Asian Paints

The story of the evolution of Asian Paints as a brand is interesting. The brand now has an iconic status in the industry thanks to some blockbuster big ideas from O&M. The brand once positioned as a mass market brand has evolved itself to a higher plane. Indian paint industry can be broadly divided into two segments Decorative segment constitutes around 75 % of the total paint industry and Asian Paints is the market leader with around 44% share. In the Industrial segment, Nerolac is the market leader. In the decorative segment, it is interesting to see how Asian Paints have changed the buying process of the product like paints.

Paints are usually considered to be a low involvement product. In earlier times, the decision of the brand was taken by the builder/contractor and the home owners does not involve much in the process may be the decision of color rest with the house owners. Asian Paints realized the need for brand building even during sixties. But at that point of time, the company had a wide range of brands/subbrands.

The focus of the company was on product innovation and service network and managing quality proposition. The brand focused on mass and rural market. Asian Paints had a mascot called Gattu who was created by the celebrated cartoonist R K Laskhman. These efforts made the brand a leader during the late sixties. Then the company realised that although volume justified the leadership position, share of mind for the brand was very low.That was the result of the mass segmentation adopted by the brand. Rightly so because the industry was driven by channel driven promotions, building a brand at that time was" uncommon sense".

During 1983, the company tried to reposition the brand as a premium brand. Asian Paints initiated the corporate campaign aimed to position the company as the number one player in the industry.The objective was to upgrade to a more margin premium product marketer .The corporate campaign " Spectrum of Excellence" was aimed to increase the Salience of the brand in a quiet market. But this campaign failed to inspire any interest in the consumers and the company felt that the market is moving towards a commodity market where price is the most important differential.

Asian Paints undertook a consumer research aimed at understanding the perception of consumers about the product category. The research revealed lot of interesting insights. Consumers felt that paints could change the mood of the space and it was a sign of festival and plenitude.It could make a gloomy place bright and pleasant. From this insight came the campaign of Asian Paints associating itself with festivals. Research also confirmed that customers tend to repaint their houses on the occasion of festivities. Thus born the campaign "Celebrate with Asian Paints".