Classmate's Brand Management Process and Brand Positioning

CLASSMATE

TAGLINE- Be Better Than Yourself

URL - https://www.classmateshop.com/

BRAND MANAGEMENT PROCESS-

1. Identifying and developing brand plans- In 1979, ITC entered the Paperboards business by promoting ITC Bhadrachalam Paperboards Limited.  To augment its offering and to reach a wider student population, the Classmate range of notebooks was launched  in  2003.

2. Designing and implementing brand marketing programs-Years 2007- 2009 saw the launch of Practical Books, Drawing Books, Geometry Boxes, Pens and Pencils under the 'Classmate' brand. In 2008, ITC positioned the business as the Education and Stationery Products Business and launched India's first environment friendly premium business paper under the 'Paperkraft' Brand. The company spends more than 5% of its turnover on marketing and brand building activities.

3. Measuring and interpreting brand performance -ITC Classmate recently came up with a campaign ‘Be better than yourself’ to educate students on how to tackle exam pressure, with a core message that the goal is not to be better than anyone else but to improve one’s own past performance. The campaign is designed to encourage children to chase their future selves. It has been a major market player in the industry and has overall more than 25% of the market share.

4. Growing and sustaining brand equity- At present, the stationery business in India is worth over Rs 15,500 crore, with notebook as the largest segment estimated to be worth over Rs 7,500 crore.  In the past few years, the industry has seen a growth of 4.5- 5% and Classmate  has clocked revenues of Rs 1,000 crore in terms of consumer spends.

It has developed a portfolio of world-class products through sustained investments in brand building. Going forward, it will leverage their competencies, expertise, innovations and brand communication strategies to stay ahead in the market.

BRAND POSITIONING

Classmate as a brand promises to deliver notebooks of high quality and Eco-friendly paper.
It is the pioneer of organization of the notebook industry.

Its product features and customer value have ensured that the customers always prefer classmate over its competitors namely:

• Student
• Navneet
• Bilt
• JK paper
• Camlin

Also the number one status of the classmate notebook has been the status symbol for the customers.

Defining and Communicating the Competitive Frame of Reference: Classmate has always catered to the requirements of the target group by introducing variants. This helped classmate to strengthen the loyalty factor and this helped in establishing the emotional connect with the brand. It puts in a lot of focus on brand management. It consistently delivers the product that matches the expectations and also provides additional features. It enhances the emotional connection within the people by its ad campaigns which focus on uniqueness and also specialties in a kid.

ITC Education & Stationery Products CEO Chand Das says: “The most challenging legwork in the stationery business has been done and that is in notebooks.” ITC also had a greeting cards business which it wound up in 2008 after e-mail and SMS dealt a body blow to the whole industry.

Communicating Category Benefits: ITC has identified the different needs in the market, which is evident from the variants that Classmate has. Buying for new school sessions vary across India:

In the North-East, it is in November and December; 

In the East, it goes on till January and February; 

In the North, it starts in February and March; and

In the South and West the sales begin in April and May. 

Not just the seasonality in the different markets, ITC has also adopted its portfolio to local preferences.

Product Descriptor: Classmate positioned itself to celebrate the uniqueness of every child. They discourage rote academics, they encourage children to become successful in line with their own strengths. Their skills could be vocational as well, which could ensure them livelihood in the future. So while a lot of brands in this category focus on passing exams, Classmate says that everybody is born unique, maybe a child is not interested in being a class topper but a damn good chef, dancer or musician. 

Points-of-Difference: Karan Kumar the Marketing manager says that ,"We are speaking to children as well as the influencers, that is; parents and teachers, to allow children to explore and follow their heart. We recently completed a series of talk sessions called ‘Follow your heart’. This was an incredible journey for us. It was about establishing what your brand proposition is. If you look at our TVC, it is all about empowering and partnering with every child to be the first in his or her chosen field. We did this at a pan-India level; on ground and we also had the largest webcast. 

Positioning through their Webcast Session: The audiences ranged between 600- 700 students, while the session was in a school of Mumbai, they simultaneously had the largest webcast session in five schools at 10 centres and questions were being answered via a live blog. They had a panel of four extremely successful women, all representing alternative careers – Mahrukh Inayet, VJ Juhi Pande, Dipika Pallikal and Soha Ali Khan. These individuals made choices by following their heart. Not for a moment are we dissuading students from studying hard, but telling them that if your true calling is somewhere else, we are there to help you. Classmate reached almost 25,000 kids in 50 schools. Plus 15,000 on its Facebook account. This was a fairly large consumer engagement initiative which did not sell anything, it was a purely proposition based engagement.

So to conclude the whole, Getting the entire product proposition right in terms of need gap, consumption, usage and behavior in the category, research on whether the current products in the category are failing consumers. As simple as it sounds, all of these entail a lot of hard work with attention to minute detail, for example, paper quality and binding quality; responsible marketing to children – ensuring that the brand proposition resonates with children and is important for their future. Classmate has been working on all of it, from "For the Big Ideas in You" to "Because you are one of a kind", from #BeBetterThanYourself to #Inspiringyoungminds, Also through Whiter, Brighter and Smoother and through many more Classmate has rightly positioned itself into its target market.

Let's have a glimpse at this video: