Fastrack: Repositioning the Brand

Fastrack is one of coolest brand launched in India in recent times. Titan was a brand for older people beforehand and never appealed to younger generation until the launch of the brand Fastrack. It was launched in 1998 targeted at 15-25 years of age. The brand was promoted with the slogan "Cool Watches from Titan". It was the time when Titan and Timex parted ways. Initially the product was a success but within five years sales stagnated since it was priced too high for the target youth segment which mainly consisted of college going students.

It changed its target segment to executive segment and casual watch segment. But the repositioning strategy failed big time. The sales came down to one of its lowest level of 23 Crores. The consumers were not willing to pay Rs 1200-2700 for a watch that did not have the executive image.

Then it conducted consumer research that for youngsters most popular products are mobiles, deodorant, sports shoes and sunglasses. It zeroed it down to sunglasses as supplement product for its watch under the same brand name and do the brand extension. The other brands available in market, Ray-Ban etc., were too expensive for the target market and there was a big gap in the market as youngster used to prefer local brands over these foreign sunglasses brand.

It repositioned once again in 2005 with a new logo and advertisements. It adopted the cost leadership strategy by cutting the cost of production by going for cheaper raw materials and reduced the price up to the level of Rs. 500. Its advertisement campaign was focused on coolness of the brand with tagline “How many you have”.

This repositioning strategy was a big success and within a year sale reached the 35 Crores level. Its brand extension exercise of adding sunglasses also paid off big time. The freshness the brand brought with its repositioning and advertisements appealed to its targeted customers of young college going students a lot.