Adi Godrej on rebranding initiatives

Chairman of Godrej Group, Adi Godrej has been all over the place lately; thanks to the company's new look and marketing strategy. For a 110-year-old plus brand that has rarely been loud when it comes to its marketing, this aggressive advertising and rebranding initiative definitely comes as a noticeable change. Four generations of family business and a century-plus of existence- that is the "Godrej" brand for you; a brand that has had such a high recall value that there was a time when the brand name actually replaced the category itself ! Like an almirah for instance! (Godrej's old advertisement- Godrej Storewell- we have this ad -used for the 15th August special)

In the 80s, Godrej's jingles were some of the most recalled, but post that the brand settled for focussed distribution shying away from high profile advertising.

And now, Godrej not only has got itself a more vibrant and youthful brand makeoever, it has upped its ad spends by 25 per cent of its sales which is the highest it has ever allocated on a marketing strategy! And what is more it has set a precedence of sorts by choosing the IPL platform to unveil its new look!


NDTV: Hi Mr Godrej, wonderful having you on. Firstly- what does this marketing strategy entail?

Adi Godrej: Well, we realised few years ago that our master brand, the Godrej brand, 110-years-old, needed rejuvenation, a fresh look. India is changing rapidly, our businesses are changing rapidly. We needed an alignment of the brand with our business, consumers, employees, India getting younger and younger every year, so we decided to appoint 'Interbrand', the London based, well known brand consultancy agency to study the Godrej brand, do consumer research, work out with our team how we need to reposition the Godrej brand and how we need to reposition it relative to our businesses and how the businesses can contribute to the brand as a whole.

NDTV: This is the first time that Godrej is planning to get a corporate branding along with the individual brand campaigns, is that correct?

Adi Godrej: Yes, we have had some of this earlier, but never in a very coordinated, concerted manner; so this will be for the first time that we are doing this group wide- we formed a strategic marketing group which my daughter Tanya heads, across the group companies that will direct the way forward in this activity "GODREJ". Over the last 3 years there has been somewhat of a tipping point. India is growing very rapidly, playing a much bigger part in the economy of the world; we are ourselves globalising much more rapidly- today 20 per cent of our group turnover comes from outside India- so we thought this was a good time- maybe we could have done 2 years earlier or 2 years later but we chose this as an appropriate time to reposition.

NDTV: Hrithik Roshan doing the Cinthol campaign; and before Cinthol was a bit louder than the rest of your brands when it came to your advertising and marketing attention, and now again you are pumping in more time and money into this brand; can you elaborate on this?

Adi Godrej: As we are repositioning the master Godrej brand we have changed a lot of not just the advertising but the products itself, in many; for example, in Cinthol- like you rightly mentioned, we used brand ambassadors in the past. We have recently taken on Hrithik Roshan as the brand ambassador, we have redesigned all the products, we are re-staging all the Cinthol products- the soaps, the talcs, the spray deodorants, a new campaign has been developed! We have appointed other brand ambassadors- for example, some of them have been for a while, some are new- for example, Preity Zinta is the brand ambassador for our appliances. As you mentioned Katrina Kaif is brand ambassador for new hair colours, Dhoni is the brand ambassador for Bryll Creem and Kiwi ; Soha Ali Khan has recently been appointed brand ambassador for Ambi Pure, Rani Mukerjee endorses Good Night...I may have forgotten some of the other new brand ambassadors, but we have appointed lots of new brand ambassadors, new campaigns, we have large budgets alloted to our new ad campaigns, and so our total spends on marketing will also increase quite considerably.

NDTV: So, what are your spends like?

Adi Godrej: Well, it will evolve but I expect that our brand, our spends on marketing across the group will exceed Rs 600-700 crore this financial year. On advertising alone, we will spend upwards of Rs 200 crore.

NDTV: Are you spending a lot on btl (below the line)?

Adi Godrej: Yes, it is all across the TV, press, internet hoardings, outdoor- so across the board but the main expenditure will be on TV.

NDTV: Can you tell the break up please?

Adi Godrej: No I am not sure but I would say upwards of 60 per cent would be on TV.

NDTV: What is the business objective of this? What do you hope to achieve with this?

Adi Godrej: Business objectives are two fold- our businesses should do very well, we expect to grow our top line by at least 30 per cent by the end of this year and our bottom line by a little more than that despite the much higher spends on advertising; and secondly we expect the value of the Godrej brand to rise dramatically.

NDTV: On a little more personal level- Adi Godrej 'as a man', how are you taking these changes? Are you happy about them?

Adi Godrej: Yes, very happy. Some of these changes would not have occurred or come naturally to me after being in the business for many many years but the young people in our business, the young professional managers, the young fly members are very clear that this is the way forward and after having been briefed by them, I totally agree with them and the way forward has my total support and I think it will do us tremendous good.

NDTV: According to you how big a role does marketing play?

Adi Godrej: It is a very strong role but that has been throughout history because we have been very brand oriented, in the times when Indian businesses did not tend to be very brand oriented- a lot of international companies were brand oriented. We have always competed with a lot of international companies, and have always been very brand oriented but now much more so and as India grows more rapidly and globalises we fully realise that brand equity will be a very important way forward for the Godrej group.

NDTV: It was really nice talking to you...

Adi Godrej: Very nice talking to you- thank you.