As we move into the new financial year of 2024-25, the growth of economy in India is robust and strong, in almost all categories of products and services. In this market environment, there is a war going on, where many battles are fought to catch the consumers’ eye for brand awareness. Fights are on for sales growth and market share too.
In this high growth and fierce confrontationist atmosphere, it is important to follow the strategy that I recommend: Stay; do not stray.
My father always taught me to stay the course and not deviate from the path chosen because, in the long run, that is what would lead to effectiveness and also success. Obviously, much thought goes into choosing the right path, hence his advice: do not to ‘stray’ from it.
What does ‘stay the course’ mean? It is a phrase used in the context of a war, meaning: ‘pursue a goal, regardless of obstacles or criticism’. It means that, after a lot of thought and discussion, once a strategy is decided, it makes sense to follow that strategy through and through, irrespective of hindrances and ridicules one may face while implementing it.
A thousand opinions may come along the way, another thousand doubts may be raised about the path and the strategy you have chosen, but you need to have faith in your own judgement and you need to ‘stay’ the course and not ‘stray’, going with other peoples’ suggestions and advice to change course or deviate from the chosen strategy.
In brand marketing, there are many choices or paths that could be chosen to achieve your objectives. Once you have thought through, discussed and decided on the relevant strategy and the path, it makes sense to ‘stay’ the course, and not ‘stray’ from it, if you truly want effectiveness and success to come your way.
This obviously requires a lot of self-confidence that you have chosen the right strategy and path; it requires a lot of patience for the results to come in; it requires single-minded focus to go your way and not deviate. It also requires a certain amount of internal strength to be able to face ridicule and criticism from so many Doubting Thomases!
In the case of positioning strategy, once a soap chooses the path of using beauty as its main platform, it continues to do so with great success over decades. On the other hand, if another soap chooses hygiene as the value proposition, over the years, it continues on the same path, and gains tremendous success over decades. In both these cases, generation after generation get attracted to the relevant brand, based on the relevant need and the relevant positioning strategy they have chosen. Both the brands achieve sales in thousands of crores of rupees, because they stayed the course and did not stray.
Many other things can come along but the basic strategy has been in place across decades, reinforcing the recommendation ‘stay; do not stray’.
In the case of pricing strategy, if a brand of luxury bag has chosen an ultra-premium pricing strategy and is able to meet its customers only by appointment, bringing out its exclusivity and luxurious image, it has stayed the course, instead of straying away from it, though low-priced brands have made their way into the bag category.
This has made the brand iconic and also aspirational; a brand that is looked up to by its owners and one which makes a status statement about the person who carries it in society. If you have chosen an ultra-premium prestige route, stay with it; do not stray away towards the mid- or mass-market.
Another example is in the case of distribution strategy. In a huge country like India, where there are over 8,000 towns and 680,000 villages, where the population is the largest in the world, you need to be available. If your brand has, over the years, adopted off-line distribution, whether in general trade or modern trade, you cannot junk it and stay away from it suddenly, to go for an ‘online only’ distribution model. That would be straying from your path.
By all means supplement your main distribution strategy and off-line distribution model with online presence, but throwing out the off-line distribution strategy altogether, would be a disaster and could actually make you stray from your original strategy, rather than stay with it.
There are umpteen cases of new age companies, which decided to go only online in terms of distribution, but had to rethink and have presence in off-line distribution too, because the nature of the Indian market demands it. Of course, online can supplement it and, over the next few decades also grow, but it does not mean that your original strength of off-line distribution should be strayed away from.
In fact, you should stay with it, enhance it, modernise it and allow the consumer to have the touch and feel like he or she actually used to. So, while you are moving ahead successfully, there should be one primary strategy of distribution with some secondary and tertiary supplemental strategies.
There are many instances where, out of pressure or temptation, people stray away from their main course. It is not sensible.
Therefore, my recommendation is, stay, do not stray
The author is cmd, Samsika Marketing Consultants. He can be reached at jk@samsika.com