M-Seal Super resulted in only incremental growth, despite being a revolutionary, low-price DIY sealant product with multiple applications. However, had M-Seal not invested in this innovation, it would have left empty space available to new entrants to disrupt its hold on the market.

Ditto with Fevi Kwik. While repair was once seen as the exclusive household domain of the men, Fevi Kwik risked its affinity by targeting homemakers. It urged them to try repairing regular household items with Fevi Kwik, and in the process, to try to earn family members’ appreciation. This strategy turned out to be a great success, and now Fevi Kwik is the go-to instant adhesive for a much larger consumer base, making the category even more uninteresting for competitors.

Each of these projects could have gone wrong for Pidilite, but not venturing into these disruptions would have meant putting these brands’ future stability at stake.

Similar to how you can use disruption to protect, use stability to attack.
Every brand, leader or challenger, is always at the risk of being upended by new technologies, entrants, or policy changes. At such times, the very stability of big brands allows them to take risks smaller brands can’t afford.

For example, ITC’s Mangaldeep is India’s 2nd largest brand of agarbattis. This year, during the Rath Yatra at Lord Jagannath Puri temple in Odisha, it launched a special multi-layered innovation: the first-ever agarbatti with dual fragrances and dual colors, with ingredients that are special to the Lord Jagannath Puri temple (Neem, Tulsi, Kasturi, and Chandan), all in an agarbatti that’s made by women’s self-help groups from Odisha itself. This innovation was so powerful, that it got the endorsement of the Temple Trust, and every pack sold results in a contribution to the temple itself.

In the Mangaldeep example, it was the established brand’s strong, profitable core that allowed it to take bigger risks and handle larger losses. While there are agarbatti start-ups that try innovative ingredients, fragrances, and partnerships, it is likely that they will have to merge with each other to gain economies of scale (or else get bought over by an existing large agarbatti brand). Big, established brands still have strong cards to play in the competition ahead.

Marketers: Don't be like Thanos

Yes, we have come to that stage in human evolution when we should take lessons from fictional villains in movie-adaptations of comic book stories. Perhaps the only saving grace is that we learn what not to do, rather than what to do, from these villains.

Lesson #1: Look before you snap!
In Endgame, Thanos gets to know that 5 years after his snap, Earth hadn’t flourished in spite of all the reduced competition for resources. And immediately, Thanos invents a new alternative of resource-planning – wiping everything out completely instead of partially.

That makes us think - Thanos had been doing this partial-killing for a long, long time before he got his hands on the Infinity Gauntlet. (Ha, that pun happened nicely!) If we start from the time of Gamora’s adoption and assume her aging process to be same as humans, it would mean Thanos had been doing this for at least a couple of decades (in Earth-time). And yet apparently, this was the very first instance when Thanos was analysing an outcome of his killings.

Does that mean he never went back and did a Return-on-Efforts-Invested analysis for all those years? Assuming he wiped half-a-civilisation every month for the past 20 or so years, he had killed half of about 240 different civilisations and not done any ROEI check! Wow!

Lesson #2: A Tree is not the same as the Forest
Thanos changes his life mission based on data taken only from Earth. But his snap had wiped out half the life in the entire Universe! That means he projected data from ‘sample’ of one, to the ‘population’ of hundreds of thousands. Maybe what happened on Earth was the exception and not the rule. He doesn't consider this. But then, even if he did, he had no way of finding out. (See Lesson 1)

I don’t suggest Thanos should do an MBA or study Market Research, but it seems even some basic knowledge would have helped him a lot!

Lesson #3: Don’t put all your Stones in one Gauntlet
To avoid getting killed, Thanos goes to a point in the past, where the Infinity Stones are with his enemy - the Avengers. Interestingly, in the original timeline, he was killed by these Avengers even when they didn’t have the Stones with them. Moreover, in the original timeline, Thanos was anyway able to get all the Stones, defeat the Avengers, and fulfill his life mission before he gets killed.

Thus, rather than just figuring out how to stay alive in his original timeline, Thanos goes to a battlefield where his enemy is not only stronger than him, but also more informed (Thanos knew nothing about time travel). And he does at the dual risk of dying and his life mission remaining unfulfilled. Why ruin an already earned achievement this way?

That’s why, marketers, don’t be like Thanos!
(And Thanos, if you are alive in any timeline, please study some research and strategy.)

Defending Gillette, or maybe not

Almost exactly 9 years ago, a brand from the P&G stable ran a very cool campaign titled ‘Smell like a man, man’. It showed an attractive African-American man in a towel talking directly to the camera (i.e. ladies watching the commercial) about how Old Spice body wash would make their man smell like the man he portrays. His attitude added to the charm – his persona was described as “wildly smug, cool-cat smooth dude”. The campaign was wildly successful, and it also won a Grand Prix for film at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. In short, lots of claps and pats on the back.

Fast-forward to the present. Another brand from the P&G stable runs a campaign with the message ‘The Best Men Can Be’. This time, it’s a razor-and-after-shave selling brand that urges men to challenge themselves to do more so that they can get closer to their best. What an awesome, inspiring message! What could possibly go wrong here?

Umm, if you are with me till here, you know how polarising this campaign has been. Maybe there’s no hidden message behind the casting here too – in two different situations, the guys about to harass women being white, and the guys stopping them being black is just coincidence. But this ad made many men uncomfortable, and they are raising all kinds of questions about the ad.

Rather than look at those questions, let’s look at why they should be questioning this campaign at all. The first and most obvious fact is that this ad evoked a reaction. Meaning, it touched a chord somewhere. You could like it, hate it, scowl at it, but you couldn’t ignore it. Maybe it made you feel inspired, threatened, irritated, or simply angry, it means it did a fantastic job. It got your attention and it made you react. Strike one.

Next, is how this ad makes men feel about being a man. Some would feel being reduced to a stereotype. Or feel guilty because it holds them to a higher standard. Some would feel uncomfortable because it urges them to address an issue they have been quiet about, while some others would wonder if they really would have to interfere in a fight to earn the respect of their sons and be their hero. Again, this simply means that it touched upon a relevant, urgent issue that forces the viewer to take a stand. They aren’t just paying attention, they are now emotionally involved. Strike two.

Last, is the significance of the stand that they have taken or will take. It is not going to be an easy decision to make. If they agree with the argument, they have to plead guilty – guilty of being part of a group that has made not just workplaces, but every other place as well, unsafe for women; guilty of allowing, if not propagating a stereotype about men being aggressive, tough, and strong; guilty of asserting their masculinity by objectifying women, feeling entitled to their bodies, being insensitive to their feelings, emotions, and most importantly, consent. On the other hand, if they disagree with the argument, they fear being exactly what they have been accused of for decades – ‘good guys’ being complicit in the stereotyping of men, and harassment of women, even if only by inaction. Now they aren’t just emotionally involved, they are put in a moral dilemma. Strike three.

That a simple ad can do this, is by itself, pretty amazing. But let’s not get carried away. It’s just that this is the first ad that talks about this issue head on. And that too, by a brand that makes products almost exclusively for men. (You had forgotten it makes razors for women too, right?)

So, are justified men in applauding it or booing it?

Which camp is the bigger one? The right one?

What do I know? I am just another advertising guy.

Disclaimer: While I am hardly taking a side, it’s important to point out my employer has P&G’s competitor, Unilever, as one of its biggest clients. Also, that these views are my personal views, and they don’t represent anyone else’s.