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Client: Lewis Berger | Project: Product branding
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This case of repositioning of Berger Paints to Lewis Berger is among Shining Consulting’s numerous classic examples of a branding exercise that resulted in phenomenal growth of the brand. Here the client achieved an increase of 69 percent in revenue within two years in Shining’s post repositioning strategy implementation.
Project profile
With 25 years of global experience, Shining Consulting addresses the rapidly changing Indian socio-economic scenario in implementing strategies for clients. In India, post economic reforms in 1991 and consequently WTO ratification in 2003, there has been a new departure in the lifestyle of Indian consumers. Consequent to the phenomenal GDP growth from 3.9 percent in 2003 to 9.4 percent in 2007, the impact on consumers has been elevation of their lifestyle aspiration, which has brought dramatic change in their purchasing behaviour.
When Berger Paints appointed Shining Consulting in 2005 for repositioning its brand for achieving growth, the latter started the assignment through its unique and patented P&P Research process. Shining understood from consumers that paint does not figure in their lifestyle as a consuming product. The overall paint industry is very hardware and professional centric and there is no end-customer pull here. Berger was a follower in this industry and a faceless second player. It did not resonate with the changing lifestyle of Indian consumers. Even the competitive scenario lacked brand architecture and coherent visibility. Consumers did not understand how to apply paints and were always dependent on their painting contractors for selection of any branded paint.
Client summary
The founder of the brand, Lewis Berger was a pioneer of dyes and pigments over 240 years ago and the company is considered as an authority on paints. Shining recommended that Berger occupy the unique and differentiated territory of being the only paint brand in the market that could boast of its origin to be from a legend and designer of paints. Shining recommended the change of the brand from Berger to Lewis Berger, and an authority of paint, being itself a pioneer. This strong differentiator of having a designer’s signature on the brand took Lewis Berger Paints away from the industrial or hardware nature of the paint industry.
Aspiring strategy
Pepositioned as
Lewis Berger
"Paint Your Imagination"
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Shining Consulting fleshed out from its consumer research that Berger’s potential lay in changing the platform of the entire paint market. Shining recommended bringing lifestyle and paint together to create the decorative market. Thus, Berger required a ‘displacement’ strategy to transcend from being a low-profile hardware-centric brand to a brand with a sustaining end-customer high aspiration connect. There was the requirement to create authenticity of Berger as a brand while its recall was very basic. Shining entered the brand’s historical aspect to find its authenticity.
Thus, the recommended brand strategy from Shining to Berger included:
- Shift from hardware to designer signature with the concept of imagination in home décor
- Change the name from Berger to Lewis Berger to bring back authenticity
- A master key positioning platform as Paint Your Imagination
Brand architecture
- Same type of products with three price and quality points with 3 layers of hierarchy.
- Consumer-friendly depiction of paint application on the surface to link to consumers over-the-counter.
Over-the-counter consumer friendly brand architecture
Client’s business results after Shining’s intervention in Branding
Shining’s brand strategy of paradigm shift for Berger enabled the brand to grow with an increase of 69 percent in revenue within two years.
Retail visibility and proximity programme
About Shining Consulting
Embedded with European skill interpreted to fit any geography, Shining Consulting was established in Paris in 1984 and has been working across the globe. Its founder Shombit Sengupta, a French national today, is an international growth strategy consultant for top management.
The company deploys its unique P&P Research process that combines ‘perceived’ and ‘potential value.’ P&P Research mines insights and unfolds the end-customer’s latent desires. It puts under the microscope the open environment and its latent trends and brings its huge database to the closed environment of client corporations to formulate their business strategy
Shining Consulting specialises in four services, viz Corporate Leap, Industrial Design, Branding and Retailing. The company handholds clients from strategy formulation to execution and implementation. It has global experience since last 25 years across multiple industry verticals such as services, technology, manufacturing, retail, luxury goods, and others. Shining’s international clients include Unilever, Danone, Nestle, 3M, Dow Chemicals, Carrefour, Intermeche, Procter & Gamble, Corning/Newell, Nivea, to mention a few.