Let’s take a look at Hero Honda (HH) now…
The company is the number one motorcycle maker in the world, and that, I must clarify, is in terms of bikes sold, and not for the variety of product mix, or cutting edge technology or the like. But it’s still a huge achievement, nonetheless.
However, the successes behind this success story aren’t very many.
There’s been the Splendor-Passion combo, the success of which I need not elaborate on at all. The CD too has been a hugely successful brand for HH. But beyond these, there’s little that HH can tom tom about.
But before we get on further, just for a moment imagine, the enormity of the triumph these brands have had, to single handedly be responsible for the company’s accomplishment. Unbelievable!
Equally unbelievable are the number of flops the company has had to live with.
HH tried to do something different in the middle ages so to speak with its entry level platform. It introduced a restyled CD 100 as the Joy. The bike of course bombed. HH then tried the same with the Dawn nameplate, she too failed.
Finally, some sense prevailed and HH re-introduced (yet again), the CD/ Splendor platform as the CD Dawn and CD Deluxe. The two met with better fortunes than the earlier two. Was it the CD brand then? I can’t think of anything else, really, cause the bikes, and their styling weren’t too different in the first place.
Hero Honda must be of the same opinion as well, otherwise how to do you explain the range of Splendors – there’s the regular Splendor+, then came along the 125cc Super Splendor, and now the Splendor NXG has chugged in promising a Splendorful life.
However, excluding the entry-level and what we largely term as the executive segment, HH has had little success. The CBZ eventually failed, so did the Ambition, the Achiever, and so on and so forth.
The company finally brought back the CBZ nameplate with the X-treme, and it was a good move, no doubt, given that the name still kindles the right flame in a biking enthusiast’s heart.
But, I have two questions here. First, why couldn’t Hero Honda, such a heavily marketing driven company, introduce the CBZ brand earlier? And second, when it did, why couldn’t they do a better job on the styling front, especially when the complete Indian motorcycle dynamics had moved towards better styled machines?
The answer to the first question, I believe, is that it was a huge goof up on the company’s part. Instead of understanding the brand and the value it commanded, HH set about breaking it with new launches like the Achiever, when that was the last thing it needed.
As for the second, we all know Hero Honda banks on Honda for the products they get. Maybe it’s a case of Honda and Hero Honda being on different wavelengths, and with the former calling the shots, HH’s understanding of the market needs - styling, features, performance etc etc, in Honda’s view, can be ignored (put politely, of course). Or maybe HH has little clue about what is actually needed.
I personally believe it’s the former.
Getting back to the CBZ, since the X-treme’s launch the bike has done pretty well, selling around 12,000-15,000 every month. It’s a fabulous achievement considering the bike’s styling isn’t very, how should I put it, palatable. The thought process at Hero Honda would then have been, “What if the bike were actually a great looker, imagine the numbers we’d manage then!”
Enter the Hunk. Employing the same mechanicals as the X, from the engine to the cycle parts, she boasts of tastier, more contemporary and racy styling.
But why Hunk? Why not something like CBZ 150 R or better still, the new CBZ X-treme. Picture the recall the bike would have had, if she too had the CBZ nameplate. Maybe HH understands the consumers better, and feels it will sell more bikes by having two different brands, I don’t know.
What I do know - in the long term, a company does need to build successful brands. Otherwise, it will have to start everything from a scratch - from defining the brand’s values, to its target audience, to its deliverables. The end result - a lot more money will be spent every time a new bike is launched.
Something HH has become used to, I guess.
No comments:
Post a Comment