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When Cadbury replaced its eclairs

By renaming its eclair brand Choclairs, Mondelez, the parent, is attempting to meet changing consumer requirements

Cadbury Eclairs
Viveat Susan Pinto Mumbai
Last Updated : Nov 23 2013 | 12:56 PM IST
The announcement is emphatic - Cadbury Eclairs is now Cadbury Choclairs. For the last few months, ads declaring this have been running on television day in and day out. The message is clear - the soft, creamy, caramel candy with a chocolate filling that many Indians have grown up on - has a new name.

The road ahead, however, is not expected to be easy, given the equity of Cadbury Eclairs as a brand which remains high in India. Mondelez, the parent, recently, was asked to remove three of its Chocolate Eclairs label trademarks by the Intellectual Property Appellate Board following a case lodged by rival ITC.

However, Choclairs also has a key attribute: It does not stick. Stickiness has been the biggest bane of the Rs 800-crore eclairs category. While Cadbury, now Mondelez, was among the first to launch its eclairs brand in 1971, eating habits over the years have chipped away at the preference for eclairs.

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Though eclairs, like toffee, remains strong in semi-urban and rural areas due to its affordability, in cities, experts say, the candy is no more consumed with the same relish as it was earlier. This has partly to do with the wide variety of options that are now available within confectionery - a nearly Rs 5,000-crore category - from chewy dragees such as Mentos (Perfetti Van Melle) to liquid-filled gums such as Centrefresh and Centre Fruit (Perfetti Van Melle) to mints, hard-boiled candies, lollipops, jellies, digestive candies, bubble gums and chewing gums. All these products are available between 50 paise and Rs 2, implying that the fight for consumer mindspace is increasingly putting pressure on companies to come up with innovative offerings.

A Ferrero spokesperson, which manufactures and markets Tic Tac mint, says consumers have been increasingly seeking "higher order benefits" in the confectionery they consume. "As a category, confectionery continues to evolve, with innovation in formats and flavours growing," the spokesperson says.

Eclairs' tendency to stick to teeth and gums was an irritant during consumption, increasingly so amid new formats that were being introduced. Mondelez has now launched its course correction. As Amit Shah, associate vice-president, powdered beverages, gum & candy, Cadbury India, says, "We are using this opportunity to improve the product further and address the stickiness quotient, which has been reduced significantly."

The move to rebrand Eclairs also comes at a time when Mondelez has been looking to introduce its global products in India. Shah says, "We hold the global copyrights for Choclairs and, hence, we thought the time is right to introduce it in India to align with the international brand identity of the candy."

Giving up the old
Following the $19.7-billion acquisition of British chocolate maker Cadbury Plc by then-Kraft Foods (now Mondelez) in 2010, the latter had integrated brands like Oreo, Tang and Toblerone, which were distributed by local players in India, into the former's system. Choclairs will, in effect, be the first product in three years to be brought to India from the multinational's global portfolio.

Shah says, "With Choclairs, we continue to keep the momentum going further to improve the product. We are confident of our latest product renovation that it will make the consumer's experience with the brand much more enjoyable." Consumer queries, he claims, at retail stores, have been on the rise following launch of the Choclairs campaign a few months ago.

But Mondelez, interestingly, has not completely exited eclairs, having retained the trademark for Cadbury Dairy Milk, even as it lost the label for three other products.

In the last few years, most confectioners in India have launched eclair variants of key brands in a bid to differentiate themselves in a category where the format remains largely the same across the board.

With the use of Choclairs, Mondelez is looking to not only dip into Cadbury's chocolate heritage, but also rise above the clutter created by a bevy of eclairs. Rivals have begun emulating this strategy. Mondelez was recently granted a temporary injunction by the Delhi High Court preventing Lotte, the Korean confectionery giant, which makes the popular Lotte Chocopie, from using the Choclairs brand name in the Indian market.

Mondelez claimed that Lotte was passing off products in violation of the trademark it had on Choclairs, prompting it to move court. While Lotte was not immediately available for comments, Mondelez says that it will challenge and refute all of the former's claims and allegations pertaining to Choclairs in court. Clearly, the last has not been said on this matter.

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First Published: Nov 19 2013 | 12:12 AM IST

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