I think Indians always love good brands. They love the brand names such a way that they forget (or don’t ever try to know what the product is) the product name. They recognize the product by brand name. Let’s focus this interesting area of India!
Surf – a very old and popular brand in India. It’s considered to be one of the top brand among all detergents. And I have heard most people using the word ‘Surf’ to refer detergent. They don’t know or they never heard of the word ‘detergent’. Surf is a costly detergent, and there are many other brands which are cheaper – like Wheel, Nirma, Tide (mid budget) etc. Most of the people use these cheap detergents, but they call it ‘Surf’. You will go to a shop and ask “Give me a 500 gram Surf”, the shopkeeper will ask “Which Surf – Surf Excel or Ariel?”. The word ‘Surf’ is on the tongue of many people, but I don’t think Hindustan Unilever – the manufacturer of Surf get more advantage, however sometimes they get lucky and shopkeeper hands you over a Surf packet without asking any question. Here I will say “Daag Achche Hain..”.
Now after detergent let’s talk about soaps. Most of the people use Lux and Lifebuoy soap, I am not saying those are good soaps, but I see most people buying them. Those fall in bathing soap category. In detergent soap category Rin, Sunlight, OK are most selling items. But I have never seen anyone using these brand names for referring a bathing soap or detergent soap.
Now let’s talk about mosquito repellents. Most used mosquito repellents are coils, mats and liquid mosquito repellents. And some popular brands are Good Knight (People never read the name the same, and me too fall under that category, we call it as ‘Good Night’), Mortein, All Out (only liquid repellent). For mats ‘Good Knight’ is the default (most used) name and for liquid ‘All Out’ is the default (most used) name, it does not matter which brand you actually use.
Oops! I did not tell the default name for Coils. Well, this is bit interesting. Let’s switch on the time machine (I don’t believe time travel as shown in films and TV, I mean just recall those old days) and go to around 16 years back. Then mosquito repellents are very less used products in the market. People liked to use mosquito nets or burn dry cow dungs to get rid of mosquitoes. I remember, there were two mosquito coil brands – Tortoise and Rooster and one mosquito mat brand – Goog Knight available in market. And the famous punch line with some funny ads were on TV was “kachua jalao machhar bhagao”. This tag line is so popular that it even flows in some funny SMS. But I don’t see this product in market. In old days, mat machine was so costly that few people use Good Knight mats on light bulbs, lanterns etc. But after All Out introduced liquid mosquito repellent, the market for mats are down, but still available.
Here no one use the word ‘Mosquito Repellent’, all use a brand name of their own choice or practice. Here no brand name rules like ‘Surf’.
Detergents, Soaps, then I should go to Tooth Paste, but I went to Mosquito Repellents, the reason is that, here mosquitoes rule and my eye fell on All Out. Among all tooth pastes, Colgate is the most popular one and a big part of people use the word Colgate to refer any tooth paste. Other big part use the term ‘Paste’ to refer tooth paste and a very few say ‘Tooth Paste’.
Do you know any other brand, which lives on the tongue of people? Do you have any similar experience like this? Please share with us, we will be happy 🙂
Image credit: Fickr – mckaysavage – India – Chennai – busy T. Nagar market 2
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