The Four faces of FMCG

What is FMCG

FMCG is the another name for the fast moving consumer goods, which provides the basic products for health, hygiene and grooming for the mankind. FMCG is the fourth largest industry in the Indian economy, contributing USD 47.3 billion of revenues to the economy and is expected to contribute USD 49 billion by the year 2016. FMCG is the last industry to be affected by the economic slowdown because people will still brush their teeth, take a bath, have cereals and toast in their breakfast irrespective of the economic conditions,

FMCG industry has three major segments:

1. Food & Beverages contributing 18% to the industry
2. Health Care contributing 32% to the industry
3. Household & Personal Care contributing 50% to the industry

These three major segments are divided into eight sub-categories, whose contributions to the total industry is described in the chart below:

These aforementioned eight sub-categories which make FMCG such an important industry today comes either of the four faces of FMCG.

So what are these four faces?

1: The Evil face:

This is the face of FMCG behind which companies creates products and persuade customers to desire these products.
This is the face which enables companies to force their customers to shell out some extra bucks out of their pockets.
Customers don't actually need these products but companies present them in front of customers as the much better than the previous products. This proposition allures customers and is happy to spend more.

Glassless Deos, Men's face wash, toothbrush with charcoal bristles, are just a few examples of evil face of FMCG.


2: Noble Face:

Just opposite to this face is the noble face of FMCG which does all the corporate social responsibility activities and wears a makeup of the social cause.
This helps FMCG companies to evolve as socially responsible companies and establish a good image in the eyes of their customers. It is because of this face only that companies are able to win soft corners in the hearts of their customers.

HUL's hath muh bum, project sunlight, Dettol's association with Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, P&G Shiksha and many more projects are examples of the noble face of FMCG.


3: Healthy face:

The face of FMCG which is established by providing a healthy proposition to the customers derived from herbal or ayurvedic or organic base.
It is always said, "Health is the real wealth", that holds true for the companies operating behind the healthy face of FMCG.
Companies under this face play the USP card as health advantage with no harmful effects of using their products, and customers willingly pay whatever amount is asked from companies.

These companies operate under the model of low volumes and high revenues and some of the examples of companies which represent healthy face are Kama Ayurvedics, Forest Essentials, Organic India, Keya Seth, Arish Ayurvedic, Parampara.


4 Religious face:

The Indian FMCG industry was operating cheerfully behind its three faces Evil, Noble and Healthy, but then came the religious face, which became the vexation for the other three faces.
This face of FMCG is still in a nascent phase and since its inception, it has become the centre of attraction for customers, channel partners and companies of other faces.
Indians are listed under most religious people alive on the planet, who don't follow religions but blindly go after the people who claims to be the messengers of religions.

The first company which utilised this opportunity of prodigious followers base was "Patanjali Ayurved", founded under the name of Baba Ramdev AKA The yoga guru.
This company operates by providing products under all the three major segments of FMCG, with lesser maximum retail price than the products of companies of the evil face.

While all the major FMCG companies, including the largest FMCG company of India HUL, operates only in one or maximum two segments of FMCG and that too with the limited products, but Patanjali Ayurved is operating in all the three segments with all possible products in every segment.

P&G: Household & Personal Care
Coca-Cola: Beverages only
Kellogg's: Foods only (Cereals)
Nestle: Foods & Beverages
L'oreal: Personal Care

Patanjali Ayurved: Foods & Beverages, Household & Personal Care and Health Care
It is now being said, if all the products of all the companies are combined together, product catalogue of Patanjali will contrive. Patanjali has products in over 75 categories and over 800 SKUs.
After the success of Patanjali Ayurved, every "baba" and "Sadhvi" in India, who have their own base of followers are now jumping in FMCG industry with the support of religious sentiments of Indians.

A company known as "Shri Shri Ayurveda" which was founded by H.H. Shri Shri Ravishankar, has now launched several products under foods & beverages and personal care categories although it started merely as a health care product manufacturing company in 2003.

