 "When it pays to go slow")
In one of its cover stories published in 2012, The Strategist showed how brands that were known to consumers vaguely in the past became top of mind and leaders in their categories after a successful advertising campaign. It is time to flip that idea and look at the other side of the story. Some brands that have been launched in the last few years have decided to keep a low profile in terms of communication and instead concentrated on getting the product mix right - deliver on the brand promise so to speak. Think of Paper Boat, Cornitos, Caprese and Carlton - they are all young brands but have cornered a sizeable chunk of the market without spending big bucks on media and advertising. All they have done is allow the consumer to discover and recognise them as brands with a difference.
Impossible? Not really.
Look at what traditional Indian drinks brand Paper Boat has achieved in less than two years of its launch. With over 1.5 million packs going off the shelves every month, the brand has carved a niche for itself in a category dominated by colas and mango drinks. Neeraj Kakkar, chief executive officer, Hector Beverages, maker of Paper Boat, was never really bothered about advertising at the time of launch. He says, "We spent the first year getting the flavours right by changing recipes time and again. Consumer feedback helped us improve our product immensely." For instance, it took a long time for the company to zero in on the final recipe for one of its variants, 'Golgappe ka pani'. As Indian consumers will know, golgappa recipes vary across regions. Many people who tasted the drink initially asked the makers to cut down on ingredients like 'mint' and add other ingredients to enhance the tanginess.
The formulation of 'Golgappe ka pani' has been changed four times till now. "If we started out making tall claims about our flavours or simply defined these flavours through advertising at the time of launch, there would have been no room for experimentation," adds Kakkar. Some of the other popular flavours of Paper Boat are Aamras, Aam Panna, Jamun Kala Khatta, Jal Jeera and Chilled Rasam.
In fact, executives at Hector Beverages wanted consumers to discover the brand themselves in a hygienic environment. So airlines and modern trade stores became the obvious choice for distribution. After establishing its early products by the last quarter of 2014, the company turned its attention to kiranas across smaller cities and towns. As things stand, the brand claims to be present in 15,000 retail outlets across six metros.
Kakkar believes now is the right time to advertise. Targeting people in the age group of 30 years and above, Paper Boat's communication plan is centred on 'memories'. Just recently the company launched its first mainline campaign linking drinks and memories. Conceptualised by Karishma Lintas, the main film of the campaign has voiceover by noted poet and lyricist Gulzar with the title score from Doordarshan's popular television series Malgudi Days playing in the background.
Rajesh Ramaswamy, group creative director, Karishma Lintas, believes that the campaign has been effective in capturing the essence of Paper Boat without being preachy. "The brand is just a connector to the world of memories. This advertising plank has a longer shelf life because 'memories' in itself is a vast area," he adds. As Paper Boat gears up to achieve the target of covering 50,000 retail outlets in the next couple of months, it hopes that the ongoing campaign will be instrumental in generating trials.
The message: If you are not certain of a product, don't over-promise. The consumer will easily see through the charade.
The minimalist
The year 2009 was a landmark year for GC Group of Companies, a manufacturer and exporter of MPP film and run capacitors. Vikram Agarwal, the younger son of founder SP Agarwal, decided to diversify into the FMCG segment. A self-confessed foodie, Agarwal saw a business opportunity in manufacturing and selling nachos, a popular snack food. The inspiration came from Doritos, a brand of seasoned tortilla chips manufactured by Frito-Lay (a wholly-owned subsidiary of PepsiCo) in the US since 1964. From 2007 to 2009, Agarwal spent his time soaking up information about the category including manufacturing know-how, sourcing raw material, consumer profiling, putting together recipes, zeroing in on test markets etc. Interestingly, before setting up its factory in 2009, the company was doing all the testing out of a pilot kitchen. Says Agarwal, now a director at GreenDot Health Foods, "Back then, not much variety was offered in the chips market. While consumers got used to what the leading players were offering, domestic consumption of chips was going down."
