When large global brands look at new geographies to conquer, they habitually try to change local tastes and behaviour and are usually unsuccessful. Others undertake expensive product engineering to make it culturally acceptable in the new market but that is both time and capital consuming and hence risky.
The CDM team’s experience shows there could be a midway between these two extremes that is easier to implement. The ‘meetha’ positioning reinvented the very essence of the product, so it became something different, and by doing so, unlocked brand growth for CDM. It did this by transposing culture codes that got a target audience to view a familiar brand in a new light, making it a new product that generated a desire for purchase.
So instead of taking on tradition and culture and trying to create behaviour change, brands may do well to align with local culture and tradition to make gaining acceptance easier. Aligning with local culture may not need a new product but merely positioning the product in a locally relevant way.
1Nestle Munch, Nestle Kitkat, along with Cadbury Perk, accounted for 30 per cent of the chocolate category. These were all chocolate-coated wafer biscuits.
2World Bank statistics.
3Cadbury estimates, 2004.
4AC Nielsen sales data.
5Listing studies, 1995, 2002, 2011.
6AC Nielsen sales data.
GOING BEYOND FOOD
We do not have to win at the expense of others to be successful. Winning alone is not enough, it’s about winning with purpose.
—Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever
Paul Polman’s words may well hold true for Kissan, a popular Unilever brand in India. In its nearly sixty-seven-year-old history, Kissan as a food brand has made long strides by constantly reinventing itself to stand tall in the Indian market.
Kissan is a home-grown brand that is synonymous with jams, ketchup and squashes. In many ways it is more than just a range of food products. It is a brand that has come to be associated with the endeavour of mothers to make the growing up years of their children healthy and joyful.
Humble beginnings
The origins of Kissan go as far back as 1935 to Punjab. Trains that passed through Punjab made a stop close to a processing unit where farmers sold their freshly produced fruits and vegetables. The spot thus came to be called Kissan by locals. In 1947, UK-based Mitchell Brothers, who wanted to set up a food-processing unit in India, decided to move Kissan down south to Bangalore.
They, however, retained the name ‘Kissan’ and thus was born India’s first food-processing unit in the year of India’s independence. Based in Bangalore, this unit caught the attention of twenty-nine-year-old Vittal Mallya (the father of liquor baron Vijay Mallya) who had just been elected the first Indian director of United Breweries (UB). A year later, he was to replace R.G.N. Price as the chairman of the UB group. A big believer in inorganic growth, Mallya not only expanded by acquiring other breweries, but strategically moved into agro-based industries, thus acquiring Kissan from the Mitchell Brothers in 1950.
Joining the ‘Hindustan Unilever’ fold
Mallya Senior’s vision of diversification paid off and the UB Group did fairly well in agro-based businesses. The processed foods company that Mallya owned operated under two brand names, Kissan and Dippy’s. Jams and ketchup were sold under the Kissan brand and juices and squash under Dippy’s. The company also set up a manufacturing plant in Nepal. However, when Vijay Mallya inherited the business in 1983 at the age of twenty-eight, after his father’s untimely demise, he found that there was a rather eclectic mix of companies in the conglomerate.
With the turn of the decade, Mallya decided it was time for him to focus on his core business of breweries and distilleries and sold off Kissan and Dippy’s to Brooke Bond India which was partly owned by the erstwhile Hindustan Lever (now known as Hindustan Unilever or HUL). Brooke Bond India on its part retained the brand name Kissan and dropped Dippy’s; its juices and squashes were also now sold under the Kissan brand name.
The metamorphosis of Kissan into a food brand of stature: 1990s
In the early 1990s, when Brooke Bond India acquired Kissan, the food category formed a minuscule portion of HUL’s overall product portfolio and comprised only cooking oils and fat. However, the entry of Kissan into its product portfolio in the year 1994, brought about a realization that this category was a huge untapped opportunity. With Kissan under its fold, HUL wanted to crack the food industry and it adopted the motto that good food should be ‘loved’.