In the recent past, a company known as "MSG all trading international" was founded by the "Dera Sacha Sauda" chief Saint Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan, under which 151 products were launched.

While the religious face will evolve with time, other faces will dwindle and it will be fascinating to see the revamped four faces of FMCG, till then fasten your seat belts and be ready for a roller coaster ride because a lot has to happen in this crazy industry.

The Human Brand Relationship

It is always said, "A Man is a social animal", who relish meeting others of the same kind, making friends and establishing long term relations. In our lifetime, we meet thousands of people, remember few hundreds, but develops a long-term friendship and relations with only handpicked out of those hundreds. This social behavior and ability to establish long-term relations are not only visible in our personal life but in every decision throughout our life. This is the reason why we prefer one brand over other despite both giving the same benefits because we make a relation with them.

Since our infanthood days, we developed the relation of brother/sister, niece/nephew with our relatives based on our parents' relations with their friends and relatives. We got our uncle & aunt because our parents chose to develop long term relations with them from their hundreds of college friends. In a similar manner, we developed a relation with "Jhonson & Jhonson" because our parents chose J&J over other brands and established a relation of trust for us. We looked upon "Nestle" with trust when we were served Cerelac three times a day and were not ready to accept anything else if ever tried by our parents.

Till the time we went to kindergarten, relations with people and brands were gifted by our parents and we automatically developed long term relations with them, but as we began going school, met new kids, developed an ability to pick and choose both people and brands.

We started demanding "Disney" characters to play with, "funskool" toys and "Hotwheels" cars to feel proud of our game collection. We developed a relation with our favorite "Natraj" pencil, sharpener, and eraser and were excited for the art lecture to use the new pack of "Camlin" crayons. We deliberately rough handled our old school shoes to buy a new pair of "action" school shoes, our first "pilot" pen when we entered 6th standard.

As we reached adolescence, we were already having the bunch of close friends and certain brands with which, relations will be a lifetime, but also had faced many heartbreaks, loss of trust both by people and brands. Sometimes we changed our priorities for people, and switched to other brands, and sometimes people change theirs and brands left us as they discontinued or lost their identities.

We realized the importance of relations with people and brands when our best friend and "Old monk" gave us his shoulder to exude our tears on our first breakup. We became responsible when our parents gifted a "Raymond" suit for our first job interview and we felt accomplished with the first salary credit notification from "HDFC" bank in our "Nexus" phone.

When we will become parents, we will trust the same brands which our parents gifted us when we were infants, and this led to generational relations with brands, which is best for any brand. In today's world of brand flood and communication tsunami, it is difficult for any brand to establish long term relations with consumers and in this scenario, if any brand is abe to establish relations with more than one generation of its consumers, it becomes immortal.

Human relations with brands changed according to human life phases from infanthood to adolescence to parenthood. At inception, we received relations from our parents, then learned to develop relations but were not able to understand their importance and with time realized the grandness of relations and established life-long relations.

"A man is known by the people with which he spends time", and a man is known by the brands he carries. This ability to reflect the personality of a man in Brand makes the idea of celebrity endorsement so successful. Brands utilize charming personalities of Celebrities to develop brand personalities which become the most important reason for a common man to carry that brand. We want to add that personality element offered by the brand to our personality and as a result, choose different brands which complement each other and develop our overall personality. Here brand act as the medium for human-human relation.

In return, brands also get something from our personality when we carry them. Brands built their personality further with the help of its users when a user carries it with other brands. Here human act as the medium for Brand-Brand relation and one brand utilizes personality of another brand to further built its own.

Just after parking your range rover endeavor, you received an important call on your apple i phone 6S, and suddenly looked at your omega and realized you are late for the meeting, rushed to the meeting room and at the end you happily took out parker from your Van Heusen suit and signed the contract. Here, you carry brands like apple, omega, parker, Van Heusen and range rover to add their personality elements to your personality. At the same time, all brands complemented each other and utilizes each other's personalities to develop their own personalities.

Man builds relations with bands and brands builds relations with other brands and thus, the chain of human brand relationship keeps on the building.

