Amitabh – The Big Brand

ikas Vitthal pasped as the Dalda Active commercial filled the television screen before him. “So it is back! Now that is interesting,” he said. Parthiv Nair, his friend, stopped stiring his tea and watched the return of the evergreen Dalda. “What a brand, what legacy, what equity,”said Vikas, “Wonder what this will lead to.”

“It will lead to Kaun Banega Crorepati if only you will tune in to Star Plus,” said Parthiv. Vikas obeyed and as the voice of Amitabh Bachchan (AB) filled the room, he heard Parthiv say; “What a brand, what equity.” Vikas sniggered. “I wish he will have the wisdom to drop out of this programme soon,” he said. “Why?” asked Parthiv. “Because it will dilute his equity fast. He was good as a launch pad, but he is not adding value any more. If you replace AB with say, Mohan Kapoor, do you think the viewership will drop? No! People are watching the crores, not AB. What is he doing on this programme?”

“He is there to lend status, grandeur, to symbolize big events,” said Parthiv. “It’s amazing what hold he has even on a programme like this.”

“Parthiv, if a sandwich spread were to be named Dalda, people would buy it. Maybe twice. But it won’t ring true. I don’t have the marketing vocabulary to express this, but Dalda does not stand for what a sandwhich spread delivers. Dalda is about a mass feeling, about everyday situation. Just because it has memorable strengths, attributes that are marketable, it does not mean you simply pick it up and juxtapose it in any category which does not enhance or use its core values.”

Parthiv mused. “That was what led to the deadline of brand AB,” he said. Brand AB was a favourite with Parthiv and he quoted from it during brand presentations. Watching the brand all these years had even led to a certain closeness, an empathy with its evolution.

The first time he saw a decline in the AB brand was in the late 80s when Bachchan was no more true to the essence of the category ‘AB type films’. The AB type film was beginning to lose contextuality. It was also the time when he became the superman-superstar, all-purpose dream of the masses, as a personality. “In the marketing terms,” he said to Vikas, “the brand AB had become very powerful while the category ‘AB type films’ had lost power.” “This is interesting,” said Vikas. “Dalda, too, had become synonymous with the vanaspati category. But its brand managers have always sought to rejuvenate and manage the Dalda brand in the face of a changing category!”

“Whereas,” said Parthiv, “the brand AB had no brand manager. There were brand builders in Salim and Javed, but they were not responsible for managing the brand. They were cashing on the category ‘AB type films’ and when it peaked – it also coincided with their split – the category died. That was when the brand AB needed a brand manager to save it from being buried with the category.”

“Why do you say the category died?” asked Vikas. “What was unique about the AB type films?’

“What was unique about the AB type films?” “It’s like this,” said Parthiv. “There is nothing that distinguishes AB films from other films at the first level. Revenge, violence, anger – these were present in most films. AB type films were centered on an idea – of a person who was marginalized by society, fighting to be legimately accepted into mainstream society. It’s not just an angry young man, but a man who is hurt. And the motivation is always more complex than revenge. Take the example of Deewar. He has been humiliated. In Trishul, it’s abandonment, pain and psychological damage.”

“And how was such a category contextual?” asked Vikas. “Get into the social context of the 70’s,” said Parthiv. “It was a period when the father skimmed off the son’s youth. Barely out of the freedom struggle, he hitched his dreams of growth and prosperity on his son. Seeking immortality through the son, he tended to live his dreams through his son’s life. Such a father, we find, has a very minor role in all AB films, but it is a common theme in them – he either abandons his son or neglects him. This was the context in which the AB type films found mass appeal as a category. “then again, even at a political level, there was a deep sense of loss of cherished authority figures. The 70’s was the era of corruption, of getting nowhere. Till the 60s, there was hope; you actually believed in Nehru, Bose and Gandhi because they stood for certain cherished values and principles.

“That era was eroded in the 70s. Suddenly that abandonment was not just by the biological father, but also the abandonment by the authority figure in society at large, where values and authority were the male aspect of life. Suddenly, you were on shifting sands and Amitabh spoke to everyone who belonged to that era, who identified with that sense of loss of parenting and authority. Where he says ‘the people who abandoned me are these corrupt men’, be it the law, the landlord, the grain-hoarding merchant, or the construction site employers. It were these people he was fighting and he was asking for his place back in society as the person who had a greater right to be there because he was value-driven – so what if he was illegitimate.”

