Thursday, June 14, 2007

Brand Update : Yamaha

This year Yamaha launched yet another bike branded Alba 106. Surprisingly this bike is a 100 cc bike which is an absolute contra strategy because almost all bike marketers are moving away from the 100 cc segment. Alba was launched after the reasonably successful run of Gladiator. But according to reports, Yamaha India is in deep trouble and time is running out for them to give a winner. As discussed in the previous blog about Yamaha, it is sad to find an iconic brand now slowly dying.
Alba 106 again is a mass market brand. The brand is once again going to dampen the brand equity of Yamaha which went down the drains with the failures of Crux,Frazer and YBX. What was needed for this brand was a SUPER BIKE and what came was a cropper.
To top it, ALBA 's campaign is one of the worse media campaign I have seen in recent times. The ad surprisingly do not feature the brand ambassador John Abraham. The brand uses the baseline " Got It?" which does not mean anything. The story , the positioning and the USP all missing in the campaign. If the agency feels that Indian consumer will be impressed by showing a tattooed girl and a dude, they are terribly mistaken or they lack commonsense.
Alba 106 fails to convey any sort of differentiation for the product. One print ad says " Ride it if you can handle it" which is a dampener. Another major issue that the brand faces is the failure of the earlier launches like Crux,Frazer etc. Customers who bought these brands are worried about the after sales support. This issue further damages the equity of Yamaha.
Yamaha is again trying wrong medicine to its disease. What it needs is a product like Pulsar that will bring back the confidence of customers back to the brand.


Related brand

Yamaha

Image courtesy : magindia

5 comments:

  1. It amazes me that yamaha globally known for its bikes has never taken the indian market seriously. And now wat we see from ALBA is the lack of understanding of the indian consumer....gone are the days when u put an rx100 in the market and it would sell without any effort...the indian consumer today is spoilt for choices and gone are the days when MNC's could come up with any automotive junk and consumers would buy it for lack of options..its high time yamaha wakes up to this call....all it would take is to launch an international blockbuster model in india before the name "yamaha" vanishes from the mind of the indian consumer

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  2. sukhbir verma3:24 PM

    hey anup watever u said is totaly true,now in dis time we cant compromise wid any mnc widout best options but dis days yamaha motor is doing a gr8 work,may be some years ago dey were not taking indian markt seriousaly but dis days dey r more concenred,u can see d launching of rz-16 n r-15...dey r desgined totaly keeping in mind od indian cutomers,hopefuly dey wil boom in market at der peak...

    ReplyDelete
  3. sukhbirverma3:26 PM

    hey anup watever u said is totaly true,now in dis time we cant compromise wid any mnc widout best options but dis days yamaha motor is doing a gr8 work,may be some years ago dey were not taking indian markt seriousaly but dis days dey r more concenred,u can see d launching of rz-16 n r-15...dey r desgined totaly keeping in mind od indian cutomers,hopefuly dey wil boom in market at der peak...

    ReplyDelete
  4. sukhbir verma7:03 PM

    jus look at d link,realy a glamourous n stylish bike...http://www.yamaha-motor-india.com/r15/index.html

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yamaha has facelifted its commuter bike Alba which targets to lure young customers.The launch of new Alba with electric start makes it a world class product for its customers.

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