The story of the dancing girl-Nirma.
There lives a man named Karsanbhai Patel in Gujarat who began his career as a lab technician and then moved to the mining department of the state government. He is a man having sound knowledge in chemicals.
Being an employee of state government, Karsanbhai manufactured an eco- friendly, phosphate -free detergent powder in the backyard of his house. He made his yellow coloured washing powder with the help of some new ingredients. He adopted the strategy of selling packets in a door-to-door basis on the way to his office. This is how he had tested the acceptance of his product with the common people. He named his detergent powder as “Nirma” in the memory of his loving daughter Nirupama who passed away in an accident. Every day, Bhaiji, was able to sell a minimum of 15–20 packets. He had sold each packet with an unbelievable low price of Rs.3/kg.Until then there was no other detergent powder having such a low price. All the operations from the formulation of the detergent to the delivery of packets were done by bhaiji. Within a short span of time bhaiji’s powder became famous for its quality and low price. From the starting itself bhaiji had given the attractive offer of money-back guarantee with each packet. Gradually he expanded his business with the lower and middle class people.
By knowing the success of his product, a small shop was opened in Ahmadabad and thus Nirma made their entry in the retail market. It was not an easy job to penetrate in the retail market as it was not a brand. They had faced a lot of problems like getting a part payment from retailers even if the whole stock is sold. Nirma’s salesmen were asked to take the material back once they demand for the money. It went for some time until then Karsanbhai realized the power of marketing. One day he asked his salesmen to go to the market and collect either money or the product.
Ever since then the media was exploded with the massive advertising campaign of Nirma. The jingles in the nostalgic advertisement “Doodh se saphedi Nirma se aayi” [means get your cloth the whiteness of milk with Nirma]made a deep impact in the mindset of women who are their target audience. Because of the great success of the campaign people started asking for Nirma and the market was completely out of the product. At that moment Bhaiji called his salesmen and instructed them to deliver the product but without any credit. All cash on delivery and the market was completely immersed with Nirma. There started Nirma’s journey to a successful largest selling brand. Within three decades Nirma became a Rs. 17 billion company. Bhaiji’s policy of “giving customer the quality product at the right time at a low-price rate” was a huge success. He followed his own rules to an entrepreneurial journey. For example, “airing the advertisement once the product is in the retailers’ shelves” was a unique advertising strategy over the traditional rules of marketing. The marketing foresights of Bhaiji helps to form a strong network in the lower and middle segment across the country. Each product of Nirma sticks to its own principle of “better product, better value, better living”.
I liked the campaign because still it gives a nostalgic feeling of my childhood because its ads were there in the TV for almost all the time. From that time till today I even remember the jingles of the ad. I like the way they had presented the ad. Each and everything like music, concept, visualization, lyrics was perfect ingredients to one of the most popular advertisement.
