Guest Lecture by Mr. Vikram Bahl

Mr. Vikram Bahl, Marketing Head, Kellogg’s India, took a guest lecture at SIMSREE on revolutionary positioning ideas. Mr. Bahl started out by defining a brand. He said a brand is an idea that should make people talk about it. Positioning on the other hand is the space occupied by a product in the mind of a consumer relative to competing products.

The next question which arises is, how do you go about positioning? There are 4 points to be followed here.

1. Who is the customer?  You should define who you are targeting.

2. Who else is talking to the customer? That is, you should know your competition.

3. You should know your customer through detailed market research.

4. Finally, you should fill a gap in your customers life.

For a product to truly succeed and to be truly memorable, the positioning of the product has to be revolutionary. According to Mr. Bahl, there are five points to be followed to make the positioning revolutionary-

1. The product should make a positive difference to the customer’s life

2. It should entail a deep understanding of the customer’s life

3. You should have the first mover advantage

4. You should be true to customer

5. You should stay committed to your idea

Mr. Bahl illustrated his talk with various examples ranging from Surf Excel, Tata Tea, McDonald’s Happy Price menu and Kellogg’s own Special K breakfast cereal.

Surf Excel’s campaign positioned the detergent in a very unique fashion by focussing on the ‘Daag Acche hain’ concept. Other detergents generally focus on the white colour, or softness of fabric after use etc. But Surf, which is projected as a premium brand, focuses on the fact that stains are a part of life and not necessarily bad.

Tata tea’s campaign was focussed on ‘Jaago re’ , wherein the tea was used to signify not just getting up from sleep, but awakening to ones responsibilities.

Similarly the Kellogg’s Special K campaign generated a lot of interest and sales were up by huge margins after the very first month itself.

The lecture gave us a very good insight into the importance of positioning and the way in which good positioning can be used to turn around a brand. We hope to have many more lectures like this in the future.