“He is the Karna who is irrevocably born on the wrong side of society,”said Parthiv. “He makes an effort to come back. In a society which is so much about continuity and a comeback. In a society which is so much about continuity and a correct past, how does he overcome his rootless birth and nameless origins? In Trishul, the supreme irony was so very Karna-like, born right but condemned to live as a discard. Or Shakti where he is so devoted to the man who gives shelter, that he is willing to sin for him.”

“Then how did the category ‘AB type films’ lose context?” asked Vikas. “In the case of Dalda, vanaspati lost relevance because health became the new context.”

“The 70s was the right time for the AB type films, not the 60s, not the 80s,” replied Parthiv. “Today, those experiences or sufferings are not relevant. Today, you can be illegitimate, your father can abondon you, it is okay. These can be stories but they cannot hook you ; but in the 70s it was not a story, it was the revelation of the times. The whole idea of legitimacy in the 70s was important because ‘the past’ was important since the future was not much to look forward to. So, what you held valuable was the honour of the past. The idea of preserving, maintaining the past was seen in words like ‘Baapdadaon ki kamai, khandaan ki izzat’.These were born out of a fear of destroying what you had and never a belief that you could build something new; because the 70s did not assure a future, an ability to create a new, build afresh.

“It was a hopeless era. That’s why there was a fear that nothing ahould crumble; at best, you should be able to retain what you had. But today, the past is of no consequence. It is what you can build for the future that is relevant, be it a political manifesto, an organization vision or a career plan. Hence, the obsession of the 70s with the legitimacy of the past. Therefore, the 70s AB type films will not have appeal today.

“Today’s values are different. The idea of marginalisation will always be relevant but the elements will change with times. Therefore, the ingredients of anger, violence, etc., continue but they will be born out of different issues of marginalisation.

“Take a look at what are modern-day issues. For Dalda, taste will have to go with health. In movies, khandaan ki izzat is a soft issue.It doesn’t hold such high appeal any more. Likewise, death is a soft consequence. The modern-day outlook is that life goes on.

“You see it in films like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and in Kaho Na Pyar Hai. They tell you that if your loved one dies, don’t worry, you will find another – one who is probably richer and has a better haircut. Nothing is devastating anymore – life goes on. Two wives are fine; breaking marriages are not shocking anymore;and relationships gone sour are not devastating.”

Then why did AB, the brand, fail?” asked Vikas. “I can understand a temporary setback like in the case of Dalda. The brands superstar status still has high recall though. So, have his abilities diminished?” “Not at all,” said Parthiv. “The attributes of the brand continue to be the same and stellar, but the movies that this brand sold, be it Deewar or Muqaddar, had a certain context in the consumer need, and hence demand. The consumer thought these films were about AB, whereas it was not so. Nobody intended that AB was born out of this category and AB became larger than the category AB type films. Because AB overpowered the category”

“But look at what happened next,” went on Parthiv. “The category had lost value, the brand AB had become overpowering, the industry was sitting on a goldmine, brand AB, and it did not know how to nourish its attributes and values. Overwhelmed by the brand, it began making films for AB.

“Instead of the performer being a part of the film, the film became a vehicle for the performer. The personality of AB became bigger and was now competing with the brand AB. So, films were produced with brand AB. Because for the brand to sell, what was needed was the composition of the AB types. The brand was in harmony only with AB type films, not with the new category it was being thrust into. In marketing parlance, Dalda the super-strong brand name of the 50s,60s and 70s, came to stand for vanaspati and in a more evolved state, edible oils. But brand Dalda cannot sell sandwhich spread in its current form.”

Now, in the 80s, the brand declined with the birth of films like Mard, Coolie – filmmakers misread the man, felt Parthiv. They saw AB films as the man. “Now understand how the market behaved,” he said. “Or how marketers behaved. The brand had been created. It was now a matter of doing another line extension for the brand. Since there was no brand manager, the brand AB was available for anyone who would take on the franchisees. They were supposed to understand the brand. But they misread the brand and marketed it as something else. They were so enamoured by the ingredients in the brand that they mistook the ingredients in the brand that they mistook the ingredients for the brand and constructed things around it like the Mirinda brand. Or they started describing it by component rather than by its core values. So they constructed AB type films, element by element…one Deewar-type scene, one Sholay-type scene. And what they ended up portraying was Amitabh Bachchan, who was so aware of being AB. Look at Mard, Coolie, Shahenshah, Toofan and Jadugar – all these films did not connect. They had the elements but no emotional quality.

