Case Of Colour

CASE OF COLOUR Madhur Tari snapped to attention as he read the commentary to Alkalac's case study in Businessworld. "Oh my God!" he gasped. The analyst, Adip Puri, director at Saatchi & Saatchi, had hit the nail on the head! How fundamental, how rudimentary, how oh-sotrue. Puri's words had awakened a sleeping giant within him. He wrote: "Who should decide whether or not Amitabh Bachchan (AB) is perfect for Alkalac Paints? Not him (Madhur), not Mr. Divakar and not even Vineeta. The people who should decide are the consumers." "Whoa!" shouted Madhur as he slapped his forehead and went, 'heck heck heck'. "How right! Why did I get pulled into a pointless debate with the MD, Vishwas Divakar on AB or Sunil Shetty? Puri is saying what we need to be doing. We have pulled the paint over our eyes; we have not even considered that our product is being sold like commodity to the dealer who does not care whether the consumer wants pink or mauve." Suddenly Madhur felt the old energy surging. Here was his magnificent opportunity to smack Colour Pitch on the old conference table - the same table which had run the gauntlet over A. Bachchan, H. Roshan, and for some odd reason, Lady Zinta. "Colour Pitch, here I come!" sang Madhur. Unknown and unseen by his usually conservative colleagues, he shook his hips, put his hands over his head and howled, "Basanti, main aa raha hoon!" with a flourish. Two months ago, when Divakar had triggered the discussion on which celebrity should endorse Alkalac Paints, Madhur had been swept off his feet by the very controversy of the debate. It had all happened in such an impromptu way that he had not even sat down to question its context. Now Divakar's words came back to him: "What would it take for our brands to become hero brands?" If that's where he wanted to be, thought Madhur, why were we discussing Bachchan? Heck, how much time did we spend discussing something which was not even the starting point of Alkalac's needs? Madhur turned to his computer to send an email to Vineeta Pardi, their research manager, when he saw a mail from his brother Shardul, a software engineer posted in Vizag. It said: "Bro, I need to jazz up this pad of mine. End up working a lot out of home, so want my space to express peace and feel relaxed. It's quite small, so can colour give me a sense of space? You guys must be having some package for single men like me who want a pretty working home? Someone who will 'come-see-do' and not leave me with a mess? You know my office is so trendy and vibrant; I want my private space to be like that. Send me some colour options ASAP; mom's sending me crazy quantities of cushions, drapes and whatnots in earth tones. Is there an Alkalac man in Vizag?" Madhur was swearing it was time Shardul got married when he froze. "Wait, wait, wait," he said to himself. "This is the new Indian consumer. This is Alkalac's future; this is what Divakar must prepare for. Consumers everywhere are probably asking this question. Shardul can ask me directly while the others cannot... at least not until Colour Pitch gets blessed." Not that Madhur had been oblivious to all this until now. Last year he had pushed for 'Colour Pitch' (CP) as a direct marketing wing of the marketing department. Madhur, aware as he was of the décor conscious consumer, wanted to introduce stimulation as a

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marketing element. He felt the much-thrashed durability and price attributes were passé. CP would work directly with consumers, examine new trends and market customized décor services in the face of a market that still resorted to mass distribution. But Divakar had questioned it, saying: "Naah! What is this, man? We are selling paint, not consultancy! Besides, where is the research to back it?" Madhur then tried to get Gautam Bose, the sales head, to initiate dealer-led research. But their boss, the director (sales and marketing) T.M. Pai had said there was no budget - they should do it next year. Divakar was sitting on the fence over this, though he told Madhur "the idea is not a bad one". Still, Colour Pitch began as a lone affair. If Divakar shrugged his assent, it was only to indulge Madhur, who had stoked his rebellious (albeit unvoiced) doubts on the whole matter. When Madhur gathered architects, interior designers and even TV serial producers to rummage into consumer habits, Gautam had called it futile. His reasoning was; "Is Alkalac into direct marketing? No. Then why mess with end consumers? Our conduit is the dealer; look at our sales, it is dealer driven all the way. This is not FMCG, this is by far the slowest moving category. You annoy dealers, and it will slow down even more." Pai agreed enthusiastically and added, "This is not lipstick or eye-shadow; what you are suggesting works for colour cosmetics, but yeh to paint hai baba!" Divakar, not sure if this was what Alkalac needed, had tried to slow down Madhur's effort through distance. Importantly, Divakar steered clear of any conflict with Pai who was his senior by many years. Alkalac nourished and respected age. All this was pre-Diwali 2003, when the painting season was warming up. On January 1st, TMP retired gracefully (and mercifully for Madhur). Importantly, the younger Divakar got his voice back, which he brazenly used to support the idea of AB endorsing Alkalac (See BW case study, 15 March). But Divakar's distancing had been very useful for Madhur, who preferred working like a beaver: alone, plodding, thinking and doing. Now with Puri's commentary working like salvo, Madhur decided to collect some direct market place reporting and corroborate the raison d'etre of Colour Pitch. The pity was neither TMP nor Divakar ever went into the market to meet consumers. Roping in Vineeta's help, they visited a few dealers and made a list of 15-20 prospects who had called in to inquire about shades, costs, etc., with the dealers. The dealers, not being too organized with data, produced prospects which were even a year old. But Madhur plodded on and put a team in place to check on these prospects with Vineeta's guidance. When his brand manager Tula Bhandari reported that 14 of these had postponed their painting decision indefinitely, Madhur was not disheartened. He knew this was inherent to the nature of the painting business. Late in the evening, Madhur drew a circle around one name: Ragini Vaidya in Malad. A meeting was arranged at the Malad residence of the Vaidyas for Saturday. When he met her, Madhur asked her why she had not gone ahead with painting her home. "Arre baba," began Mrs Vaidya, "Bahut jamela hai!" A high school teacher, Vaidya then broke into chaste English. "See, I am a teacher," she said. "I teach 11th and 12th; the internal assessment of 11th is in April. Meanwhile, I have extra classes every evening and weekends. Now to paint a house like this, you know what a mess it creates!