Some markets in the national capital region and in Punjab were picked as Cornitos' first test markets. All along, the company chose to keep a low-profile in terms of media exposure. It focused on building its distribution. Similar to Paper Boat's distribution strategy, Cornitos was initially placed only in modern trade outlets targeting consumers from the middle and the upper-middle classes. Agarwal admits there was nothing path breaking about the product's distribution strategy, except that it was a case of 'slow and steady' expansion. The company followed the super stockist model to pump inventory down the distribution chain. Says Agarwal, "We chose young and dynamic distributors who could push our products the right way across retail points. Once this was taken care of, we channelised our efforts into creating sales promotions and other below-the-line initiatives."
The first year proved tricky for Cornitos as some distributors decided to place the product at all the stores in their network. Executives at GreenDot Health Foods stepped in immediately and asked each distributor to choose, say, two out of 10 stores in their respective territories. This decision made sense because the company did not want the brand to be seen as a 'mass' product.
Once it started picking stores selectively, the company saw a marked change in the interest levels of retailers. "Since we were working with just a couple of retailers in each territory, these guys could see the 'exclusivity' we were offering. This reflected in our product displays which became more prominent and neat with time," he adds. In October 2012, the company also decided to change its logo and packaging because it felt Cornitos' earlier packaging lacked visual appeal. The company claims its sales increased by 40 per cent by the end of 2013. During this time, Cornitos also explored alternative sales channels such as low-cost carriers (Indigo, SpiceJet, GoAir, AirAsia and so on), multiplexes and coffee shops (Cafe Coffee Day).
With an initial investment of Rs 20 crore, only a fraction of which was spent in advertising, Cornitos broke even in 2013. Currently the nachos brand is available across 2,500 modern trade outlets in India. Now GreenDot Health Foods is gearing up to bring its product to kiranas across tier-II and tier-III cities. Pricing will be key to expansion here on. Recently Cornitos launched its 30 gm pack at Rs 20. With this pack the company expects to penetrate more kiranas in smaller cities.
Says Agarwal, "While we have spent some money on print, outdoor and online advertising, it is always more fruitful to spend on consumer research. It is the product that matters eventually. We will continue to be a low-profile advertiser."
The message from his experience: if you are in a market where regional variations abound, it might a good idea to understand your consumer first.
Know your product both from a seller’s and buyer’s perspective: It’s important to understand what makes it unique and the role it plays in the consumer’s life. You might feel great about offering the purest form of orange juice, but if your consumer finds it bitter, the purpose stands defeated Know your customers well: Know their whims, weaknesses, likes and most importantly, their dislikes. For example, you may offer a farmer a tractor loan with low interest rate or quick processing which he will like, but his intense dislike for extensive paper submission that he doesn’t have because of his cash income will surely supersede. Remember this farmer buys in cash, sells in cash, and has approximately 20 acre and a probable capability of buying five tractors. But he is not comfortable with the idea of day-to-day banking Strengthen your infrastructure: Ensure that your back-end processes and logistics are on par with the best in the category. No one is interested in knowing the reasons behind why team India failed to beat Australia. You get branded as a ‘loser’ in a split second. Magma Fincorp, a non-banking financial company with an asset under management of Rs 18,000 crore is still a low-profile advertiser. For the last two years it has been perfecting its backend and processes. Its 6,000-strong sales and collection team, which till lately used the ‘khata-bahi’ process, are now equipped with tablets which run on a real-time updating system on everything they do Get a brand head who is passionate about your product: And not someone who is caught up with his knowledge of typography/layout or on how many leggy models should be roped in for your next campaign. Remember communication is not about translating the power-point into a TVC. Marketers tend to get caught up with insights. They either come out of commonsense or Google search. Insights are useless, unless they excite the customer Think micro and in detail when you are low-profile: Think big when planning your above-the-line campaigns. Don’t refer to competition and category norms when creating your campaign because no matter who the agency is, you will still be the 37th player in the category. You cannot announce an ‘India’s first so and so …” in a classified display ad. Likewise you should not underrate your ATL campaign with the support of the low-cost, high impact digital media marketing. This is because the biggest online brand today have the highest ATL spends.
