Dollar Industries recently, has announced its new brand identity with a fresh vision of ‘WEAR THE CHANGE’. With the re-branding exercise, the brand is not only set to create a youth-friendly image but also creating a synchronized and improved brand architecture and user-friendly interface in the market to establish stronger brand recall. The reinvigorated brand identity will also assist in creating a synchronised brand portfolio amongst its end consumers and stakeholders.
With this change, the company has become simpler in maintaining various product categories which include Men, Women, Junior, Always and Thermals.
Medianews4u in a conversation with Vinod Kumar Gupta, Managing Director, Dollar Industries Limited.
What made you go for a Brand Restructuring now during this period of lockdown?
The decision to implement the rebranding exercise was taken way before the lockdown as we were planning to launch the new logo by end of March targeting our peak season. But with the global spread of the deadly coronavirus and lockdown, we decided to keep the launch on hold.
With easing of lockdown from June, we immediately planned to unveil our new brand identity. We initiated our first-ever digital launch in the presence of our brand ambassador, superstar Akshay Kumar, with whom we share a decade long association.
What would be the relevance of this new structure and Logo?
We wanted to simplify our product portfolio for our consumers. So, this new brand architecture manages to convey our message in absolute simplicity.
Our brand-new logo provides a distinct brand identity. The ‘Knitted and Overlapping D’ symbolizes our product line and the knitting industry. We wanted a logo which would not only be simpler but easier to use in all communications for the brand. Moreover, the new logo not only induces a feeling of inspiration and novelty, but also signifies warmth, comfort and positivity.
What were the learnings from the research?
To launch a whole new brand identity and architecture, we had to follow a rigorous process as well as research intensively. We undertook retail visits, spoke to our stakeholders, did a competitive review, attended brand custodian workshops and carried out consumer research as well.
In our research we found out that following a single brand architecture provides consistency as it ensures that all the offerings in the product portfolio are in synergy with the brand. It also assists the retailers as well as consumers to choose appropriately. It helps to guide future innovations and also guides the categorization of the future product launches. Hence, making it simpler and clear for the consumers to recall the brand.
How do you think this single brand architecture benefit the brand in the long run?
As mentioned above, having a single brand architecture is more focussed. Consumers have brands all around from morning till night – which they associate with. It becomes difficult to remember a lot of things. Moreover, from the marketing communications point of view – either you have humongous budget to promote each product and establish them or just concentrate on one. Be it the star collections or sub-brands, if they are not connected to a celebrated bigger entity, acceptability become a challenge. The company has decided to highlight Dollar, then shall zoom into products categories that are streamlined under the product portfolio of Men, Women, Junior (for Kids), Always (Economy range for all) and Thermals.
There was an E – launch, what was the response and how have your distributors embraced this new restructuring and logo?
The response has been tremendous. E-launch was our only choice during lockdown, but it became a one of its kind event for our trade – thus, inviting lots of enquires. Further, the acceptability was immediate, as the new architecture and logo are simple. The mood is quite upbeat now. We are witnessing sales growth 4x times in e-commerce platforms besides bulk orders from across India.
What would be your communication and marketing strategy to reach out to your consumers?
Due to the Coronavirus, we have seen a lot of changes globally and locally – that requires businesses and brands to analyse and retrospect on ways to sail through this crisis. Even we had to unveil our new brand identity via e-press conference for the very first time during the lockdown period. Hence, adapting to the ‘New Normal’ is the mantra to get through the tough times.
As a brand, we would now be focusing more on our single brand architecture and product offerings in the coming days.
During this period we will be concentrating more on online/e-commerce platforms as the consumers will be very cautious about shopping from the offline stores. We will adopt digitization and opt for digital payment methods for our urban consumers.
Our marcom campaigns shall be Digital and TV led – supported by other mediums if necessary and feasible.
