Surf Excel
They may have slipped in the rankings, but Surf Excel remains the most popular detergent!

Ever heard of a detergent that praises its foe? We have one on our list which says ‘Daag achhe hain’ very confidently. For any other brand, it would have been difficult to convince the customers about the product with such a paradoxical statement, but for Surf Excel, which can easily be called as one of the most powerful detergent brands of India, it seemed a cake walk. FMCG Analyst Harish Bijoor says, “Surf Excel is an interestingly managed brand. With the ‘Daag achhe hain’ campaign, they caught the pulse of the consumer, leading to excellent brand management.” What’s more, the brand not only focuses on its generic space of a detergent but also on making a social difference in the lives of its consumers. Surf Excel’s social awareness campaigns like ‘Do bucket paani ab rozana hai bachana’ and the scholarship campaign for unfortunate students too endear the brand to the morally responsive Indian consumer.

Right from ‘Lalitaji’, representative of the true-blue cost-conscious Indian woman, till the inspiring storyboards of today, Surf Excel has done it all and in style! Yes, P&G’s Ariel did become a worry for some time, but then Surf Excel kills its enemies after applauding them all the way, right?

State Bank Of India
The brand has miraculously catapulted itself from rank 50 (last year) to rank amidst the cream of Indian brands!

You ought to believe it; 90 million Indians can’t be wrong. With a gargantuan customer base and an all encompassing reach, State Bank of India springboards to the top 20, securing a place at the 18th position in the top 100. And what’s important is that the brand has now got a man at its helm, who is on a mission. O. P. Bhatt, the current Chairman of SBI means business and has thrown himself into giving SBI a complete makeover to unlock its brand equity. While former Chairman, A. K. Purwar focused more on overseas acquisitions, Bhatt has got back the focus on Indian market, with the ‘Pure Banking. Nothing Else’ tagline. Termed as the big daddy of all Indian banks, SBI has managed to break the taboo that public sector enterprises do not make good brands. SBI boasts of a staggering reach with 9,000 branches, along with the largest network of ATMs all across India. Recently the bank celebrated its bi-centenary. Its sheer size not only helps it to withstand the troughs and crests of business cycles, but also helps the bank in quenching the ever growing appetite of Indian consumers.

NOKIA
What an eye-popping slip... from rank 3 last year to rank 19 now!

So why has Nokia shown such a sad performance as compared to last year? After all, the Finnish giant has always been a strong brand in Indian mobile market? Sure, volume-wise, India’s consumption of Nokia has been increasing, but the brand appeal has taken a beating with a steady stream of people queued outside Nokia Care Centres lately (growing list of complaints against N-series).

Also Nokia’s continued emphasis on high-end phones has decreased its appeal, as many of the newest users are people with limited budgets. Yet analysts do emphasise on the brand’s massive recall value even today. “Think mobile, think Nokia. It has mobiles for everyone, be it a sober (person) to the ultimate music geek,” thumps Akshun Gulati, Analyst, IndusView Advisors. And indeed it has recently announced quite a few new different models, but value-wise, the market has opened up to other brands like Sony Ericsson, Motorola, even Samsung. This is reflected in the ranking as it slips from Rank 3 to Rank 19 on the 4Ps B&M Most Valued Brands list – a massive loss by 16 points. Nokia, though has never ceased to put tremendous efforts into its brand image. “Nokia Priority dealers everywhere, helps in the branding,” adds Gulati. But clearly, Nokia needs to edge out the negative.

Mahindra & Mahindra
At Rank 60 last year, driven by Anand Mahindra’s zeal, M&M has gallantly galloped ahead...

Mahindra as a brand has undergone major restructuring, over the last few years. The automajor has not only diversified into passenger car segment successfully (from just being a CV maker), but by forming a JV with France’s Renault, the brand value of Mahindra has shot-up significantly. Moreover, leading positions across sectors – farm equipment, infrastructure, IT and financial services, has added ions to the Mahindra portfolio. The group also enjoys a handsome global footprint in almost every sector it operates. The $4 billion Group has also made strategic acquisitions in China and the UK, besides boasting of 3 assembly plants in USA. The power of Brand Mahindra can be judged by the fact that Forbes has listed it among the World’s top 200 most reputable companies (and in the top 10 list of India’s most reputable companies). Now, the key to more power for M&M hinges strongly on the recently launched Logan’s success in Indian market. With apologies to Robert Frost: The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but M&M still has miles to travel before it sleeps!

INTEL
‘Intel Inside’ or ‘Leap ahead’! When has that ever stopped anyone from buying a PC or laptop?