Let the mother brand rest
Last year, Coca-Cola launched its sugar-free soft drink, Coke Zero, without a mainline campaign. During the launch, a film titled 'Taste it to believe it', featuring actor Farhan Akhtar, was shot and posted on social media. Well, this is not to say that world's leading beverage maker is short of marketing dollars and cannot spend Rs 25-30 crore on a media burst. This year, the company plans to launch Coke Zero's first media blitzkrieg.
In sharp contrast are brands that look to expand the franchise without leveraging the equity of the mother brand. Two brands from VIP Industries, Caprese and Carlton, have followed this strategy systematically. Says Sudip Ghose, vice-president, marketing, VIP Industries, "Good advertising can bring down a bad product faster." After joining the company in April 2013, his priority was to get the product mix right. The two brands that demanded his immediate attention were Carlton, a premium luggage brand acquired by VIP in 2004, and ladies handbag brand, Caprese.
The challenge was bigger in the case of Carlton. The thing was this: Samsonite was already an established brand patronised by business travellers. Ghose believed there was scope for upping the game within the category by redefining Carlton's product and distribution strategy. So VIP went back to the drawing board to understand what was missing in the existing offerings in the premium luggage space. "It is equally challenging to design a mass and a premium product. Luggage designing is full of intricacies and there's scope for modifications based on consumer feedback," he says. Based on such feedback, Carlton incorporated a series of design changes in the Carlton range. It added lycra newspaper holders in the Impaq Pro, a range of laptop backpacks, a laptop folio on wheels, and a laptop folio case. In the last one year, the company has also introduced variants in a range of splashy colours.
While VIP was always confident that Caprese was a strong product, it struggled with the positioning in the first year of its official launch. In 2012, Caprese was positioned as a high-end fashion accessory. This decision polarised the brand to a great extent. In the next two years, Ghose's team decided to take the brand closer to consumers through a different distribution and pricing strategy. The work began by limiting the media plan to sporadic appearances across print, online and outdoor. Says Ghose, "While standalone stores are in, it may not be worthwhile to isolate a product like handbags in an exclusive brand shop. Since handbags are paired with clothes and footwear, we decided to build our presence in departmental stores like Shoppers Stop, Pantaloons, Lifestyle and Central."
As a next step, the starting price was slashed to Rs 2,000 from Rs 2,700 earlier. Then last year, Hindi movie actor, Alia Bhat, was roped in to promote Caprese as an affordable fashion brand. Now, as the brand gears up to push its spring-summer collection aggressively, the company is planning to unveil its first ever multimedia campaign. Says Ghose, "What was good yesterday may not work today. What's good today may turn bad tomorrow. While it is not very difficult to create a brand in any category, the biggest challenge is to deliver the product promise consistently."
The message from its experience: if you don't have a strong reason to spend money on a multimedia campaign, just sit back and focus on improving your product.
Impossible? Not really.
Look at what traditional Indian drinks brand Paper Boat has achieved in less than two years of its launch. With over 1.5 million packs going off the shelves every month, the brand has carved a niche for itself in a category dominated by colas and mango drinks. Neeraj Kakkar, chief executive officer, Hector Beverages, maker of Paper Boat, was never really bothered about advertising at the time of launch. He says, "We spent the first year getting the flavours right by changing recipes time and again. Consumer feedback helped us improve our product immensely." For instance, it took a long time for the company to zero in on the final recipe for one of its variants, 'Golgappe ka pani'. As Indian consumers will know, golgappa recipes vary across regions. Many people who tasted the drink initially asked the makers to cut down on ingredients like 'mint' and add other ingredients to enhance the tanginess.
