T he new ad for Britannia Rusk by Grey India conveys a simple story of a family coming together over tea and a packet of crunchy and juicy Britannia Rusks, making it enjoyable and memorable. The brand promise is signed off with “Britannia Rusk Jahaan, Family wahaan”.
This is the first time that Britannia is advertising this product, rusks, and the ad happens to be set in space. The minute the protagonist takes a bite of the crunchy rusk (in space), his dad, upon hearing the sound (from earth) barges into the space craft, followed by the mother, the grandmother and finally the maid.
“We wanted to capture a real family moment, with its inherent humour and warmth,” say Vishnu Srivatsav and Sham Ramachandran, executive creative directors, Grey Bangalore. “It’s a typical Indian scene — where a guy is visited by his family. It could have been in another city, but we wanted to exaggerate the promise that Britannia Rusk brings the family together. So we set it in space. Even with the production, we didn’t want to get too carried away — it was just a setting for a real family moment.”
With its new rusk, the challenge for Britannia is to break into a category that is highly unorganised. The market is led by a variety of local brands and bakeries that offer little in terms of differentiation or innovation. According to estimates the rusk market in India stands at Rs 900 crore, and as much as 60 per cent of it is unorganised. Britannia has a 15 per cent share of the rusk market.
Anuradha Narasimhan, category director, Britannia Industries, says since the rusk category is nascent it is important for the company to stimulate both trials and regular consumption. “We had to bring alive the relevance of the consumption occasion — and we chose to do this in an extremely evocative manner while staying true to warm and convivial family tea-times. More importantly, families today need a bonding experience — everyday moments where they come together to share and enjoy intimate and personal moments of joy. These are what we call family ‘pajama’ moments,” Narasimhan adds.
For the agency there were two challenged, says Malvika Mehra, SVP and joint national creative director, Grey India. The first was to do a ‘new’ story around tea time snacking. The second was to make the spacecraft look real. “Honestly, a lot of brands are trying to appropriate that space. I think we managed to hit the right note with ‘Britannia Rusks jahan, family wahan’ both in terms of messaging and execution. No pun intended, but setting ‘tea time’ in space, lifted the idea even further,” she says.
Britannia is perhaps the first marketer to advertise its rusk brand on national television. “Our investment in the campaign is large and comparable with what we invest in any of our large brands like Tiger or Mariegold,” says Narasimhan.