If you ever had to name a brand that you never see, yet swear by it then it has to be Intel. Intel’s long standing slogan has been ‘Intel Inside’, but last year the comp any changed tack and changed its tagline to ‘Leap ahead’. Of late, Intel has benefited from its strong line of innovative processors too. The first was the entire Core 2 Duo processor family. The fanfare and the fact that it was being bundled as the Microsoft Vista ready chip, created enough hype to keep its brand value intact in the top 100. However, the lack of any of the usually visible and aggressive advertising, did affect the user recall to some extent. Intel slipped from Rank 10 on the 4Ps B&M list of Valuable Brands last year to Rank 21 this time.

However, Intel rarely if ever lets inactivity on advertising front, affect it. It has just recently released the Santa Rosa platform for mobile computing, that builds on its famous mobile Centrino platform for laptops. In early 2006, it entered the rural market with its community PC programme unveiling its ruggedised PC platform. “Even though there is no direct contact, Intel has very strong OEM relationships. We do not choose Intel, it just comes with your laptops,” elaborates Akshun Gulati, Analyst, IndusView Advisors, on the key strategy that keeps Intel so firmly entrenched in Indian market. Fighting tooth and nail with arch rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to keep its market share intact (in India and globally), Intel has certainly been mulling strategies to ‘Leap ahead’!

Colgate
Despite roadblocks, this oral-care brand continues on a high momentum growth path...

Here’s a cult brand that resides deep inside the consumer’s throats. No kidding! As a dental care brand, Colgate does exactly that. Right from the beginning (in 1937), Colgate has deployed two-pronged strategies for building its brand: the top down effort of advertising and the mainstream effort of aggressive marketing. The company has clear strategies that have taken it miles ahead, be it the pact with Indian Dental Association to gain the faith of the Indian consumer or the efforts of bringing oral hygiene to rural India where Colgate is a household name now.

In his May 2007 report, FMCG Analyst, Nikhil Vora of SSKI states: “Colgate continues to dominate the oral care market with a 49% share of toothpaste market and a 35% share of toothbrush market. Colgate’s continuous product innovation has helped it to consolidate its position.” In FY07, the parent company Colgate-Palmolive India Ltd. posted a 26% net profit increase.

But while aggressive advertising made this brand omnipresent in almost every second Indian home, of late competition from HLL’s Pepsodent and Close-Up (in the gel category, the latter is market leader) is posing a stiff challenge to Colgate’s dominance. In 2006, Colgate Palmolive could contribute less than half of HLL’s advertising share on TV (as per TAM Media Research). Nevertheless, this FMCG king has brought radiant and sparkling smile on faces of millions of loyalists all over the world and in India too.

Kingfisher Airlines
The flamboyant Mallya has managed to build a branded castle in the air too...

It dared to be different and chose to tread along the high-quality, highprice corridor while the herd was fast galloping down the low-cost, low-prices alley. The result – Kingfisher Airlines! And the brand image – eminently sustainable. Its public perception hasn’t changed for over two years now (Kingfisher celebrated its second year of inception on May 9, 2007). With orders worth Rs.100 billion during 2005-06 alone and being the only Indian airline to place an order for 5 A380 superjumbos, the airline is also mulling an IPO to raise Rs.60 billion, which would help finance its future purchases. Perhaps the first airline ever to have received accolades even before completing a year, it was awarded with the ‘Best Airline of The Year’ award and also landed the Skytrax Award for ‘Service Excellence for a New Airline’. Mallya is also currently identified among those interested in the low-cost carrier Air Deccan. Being a liquor baron (where advertising is banned), Mallya is happily pumping capital into the airline so that it serves as an ad for even his liquor brand. No wonder, despite ‘not’ being a profit-making airline yet, Kingfisher is easily noticed. Binit Somaia, Regional Director, Centre for Asia-Pacific Aviation, says, “In a short span, Kingfisher has set new benchmarks for airline service, driven by innovation and investment.” Even the Panasonic Toyota For- mula One willfully accepted Kingfisher as its official sponsor in January this year. Sure, Indians can be proud of this truly indigenous brand!

Indian Oil Corporation
It’s the 18th largest oil company in the world with 8,952 kms of pipeline. Need we elaborate?

Talk about oil, and adjectives that come to mind are – slippery, yellow, dense, dirty. Famed and respected? Nah! But when the Incas called it ‘liquid gold’, they certainly, understood the power it could generate. And going by the fact that Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) garnered a blazing Rs.1.83 trillion as revenues during FY06 alone, the corporation seems to have understood why the Incas were known for their prosperity! The public sector behemoth, generates immediate trust in minds of Indians! A Fortune Global 500 powerhouse (ranked at an impeccable 153), IOC stands for ‘inspired India’, and all because it dared to get into brand differentiation of petroleum and oil. Today, it has gained tremendous brand equity, with its basket of super brands like Servo, Indane, and Xtral. “There are two aspects to our promotion, to promote brands which need support by way of ads and through brand building strategies...” an IOC official told 4Ps B&M. The approach, besides the run-of-themill dealer incentives and on-field activities, involves agreements with other trusted brands like Citibank and Coca Cola, which further helps IOC leverage its brand image.