Branding and Packaging in the Dairy Category: India vis-à-vis International markets

The role of advertising for fast moving consumer categories ends after creating awareness for a product. In today’s cluttered media space where advertisers are constantly fighting for recall and top of mind awareness for their brands, whether the customer decides to buy a product of a certain brand or not, is more often than not decided on the aisles of the modern retail store or the local kirana store where she actually gets to see, touch and feel the product (packaging). And not at the time that she is exposed to the TV commercial or the press ad. Yet, packaging is still to get its due in the Indian scenario.The dairy category in India however has seen some interesting developments in recent times that are indicative of a new trend.

Branding in the dairy category in India

Over the years with the advent of modern retail, Indian brands have been focusing more than before on the packaging of their products so as to lure the fickle consumer.Dairy is one such category that has been seeing innovations in packaging. Amul and Nestle ruled the roost for a good many years. But with the arrival of other local, national, and international brands like Britannia, Mother Dairy, Go, Danone, Kraft, etc. the competition has stiffened. All brands are fighting for shelf and mind space. Blue and Yellow colours seem to be predominant in the category with most brands belonging to one or the other colour palette.  Internationally, the entire colour palette has been used for the dairy category. Primarily since dairy products there are available in a lot more formats, flavours and varieties than they are in India, the ingredient story is built on the pack very prominently. With the arrival of these newer formats in India, the pack graphic design scene will surely see changes here as well.

‘Go’ as a branding case study is interesting. When it came in with its new packaging, it immediately cut the clutter with its bold logotype and imagery in an otherwise sedate looking category. Interestingly, for its non-traditional dairy products like flavored yogurts and various cheese spreads among others, it went with the name ‘Go’ which is nothing but an extension of the mother brand ‘Gowardhan’. The brand architecture was designed smartly so that the new child brand gained from the equity of the mother brand but at the same time had a distinct identity of its own since it very clearly targeted a different consumer set than brand Gowardhan did.

Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani

The Financial Express - Tuesday, Nov 20, 2012

There are two different stores for organic food in the 2 km radius around my house in Mumbai. There are more sprouting in Chennai, Bangalore, Pune and more. From Vadodara to Vizag – there are murmurs of local entrepreneurs looking at organic foods as a business opportunity.

Really? Firstly, what is organic food? In India – there is no regulatory body such as the USDA that certifies food as organic. In absence of clear and widely known standards of organic food, there is little agreement on what is considered organic. More importantly, who cares?

For the Indian consumer, his/ her real worries are contaminated / sewage water used for irrigation, high level of pesticides used on the crop and perhaps genetically modified crops (ever since I read about porcine genes used for making fleshy potatoes—I am spooked!). The danger of bringing a foreign concept into India ‘as is’, is this: you can completely miss the real opportunity and can spend decades trying to educate a consumer rather than cater to their specific needs.

The so-called organic food industry would do well to call themselves ‘pesticide-free’ or ‘toxic-free’ rather than trying to force a nation to learn the meaning of organic.

For decades, the industry’s insistence on using the word ‘yoghurt’ instead of ‘curd’ or ‘dahi’ was mystifying. In the last few years, dairy brands have stumbled onto the incredible concept that consumers will be more responsive to the familiar!

But this learning does not seem to extend to the use of the word ‘pro-biotic’. What is it really? Every Indian knows that curd is good for digestion and curd rice is the easiest thing to digest – for babies to seniors. Would not a ‘super dahi’ or a ‘curd plus’ kind of nomenclature demystify this category?

Category after category—we see a rush to bring in foreign categories/ products/ brands to India—with barely a nod to local needs. But imported concepts do not translate into market successes and remain peripheral brands. To grow truly big— in a country such as ours—the answers need to be local. McDonald’s, Domino’s, Lays and others have all learnt the lessons of localisation with local flavours and cuisines becoming part of the local offering.

For others, the global dictates are so strong—that local opportunities are completely lost. For eons now, Harpic has been the overwhelming market leader in the toilet cleaner category. The closest challenger Domex is a distant second. It stays true to its global positioning of ‘germ kill’.

“Germs in the toilet” is not an Indian worry. Keeping it clean is. Preserving the increasingly upgraded bathroom’s pristine whiteness and caring for the marble and fancy ceramic fixtures is. Harpic is acid based. Domex contains bleach. One corrodes ceramic surfaces and ruins expensive fittings. The other maintains them continually. The word acid itself is full of negative connotations (think acid attacks and acid rain) and the other is a super cleaner. Nothing else. The opportunity for Domex to capitalise on its arch rival’s fundamental premise is enormous. Yet, it stands for ‘germ kill’ alone.

Thinking afresh is an imperative for Indian products. We were creating an Indian version of a pasta sauce for Mutti, one of Europe’s largest manufacturer of tomato products. While we ensured that the recipe was ‘Indian’ (higher sweet, salty and sour notes, greater spice levels)—we were assuming that the packaging format to be the same as it is globally—a glass jar. That is, till we conducted an ethnographic study of Indian kitchens and found that everything in jars—whether pickles, ghee or jam—came out by the spoon.

