Indo Nissin’s Top Ramen wants to jump on to the health bandwagon; but it would do well to remember that it takes time to win over health-conscious customers.
Yet another attempt to reposition Top Ramen noodles from Indo Nissin, the Indian unit of Japan’s Nissin Food Products.
This is not the first time Top Ramen is going through a brand overhaul. Since it entered India in 1991, the brand’s journey has not been as smooth, to put it mildly. It has been changing its product composition and marketing pitch regularly to click with Indian consumers. Its debut in India was with a product similar to the Japanese style soupy noodles with a soya flavour, sold in a pillow pack. Sales remained in the dumps as Indians were used to the taste of Nestlé’s Maggi, which was dry and mostly eaten from a plate.
In 1992, the brand decided to take on Maggi on its turf and relaunched Top Ramen as an easy-to-prepare snack food. It also launched new flavours like masala and vegetable. However, this did little to loosen Maggi’s stranglehold in the Indian market.
A few years later, the company decided to differentiate the brand through the texture of the product, and said as much with a new slogan, ‘Don’t be a noodle, be a smoodle’. The word ‘smoodle’, as the sales graph showed, failed to make the connect and Top Ramen continued to languish in a market driven by taste, convenience, affordability and availability.
Then a little emotional play seemed to open up the Indian market. Top Ramen changed its positioning once again to ‘smooth noodles’ and went on to convey the message through advertising that featured a boy lost in the jungle, whose mother prepares Top Ramen noodles as a way to find him. The boy reappears, drawn by the aroma of the noodles, and Top Ramen, in the process, unites the family. Drawing a parallel with Mowgli, the much-loved fictional character from Rudyard Kipling’s short stories, Top Ramen seemed to finally build a rapport with Indian kids.
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Keep it healthy
In its latest effort, the company is trying to relaunch the brand as ‘super noodles’. Instead of trumpeting the texture of the noodles, it now wants to focus on its health benefits. “We want consumers to notice that we have improved the taste and fortified the noodles with vitamins,” says MNVV Prasad, general manager, marketing, Indo Nissin. This comes at a time when most food brands have cottoned on to ‘health’ as a differentiator. Maggi has a healthy atta variant and has recently launched its four-grain noodles. Likewise, GlaxoSmithKline’s Foodles is betting on the heritage of its parent company to position its noodles on the health plank.
From the looks of it, Top Ramen means business and is ready to loosen its purse strings. The brand’s focus on ‘health’ in general and ‘energy’ in particular is apparent from the brand’s choice of Saina Nehwal as ambassador. The makeover, orchestrated by its new advertising agency Dentsu, will ride on a new slogan, “Be the Champion”, and a new mascot, the Top Boy. The aim is to appeal to kids, who account for 80 per cent of instant noodle sales in India. “This was to meet the secondary objective of appealing to mothers who play a key role in influencing purchase decisions,” says Kishore Subramanium, vice-president and branch head (Bangalore), Dentsu Communications. To address the two target segments, the television commercial will air on children’s and Hindi general entertainment channels. The repositioning exercise will also manifest itself through its new packaging, online initiatives and on-ground activations.
Prasad is hoping that the relaunch will help notch up Top Ramen’s market share by a few points from the current 7 per cent. And the market is clearly very attractive. Invented more than 60 years ago in post-war Japan, instant noodles is one of the most popular snacks in India. Nestlé’s Maggi continues to dominate the Rs 1,300-crore market in India with 80 per cent share. The category has seen the entry of many new brands in the last one year — GlaxoSmithKline’s Foodles, Hindustan Unilever’s Knorr Soupy Noodles and ITC’s Sunfeast Yippee!, which have already notched up 2.5 per cent, 2.5 per cent and 5 per cent market share respectively. Top Ramen is also planning to launch an oat variant soon, to add to its portfolio of chicken, masala and tomato.
The company knows it has its task cut out. Despite its strong lineage — instant noodles were invented by Momofuku Ando of Nissin Foods, Japan — Indo Nissin has not been able to cut much ice in India and brand recall remains low. What has probably held it back is differentiation, both in terms of the product and the brand.
Challenges ahead
The biggest challenge for Indo Nissin will be improving reach — something its competitors have invested heavily in. Unfortunately, the brand has changed hands several times since its entry into India. It started its innings in India in a partnership with Hindustan Unilever, which lasted only a few years. It then inked a deal with Marico, which served it well for seven years. By then Indo Nissin had achieved a critical turnover mass and was keen to set up its own distribution network in India.
Its earlier tie-ups did help the company establish a loyal consumer base, but it remains confined to the south and the east of the country. The brand currently reaches 3 lakh outlets. Compare that to Nestlé’s Maggi, which reaches 20 lakh outlets. However, unlike pillow pack noodles, Indo Nissin is the leader in cup noodles with 65 per cent share of the Rs 36-crore market.
So will the new positioning help change its destiny? Here’s some advice.
KV Sridhar, national creative director, Leo Burnett, says, “From the commercial, it is not clear if the brand is talking to kids or mothers. While the Top Boy character as a mascot is excellent, it could have been used creatively to build a fun personality around the brand, rather than dramatising energy.” Top Ramen could use the character to build fun elements like ‘hungry birds’ (akin to Angry Birds, the best-selling mobile game developed and published by Rovio Mobile). To differentiate, it could build Top Ramen as a brand that is a ‘friend’, as opposed to the image of Maggi, which is more like the ‘mother’.
Sridhar feels the campaign also falls short of addressing the needs of mothers. “Maggi did well by harping on convenience (easy to cook and makes a satisfying meal). In Top Ramen’s case, using energy as a plank to appeal to mothers is a little far-fetched. Mothers would rather give their children Glucon-D or a glass of milk for instant energy,” he adds. Bates India Regional Planning Director Dheeraj Sinha agrees: “The connection of strength with noodles is a weak one. I am not sure how much credit consumers would give a noodle brand when it comes to strength.”
Of course, it is early days to give a verdict but Indo Nissin would do well to remember that it does take time to win over health-conscious customers.