Tanya SachdevWelcome to another blogpost by Indian Fashion Blogger.
Marketing is a catalyst to increase awareness, to enhance acceptability. It is a cost centre with accountability & quantifiable results. Marketing is an activity & campaign focused; it is supported on incentive & motivation plans, both for consumer & seller, but every brand has its unique identification.
The name of the product is the brainchild of marketing people. From times of industrial revolutions to the current day of business competition a product is characterised by various options. The owner’s name was the first most formidable identification of the category, TATAs, BIRLAS, FORD etc. The industrial output — the product is branded by various names but the trend of a category being recognised by numbers— numericals, it is a classic case of highs & lows in the name for a brand.
The presence of numbers in the brand is well accepted for the brand recognition & acceptance to pull the product. Brands with numericals are well entrenched & acceptable in the market place & are also recalled by the number. The list is countless, few hit & successful numerical brands for the category are:
VAT 69 the famous whisky started the trend of numbers in the whisky category. The different stories around the number are: it is the 69th vat which was accepted by the blender & others say it is the number of Pope’s telephone at Vatican city. The trend with stories continues giving hit & miss brands with numericals. Hangover one vodka, Solan no. 1, Seagram’s 100 pipers, Radico Khaitans 8 PM are recalled by the numbers. The famous American revolver /pistol name was suffixed COLT45 for a brand of malt liquor.
Microsoft gave its operating program the number based on version, Windows 4, 7. Perfumery maker gave its product the number Chanel no. 1, no. 5.
World biggest airplane company Airbus gave its product the number based on capacity, Airbus 300 etc, Boeing with 707,717,727,737,747 till 787.
Razor Company gave its product the brand name for blades as 6 mornings 7 o’ clock, the time people get up & start the day with shaving & now Mach 3 the new triple edge blade razor.
Pharmaceutical company P&G christened its cough syrup as Vicks formula 44 (however this product was withdrawn from Chinese market as number 4 spells death & twice 4 sounded death death). Ajanta pharma brought the male rejuvenation pill 30 PLUS with emphasis on people at above 30 to rejuvenate & the most recent & controversial female rejuvenation medicine 18 AGAIN. Action 500 the paracetamol 500mg antipyretic tablet is another classic product from P & G. Seven Seas cod liver oil is another (lucky seven) famous & well accepted brand.
Beverages maker Modern in the year 1977, when George Fernandes shunted away the multinationals from the country- the local companies came forward with cola, orange drink. As the companies started in the year 1977 they introduced its product as double seven cola, the global brand Coca Cola has a product COKE ZERO & PepsiCo has the number in brand 7 up.
Even the lingerie companies came up with a product titled 18 hour bra, and the product was an instant success.
It’s traditional to name the brand with numbers. Automobile makers Fiat came with Fiat UNO, but the product did not take off as the number was spelt as uno, the numerical no.1 was missing. Maruti came up with SX 4, Hyundai followed with i10 & i 20.
Film industry too started naming the movies with numbers. Mr. & Mrs. 55, the mystery movie 36 ghante (the story of tresspassers staying in a house for 36 hours), Woh 7 din- the Anil Kapoor debut starrer. It was Govinda who reintroduced numbers as Hero no.1, Coolie no.1, Aunty no.1 when he was fading away he recalled his first movie which was with the numerical of the year 1986 & the film was LOVE 86. Luck struck again & with the numbers in suffix he gave a series of hit movies again.
Whilst the gun company gave the famous colt rifle M16 during the Vietnam War, the brand with the power of 16 was a major hit with American army & the brand took the rounds of all frontiers, barracks.
The power of numerical brands can be seen by the success of the category, the number game of names is a success of probability.
Picture source: Designer Abdul Halder
Tanya Sachdev
Kritika Manchanda