Why 'travelling' is the best gift you can give yourself ?

Travelling has been an important part of human civilization from centuries. The early man used to travel in search of water, food and shelter. When the early man started living in civilizations, he learned to farm and started traveling in search of fertile land. As more and more civilizations flourished, the man learned to trade and he started traveling for business.

With sands of time, the man turned greedy and started traveling for invasion and loot. Part of the civilization who were called as 'wise men' started spreading their knowledge through the education system and people started traveling for receiving the education. As more men turned wise and aware of right and wrong, traveling for invasion and loot decreased and major traveling was for business and education. 

As the man become technologically advanced, he invented technologies like the telegraph, the telephone, mobile phone and the internet and virtually reduced the distance of miles to zero, which allowed the man to not travel cities-countries-continents for business and education. Now he can arrange a business meeting on video conference rather than traveling to other city and can get online lecture without the need to travel to foreign university.

Most people consider traveling a headache & waste of time and thus are happy to rely on technology as an alternative to the traveling. But they do not realize what they miss when they choose technology over traveling. It is always said, 'the more you see the more you learn' and 'change is the only constant thing', and traveling is the only way to see more and to experience the constant change in life.

Some of the reasons why traveling is the best gift:


The feeling of Euphoria

We humans are blessed with an imaginative mind and when we are traveling to new places which we have never visited before, it paints an image of the place in our mind.

This image is being painted on the canvas of our expectations, excitement, past experiences and our resistance to change. That feeling of ecstasy when that painted picture turns into reality or of amazement when it turns out divergent is what it makes traveling a fun and the reason people still love to travel in this technological dependent world.


Building contacts

While we travel, we meet new people with different beliefs, mindsets, and experiences. This helps us to develop both personally and professionally. While we observe and interact with them, we get to learn things which no book can teach us.

On personal grounds, we get to understand different belief system, different cultures, different living styles and methods to deal with different situations. Sometimes you even get lucky and meet your prince charming or princess Fiona, but do not travel for this intent only.

On professional grounds, we learn from their experiences, are able to generate new ideas from their stories, learn what to do and what not to do in our career and get new opportunities.

This way we develop a unique perspective towards life and a unique approach towards our career which is the result of all the knowledge which was absorbed from countless contacts you made while traveling.


Boosts your confidence

In our day to day lives, each one of us has to face uncertainties in both personal and professional lives. A flat tyre when you are already late for office, or elevator went out of order when you returned home after long day's job, or you find your partner dating your ex. Well, this may sound bizarre, but it is also true that anything can happen in our lives and the main thing is how we handle those situations. Traveling is a tool to make self-comfortable to handle any unpredictable situation in a much better way than we do.

How is that so?
Because traveling gives us exposure to anomalies at every step on which we don't have any control but we have to face them and find a way out of it. This experience of facing oddity helps us to handle uncertainties in our day to day lives.



Try different mode

While we travel, we always have to use more than one mode of transport to reach our destination. Traveling gives us the fun of the feeling of butterflies in stomach everytime plane takes off, the fun of rocking every time train changes its tracks, fun of stopping at a motel for refreshment on a long highway and fun of increased blood circulation when we walk.

The real fun is when you travel to rural parts, and experience an auto rickshaw, jugaad (very popular in rural India), horse carts or bullock carts. All these amusements which you get in traveling via different modes are unparalleled.

Makes you an explorer

When we travel to new places, we desire to see its tourist attraction spots, taste its special dishes. So to explore a new place in a better way, make the checklist of places to be covered according to the time you have, make an itinerary and start exploring,

The best way to explore a place is by taking an alternate route from one place to another when we travel between for more than one time, have our meals at different eating places rather than sticking to one place each time we have your meal outside the home.

Time for yourself

Traveling gives some time for us to introspect and think about matters which we don't in our daily routine. This helps us to get a fresh start with new ideas and strategies which will improve our present condition both professionally and personally.

So, the next time you plan for a video conference, think twice and plan some traveling and I guarantee you will not regret it.