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There is no one to supervise also. My kids are grown up, they have exams. Painting means complete physical upheaval. The house looks messy, lots of dust due to the scraping, then the smell of turpentine! My son is asthmatic, how will he study? Then, all the things are thrown here and there; I get scared even thinking about this. And how do we sleep? Then, everyone is irritable, proper food can't be cooked, studies get disrupted... Oh, and then, my husband I know, he will hate coming back to a messy house! Besides, all the cleaning up will come on me. With all my assessments, extra classes and all, I will end up fighting with my husband and then the whole house will be unhappy. My nanad painted her house just last month; they had to eat out almost everyday! They are still looking for this and that which got misplaced during this time. It's a terrible experience." Madhur's next call was at Mrs Kanta Khanna's in Gurgaon. The Khannas were very confused. Mr Khanna had recently been promoted as GM, and he wanted to reflect this growth in his home. "See, now that I am GM, people will come home. I want them to see who I really am, my personality; but my wife wants our home to look like something from the TV serials, so she has been unable to decide the colour!" Mrs Khanna interrupted: "If I leave it to him, he will get it painted the regular cream and ivory, it is so boring... as it is, we live in a middle income colony, at least on the inside we can have it look like Bandra. See all those homes they show on Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (KSBKBT) and what not, those homes look attractive, so I called a paint contractor...." Mrs Khanna explained that all the confusion and chaos had begun there. The contractor, one Dhanabhai Paintwala, "tries to look and sound like the tentwala in Monsoon Wedding," she said, amidst giggles. "He has a cellphone which keeps ringing, and he keeps barking into it that he is busy with a client! Then he recommended some colours saying Mrs Kapoor used this, 'funtastik dikhta hai uska ghar', but I was not happy." Mrs Khanna was disappointed; she has a budget which her husband's company has given him. "I have to use it carefully and make a dream house...then someone said for that money you must call an interior designer, must do the whole place up. So I spoke to friends and called one designer from Malad, thinking in such a township it will be reasonable. But no! She wanted Rs 1,500 just for a house visit! Yet I called her, cut her down to Rs.500; arre, but she said change the pipes, leakage hai, false ceiling lagao, woodwork change karo! When I said no, only painting, she was not interested." Khanna finally got Dhanabhai back and asked him to recommend some nice modern colours. "But he could not talk beyond grey and ivory!" she said. "Every colour I showed he said, 'risky hai'. I want a pretty looking home. If I am spending Rs 80,000 on painting, why can't somebody suggest what colour to paint? Then, I am reading about Feng Shui. It says I should have certain walls facing North or East, in yellow or blue... now how am I to do that when this fellow cannot even give me an idea what other colours will go with it? 'Aur hanh,' he said, 'if you open one tin, then that cost is yours, whether you paint one wall or four.' All this is so expensive, I said, budget mein nahi aata. He replied, 'But then how am I to use different colours? Would you have a good designer, free of cost?'" Madhur then met Hansa Trivedi in Ghatkopar. She too had put the paint job on hold because her in-laws lived with her and all the mess and upheaval was inhibiting. But this year Hansaben's daughter was getting married, she told Madhur, and she really needed to smarten up her house. Madhur thought up a plan. He now needed to observe how

