L?Oreal wins five honours at the fifth PoY awards held in Mumbai
The ?Product of the Year? awards held in Trident, Mumbai was a breezy soiree attended by marketers, brand managers and celebrities from across industries. Conversations flowed freely alongside spirits. The real star of the evening, however, was L?Oreal India which swept the awards in five categories ? Garnier Fructis, long & strong shampoo and conditioner in the ?hair care? category; Garnier Color Naturals (small pack) in the ?hair colour? category; Garnier light fairness facial was the product of the year in the ?fairness category? while Garnier Men Powerlight won in the ?men?s moisturiser? category and Green Garnier Pure Active Neem facewash struck gold in the ?women?s face wash and scrubs? category.
An ebullient Satyaki Ghosh, director, consumer products division at L?Or?al India, said that the awards were a direct endorsement from consumers and a strong affirmation of their ?universalisation? strategy of adapting Garnier?s global brands to specific needs of different cultures. ?Research is a driving force behind L?Or?al. We file close to 700 patents every year, worldwide,? she said, adding that ?innovation has to be built around consumers through an approach that is based on practices in their local context. This makes it possible to devise and develop innovative products that deliver real advances in quality and performance.?
?Product of the Year? is the gold standard for innovations in consumer products. PoY is organised in over 32 countries across the world. In India, the selection of the products of the year involves an absolute face to face independent survey conducted by The Nielsen and covers 18,000 respondents in 23 territories.
Other winners included Tuborg beer in the alcohol/beer category; ICICI Lombard in general insurance; Tuborg Zero in the non -alchoholic beverage segment; Fiama Di Wills Acqua Pulse in the men?s face wash genre; Tata I-Shakti in the packaged foods category and Nutralite in the table spreads category.
The evening began with a panel discussion on ?Jugaad versus Innovation?. The panelists included advertising legend Alyque Padamsee; Ganesh Natrajan – vice chairman and chief executive at Zensar; Justin Sargent, managing director for The Nielsen?s consumer business in India; Anil Kumar Gupta – professor in the Centre for Management in Agriculture at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and Ranjan Malik , an innovation consultant and facilitator and also, a director at Orbit-Shifting Innovation Missions. The discussion was moderated by Charulata Ravi Kumar, chief executive, PoY India. Sargent said that western countries had more structured processes and their thinking was long term. In India, such thinking was difficult to implement because of the nation?s furious pace of growth. Hence, the tendency to come up with quick fix solutions, rather than long lasting ones is common here, he said.
Padamsee spoke about the need to spin off ?idea academies? which would just be dedicated to conceiving and implementing great ideas. ?What we need in this country is imagination,? he said. Ravi Kumar noted that the Indian schooling system did not encourage kids to innovate or question and this was intrinisically linked to our culture. Professor Gupta?said that the lack of motivation for original breakthrough ideas was leading to a lot of quick-fix stuff and it was detrimental to development. ?If our dreams are so short, we are never going to make a breakthrough,? he said.
The guest of honour Nandan Nilekani, chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India said it was important to create the right kind of platform for any idea to succeed. To elucidate his point, he said internet was built 30 years ago and was based on the simple principle of sending information from one point to the other but it led to the development of the worldwide web and has now sprawled into a trillion dollar industry. ?This is a great example of how, on the one hand you have a platform built by the government and then the platform made it possible for smart people to build applications on it.? He said the Aadhar project is also trying to bring in innovation. ?Our fundamental mandate was to give a unique identity to everyone. But we thought that rather than doing it as an ID for one application which gives subsidies or cash transfers, is there a way to look at this as a platform and allow people to build apps ?? said Nilekani, adding that ?we are building an application which works with the banking system, Reserve Bank of India and all other stakeholders in the financial sector to allow an electronic transfer to a person?s account using the Aadhar number.?
According to organisers, PoY award runs on a proven return on investment model. One of the winners, Pantene Pro-V, for instance, previously reported a 135% increase in sales year on year. Likewise, Neutrogena reported a 15% increase in sales. Also, a survey on consumers and retailers in India, conducted by Nielsen end 2011, revealed that while 74% of consumers are more likely to try a product that claims to be ?new?, 83% are more likely to try a product which has the ?Product of the Year? tag. Ravi Kumar said that the awards are a recognition and validation that consumers can trust certain products especially in an era of spin and over claim.
The winners, obviously, were ecstatic on receiving the award. ?We are very happy on receiving this award. Consumers have obviously put a great deal of faith in us and confidence in our products. But it also makes me a little nervous because that means that we have to constantly keep innovating and constantly bring value,? said Subodh Marwah, director (marketing) at Carlsberg India.