There was no behaviour whatsoever of a jar being overturned for a single use. Overturning a jar gave even the most affluent housewives a sense of over-use. To truly grow the pasta sauce market—we launched this product in pouches and market success validated the hypothesis.

Global products need to truly Indianise. Not just in terms of creating a local version of the same ads— but finding a deeper relevance for the Indian consumer in terms of positioning, naming and building in cultural cues that make the products relevant to India. The market size for “pesticide-free vegetables” is exponentially larger than “organic produce”.

The author is president, DY Works. She can be reached at alpana@dyworks.in

THE POWER OF THE BACK OF THE PACK

By ALPANA PARIDA

Financial Express - 15th May 2012

As consumers move from their homes where they see ads, to the point of sale where they are reaching out for their wallets, they need more and more rational information as against emotive hooks. That’s when the back of the pack becomes crucial

No matter how much you advertise, and how many awards you win, it is the actual sale of a product that ensures growth and brings in profits. At the time when a consumer is buying the product, there is nothing stronger than the packaging itself to clinch the deal. The imagery, or the need identification could have been driven by advertising, but when the consumer is deciding Harpic or Domex, Kelloggs or Baggry's, Medimix or Margo; the packs have to work hard to convert consumers at the retail shelf.

While the Front of Pack (FOP) interests and engages the consumer from 10ft to when the consumer handling the pack at 2 ft (arm’s length), it is the back of pack (BOP) that seals the deal. If the consumer is interested enough to pick the pack up and has turned the pack over to read the BOP, the consumer is yours. If you lose that consumer, then the BOP has failed big time. It has failed to provide information that would have caused conversion. Will I know how to use it? Is it easy? Are the ingredients good? Is this going to provide nutrition? Is it worth the price?

This is an opportunity to tell the brand / product story as the consumer is actively seeking information to rationalise the purchase decision. Too often the BOP says nothing at all. Or it says too much. The copy is too long, the font is too small, and it is an opportunity lost to win the consumer.

The Kellogg’s BOP does a great job telling the oats story. (Except that the BOP says oat flakes on top and cornflakes on bottom. Huh? What did I miss?)

The brand story is neatly placed, the product benefits are highlighted, and everything the brand needs to say is there.

The bowl of oats highlights the serving suggestions and the Iron Shakti mnemonic completes the brand USP.

But why so many verbose and repetitive messages? “All these help in keeping your family healthy” and “So give your family the advantage of Iron Shakti and ready-to-eat oats in a single bowl”. And “Mental performance depends on ade- quate Iron at every stage of life— for all members of your family.” And in case you didn’t get it, “This is because: Iron Deficiency leads to reduced attention span and lack of concentration that affects children’s performance at school and adults performance at work”. The iron story is further bolstered by the Iron Shakti logo and the blurb that says “this is the best source of iron”. This copy, I suspect, was on an internal power point and then cut and paste on the pack!

Further, the one thing that a corn flakes box allows you is pack real estate – that sits in front of the consumer as they are eating their daily bowl. The pack can have engagement devices built in. Puzzles, iron facts, Kelloggs history, possible recipes - they can all be extremely interactive devices that continue the relationship with the consumer long after the pack is bought.

In contrast, you have the Sofit pack. Who, why, what – all neatly detailed and succinct. The visual accentuates the health/ fitness proposition through a simple device of a measure tape that extends from the front of pack. The delicious glass adds to drool appeal and says pick me up. The taste parameters are not overdone (it is soya after all) and the pack real estate is beautifully used. The chocolate and the soya ingredients tell the rest of the story – and the chances are high that the consumers will read everything on the BOP and buy the product.

Genteel? A large bottle (2kg), and the point size is so small, my eyes hurt to read it. The real estate of the large shrink wrap (not just a 4x2 label) bottle is totally wasted and all the relevant information is inside a blue bone-shaped unit. The shape does not borrow from the category or the brand, and only distracts. The BOP has large blank spaces that are dead zones – and could have been used to tell the story better. As a consumer, I would like to know that my sweaters would not shrink and my Kanjivarams will stay pristine. It could communicate to me interestingly through visuals and mnemonics. Does neither, and I will bet anyone who cares to, this brand has lost share.

As consumers move from their homes where they are seeing advertising, to the point of sale where they are reaching out for their wallets, they need more and more rational information as against emotive hooks. In this case, the colour of the product and the texture of the product are shown through a window. The uses and relevant surfaces are visually depicted. Any potential consumer gets all the relevant information and the product is sold.

The back of pack is what wins consumers. The FOPs can engage them; the BOPs are what they are reading. Indeed, for every high engagement category – the consumer wants to know more. If you are a marketer, pay attention to the BOP and you could see a 3-3-5% spike in sales due to that alone.

The writer is president of DY Works. The views expressed here are her own