The formulation of 'Golgappe ka pani' has been changed four times till now. "If we started out making tall claims about our flavours or simply defined these flavours through advertising at the time of launch, there would have been no room for experimentation," adds Kakkar. Some of the other popular flavours of Paper Boat are Aamras, Aam Panna, Jamun Kala Khatta, Jal Jeera and Chilled Rasam.
In fact, executives at Hector Beverages wanted consumers to discover the brand themselves in a hygienic environment. So airlines and modern trade stores became the obvious choice for distribution. After establishing its early products by the last quarter of 2014, the company turned its attention to kiranas across smaller cities and towns. As things stand, the brand claims to be present in 15,000 retail outlets across six metros.
Kakkar believes now is the right time to advertise. Targeting people in the age group of 30 years and above, Paper Boat's communication plan is centred on 'memories'. Just recently the company launched its first mainline campaign linking drinks and memories. Conceptualised by Karishma Lintas, the main film of the campaign has voiceover by noted poet and lyricist Gulzar with the title score from Doordarshan's popular television series Malgudi Days playing in the background.
Rajesh Ramaswamy, group creative director, Karishma Lintas, believes that the campaign has been effective in capturing the essence of Paper Boat without being preachy. "The brand is just a connector to the world of memories. This advertising plank has a longer shelf life because 'memories' in itself is a vast area," he adds. As Paper Boat gears up to achieve the target of covering 50,000 retail outlets in the next couple of months, it hopes that the ongoing campaign will be instrumental in generating trials.
The message: If you are not certain of a product, don't over-promise. The consumer will easily see through the charade.
The minimalist
The year 2009 was a landmark year for GC Group of Companies, a manufacturer and exporter of MPP film and run capacitors. Vikram Agarwal, the younger son of founder SP Agarwal, decided to diversify into the FMCG segment. A self-confessed foodie, Agarwal saw a business opportunity in manufacturing and selling nachos, a popular snack food. The inspiration came from Doritos, a brand of seasoned tortilla chips manufactured by Frito-Lay (a wholly-owned subsidiary of PepsiCo) in the US since 1964. From 2007 to 2009, Agarwal spent his time soaking up information about the category including manufacturing know-how, sourcing raw material, consumer profiling, putting together recipes, zeroing in on test markets etc. Interestingly, before setting up its factory in 2009, the company was doing all the testing out of a pilot kitchen. Says Agarwal, now a director at GreenDot Health Foods, "Back then, not much variety was offered in the chips market. While consumers got used to what the leading players were offering, domestic consumption of chips was going down."
Some markets in the national capital region and in Punjab were picked as Cornitos' first test markets. All along, the company chose to keep a low-profile in terms of media exposure. It focused on building its distribution. Similar to Paper Boat's distribution strategy, Cornitos was initially placed only in modern trade outlets targeting consumers from the middle and the upper-middle classes. Agarwal admits there was nothing path breaking about the product's distribution strategy, except that it was a case of 'slow and steady' expansion. The company followed the super stockist model to pump inventory down the distribution chain. Says Agarwal, "We chose young and dynamic distributors who could push our products the right way across retail points. Once this was taken care of, we channelised our efforts into creating sales promotions and other below-the-line initiatives."
The first year proved tricky for Cornitos as some distributors decided to place the product at all the stores in their network. Executives at GreenDot Health Foods stepped in immediately and asked each distributor to choose, say, two out of 10 stores in their respective territories. This decision made sense because the company did not want the brand to be seen as a 'mass' product.
Once it started picking stores selectively, the company saw a marked change in the interest levels of retailers. "Since we were working with just a couple of retailers in each territory, these guys could see the 'exclusivity' we were offering. This reflected in our product displays which became more prominent and neat with time," he adds. In October 2012, the company also decided to change its logo and packaging because it felt Cornitos' earlier packaging lacked visual appeal. The company claims its sales increased by 40 per cent by the end of 2013. During this time, Cornitos also explored alternative sales channels such as low-cost carriers (Indigo, SpiceJet, GoAir, AirAsia and so on), multiplexes and coffee shops (Cafe Coffee Day).