Accordingly, Kissan deployed an array of measures that shaped its successes over the next two decades.
The first and the most important challenge for Kissan was that of differentiation in a category with intense local competition. What really differentiated Kissan from its competition was the fact that it is made 100 per cent of real fruits and vegetables. Every bottle of Kissan products is packed with the goodness of real fruits and vegetables along with other best-quality ingredients.
Ketchup, which was another stronghold of the brand, too was given a facelift. A variant strategy was deployed to cater to local palates. A chilli-flavoured ketchup called ‘Kissan Tomchi’ was introduced in May 1997, and a tamarind variant in December, christened ‘Kissan Tom-Imli’.
True to its proposition, Kissan also forayed into the squash category with the tagline ‘Sachche phalon ki praapti’ as a refreshing summer drink.
Roping in Rahul Dravid, who was at the peak of his form at the time, to lend his nickname ‘Jammy’ to the advertising campaign was a strategy that worked well for Kissan Jam.
All these efforts paid off, and HUL recorded a 40 per cent growth in sales between 1997 and 1998. By the year 2000, Kissan was doing rather well with a market value of ₹400 crore and was leading in the jam market. In addition to its success in jams, Kissan was catching up with its nearest competitor in the ketchup market—Nestle’s Maggi—as well. It was also fast replacing the likes of local squash brands like Mala and Druk.
Unveiling the ‘Power Brand’ strategy: Bold moves and ensuing lessons—2001–2005
HUL unveiled its ‘Power Brand’ strategy in 2001, which essentially meant that it would concentrate its resources and energies on the growth of some core brands that had potential to grab a higher market share, while pruning its exposure to others. As a result, the Kissan brand, which had tremendous brand equity in the 1990s and the early 2000s, was rebranded Kissan Annapurna. Under this repositioned brand, HUL planned to sell not just jams, ketchup and squash, but staples such as flour and salt as well.
Between the years 2001 and 2005, Kissan struggled to retain its brand equity. Although it managed to retain its leadership position in the jam market, it faced challenges across the entire remaining spectrum of product categories.
Threat from ITC: A new entrant in the staple foods category
Cigarette maker ITC entered the staple food market with its Ashirvaad brand of wheat flour (atta), which posed a threat to Kissan Annapurna. HUL at this time was eager to grab a greater share of the food market. Given its success in creating national mass market brands, HUL felt it could leverage its national distribution network to rapidly scale up Annapurna. However, the plan did not work and the company split into two brands, with Kissan concentrating on processed foods and Annapurna on staples. These decisions, however, took a toll on the Kissan brand.
Taking on Nestle Maggi in ketchups
Nestle was making aggressive moves in the ketchup category through its advertising campaigns, with popular actors of the day such as Javed Jaffrey and Pankaj Kapur endorsing its catchy tagline ‘It’s different!’ Kissan rolled out a campaign in 2006 claiming that Kissan ketchup made samosas tastier but this did not make much of a dent in Maggi’s market share.
Relegated to the back of the shelf in the squash market
In the squash category, too, players such as Rasna and cola makers made Kissan irrelevant. The challenge from Rasna had been in the making for a few years. Rasna, another homegrown product, was giving tou
gh competition to Kissan squash as it targeted the great Indian middle class by releasing commercials that drove home its ‘value for money’ aspect as compared to popular squashes and syrups of the day.
Key learnings
While home and personal care had always been a stronghold for HUL, it was continuously experimenting to capture a wider share of the food market in India.
HUL’s ambitions in the food market needed to be matched by the perseverance required to create sustainable success in this category—new products were withdrawn too quickly.
»In 2009, Kissan launched Amaze in the malted food drinks category. Amaze claimed it provided 33 per cent of the brain nutrients that growing children required daily. However, since the product did not pick up as per the market expectation, the company discontinued it.
