It has been 5 years since I updated about this brand. Last time I wrote about this brand, Daikin was having a fair share of voice with lot of ads focusing on the Silence attribute. The brand was running the " Complete Silence " ads for a while and then went into silence for five long years. I don't remember any campaign from Daikin during the last five years ( atleast in my place). But even without any hype, the brand still commands around 5% of the Indian residential A/C market. The brand may be doing the sales activities in the B2B market in these years but in the consumer market, Daiken was having complete silence.
In this IPL 2011, the brand started making some noise. The brand is now showing some reminder ads and the presence is also felt in OOH media.
What is interesting about the brand now is that it has been repositioned. The brand has done away with the attribute based positioning and is trying out the Country of Origin proposition. The brand has adopted the positioning " With Love from Japan " . From a highly creative Complete Silence to basic Made in Japan tag seems intriguing.
Along with the tag, the brand seems to have adopted some aspects of parent company's approach to branding. Infact the brand has imported some brand elements from the parent. Daikin now introduces a mascot for the brand - a character called Pichon- Kun. Pichon-Kun is a mascot which is a droplet with a small body. The mascot embodies the brand's philosophy of best of nature, fresh and eco-friendly.
Globally, the brand uses the tagline " Here , There , Everywhere".
The new brand line " With Love from Japan " at first sounded very archaic to me. I thought that the era of Made in Japan tag was over. But on thinking, I have a feeling that this could work in practical sense better than high profile branding stuff. The association of quality and innovation is still very much connected with Japanese products. But the issue is that most of Japanese brands sell their Chinese made products so the manufacturing excellence associated with Japanese products have diminished significantly. If Daikin could reinforce the connection of quality and Country of Origin, then the consumers will embrace the product.
The brand has been existence in India for the last 10 years . The brand has a market share of hardly 5 %. This surely means that the brand has not reached its potential. One of the factor being the lack of investment in brand building.
The brand can boost its sales if it could position itself as a true blood Japanese product (like Toyota) emphasizing on quality , innovation etc. But that need a series of campaigns reinforcing each of those attributes rather than just advertising the " Made in Japan " tag.
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