PINCH OF NAMAK

12th March 1930. Most of us might not even remember the day. It was the first act of organized opposition to British rule When the Mahatma broke salt laws in Dandi at the conclusion of the march on April 6, it sparked large scale acts of civil disobedience against the British Raj salt laws by millions of Indians. Well, if not British Raj, this day might have surely inspired a lot of companies to venture into the most basic of all products. To begin with, I remember our eco faculty talking about price inelasticity of demand - Salt is a cheap but an essential good. As the price of salt increases, people do not tend decrease their consumption of salt. And possibly in the marketing sense of it, salt is one product which is mass product. Across segmentation the “customer needs” are the same. Talking of stats, did you know India is the third largest salt producing country in the world with an average annual production of about 148 lakh tones?
These days, there is a TVC run by NIRMA SHUDH NAMAK. Ahh remember that oversmart kid a few years ago, educating the baniyaa? “Shudh nahi samajhte kya?” A much better TVC this time, with positioning efforts not pretty evident. Lets dwell deeper into the case.
NIRMA- a name which is synonymous with the detergent offering, I still remember an hour long discussion in our branding lectures on why they should have used Multiple Branding strategy instead of Brand Extension. But thats another story. Now that the Brand managers at NIRMA decided to play it safe, they have NIRMA SHUDH NAMAK.
Lets see what they have done here. They have shown the raw vegetables in a salad running away from the bombardment of ordinary namak(I like using this word instead of salt). And when they jump out of the window, they see the same NIRMA girl emerging from the sunlight and the vegetables are happy again.
Come to think of it, a very naive campaign. Thanks to the brand managers at TATA Chem (TATA NAMAK), HUL (Annapurna Namak) etc using a bit of rationality in a low involvement product like salt by launching Line Extensions like TATA Salt Lite or the Annapurna Namak’s brilliant Iodised Positioning, the marketing efforts of NIRMA are very lousy. Why?
a. You don’t have a clear differentiation. Why should a habitual buyer of a TATA Salt go for your salt. TATA Salt also has refined free flow technology. What you are showing is grounded ordinary khara namak.
b. No rational factor – Is it good for my or my family’s health? If not is only daana daana ek samaan the reason for purchasing? Thanks but no thanks!

Also a humble request to the professors of BSchools to not glamorise this case by pointing out that the failure of this product is because of the name. I disagree, lack of value positioning is the key for any failure of this product. When NIRMA might have calculated the market size and thought of venturing into its only edible product, they should have totally got their product and positioning of the product correct.
A request to NIRMA, you created magic with your detergent kitty, one way of possible being an ambitious FMCG basket is by launching a few more SKUs in Food segment. Then the acceptability would also be evident. But for the time being, as my guru Jack Trout and Al Reis plead “DIFFERENTIATE OR DIE”