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they negotiated and where the need gaps lay. For in that lay the way ahead for Colour Pitch. So he asked her to call her contractor at an appointed hour. Amish Torani, the contractor, walked in carrying 10 shade cards in a small brief case and rattled off rates per sq. foot for each product. After deciding on the rate and the product, Hareshbhai, Hansa's husband said, "Chalo bhav theek chhe; tu rang nakki kar, after all, rang tara department ma chhe, tu saheb chhe!" (C'mon, rates are okay, now you finalize the colour, that's your department, you are the boss!) After that, Haresh continued to sit around and examined the colours keenly. Listening to him, Madhur smiled; Haresh was amazingly décor conscious. Every colour Hansaben selected was checked for its compatibility with various furnishings and linen they had. Haresh was the archetypal man for Alkalac, who saw his living space as an extension of himself, a power tool, an ID card. Suddenly conscious of Madhur, Haresh said, "Motabhai, you look surprised! My home is the only place where I can be what I am inside, nahi?" Hansaben looked at the shade card and queried the contractor on trendy shades, "Aaj kal kaun se shade chal rahe hain?" (What are the colour trends these days?) He rattled off three names for each room which he had used commonly over the years, "Living room ke liye beacon aur ivory chalta hai". Madhur was alarmed. Those were the shades commonly used five years ago! But Hansaben was not happy, "Is that all you have? Show me more!" Finally Torani asked her to visit the dealer's outlet, "You will get all the shades in the shop," he said. Madhur gasped mentally. What was Alkalac doing, leaving 'selling' to contractors who were the mere carriers of colour tools? They had no expertise or inclination to offer any kind of shade advice; they did not even know the current shades. Not wanting to let go this opportunity, Madhur agreed to visit the dealer with her. Haresh excused himself to go and change his trousers. "Arre, paint shops are very dusty, their chairs also have paint on them! I don't want to spoil my good trousers there!" he said. The outlet was, in fact, very depressing. Madhur saw now how uninspiring the outlet was. No pictures of snazzy homes, pretty walls or beautiful interiors. Where was the product delivery at point of sale? Paints were the only organized retail product in that shop. Nestling neck to neck were nails, pipes, drums and random hardware, enjoying the hospitality of Alkalac Paints. Commenting on this out of embarrassment, Madhur told the dealer, "Yaar, dukan thoda saaf rakha karo, customer log ko achcha lagna chahiye na!" (Friend, keep the shop a little clean, customers should find it pleasant!) The dealer cribbed defensively and said, "What to do saab, I sell to painters also, and you know they walk in with material and this place gets dirty." That did not satisfy Madhur; he thought the ambience of the outlet was enough to put off any desire for painting. Soon, the dealer put before the couple a fan deck of over 1,100 shades; Hareshbhai started laughing. "I am not going to sit and see all this," he said. "Show us what is latest, modern, ekdum young colour, jo man ko khush kare!" The dealer would not comment. All he said was, "yeh dekho, yeh bhi dekho," which was neither here nor there. Hansaben, not one to be thwarted easily, asked: "But of these, which one will look good?" And the dealer said: "That depends on you. Take what you like, sab aapka hi hai ....creams chal rahe hain, pink bhi chalta hai." The couple tried to ask focussed questions, "hamaara 150 sq ft ka bedroom hai, aur marble flooring hai, usme kya chalega? But he had nothing to offer. All his attempts at suggesting were simply around a family of colour, not a particular shade. Vineeta, who had accompanied them, stood behind and whispered:

