"Lyrix should reposition itself from its 'classical' slot to a more trendy and elegant look, even while retaining its superior value proposition" Harsh Chopra, Managing Director, Ray-Ban Sun Optics India

Should MAS adopt Uday's plan? at the very outset, it is clear that the core position of this heritage brand-a combination of high performance and styling-cannot be abandoned because that would result in Lyrix losing its identity. While the brand must evolve with changing lifestyles, a shift to street styles will make its product range and styling indistinguishable among the multitude of fashion brands screaming for the consumer's attention.

This is particularly true in the Indian context where a purchase decision involving Lyrix sunglasses would be a big financial commitment by the consumer and a relatively involved decision. A shift to 'flavour of the month' styles from Italian fashion houses would be suicidal for the brand.

With global fashion brands changing their collections every season, consumers are more often than not likely to find their expensive sunglasses going out of fashion every season. As for the argument that the brand should be repositioned with the aim of ensnaring teenagers, they would constitute at best a low margins market and would not be able to afford the higher-end offerings of MAS.

A strategy that is essentially based on going after cheap imitations of Lyrix through a focus on the technical delivery of the product is unlikely to help MAS much either, for the simple reason that those who go in for these visibly shoddy fake sunglasses are buyers from a different strata-people who wouldn't buy Lyrix anyway, good or not.

So, the right way forward is for the company's management to focus on the Lyrix brand successfully making the transition from its current 'classical' positioning to a more trendy, elegant and refined look even while retaining its technical superiority and functional image of guaranteeing protection to the eyes.

The sunglasses brand should offer more than just glamorous styles and be positioned to bring out its legendary heritage. This would be akin to a Mercedes-Benz car-a very high performance machine that is an evolving brand at the same time. This shift in positioning needs to be started at the design stage-style, lens colours, frame material and so on-so as to accommodate its core loyal users while initiating the younger users into its fold.

If such a shared vision could be evolved by MAS' management, it could successfully effect the brand's transition from its classical positioning. This should be the first step. The next big challenge would lie in executing the vision. Communication of this vision to designers and engineers, selection of the right styles and creating a balanced product range that offers something relevant to all consumers will determine the brand's success in the long-term.

"Lyrix needs to transcend the category boundary of functionality and differentiate itself as a premium brand through product innovation" Prodipto Roy, Associate Director, KSA Technopak

MAS' problem is akin to that of most premium fashion brands. In its long existence in this country Lyrix has built a brand equity for itself through successfully communicating its functional benefits to the consumer. But it has done little to bring its product-mix up to date.

Clearly, the two major challengers to Lyrix's dominant position are the foreign brands that have entered the market with greater glamour appeal and the fakes that are eating into its market, primarily in the B and C class towns.

There are four stages of evolution that a brand's lifecycle can be divided into. In the initial stages, a new category of products is created that offers specific functional value to the customer. This is followed by a process where the original product proposition is altered to offer more value to more people. These two stages belong to the emergent phase of a brand where it is yet to make it to the big league. The brand enters the mainstream through a prolonged phase of commercialisation and finally establishes itself as a key player in a particular product category across segments.

In this instance, Lyrix has created the sunglasses market in this country but its communication focus remains largely on functionality (protection from ultraviolet rays) even though the market has moved on to a higher level of sophistication. It now needs to transcend the boundary of functionality and differentiate itself as a premium brand through innovation.

MAS' Managing Director Shrishti Tandon is correct in her assessment that the Indian consumer is hunting not for cheap, but for 'value' products. There are numerous instances of consumers going in for a more expensive product once they were convinced that it would prove to be a better bargain in the long run. Nokia, for instance, is the clear leader in India in mobile phones even though the cheapest products in that market are offered by Motorola. Another good example of this is the fact that many car buyers are willing to shell out an extra Rs 1 lakh or even more and be seen driving a Palio, which is considered a better-designed car than its counterparts in the B segment.

However, consumers have reached a level of sophistication where the old definition of 'value' has been expanded to include differentiation. The consumer now wants to be able to choose from among a range of products, technologies and designs.

MAS has its work cut out. The market is expanding; the B & C class towns are also growing. They need to look beyond the UV filter, come up with different product propositions to cater to each consumer segment. Having said that, this is no quick-fix solution, it would require a lot of grind, testing of hypotheses, launches, mass distributions, supply channels, and of course, many such discussions in the future.

"Rather than questioning Lyrix's nurtured synergy between hipness and solid science, it's necessary to reinterpret glamour and science" Richa Puranesh, Manager (Marketing Services), DCM Benetton India

A 5 per cent drop in MAS' marketshare over a period of barely a year means that the growth of Lyrix as a brand has failed to keep pace with that of the sunglasses market as a whole. It is also a clear signal of the serious shift in the dynamics of the product segment. While the consumers remain loyal to high-end brands longer than they do in the other segments, realignment is inevitable beyond a point. The argument by MAS' marketing head that Lyrix as a brand is at a critical crossroads is absolutely correct.

The sunglasses market that Lyrix dominated for so long has metamorphosed over the years from a simplistic, notionally homogeneous one into a sophisticated web of segmentation with all its attendant specificities: age groups, lifestyles, affiliation choices, trend consciousness, plus a complex lot of swish-shopping environments and brand alternatives. To survive in this environment, Lyrix should evolve.

If MAS has so far failed to stem the tide, it is because its attempts to stay in tune with consumers' changing preferences have been half-hearted. While MAS' television campaign portrayed Lyrix as a sunglasses brand for cool, confident yuppies, its sales thrust focused on B and C class towns. The pricing, in turn, was determined by this sales strategy. Further, the models emphasised were classic Lyrix oldies.

Lifestyle brands are often born of rational brand promises that then draw upon glamour power to grow their appeal. Even after these brands evolve, they depend on their original rational assurances of value to lend substance to their fashion gloss. The two are co-dependent and never contradictory, even though MAS' marketing chief seems to think that there is a choice to be made between them.

Instead of calling in question Lyrix's carefully nurtured synergy and linkage between hipness and solid science, a reinterpretation of what glamour and science mean is needed. MAS' Managing Director Tandon, on the other hand, needs to realise that tackling fakes is no marketing strategy, but just a bottom-line protection task.

To send Lyrix's positioning skittering from addressing mature 35-plus loyalists to college teenies seems too much of a knee-jerk reaction on the part of the company. Such a course of action would also create the risk of alienating the core franchise and rejection on part of disbelieving teenagers. It would be cannier to isolate the core attitudes that the market seems to be tuning to, which would integrate with and evolve the brand.

The insights obtained thus could also help the company's brand make it big with the image-conscious 25-plus consumers. The decision on whether to re-orient the brand completely towards this segment or to hive off a brand extension would require a fair degree of research and analysis on the segment's dynamics and the implications for brand Lyrix's architecture.

Either course of action would give Lyrix a hipper, younger spin, while allowing it to keep its 'establishment' credentials intact. Rigorous interpretation and decoding of emerging lifestyle affiliations are critical to survival of brands in this category. As is re-energising of the brand with a view to creating new loyalists with different socio-economic profiles.