BRAND REPOSITIONING OF TITAN

Group 7/Section D Group Members Rakshit Bhargava Koutam Srivatsav Harshit Lunawat Viplove Patidar Mansi Ingrole Vishwanath Soni Enrollment No. 12BSP1943 12BSP1550 12BSP2172 12BSP1398 12BSP1724 12BSP1411

CONTENTS
Introduction...................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Products .............................................................................................................................................................................. 3 Brand Repositioning .................................................................................................................................................... 4 Strategies ....................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Why Repositioning??? ............................................................................................................................................ 4 Cause of Repositioning........................................................................................................................................... 4 Effects of Repositioning ......................................................................................................................................... 5 Success & Failures ......................................................................................................................................................... 5 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................................................... 6

INTRODUCTION
Titan Industries was established in 1984 as a joint venture between the Tata Group and the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation. The company brought about a paradigm shift in the Indian watch market, offering quartz technology with international styling, manufactured in a state-of-the-art factory at Hosur, Tamil Nadu. Leveraging its understanding of different segments in the watch market, the company launched a second independent watch brand-Sonata, as a value brand to those seeking to buy functionally styled watches at affordable prices. In addition it focused on the youth with its third brand Fastrack. It has also premium fashion watches by acquiring a license for global brands such as Tommy Hilfiger and Hugo Boss, while. It has also in its portfolio its first Swiss Made watch brand Xylys. In 1995, the company diversified into jewellery under the brand Tanishq to capitalize on a fragmented market operating with no brands in urban cities. In 2005, the company launched its second Jewellery brand, Gold Plus, for capitalizing on the opportunity in small towns and rural India. The company has now diversified into fashion Eyewear by launching Fastrack EyeGear sunglasses, as well as Prescription Eyewear. The Company leveraged its manufacturing competencies and branched into Precision Engineering Products and Machine Building from 2003. Today Titan Industries is India's leading manufacturer of watches and jewellery employing 3,800 people. Titan and Tanishq are among the most admired brands in their categories.

PRODUCTS
The company manufactures over 8 million watches per annum and has a customer base of over 80 million. It has manufacturing and assembly operations at Hosur, Dehradun, Roorkee and Baddi in Himachal Pradesh and an ECB plant in Goa. Its main products are:

Watches- Main Sub-brands under watches are

Fastrack Sonata Edge Xylys Raga Zoop

Jewellery- Tanishq Eyewear- Titan Eye+

BRAND REPOSITIONING
Titan Industries decided to revamp its flagship watch brand, Titan, with the intention of making it more youthful and relevant to the changing times. The brand, launched more than 24 years ago, has undergone a major repositioning exercise only once before five years ago, when Hindi film actor Aamir Khan was appointed brand ambassador. What followed later was the Whats Your Style? campaign, which tried to increase watch consumption per person, by suggesting the use of different watches for different occasions. STRATEGIES

New logo & tagline: Be More

Beyond Style Titan wants to move from style statements to personality statements. According to Harish Bhat, chief operating officer, watches, Titan Industries, a watch ought to denote the wearers mood and personality. With the explosion of options in a persons life, our core consumer is changing. And to keep up with them, Titan has evolved too, he says. On the adoption of Be More, Bhat says that that statement is supposed to denote the aspirations of consumers to make more of their lives and be whatever they want to be. The watch allows for such imaginative travels, he says.

Other Strategies:
Titan is also trying to reach new customer segments. They are now trying to target all adults in socio economic classes A&B. Titan is also looking at innovative retail strategies and planned to launch ten innovative product collections soon. WHY REPOSITIONING??? Through the new Repositioning, Titan is trying to connect with new consumers who are yearning to be 'more'. We are reinventing the brand through new designs, retail strategy and advertising. CAUSE OF REPOSITIONING The reason for repositioning Titan did not come from the current crisis or other usual reasons like slipping market shares, declining volumes, et al, clarifies Suparna Mitra, Global Marketing Head, Titan. Being the market leader with over 55% share in the watch category, Titan clearly defied slowdown by registering 17% growth in the watch segment in FY200708. So, if slowdown was not a cause of concern, why did Titan undergo a repositioning exercise?

The origin of repositioning came from a certain restlessness of the brand. Titan, over the years had become a larger than life brand catering to a wide range of consumers. The entire exercise was an initiative to understand what Titan really stood for, avers Santosh Desai, CEO, Future Brands (brand consultants for Titan). Certainly, launched in 1987, Titan successfully ended HMTs monopoly in the Indian market and gave an altogether new dimension to the entire watch-shopping experience. However, of late, Titan was apprehensive about how the up-coming generation will look at it. We wanted to connect with a new consumer and a new India. Therefore, we decided to re-look at the brand idea to appeal to the young generation, explains Mitra. In fact, the new brand idea came from a multi-disciplinary exercise, which encompassed consumer research, retail analysis, product-line research, internal company culture introspection, et al. The key consumer insights analysed from the research were: My watch is an expression of who all I want to be and My watch is a compass of my imagination. All these threads when weaved together created the brand idea of Be more. EFFECTS OF REPOSITIONING Titans proactive approach to appeal to the younger audience may have been a forward-looking approach, but it seems that the idea has not gone too well with the financials of the company. For FY 2008-09, Titan recorded just 3.6% growth in the watch segment. Growth was never a problem for us. It was not the reason behind repositioning. The main idea was to connect with a whole new generation of consumers, counters Mitra. They may shout it from the rooftops that the slowdown has left them untouched, but theres no denying that Titans growth has indeed been sluggish not just in the last year, but last few years. Who knows Be more may yet add more to Titans kitty.

SUCCESS & FAILURES

As titan repositioned its watches as a part of ornamentation & dress it promptly changed the mindset of people into beliving it is a fashion accessory rather than just a mere tool for watching time, which helped it to attract more customers. Won various awards like The ''Titan'' watch brand won the Northeast Consumer Award for most preferred watch brand. The Fastrack brand won the Gold Award in IAMAI Digital Media awards for its interactive video SMS. There were also some failures for titan watches in repositioning the brand. When they launched the sub-brand sonata aiming toward masses, it was taking away the premiumness of the brand & so the high end customers were not getting attracted toward it.

CONCLUSION

The opening of the Indian market and the arrival of premium Swiss brands has certainly led to Indian consumers being exposed to global brands, styles and various price levels. To the Indian consumers, the high price of Swiss watches has helped them to realize the value of Indian brands, particularly of Titan, which offers equivalent quality, but at lower prices and with better distribution and service. Titan has shown its differentiation, and customer centric approach which helped them to get the market. Titan is growing rapidly and has successful operations. All these can be confirmed from lots of information. Titan has obtained a high reputation in a short period. As a latecomer of watch industry of India, the company surpassed the formers and has got the first position of marketing share. As a watch company, Titan founded a famous jewelry brand successfully. It adopted appropriate marketing strategies which defeated competitors, meanwhile expanded its marketing share on local market.