How are big brands made on small budgets?

Unilever spent Rs 800 crores in 2007 on advertising and marketing. Reliance ADAG spent Rs 600 crores.

It's a daunting task to break through the clutter of brands without advertising budgets like these to lean on! But it doesn't always take big bucks to make an impact.

So what's the magic formula to do that you would ask?

Rupin Jayal said, "Find other ways to communicate to your self, to your people and to your audience. Don’t use the tried and tested, because sometimes that is the most expensive way to go about it and does not give the required return."

R Balakrishnan, National Creative Director, Lowe India said, “When you're small and you want to be big, don't follow the rules of the big. Even if I take mass media advertising, when you have less money lot of small people make that mistake.

But often a successful marketing strategy is about not having any campaign at all.

Perfect positioning is, quite literally, all it takes.

Take for example, the case of Jumbo King Wada Pav. What started as one Vada Pav store in suburban Mumbai 7 years ago with a 1000 rupees marketing budget is now a 45 store network across Maharshtra & Gujarat.

Stores that compete with cheaper hawkers on one side and large food chains like McDonalds on the other.

It has taken the dependability of hygiene and quality of McDonalds and offered it in a product that many others can enjoy and that is the humble wada pav.

What have they done? Perfect locations! They have located their shops bang outside railway stations.

Dheeraj Gupta, Managing Director,Jumbo King Wada Pav said that after understanding the railway commuter’s needs , he realized that he does not want air-conditoning, he wants a hygienic wada pav, which is what we want to deliver to him consistently. So ‘it’s not what we wanted to give to the customer. It is what the customer wanted out of that product.’

And it seems that this strategy works just as well for high end products.

Take for example the case of Delhi-based herbal product brand Biotique.

It's now a household name in upper middle class India. 16 years ago it was just another cosmetic brand launched by aspiring entrepreneur and housewife Vineeta Jain.

A small brand that carried a hefty price tag. And so it was made available only in up market stores across the country and in luxury hotels. Today the company has a turnover of about 500 crore rupees without any designated advertising or marketing budget.

Vinita Jain, MD,Biotique said “I wanted to put the products where consumers could use them and see their benefits.”

There are many such examples across products and services. And standing out in an over crowded marketplace with little money means starting out by asking yourself the some basic questions like -

Do I really have anything different to offer?

Who am I talking to?

How am I going to position my product?

And how different is my positioning strategy?