Reliance juggles with 35 varied brands

Tag : PVC Flocking


Vinay Kamath
Chennai, June 20 If you thought managing a handful of brands for acompany was a task enough then consider the country’s largestcompany, Reliance Industries, which lists in its annual report atleast 35 brands that it deals with.
While the country’s largest brand marketer, HindustanUnilever, also deals with 35 disparate consumer brands, thedifference is that most of Reliance’s brands, except for afew such as its textiles brand Vimal and Harmony for furnishings,use the Reliance tag. And, most of them are industrial brands.
The company’s latest annual report lists one refinery brandin Reliance Gas, five polymer brands (which serves as inputs forHDPE/ LDPE packaging material and PVC) with names such as Repol andRelene, two chemical brands (which go into detergents), 11polyester brands, which are variations of Recron, which go intopillows and apparel, Vimal for textiles, Harmony for furnishings,RueRel for suitings and, of course, Reliance’s latest foray— retail — which lists 16 brands, most of which takethe Reliance tag as an umbrella brand.
Says Mr Paresh Chaudhry, Group President, Corporate Communications,RIL, “Very clearly, we are using our powerful brand equityfor customers and consumers both. In industry it is well knownsince there are limited customers who buy directly and find aconnect with the end user. Reliance Retail is new and we areleveraging Reliance as a prefix everywhere and it’s workingwell.”
Mr Chaudhry says that the company had undertaken consumer studiesbefore the Reliance Retail formats were rolled out and post launch,he said, vindicated the findings that using Reliance as an umbrellabrand would help recall. Without advertising, as yet, and byoffering a great consumer experience and word of mouth the retailformats are growing, says Mr Chaudhry.
Says brand consultant Harish Bijoor, “The company has beenusing the mother corporate brand name on everything, from footwearto jewellery, in retail. The attempt is to extend the brand in acontinuous manner. In this way, investment in building completelynew brands is avoided, recall value is quick, brand residue buildup is instantaneous and the effort is more single-minded.” Losing depth
However, those are the pros; Mr Bijoor says the cons are many too.When the brand is extended too thin, it loses depth, he says.
“Further, when a brand means everything to everybody, itmeans nothing specific to any one person. This is dangerous,”he adds.
As he explains, a brand essentially has two facets. One is widthand the other is depth. Depth is all about single-minded focus andthe ability of a brand to cultivate customers and their like over aperiod of time. The other facet is width. This is all about howwide the brand is, how it is spread across categories. “Thisis, however, a shallow trait. When a brand spreads, you compromiseon depth. This is the Reliance problem.”
Says a senior executive with a brand valuation firm,“Reliance Retail reflects the challenges of evolution of atraditional product (commodity) brand trying to deliver a customerexperience. Many brands have stumbled here. It is about time theydid something really well with that huge reservoir of brand valueor it will surely but slowly weaken in the long run.”
However, put these questions to Reliance’s Mr Chaudhry and hesays that Reliance is an expert in executing projects well and theultimate test is whether consumers come to its stores. And, as ofnow, he says, they are flocking to the Reliance-branded stores.
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