»In more recent times, soya-based fruit juices were launched under the label Kissan Nutrismart, but these were also discontinued because they did not meet the desired expectations.
»Earlier, at the turn of the decade, Kissan had explored some other adjacent categories such as spices which it tried to introduce along with the staples of flour and salt.
»Kissan also made forays in the biscuits segment in December 2002 by launching the first indigenous fruit-cream biscuit brand under the Kissan franchise. Bistix was a unique offering of biscuit sticks with fruity dips. This again was withdrawn quickly based on initial results.
What is significant during this period is that Kissan kept innovating and each of these innovations brought in learnings for the brand. All these learnings were effective for the company to reinvent the brand and emerge as a strong player in the foods category.
Life comes full circle: 2012
Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.
—George Eliot
HUL decided to focus on growing its core business. Low penetration levels of under 20 per cent left enough room for market development in the ketchup and jam categories in India. One of the unique challenges of these categories was that they were highly fragmented with a plethora of local players. Most regional players operated on discounts with highly optimized supply chain costs and no investments on advertising and promotion. Minimal perceived product differentiation, especially in the ketchup category, was another key challenge. For a consumer ‘a sauce was a sauce’ as long as it fit her monthly budget.
Hence the key tasks ahead of Kissan were:
»Get more and more consumers to start using Kissan jams and ketchup along with their regular food, thereby increasing consumption and penetration and leading the task of market development.
»Differentiate Kissan from the competition.
Back to the basics: Nurturing love for nature
In a bid to reposition the brand, Kissan first sought to differentiate itself from other branded competitors and local players. In a quest for a proposition, Kissan came back to something it had started out with—the power of 100 per cent real fruits and vegetables.
Every bottle of a Kissan product is packed with the goodness of real fruits and vegetables along with other best-quality ingredients.
Kissan carried out extensive consumer studies to find a compelling insight which it could use to build a connect and credibility with consumers while being differentiated from its competition.
This insight eventually led to the start of the now famous ‘Kissanpur’ journey that began on 15 February 2012. It all began with a ‘positive response’ in one of the first consumer studies that amazed the team at Kissan. Subsequent consumer interactions kept throwing up similar replies from children. When asked, ‘Where do tomatoes come from?’ children came up with a variety of innocent responses like they grow on trees or they grow under the ground, with a few kids even believing that they were manufactured in shopping malls!
These responses which showed that kids in India were quite distanced from nature gave Kissan its big idea. The idea was that if it gave its consumers a chance to experience nature and fall in love with it, they would always come back to Kissan. With this was born the ‘Kissanpur’ campaign asking kids to turn into farmers and get their hands dirty to grow tomatoes—tomatoes as red and juicy as the ones used for making Kissan ketchup
The building blocks of Kissanpur
Inspire
This phase was all about inspiring and inviting kids to grow real tomatoes and live the journey from ‘seed to fruit’. One fine day in February 2012, parents and kids woke up to a sachet of tomato seeds in their morning newspapers. Kissan ran a campaign urging kids to plant these seeds and post pictures of their plants with tomatoes on Kissan’s Facebook page (that was aptly named ‘Kissanpur’). It came with a promise of launching a hundred new faces on their ketchup bottle soon. These would be of kids who had successfully grown tomatoes. The idea was to introduce children to the joys of growing a plant and nurturing it.
Engage
The second phase of the campaign was the most challenging and critical one, where the kids had to be captivated by the idea and motivated enough to complete the journey of growing tomato plants in their houses over the next five months. Digital media was used as a platform to share tips about growing tomatoes with mothers and kids and also for them to share their pictures, stories and experiences of growing tomatoes.
The campaign received further thrust with exciting SMS alerts, micro contests and other interesting apps. Interactive communication remained at the heart of this campaign, and a 109 per cent improvement was noticed in brand awareness through its Facebook page. These online efforts blended seamlessly with an offline event in which 7,000 tomato plants were seeded in a makeshift ‘tomato farm’ in the heart of Mumbai city in a popular mall.
