Rebranding and Product Life Cycle

This goes back to my previous post 'Rebranding – Let’s Google It'. I have gone around explaining people why I took such a stand. (This proves my point of our loyalty and being undemanding.)
Many asked me why we should try to make a change when already things are going good and fine. Should we change the winning strategy that has proved to be such a big money spinner? To answer this I have a simple explanation: Either we can wait for the competition to catch up and then react, or realize the time and deliver something which keeps us ahead of the competition, and let others always play a catch-up. Now this stand is good for any product in any market condition, and surely Google is no exception.
This time I want to be more generic in my views rather being specific to one product. I have a theory which is MY explanation to the product life cycle.

Every product has to go through a life cycle, from the time it was launched. The time frames can be divided into three parts:
1. Short Term
2. Medium Term
3. Long Term

This time frame changes from product to product, market to market. Like in the field of electronics and technology the whole life cycle may last a years or half more, in case of consumer and daily utility goods it may be a couple of years.

Lets look at each stage and analyze it.

Short Term:
When a product is launched and marketed, it gains acceptability and thus user base increases from 0 to a certain market percent. This growth usually is fast and exponential. As the market base increases it brings in revenue which can be used further to increase the market hold, tap untouched markets and advertise more. All this while customer base is increasing at a very fast pace. At this time focus is more on growth and marketing.

Medium Term:
Product is in the market from sometime and has tapped some market share. At this stage customer base stabilizes. Many become loyal customers and many new customers are added. Many leave the product also. At this time revenue is still being generated in positive direction, but the growth that was seen at an earlier phase is not there. Many competitors also enter in the market and try to pull customers. At this point focuses is more on retaining the customer and expand also. Different policies of price reduction or gift schemes are brought in to maintain the hype.

Long Term:
Now the particular product has been in the market for a considerable period, it has been able to retain loyal customer, competition has increased and many of the customers have shifted to a different product, market condition and people taste has also changed. Since customer base is diminishing, revenue also comes down. Focus is on price cutting and advertisement to pull in more customers. This put more pressure on the net revenues.



This is the time when usually product goes for rebranding or EOL.

Question is what do we want the destiny of our product to be? If we are looking at it as one of the biggest revenue spinner for the company then surely the enhancement and rebranding has to be thought at the medium stage and comes into effect before we say the product enters the last stage. This is important to remain ahead of competition and sustain the market share.

What other benefits we can have from it?
We can also look at increasing the customer base as the product has gone for a face lift; the right marketing strategy recreates the hype. Many of the customers who may have shifted will come back. New customer will also be added. This in tern will have an effect on the revenue. Competitors may have to re-pace themselves to do a catch-up again, and the product can enjoy high market share for some more time.

Time and again this theory has proved successful to many. Apple i-pod nano is one of the biggest example of it. 'i-pod' mini was taken out of the market to introduce 'nano' which recreated the hype to such an extant that, people who already had i-pods went on to buy nano for the sake of it. This is clever marketing strategy and surely is bold and daring. Everyone knows how it has turned the fortune of Apple and its competitors.
If we take example of Nokia and Sony in mobile phone market, almost every month we have a new product being launched. Many a times the phone has just one new feature added, but is released with a different name, to recreate the hype. Off course no one is complaining but that’s what happens when the customers are demanding, more choices and better product.

All this while writing this entry, 4 lines from Roger Waters kept coming into my head. Thought they are worth mentioning:
"By the grace of God Almighty
and pressure of the market place
the human race
has civilized itself
ITS A MIRACLE"

Rebranding - 'Lets Google it'

Me and my friend Rohit always have these small talks about the world of business and trends. Todays topic was one of my favorite 'GOOGLE'.

Google is my homepage, I use Google mail, Google personalized page, Google Toolbar, Google Earth, Blogger.... and every thing else that comes from it.
I hardly remember using anyother search engine EVER and have this strong feeling that if its not found on Google, maybe its not there on the net at the first place. sOO many times I have felt 'Lucky', and admired the GoOgLe LoGo.

But the thing that always haunted is the gOOgle hOme paGE and search results. You look at the Google home page and everything looks so clean, a page which has less than 50 words on it is the door to all the information on the web. It is in this awe and admiration that we realize that this is the single page which is driving a company worth $80 billion.

What is the shelf life of a mobile phone or your favourite thing that you use every day. May be few months, after that we all get bored of seeing the same thing. But Google homepage has withstood the test of time for so many years that, it still is the best thing on the web you know.
I dont know how many other examples we can find which have such big usage and user base. May be it is this mystery that so may things have been written about it.

Whenever we talk about branding and marketing we always say that every product has a limited life, after that either its End Of Life for it or a complete make over.
Take example of any product in any field be it gadget world of mobile phones, media players, gaming devices, computer hardware, computer operating systems like Windows, Linux all have felt the pressure of the customer to change the product completely or bring in a new product, be it in terms of new look and feel or new features.

