Racing to the finish line

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Wanted: CEOs from India

: Golden Tobacco Company launched a new brand called Style in the early 1980s, at the beginning only in the western region. Its pack had a simple but stylish design with red and white as the dominant colours. Its blend was made up of mainly flue cured Virginia tobacco of medium grade but flavoured to heighten its taste. As a company, Goldten Tobacco had two specialities—one of them was deft usage of flavours in their blend formulations. Right from day one, this brand hit the hawa of success just like a gentle breeze for about two weeks, and ten suddenly it turned into a gale. Golden Tobacco’s marketing management was smart enough to sniff success, and commenced extending its distribution at a relentless pace, without any caution of a possible slow down owing to dissonance, or competitive reaction or different preferences in different markets. This kind of risk-taking was the second speciality of Golden Tobacco. Within a short time, this brand had hit a century and was taking business away from some of our brands particularly in the West.

About the same time, Vazir Sultan Tobacco, an affiliate of ours had meticulously developed and marketed an elegant brand, Charms King size, deftly positioned as the exponent of the then popular theme of freedom, liberation, fresh style and taste. The product, brand, position and campaign were in splendid consonance, crafted skillfully and jointly by Sunny Pillai, chairman and managing director, and BP Singh, marketing director of this company. The brand instantly caught the imagination of the youth of India, and was a runaway success in its test markets. In a planned way, its distribution was extended to cover the metro markets, and then more rapidly to other large towns. Its planned extension met with enthusiastic response, and soon it began to wean away smokers from some of our well-known and well- established brands.

In the same vein was the launch of red Regent Filter about which I have already mentioned earlier. It was also an instant success in the large Calcutta market, and its demand quickly spread to the eastern markets emulating the trends of Calcutta. This brand was soon posing a threat to our brands in these areas.