Reward
The last phase was about recognizing and rewarding the top growers of tomato plants and establishing Kissan’s ‘real’ credentials by demonstrating its ‘real ingredients’. Top growers were identified and their tomatoes were taken to make ‘real Kissan ketchup’. A flash-based application was also developed where kids were allowed to create their own Kissan ketchup bottle label and share their stories about their journey as little farmers. The stress was on ‘real’ experiences and it had the desired results.
The campaign closed successfully with over 2 lakh hits on the official website www.kissanpur.co.in, over 30,000 fans garnered through social media and more than 51,000 registrations on the website during the last phase of the campaign.
The seeds sown in Kissanpur are yielding a good ‘crop’
Kissanpur not only helped mothers and kids engage together in ‘real experiences’ by transforming the way they lived their lives for five months, but also firmly imprinted itself in the hearts of mothers and kids in India.
The campaign has helped differentiate Kissan ketchup from its competition on the basic claim that it is made 100 per cent of real tomatoes. The campaign is in its third consecutive year and is still exciting kids across the country simply because it has enabled them to experience something different from their day-to-day lives; it has helped them to experience nature. It has also helped parents and kids bond while living the journey of Kissanpur.
Unlocking the growth potential of the Kissan portfolio
The year 2012 brought in great lessons for Kissan through Kissanpur. It gave it new-found confidence and also made it feel that it was playing too small a game by looking only to gain share. In order to unlock the true growth potential, the onus was on it to grow the reach of processed foods like ketchup and jams.
While looking around for inspiration from global Unilever brands, it came across Hellmann’s (a mayonnaise brand) which was faced with a similar challenge in the past. The learning it took on board from the Hellmann’s case was that to grow penetration or consumption for a category, it is imperative to build association of the product with the most commonly used food item. In India the dishes identified were paratha/roti for the north and dosa for the south. Through extensive consumer research, Kissan found that packing the lunch box is one of the h
ighest stress points in the life of a mother.
While she has limited time to prepare this lunch box, she needs to ensure that the lunch is tasty enough for the kid to come back home with an empty lunch box. Mothers were apt to treat this lunch box, or ‘dabba’ or ‘tiffin’ as it is popularly called, as a barometer of their success. If the child came back home beaming that not only had she loved her lunch, but her friends were envious of her too, the mom had indeed passed the ‘tiffin test’ with flying colours! Thus an advertising campaign targeted at mothers was launched with the tagline ‘ungli ghuma ke bol’. The campaign was aimed at giving mothers a quick solution to getting their children to eat nutritious food. Thus the ‘boring’ roti or paratha with sabzi could be transformed into an interesting ‘roll’ with just a dollop of ketchup.
After identifying this powerful idea, Kissan used different mediums like audiovisual, print and digital to communicate the idea. It also set up a helpline to provide new tiffin roll recipes to mothers every day.
This campaign has already started yielding fantastic results. It has not only helped grow consumption and penetration of the category and of Kissan, it has helped the brand grow to double digits in 2013.
Results
Today, in 2015, Kissan is the market leader in jams and ketchup with a 62 per cent and 25 per cent share respectively. It has steadily grown brand equity and penetration by leaps and bounds and is seen as a happy brand and a champion of happy growth. It offers health and functional benefits besides being fun and tasty and is a trusted partner of the modern mother. Motherhood is an exciting challenge in today’s changing times, and the modern mom takes immense pride in her child’s upbringing, as she views it as an opportunity to show her mettle. She is extremely involved in her kid’s life and is always trying to maintain a balance between work and home. She strongly believes that the future is important but not at the cost of a happy childhood. She constantly needs to balance her roles of friend and parent. She recognizes the role that food plays in the upbringing of her kids. She believes that food should be loved and not shoved. Thus she constantly experiments and tries to come up with solutions which either makes healthy food exciting or exciting food healthy.
Storm the Norm Page 21