“The Mard ilk of movies could not be present a credible background to his angry young man portrayal because the context had gone. The psychological hooking was not there. They were mere stories. No core. Then you depend on the personality, the great actor AB. Now look at Dalda, its birth and genesis in the 60s had a subtle emotional hooking quality in an era when vanaspati was a big breakthrough. In the context of the 60s, it was seen as the credible, dependable cooking medium to the extent that it brooked no competition and became synonymous with the category. In the late 70s and early 80s, with the entry of other edible oils, Dalda vanaspati evolved into Dalda cooking oil which brought with it the hooking of the erstwhile vanaspati. Then when the sunflower oils came in on health platform, Dalda lost context. If the manufacturer had tried to name his sunflower oil Dalda it would have bee like fitting AB into Mard, Coolie, etc. You can’t fit a brand into a story or build a new story around an old brand that had already told a story.

“So, to understand the brand AB, you have to understand the evolution of films and where the brand can fit in with some evolution. The personality of Vijay, the raving crusader avenging his abandonment will not sell. It is too weak. Abondenment is not devastating. It can, at best, be an ingredient but not the gravy – which today is survival with complete disregard of the past.”

“But how does Vijay, the mythical concept of strength in the 70s, evolve?” asked Vikas. “It has evolved into Rahul. In the 90s, the mythical concept is Rahul who wants to blend tradition with modernity. He is relaxed and fun – loving. Every film and commercial has a Rahul. He stands for someone wild, naughty and very comfortable. But AB as Vijay was very uncomfortable. He was restless. You might transact with him but you did not want to get too close to him – he was dangerous and intense. But Rahul is cool. That is why children love Shahrukh Khan,

Vikas could see the similarities. After close to 25 years of unquestioned leadership, Dalda disappeared when cholesterol became an issue. Taste as an attribute had been satisfied but a new need called health presented itself. Then came sunflower oil. Also, he felt, Dalda belonged to an era when the understanding of brands was still evolving and nobody probably realized that brands could outgrow categories. In trying to replace ghee in a family’s larder, Dalda probably said that you could show love for your family in a less expensive way-through vanaspati. It had a context; it did well. Then the context changed and the idea was rewritten by the industry, which said, caring for your family means spending that extra rupee and getting the safer cooking medium. Vikas now felt that the revival of brand AB lay in its genetic code. Every brand, he felt, has a genetic formula. He had seen that the brand AB had been built by the cumulative memory of his various movies, his exploration of the roles and the context in which these movies took birth. It was when the market sought to juxtapose elements that the coherence was lost. And, yet, it was the enduring memory that lent AB a different meaning to different generation of viewers. He had noticed for instance, among brands like Lux, Dalda and Colgate that consumer preference endured. At 50, these consumers continued to revere these brands, which they had bonded with in their youth. Ditto brand AB.

