Brand Watch: Dabur's Yoodley

Ever since I decided to stop drafting agreements, and abandon my corporate law career, for being a 'shop-keeper' (as most Indians call small to medium scale retailers), my worried mother has asked me what it is about sitting at the cash counter in sweltering Calcutta heat in a 200 square feet shop that I like so much that I continue to put myself through what she clearly perceives to be an 'ordeal'. Every now and then, she asks me tactfully, if I have finally been bored, sitting at the cash counter, with a faint hope that I would concede and go back to being a lawyer. 

But then, the truth is that I have never been bored, and far from it, after years and years of consumer gazing at shopping malls and sabzi mandis, most of which began with my shopping trips with my mother to local markets, getting the first-point perspective of observing Indian customers is probably the most fun thing for a struggling business-woman, while making little or no money on most days.

And, why wouldn't it be ? Indian consumer grass-root shopping experience is so vibrant and nuanced and so little captured in academic business writings (which captures predominantly the western  world market) that there is literally no way to get a hang of it, unless one sits in one of those of God damn cash counters for a while. 

First look at the incredibly diverse and unrelated items all retailers stock up -  in fact, small Indian retailers, popularly known as Kiranas (the colloquial equivalent of 'Mom and Pop shops') are so versatile and diverse in their stock inventory that it is not surprising to find a shop selling radio sets as well as potatoes. And in that, they are not any less diversely stocked than bigger shopping malls, albeit at a much smaller scale. 

I don't run a Kirana shop. I run a chemist shop. Not surprisingly, Chemist Shops in India often double up as part-grocery stores, stocking up soft drinks, shampoos sachets, nail polish removers, and all and sundry. My small shop is no exception to that. And why not ? Every now and then there is a request for products ranging from Loreal Burgundy Hair Colour to Nestle Qadbury Chocolates, and every foot-fall, as any retailer would tell you, matters. 

So, about a couple of months, the door-to-door sales manager from Dabur, after taking order for its regular ayurvedic medicated products, set out on the front desk counter a few packets of richly coloured drinks in paper packets, and said "Madam, this is exactly like 'Paper Boat'. Dabur has just launched this under the 'Hajmola Brand' and we have good offers. Keep a few and it will fly out of your counter in no time." 

Wait, but what is 'Paper Boat'? The sales-men at the counter had never heard of 'Paper Boat'. Of course, I had and totally been in love with  their Jal Jeera flavour, a regular on most flights, where it is regularly served since its launch in 2013. Clearly, Paper Boat is a niche market product and it didn't have any mass market visibilty like the Coke-s and Pepsi-s  or even the popular Indian, non-carobonated, mango based drinks like Mazza and Slice. That's why the salesmen, who had barely anything more than high school education but an innate skill to remember stock of nearly 7000 odd medicines, had no clue about it. 

And to make things worse, they couldn't even guess what it was. Do you drink it directly ? Do you add it to water ? Do you need to refrigerate it ? Do you need to drink in one go ? After all,  it wasn't a bottled cola drink or any other drinks that came in a bottle, a format they had been familiar with. It came in a  paper packet with a lid on it, a format very unknown to the mass-market, and had only been used by Paper Boat so far. 

The most experienced salesman at my shop looked at the rates offered, and concluded it was a very good introductory offer with very good margins for us. After all, it was priced only at 30 rupees and we could keep one sample of each to see how it fares, right at the front counter, with maximum visibility to all the customers. Dabur has been a very trusted Indian FMGC brand for decades, and Hajmola has been an iconic digestive pill, widely popular, and a common household favorite across generations. In his decade long experience as a pharmaceutical retail salesman, he has been very wary of new companies and products, which do not fly off the counter and then companies which go bust before withdrawing unsold expired goods from retailers, but he trusted Dabur and believed the brand name would sell it easily off the counter. 

Like that, Yoodley ended up on the counter, and instead of flying off the counter in a jiffy, it took a good two months to sell all the six samples !

From my cash-counter view, I saw all the customers, ranging from middle class house-wives to retired government servants, picking it up with great inquisition and asking the same questions which the sales guys had asked in the first place - Do you drink it directly ? Do you add it to water ? Do you need to refrigerate it ? Do you need to drink in one go ?! Each of them would turn the packet left and right, front and back, with some trying to squeeze or smell,  and then keep it back on the counter dispassionately. First, I would tell me them that it was like 'Paper Boat' and it fell blank with them. So then I began to tell them it was like Maaza, a popular mango drink made by Coca Cola and they needed to do the same thing - drink straight out of the packet and refrigerate, prior to drinking, if they wanted it chilled.

Thus, here's my first question  - 

A ) How important is the physical design of a product, esp. for a product that is being introduced into the market, to be in a format familiar to the consumer ?

Clearly, Dabur has missed the mark by completely copying entirely an unfamiliar format of its product based on presentation of an earlier launched product, i.e. Paper Boat. Other than the fact that it was confusing to consumers, even for those who knew about Paper Boat, it made it look exactly like it was copying Paper Boat - which can't be a good branding strategy to begin with, given that both the products are priced similarly. 

Unless Dabur begins spending bag fulls of money on advertisement to educate the customers on what the product is  (which it subsequently began), why not stick to a familiar physical format, esp when the core products in terms of the flavours  (Awaara Aam Panna, Nimboora Shikanji, Go Goa Guava, Jhakaas Jaljeera, Golmaal Golgappa and Kabhi Kala Kabhi Khatta) are all new.

To add to that, Indian consumers like to touch, feel and see a product before buying, and a hidden drink inside a paper packet wasn't going to get them to trust the product instantly. 

Note to future business-magnet self : Never, never, ever (as Arnab Goswami puts it) confuse the consumer. Do not give them things they have no clue about. And if one new identity is confusing, don't double confuse the consumer with two new things - a new product and a new physical format. And of course, if you are small company with limited marketing budget relying entirely on word of mouth, this could be your death knell. Like seriously !!

Now for the second question :

B) How to make a product aesthetically and psychologically more enticing and informative with the product design of logos and images ?

Yoodley comes in very rich, and un-enticing colours, which are not even associated with imageries of food from any angle. Would you, for example, think of eating anything that is coloured purple ? A food product should be coloured such that it automatically triggers enticement to the brain as an edible product and Yoodley's colour scheme totally failed on this count. The crazy doodles on it are more appropriate for selling children's stationary products and not a food product. This explains why even children and young adults, the more susceptible target group for products such as this, failed to show much excitement in trying out this product. 

And then, there was the fundamental flaw that nearly nothing on the design indicated it was a food product. There were no images of the core fruit flavours on the design - no guava for the Go Goa Guava, no Aam fro Aware Aam Panna. and such. 

Paper Boat on the other hand is a clear winner - the design is clean, on a white background, and provides for cheerful imageries of the core fruit ingredient. Even if a consumer would know nothing about Paper Boat, can still guess it was a mango drink or a jamun drink. 

Note to future marketing stud self:  Pay designers for clear informative designs of product. And don't have doodlers do the professional task. Finally, food products should look like food products, and not stationary sets. As Ogilvy said it long back, providing information through advertising is best way to sell a product.