But here we hardly see any change happening. Only thing may have changed is the search result ranking or unnoticed features of caluclator and spelling check.
Any change in terms of search that was big and noticed - nothing. We are just relieved to find what we were searching for that too after checking 2 - 3 different results.
Have we as a consumer become less demanding, or have we run out of imagination of what to expect? Or are we looking at a product which has send many marketing theories for rebranding or EOL.
We as users are so loyal that we have made our self resilient to change for our favourite tool and have succumbed to the statement that 'If its not on Google, its not on the Web.'

No doubt the search results are fantastic. The way search results are returned is great. But as a customer(user) dont we want to see more. May be a different presentation of search results, some added information about the results and many more similar things. Many of the competitors are coming with new search algorithms and presentations. Microsoft’s live.com is being marketed big time these days, grokker.com which gives you categorization based search result, previewseek.com is another example. Though they have a long way to catch up, but then they also cannot be written off the competition completely.

Are we exepcting anything new, I am not sure, but i surely feel that its time for google to deliver a surprise and we fulfill our duty of GooGLing.

Choice or by Chance?

"We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact."
-Jean-Paul Sartre

How true and cruel the quote is. It’s just a feeling that we want something, we are sure we want it, but what it is, many of us do not know. We keep planning short term goals, but not all are sure of long term ones.
I used to interpret life like: 'Many of the things happen to us by chance and not by choice.' Sometime we just swim with the flow and reach on the side. If waves had taken us on to the other side, we would have found our comfort there. It’s all about chance and finding comfort in the things that have come to us.
Same with our job and career. Many of us never planned our career to be like this. It just happened by chance. We got into a company because we needed some where to start, or it paid better salary and promised good work. We got some work, found our comfort and learning in it and tried to comfort our self. Not many people have answer why they chose a particular company or an industry.

What do we want?
The first and foremost priority is money. Every one wants to cover basic needs and keep something for later safety. May be once we have enough to buy a house, a car - we feel settled.
But Maslows law never let us settle, as once our money needs are satisfied others like Work, Ego, Esteem, Recognition takes over. These needs are the motivational factors as they are the ones which motivate us to 'make things happen by choice and not by chance.'

Responsibility
But then life is also about taking responsibility.What ever it be, even if I achieve something by chance or choice, it becomes my responsbility to be best at it. Sometime we may end up getting more by chance, but then its beacuse we tried for it, and now we have to keep it. Surviving and taking up the challenge, facing and standing for it, is now my accountability and responsibility.

I feel it’s all about planning and executing accordingly. Plan what we want from life. Is it just about work, making money, competition to stay ahead, or is it more to cover dimensions of friends and family, your personal happiness in doing what you always wanted. Planning may make you feel mechanical and not living up the moment, but then its wish to flow or to be in control. Surely life is much more than that, it’s also about living and enjoying.

It takes a lot of courage and determination to look on the other side of the wall and carve our own path. But then that’s life and living it to the complete. May be its all about finding what we want and be responsible for what we are.

Developing Countries and India Inc.

My friend gave me some food for thought by writing this. He has brought out a point that developing countries hold an edge on the developed nations.

If we are looking at a country like India things may sound ok as India is growing exponentially and has come out very strongly on world map as one of the biggest service industry. But many of the other countries in African, South East Asia and South American continents have long way to go as in term of education, infrastructure etc.

There’s a theory that goes like this: As a developing countries tend to grow at a faster pace the money gets pumped into the economy. As people have more money to spend, consumption inside the country grows. The companies thus in various sectors grow positively. New market leader emerges, various smaller companies supporting the primary industries also gains. So all in all we see a rapid positive movement everywhere. Which is what i believe India is going through now. There’s a sense of pace in the economy, a wave of growth.

Many of the companies growing locally try to break internationally and expand their market. This is the time when reality of economics hit.

Does these companies have enough fund and international backing to come out as a competitor? Secondly do they have something new to offer which can change the market dynamics.
Most of the companies making big have played more like a clone to an already existing companies providing similar kind of goods and services. Many of the companies in India and other countries have grown to be a service provider to huge MNCs, who are while you are reading this are actually shaping the world. These service providers no doubt have made big impact on the MNCs growth, but does it itself has the potential to imagine similar growth for itself.
They may have right management, a right product but then everything again boils down to 2 facts Money and backing.

Sometime it is hard to believe that a country living on aide from a developed countries and world bank, produces a company which can emerge as a challenge to big international companies.

But then is the dream impossible?
The dream of making big may be a bit difficult but is not impossible. As in India we have big companies coming out like Infosys in Software, ICICI Bank, Reliance in telecom and petro. They have really made extraordinary growth in last few years. many of the other companies are putting their foot in the international biz either by acquisitions or launching their own offices. Many of these companies have right market strategy and right aggressive management. And I don’t think that day is far when we can also have a truly MNC head quartered in India which will be shaping new market strategy.