Why else would contestants pitching for crores address him as ‘Sir’, he asked himself. It was the reverence accorded to a successful brand. Naturally, the consumer set was willing to forgive mishaps like Mard and Coolie, regarding these as unrepresentative. For instance, the Pond’s brand was not harmed even when it extended into and failed in soaps. It was Pond’s dreamflower Talc that had left an indelible impression and enduring image. Vikas was sure that brand AB failed because the self appointed franchisees of this brand simply tried to repeat the past, in a present that was vastly different. There was such an inexplicable reverence to the ‘AB type films’ of the 70’s and the 80’s that they sought to recreate that context, unwilling or unable to let brand AB evolve and grow into the changed context. And that was exactly what Dalda could not allow to happen, he knew, Dalda would modernize, based on altered consumer needs of health. He now said: “ Dalda must adapt to the context, through its deliverables and its communication. It must not allow its past to determine its path today and in the future” ‘Ditto AB” said Parthiv. “ This brand continues to be narrowly defined by the splendour and context of the AB type films. BY reinforcing its outdated character, they rendered the brand even more incapable of extension.” The trick, mused Vikas, lay in dissociating brand AB from the category’AB type films’ No doubt, the brand AB would serve as a memory of the AB type films, but what was being overlooked was that brand AB had its own identity, meaning and inner nergy which was quite distinct from the category it modeled for. Yet that was its stumbling block-its larger than life association with an era, which produced an even larger category, the AB type films. So, was the AB type film a category produced by the barnd or the era of the 70s he mused. He realized that both (the brand and the category) were mutually exzclusive and the exclusivity could have been maintained had there been a brand manager. For in a marketing sense, the AB type film was only a surface characteristic of the brand AB, whereas AB, the brand,was, in fact, an artist who could create, innovate and change for a wide variety of emotions, feelings and contexts. Brands like Sanjeev Kumar had done it. If brand AB got stuck, it was because of this preoccupation with the elements of the category AB type films. This unwittingly made AB a prototype brand, thought Vikas as he now switched off the television. The power of a prototype brand is itself self-restricting in that it can,at best, extend into more superior categories, but never into categories where other prototypes exist. In a way the ‘Mard’, Coolie category had prototypes like Jackie Shroff and Anil Kapoor; therefore,an AB could not leave a mark (which is what prototype brands seek to do), change the category or dominate it. By extending into such categories the AB brand itself declined. Thus a Cadbury failed when it tried to extend into biscuits, also because it was a category already dominated by Britannia. Time and again, the decline pointed to an extended and intense association with the category AB type films. The category itself dished out a single product-‘angry young man on the rampage’- with moderate tweaks to its ingredients. Or had the brand aged, wondered Vikas. In a way it could be said that the brand aged because it was not saying new things or doing new things for the consumer who was evolving. . In short the brand did not appear to belong to the changed era. The new era sought expression on the newer changed values. The 90’s individual was no more craving for attention or acceptance. In the 90’s everyone was busy with redefining the status of women, the role of the man as a father and a husband extolling the complete man who wanted to survive through self-evolution.The icons of the modern day individual were Cola, IT, fitness, and the complete man who wanted to‘ Kuch paana hai, kuch kar dikhana hai. Not one who battled a ghost from the past like ‘mera baap chor hai’ or ‘mera baap kaun hai’. Vikas had a distinct feeling that the brand AB born in the tumultuous era of the 70’s, in fact, had the makings of the millennium hero-rough, cool, resilient and determined. Will this brand be allowed to survive, he wondered. Yes, he felt, if it adopts the modern contexts of future goals (Kuch paana hai) and not merely resting on past ghosts (mere paas maa hai).

This cases study of brand Amitabh, as presented by Parthiv Nair has been drawn from the basis work of Santosh Desai, executive vice-president MC Cann Brickson, India.

The Brand Lifecycle

1) Kaun Banega Crorepati, and the brand is on the growth path again, reinvented to serve in a different consumer context, with a relevant consumer proposition.
2) Brands have finite lifecycles determined by the relevance of their core values to the larger socio-economic cultural context in which their target customers live and by the competitive environment they operate in. If either changes, it means it is time to reinvent the brand.
3) It’s important to know that product categories and brands within the category have different lifecycles. 4) Product Life Cycle:- Introduction, growth, maturity & decline are the four stages of product life cycle. Introduction (Zangeer), Growth (Sholay), Maturity (Jadugar, Toofan, Mard) 1st rejuvenation (Khuda Gawah), ABCL-decline again 2nd rejuvenation (Major Saab), Chote Miyan, decline again KBC. 5) The gloom of the 70s gave way to a brighter era. The themes changed from social to economic issues,from obeying authority to freedom of choice. 6) KBC has managed to recycle the brand. It is tapping into the middle- class aspiration of getting rich, exploiting the new openness that it’s okay to make money.’I made it and so can you’, is what it’s saying to the others. 7) Brand handlers must be vigilant about two aspects: its differentiation with respect to competition and its relevance to consumers.
8) The AB brand has made the transition from the angry young underdog fighting for social justice, to a caring achiever, who, having journeyed from rags (in a manner of speaking) to riches, is willing to hold your hand and guide you. What does this new brand have in common with the earlier one? 9) This brand is the Messiah with the Midas Touch. The old one was The Messiah of the Downtrodden Masses. The core value is the same. Only the consumer promise has changed, to become relevant to a changed consumer context.

Product Life Cycle:- Introduction, growth, maturity & decline are the four stages of product life cycle. Introduction (Zangeer), Growth (Sholay), Maturity (Jadugar, Toofan, Mard) 1st rejuvenation (Khuda Gawah), ABCL-decline again 2nd rejuvenation (Major Saab), Chote Miyan, decline again KBC.