Not just a sliver

Pepsi repositions Slice to get some of the fruit drinks action.

Time was when fruit drinks came with forbidding price tags. But, as PepsiCo acknowledged recently, the Indian consumer has started going for them all the same.

Today, the market is estimated at Rs 1,200 crore. This is an approximate figure, but it's large enough to get marketers salivating.

Judge for yourself. Slice has just repositioned itself. As Slice Mangola now, the Pepsi brand is leveraging Duke's residual brand equity to offer juicy thickness of another kind.

Parle Agro's Appy, meanwhile, has given itself some sparkle with Appy Fizz "" in a special champagne-style bottle. While this move was made back in August 2005, the ad campaign has begun to saturate TV screens only now.

India being India, though, mango is the overwhelming favourite. The famous Indian fruit has by far the biggest slice of the Indian juice drinks market, some two-thirds of it by value. But Slice itself was in danger of remaining just a sliver.

According to Rekha Pamani Gulati, CEO, DMA Branding, which handled the repositioning exercise, while Maaza and Frooti as rivals enjoyed clear positions (Maaza means mango, Frooti is an attitude), Slice was too vague.

"Slice as a brand had a diffused imagery "" no clear personality traits, no strong proposition "" and was not perceived to be contemporary at all," she says. Adds Prateek Pota, executive vice-president, flavours, PepsiCo India, "We felt the need to give the brand a new look and feel."