With an initial investment of Rs 20 crore, only a fraction of which was spent in advertising, Cornitos broke even in 2013. Currently the nachos brand is available across 2,500 modern trade outlets in India. Now GreenDot Health Foods is gearing up to bring its product to kiranas across tier-II and tier-III cities. Pricing will be key to expansion here on. Recently Cornitos launched its 30 gm pack at Rs 20. With this pack the company expects to penetrate more kiranas in smaller cities.
Says Agarwal, "While we have spent some money on print, outdoor and online advertising, it is always more fruitful to spend on consumer research. It is the product that matters eventually. We will continue to be a low-profile advertiser."
The message from his experience: if you are in a market where regional variations abound, it might a good idea to understand your consumer first.
| 5 things to keep in mind before launching an advertising blitz |
| |
Anil Bhardwaj
Director, Basecamp India
Director, Basecamp India
Let the mother brand rest
Last year, Coca-Cola launched its sugar-free soft drink, Coke Zero, without a mainline campaign. During the launch, a film titled 'Taste it to believe it', featuring actor Farhan Akhtar, was shot and posted on social media. Well, this is not to say that world's leading beverage maker is short of marketing dollars and cannot spend Rs 25-30 crore on a media burst. This year, the company plans to launch Coke Zero's first media blitzkrieg.
In sharp contrast are brands that look to expand the franchise without leveraging the equity of the mother brand. Two brands from VIP Industries, Caprese and Carlton, have followed this strategy systematically. Says Sudip Ghose, vice-president, marketing, VIP Industries, "Good advertising can bring down a bad product faster." After joining the company in April 2013, his priority was to get the product mix right. The two brands that demanded his immediate attention were Carlton, a premium luggage brand acquired by VIP in 2004, and ladies handbag brand, Caprese.
The challenge was bigger in the case of Carlton. The thing was this: Samsonite was already an established brand patronised by business travellers. Ghose believed there was scope for upping the game within the category by redefining Carlton's product and distribution strategy. So VIP went back to the drawing board to understand what was missing in the existing offerings in the premium luggage space. "It is equally challenging to design a mass and a premium product. Luggage designing is full of intricacies and there's scope for modifications based on consumer feedback," he says. Based on such feedback, Carlton incorporated a series of design changes in the Carlton range. It added lycra newspaper holders in the Impaq Pro, a range of laptop backpacks, a laptop folio on wheels, and a laptop folio case. In the last one year, the company has also introduced variants in a range of splashy colours.
While VIP was always confident that Caprese was a strong product, it struggled with the positioning in the first year of its official launch. In 2012, Caprese was positioned as a high-end fashion accessory. This decision polarised the brand to a great extent. In the next two years, Ghose's team decided to take the brand closer to consumers through a different distribution and pricing strategy. The work began by limiting the media plan to sporadic appearances across print, online and outdoor. Says Ghose, "While standalone stores are in, it may not be worthwhile to isolate a product like handbags in an exclusive brand shop. Since handbags are paired with clothes and footwear, we decided to build our presence in departmental stores like Shoppers Stop, Pantaloons, Lifestyle and Central."
As a next step, the starting price was slashed to Rs 2,000 from Rs 2,700 earlier. Then last year, Hindi movie actor, Alia Bhat, was roped in to promote Caprese as an affordable fashion brand. Now, as the brand gears up to push its spring-summer collection aggressively, the company is planning to unveil its first ever multimedia campaign. Says Ghose, "What was good yesterday may not work today. What's good today may turn bad tomorrow. While it is not very difficult to create a brand in any category, the biggest challenge is to deliver the product promise consistently."
The message from its experience: if you don't have a strong reason to spend money on a multimedia campaign, just sit back and focus on improving your product.