Reynolds: Penning a Success Story

Reynolds is synonymous with writing, just like Bata is with footwear or Tata with tea or salts. The brand brings back memories of the ubiquitous blue-and-white pen simple, cheap and dependable during those never-ending make-and-break annual school exams. Though originated in France in 1927 at la Ferte -Milon, the company headquarters later shifted to Valence. In 1999, the brand was taken over by Sanford Corporation the writing instruments division of the US-based $ 7-billion Newell Rubbermaid group. In India, too, Reynolds has been an able companion to millions of students in their successes and failures since 1986, when it was brought by GM Pens International, the licensee of Reynolds, in the domestic market. Riding on brand Reynolds, GM Pens has gone on to become a pioneer in the writing instruments market, turning the commodity-structured market into brand-driven one in nature. It invested substantially in manufacturing plants at Chennai and Pondicherry and state-of-the-art R&D to ensure its leader role. Substantial investments were also made in the mass media, especially television and press, to establish Reynolds. Today Reynolds products are available at 300,000 retail outlets across the country with a network of 1800 redistribution stockists and 27 main stockists, it has a 15 percent share in the estimated Rs.1,800-crore writing instruments market with annual sales of around Rs. 250 crore. Reynolds marketing executive, B. Karthik took Pitch along the Reynolds roller-coaster journey in India. He reveals that out of the 4Ps, pricing has been their most important marketing pillar. Today GM Pens offers the widest range of writing instruments and accessories including ball pens, gel pens, fountain pens, mechanical pencils, markers, handy boards and childrens colouring pens, catering to consumers from six to 60 years. When we started in India, it was a commodity market. To take care of this we launched products at various price slabs, introduced a three-tier distribution system to ensure it reaches the target audience, and put in place a proper design and architecture system around the model brand Reynolds. We came up with sub-brands in categories like ball pens, gel pens and retractable unlike other players of the industry who were mostly limited to ball pens and gel pens, informs Karthik. Talking about the brand extensions, Karthik reveals that there are various needs to be catered as writing varies from people to people. While some prefer thick writing, most others in this country are thin writing aficionados. Since there were no organised players in the segments, Reynolds got an opportunity to come up with extensions like jetter, gel, ink flow and Trimax, to further consolidate its leadership. It launched Reynolds Bold for thick writing and for thin w riting; it launched many products in the popular pricesegments. Afterwards, it launched retractable jetter pen which has been a big success over the last 10 to 15 years. When gel pens emerged as a market leader, Reynolds was caught off guard by its competitors. But it fought back and launched water-proof gel pens going on to become a major player in this category too. Reynolds has recently come up with liquiflo which provides extra smooth writing experience and it is neither a gel pen nor a ball pen. Reynolds brand manager says, the idea (liquiflo) came when we thought about what the next innovation stage would be and what new products should be there. Evolving Communication Reynolds commercials started around 1988-1990 and had French models to showcase its international credentials. Then came another commercial Reynolds, th e pen that world prefers centering around the international theme and showcasing people from different nationalities and regions using Reynolds. Soon, it established itself as a top brand in the writing instruments category and became an intrinsic part of students life in the country as almost a generation grew-up using Reynolds pens. Around 1990s, Reynolds brought emotional touch to its communication and came up with building bonds with words or shabdo se bandhan banaye campa ign featuring people from various walks of life like students, professionals, etc. Then it came up with another campaign tag lined With my Reynolds, yes I can. This w as the fourth stage of Reynolds advertising and most of it focused around the mother brand. Next stage came when it started advertising for various sub-brands like jetter, markers and highlighters. However, the most visible was the jetter launch campaign around 1988-1990. That time jetter was the only retractable pen with a reliable click-open technology. It had an economic slim look and has been one of Reynolds most successful extensions here. 1990s onwards several category-oriented campaigns were launched around sub-brands like water proof gel pens and razor pens. Many kid products like argon pens used for coloring purposes were advertised in a big way on children-oriented channels like Pogo, Cartoon network, featuring animated commercials appealing kids. To cut through the media clutter, Sachin Tendulkar was roped in as brand ambassador two year ago. The first ad featuring Sachin had him playing dumb-charades with a group of kids where he comes up and picks a Reynolds written card, which he tries to enact through gestures like a forward movement meaning go on, pointing to him meaning international, and steps like that. Karthik informs that this ad broke the clutter for them as no body has done something similar before. This year, Reynolds major focus has been to reinvigorate the popular the 045 blue and white pen which was not advertised for quiet sometim e. The legendry pen has been doing quiet well for a long time and the company wanted to convey the same to the latest new generation. In fact, Karthik said a research done by Reynolds by checkin g the pencil boxes of students found that the 045 pen was carried by almost every student as a back up. JWT made the ad, where Sachin comes up to bat in two different colours blue for one-day and white for test. Blue is associated with agility while white is for comfort and longevity. The ad has two taglines When blue and white come together, you get success and blue and white 045, the colours of success. Brand manager Karthik informs that Lintas was the first agency to work with Reynolds in India and Alyque Padamsee created their first campaign. Other agencies to have worked on Reynolds account are JWT, Contract, O&M and Maitree. Reynolds tries to focus equally on ATL and BTL activities, the former to create ToM, and BTL to convert ToM into action. Packaging is another tool especially in the popular Rs. 5-10 segments where a lot of purchase is done on the attractiveness of product-packages at the outlets. While its ATL is done mostly through TV and some print, Reynolds detailed website is another place where people can log in and check the various products. BTL is being done through contact programs, and its latest organised retail initiative Write Site where people can walk in and surf thro ugh various offerings. Word- of-mouth (WoM) is another way which induces people to try products. For the mother brand we have been using more of the mass media campaigns while for our sub-brands we use more of our contact programs, Karthik says. Opportunities & Challenges Talking about the challenges they face, Karthik says that it is a low-involvement product mostly used by students and little extra investment goes into buying them as money comes from the parents as part of study costs. So, even though students use pens for eight hours a day at school, still it does not have their top-of-mind (ToM) recall. To complicate matters further, reaching out to the core audience i.e. students, is a challenge too, as most homes are single TV home, and media is highly cluttered with many channels vying for eyeballs unlike the past days when there were very a few programs and chan nels. So even if Reynolds advertises on kids channel, the time given to them can never be known and it can happen that the whole family could be sitting there at the time slot you book. Also, it is a fragmented market with many segments like gel pens, ball pens, etc. So product designing strategy becomes a challenge, no one can foresee whether the consumer will like a particular product or not. Since it is a low involvement category, people can easily switch over to other brands. To counter this, Reynolds products are designed with individual USP, whatever it does is done with the consumers thinking, so that he comes back to buy a particula r product again. Consumption of pens in the country is still very low compared to developed markets, because of the low literacy rate. This presents a big scope for future growth as literacy rises. Also, Karthik feels. As people grow richer they buy more products, just like you have more shirts, you will have more pens as well.

Reynolds has also started a retail venture called Write Site first of which opened in Chennai, showcasing a range of global products, in a smart yet easy ambience where one can touch, feel and choose products ranging from Rs. five to Rs. 5000. It has 30 such stores already. Karthik says, through Write Site our idea is to tell people to enjoy writing by trying it out at the Write Site stores.