Brand Update : Sparx adds Akshay Kumar to its Life

Sparx, the shoe brand from Relaxo has replaced the brand ambassador Neil Nitin Mukesh with the Action Superstar Akshay Kumar. 

Relaxo Footwear Ltd , the owner of the brand is on a roll these days. The company is seriously in to celebrity driven branding and has roped in stars like Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif to endorse its brands Hawaii and Flite respectively.

For the sports shoe brand Sparx, the brand chose to rope in a new brand ambassador - Akshay Kumar. The brand is running its print campaign now featuring the new celebrity.

As far as the brand's personality and positioning is concerned, Akshhay fits the bill perfectly. Akshay is the most atheletic Bollywood star and is the ideal pick for a sports brand. How ever, the celebrity is highly stereotyped by the ad campaigns and his stunt-oriented ad campaigns have lost the wow factor due to this stereotyping . Brands have failed to exploit his personal characteristics and is lured by the obvious athleticism and martial art stunts.

Sparx also is using the star in the same manner. This also-ran theme does not do any good to the brand except for some amount of attention and a possible recall. Sparx could have gained a lot if it tried to exploit Akshay Kumar's personal qualities like confidence, self-made, hardworking nature etc rather than just those flying kicks.

Akshay would definitely help the brand gain more eyeballs nationally but the way the ad campaigns are executed will define the brand's position in comparison with competitors. With global brands like Nike , Reebok etc have lowered their price points to cover the mass market, Sparx should try to make use of its celebrities much more powerfully rather than just gain brand awareness.

Related Brand

Sparx

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Marketing Funda : Marketing and Osborne Effect

Osborne effect is a phenomenon where the sales of an existing product gets affected because of the announcement of future products. Osborne Effect's story goes like this :- During 1980s, Osborne computer corporation was a highly successful computer manufacturing firm which marketed the personal computer named Osborne 1. The chairman of the corporation Mr. Adam Osborne during 1983 announced several future models promising consumers highly efficient and fast machines. When he made the announcements, none of these machines were in the pipeline.

The announcement prompted a heavy cancellation of orders of Osborne 1 because consumers and trade expected the arrival of advanced machines. This event have virtually driven the company to bankruptcy ( although many other reasons also contributed to it ). Source : Wiki , Report

The same effect is now played out in the case of Nokia- a brand which is struggling at the onset of competition from Apple and affordable Chinese brands. Nokia in 2011 announced with much fanfare, its tie-up with Microsoft for the mobile O/S. Nokia announced the shift in the OS from Symbian to Windows much before the actual shift. The first shock for existing Symbian users who began to ditch the existing Symbian models in favor of other platforms like Android. 

Then came the much touted Nokia Lumia with the hyped Windows Mango ( 7.5). The well designed Lumia range was expected to lift the fortunes of Nokia in the smartphone category. The company also launched an affordable version of Lumia in the Indian market thus effectively covering various price-points. 

Then came the announcement of Microsoft about the Windows 8 and the shock that the existing Lumia phones will not be upgradable to the new much talked about Windows 8 platform. No wonder, many of the prospective Lumia buyers will be postponing their purchase.

The trouble is not with Nokia alone. Even Android based mobiles also are facing the issue of frequent upgrades and the existing phones not being able to be upgraded to the new platforms. Google has rapidly introduced upgrades from Froyo to Gingerbread to Icecream Sandwich within a short span of time much to the confusion of  consumers and marketers.

One needs to learn from Apple on how to handle this rapid changes in the technology and specifications. Apple has an advantage since it is tightly controlling the eco-system. It makes the entire upgradation process highly secretive and this prevents any shocks on the existing inventory and product line. 

Android based phone marketers have a huge issue since the platform upgrades are beyond their control. So how can a marketer prevent Osborne effect when they do not have control over the platform changes.? The million dollar question is whether the consumer buy a Ginger Bread Android Phone even after the launch of Icecream Sandwich ? 

The only way is to build a powerful brand having value more than the platform. So till now, the Android makers were riding the equity of Google and Android ingredient brand. But to insulate the after-effects of platform changes, one needs to build their own brand showing more value so that consumers doesn't ditch the brand because of future version announcements. 

Another method is to customize the product so that consumers are lured by the customization rather than the platform itself . Amazon has tried to do that in the Kindle Fire where  the version is customized and hence the user experience is owned by Amazon rather than Android.

Brands can also insulate itself by building a comprehensive package of features and attributes rather than just depending on one single platform.

In the new fight over the platforms, the key to success is the user experience. Firms are now forgetting this and running after platforms. Although platforms are important, it will be the unique user experience that will be luring your customers to your product

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ONN Inners : Keep It On

Brand : ONN
Company : Lux Hosiery

Brand Analysis Count : #514

ONN is the new brand of premium innerwears from the house of Lux Hosiery. The brand is targeting its share in the high growth premium men's innerwear segment. Indian innerwear market is worth around Rs 13000-14000 crores. The market is equally split among organized and unorganized players. The men's inner-wear segment is worth around Rs 5800 crore. According to reports, the premium segment in this market is growing at a scorching pace of around 40%.

It is in this context that the launch of ONN gains significance. Lux Hosiery has been a dominant player in the innerwear market with its Lux brand of inners. Lux gained prominence in the affordable segment with its celebrity endorsements and the famous slogan " Ye ander ki baat hain ". Lux had the brands Lux Cozi and GenX with endorsers like Sunny Deol and Neil Nithin Mukesh.

ONN has gained lot of eyeballs by roping in Shahrukh Khan as its brand ambassador. The brand is running its campaigns across the media

Watch the TVC : ONN with Shahrukh

Just like most of the innerwear brands except Jockey, ONN also is following the celebrity centered brand building route. The saddest part is that there is nothing more to the branding strategy other than the celebrity. 

Here also there is Shahrukh Khan and the brand ONN. The brand owners failed to convey any meaningful message for this brand. For a low priced inner-wear brand, creating brand awareness is the key to success. But for a premium brand, it needs to justify the premium and a mere celebrity endorsement may not work. The task becomes more important when there are international brands like Jockey upping its noise and most of the readymade brands like Vanheusen , Louis Philleppe etc have their own innerwears. 

The quality of the TVC is  much below standards interms of theme and execution.The ad doesn't suit the premium segment but will be ideal for a low priced segment. By choosing a hyperbole around the movie Don and with a stereotyped characters has virtually downgraded the positioning to a lower level brand. The brand's site says that ONN wants to fight Jockey but with this kind of creatives, the dream will be a distant one.

ONN needs to focus more on creating a credible differentiator or atleast position itself on the basis of some important attributes like Fit, Design, Range, Comfort etc. Just having an expensive brand ambassador will not work well in the segment it is in.

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