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"This is the point on most consumers’ patience curve, when she gives up and chooses any old shade or worse, postpones painting!" Madhur couldn't agree more; he recalled his brother's email asking him for help and mused: "Shardul could ask me, but these people end up in confusion between their own walls!" When the Trivedis left the outlet, Madhur asked the dealer, "Why don't you offer shade suggestions?" The dealer shook his head, "Risky saab. Customer kitna demanding hai, aap dekha na? After the painting if they don't like the colour, they will wring my neck! Waise bhi a customer paints her house once in five years. Colour dimaag mein clear hona mangta hai (Colour has to be clear in the mind). I will tell you what happened just last week. We were painting this house on Gandhi Marg. The drawing room had a deep arch in the centre. Madam had seen some serial and now she wanted to paint the insides of the arch a deep dull orange, fix glass shelves on it and dot it with curios. So she asked for shades of orange. My man put six sample panels, she chose one. Yet when the arch was painted, she got annoyed and said it was very dark! Abhi ham kya karega? I told her, kam watt ka bulb lagao, aur kya! (Now what can we do? I told her to use a lower wattage bulb) But no! She was very annoyed and said the serial colour was completely different, that we had cheated her. Yes, I can give advice, but the company must help; aap guarantee karo, saab, ham karega! Usme kya hai!" Guarantee? Madhur realized that, in short, dealers were saying: if you appoint a colour consultant we will find the contractors, but you must guarantee your colour consultation! Meanwhile in Thane, Tula Bhandari watched Mrs Rane speak to her interior designer, from Janki Associates from the neighbourhood. Mrs. Rane had liked Tulsi's bedroom in a particular scene in KSBKBT and had resolved to have her bedroom painted identically. For her in-laws' room she came armed with some back issues of Griha Shobha. But the interior decorator had no idea who Tulsi was, let alone the colour of her bedroom. She showed Rane some issues of Good Housekeeping instead, but Rane baulked; pastels were not for her. Tula saw that the decorator was inept at handling specific needs, and had no idea about the numerous décor influences flowing from Ekta Kapoor and the Balaji serials. Nor did she want to pander to 'low cost jobs', which she later confided to Tula. The interior decorator was into western homes and appeals; but the Indian consumer was adventurous! But Rane thundered on, mindless of the decorator's waning interest, "Is the Feng Shui of this room ok? I think the colour combination we saw in KSBKBT serial will be good" That evening, Tula wrote a note to Madhur. "Bottomline: consumers want to do up and 'accessorize' their homes like their physical selves. Through their homes, they want to express who they are and what they aspire to be. There is also this strong urge to do up children's spaces - the usual reason given is: I want my children to have what I didn’t, who else are we earning money for? Have noticed there is more spending happening, impulsive buying and accessorizing of the living space. There is also a lot of decor comparisons happening in kitty parties and other social interactions. Very critical point to note, this Tulsi woman from KSBKBT is a high point of aspiration. Maddeningly, Tulsi's bedroom colours keep changing from episode to episode. It started off as peach, then mustard yellow with purple squares in the middle, pastel pink, bright purple with red mouldings, etc. I think the real influencer is Ekta Kapoor...all the Balaji Telefilms soaps have the most adventurous combinations which have gone a long way in redefining colour usage among the consumers."

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On Monday, Madhur sat amid a bunch of reports from his team. He wondered where he should begin. Gautam and Sales? Divakar ? Or even higher, Alkalac and its mindset? Alkalac was still selling paints like it had 40 years ago; and over the years, it had accumulated people who lived in a time warp. Divakar wanted an icon to sell Alkalac's heroism. Colour Pitch was going to show that Alkalac must become the icon that revives old walls and dull environs. Oh, but that was subject of a completely different strategy. Madhur could not put the cart before the horse. First on his agenda was submitting this report to Divakar, and then discussing the second strategy, the one which held the root of the problem at Alkalac's rusty drive. Alkalac needed to meet the consumer. For that, it needed to either bypass the dealer or create new dealer-led relationships with end users. Everywhere he went, consumer voices spoke the same language. But Gautam and Divakar didn't even know that a consumer spoke! Funny, he now thought, that they advertised in Femina, Griha Shobha, Women's Era, Sarita... the consumers he met read these very magazines. Unfortunately, while Alkalac could reach the consumer's eye, the consumer could not reach Alkalac's ear! Both were painfully out of sync. Madhur finalized his note and sent it to Divakar the following week. In his preamble, he wrote: "Between the dealer and the contractor, the consumer's voice is whitewashed under the primer. Scratch deep, as Colour Pitch has done, and hear their voices redefining Alkalac's marketing drive. Sample them: 'Today I have more money so I will paint my house more often...so who wants durability, yaar? My moods change so I will change colours too, my Feng Shui master told me to have a blue corner in the Northeast. People are upgrading mobile phones every three months, so what are we talking about, staying with a durable ivory paint for four years?' "...Today the point of decision is also colour, not just cost. And face it, near identical shades and more consumer-friendly service can be had from any paint company such as Nerolac, Asian Paints and Berger. That famous 'point of indifference' across brands has been reached by paint consumers too! You want top line growth? You want Alkalac to be the hero brand? Then build in the differentiator. Colour Pitch will use colour as a creative tool to differentiate in a world of parity.

Questions: 1. Based on the information provided in the case, identify the different segments of customers of decorative paints market. 2. As the case gives a snapshot of only some customers, create a research proposal to better understand the customer behaviour of decorative paints market. 3. Develop a questionnaire form which would help you to segment the customers in the decorative paints market.

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