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.

Creating Indian Brands is the need of the hour

Alpana Parida, an IIM–Ahmedabad alumna, is the face of a variety of branding solutions. Currently she works as President at DY Works, an established brand consulting and brand design firm. Some of the achievements that DY Works has to its credit are brand creation for Bingo and Yippie Noodles (ITC Foods), brand architecture for Nerolac and Kurkure and brand rejuvenation for Dabur. Parida has also worked as the Head of Marketing for an organic food company in the US. Prior to joining DY Works, she worked as Marketing and Merchandising Head at Tanishq.

Adgully caught up with Alpana Parida as she talks about the nuances of branding.

Alpana has been a part of the advertising industry for a really long time. Talking about her journey she says, “The callibre of people who joined advertising was very different earlier. Higher advertising resulted in higher market share. Today however with the market, advertising has also become very cluttered. Categories have multiplied, brands in the categories have grown exponentially and the variants under the brands have grown tremendously. The shelf price however has remained the same. The importance of the retail outlet and the shelf has grown dramatically. This has led to consumers becoming increasingly aware of what they want.”

Alpana says that although there is a lot of market research available today, very little of it is actually usable. Research which gives deep insights into the market structure is rare. She points out that semiotic analysis is the answer to this problem. Semiotic analysis helps in understanding brands and thus helps in creating brands which are unique to India.

Speaking about how the branding scene has evolved in India, she said, “In the Indian context, we are adopting foreign constructs. This gives us marketing cues which are irrelevant. Thus, the creation of brands in the Indian cultural context seems to be missing altogether.” She states that there is an immediate need of studying our culture properly and building brands on the basis of these studies.

Providing insights into what can be done to improve the situation at hand Alpana said, “There are very few truly successful Indian brands which have used the understanding of the Indian basics, even for product design and development. Brands can create huge differentiation through product design and packaging design as well as packaging structure design. The market needs to concentrate on these critical aspects.”

Talking about some of the immediate goals of DY Works, she said, “There are several objectives in mind. We do a lot of work internationally in places like United States, Singapore, and Middle East. So, we are trying to gain a foothold there as we look forward to establishing our offices outside India. This would be the definitely be the immediate growth plan. The larger and long term objective is to evangelize the need for branding and creating strong brands that can actually build market shares rather than advertising.”

Some of the core competencies of DY Works are brand strategy and brand design. Shedding light on the brand design process, Alpana said, “There are different kinds of branding solutions. One of them is import wherein; expats set up shop and offer brand solutions in India. The other kind is freelancers and young designers. Brand Design has to be a strategic answer to a brand problem .This is the most crucial part. When people choose a branding solution they should ensure that there is a strategic problem that is being answered through the design otherwise it would just remain a pretty picture.”

Commenting on the importance of the digital media in the brand-building process, she said, “The digital platform has become increasingly important in the recent times. Anybody can access your brand from anywhere in the world and the experience they get is of utmost importance. People have enormous power today. The best thing about the medium is that you can have direct access to your consumers and thus interact with them on a greater level. It is equally an opportunity as much as it is something that you need to watch out for.”

Alpana believes that the visibility in advertising need not be so much as the visibility on the shelf as she states that the moment of truth changes from the time consumers watch the advertisement to the time they actually buy the product.

Alpana Parida is currently reading a book by Roland Barthes; a French author who is also a semiotician. The book is about mythology and provides an understanding of how cultural material can be used to understand societies. “At DY Works, we use a lot of semiotics and the author was an early proponent of semiotics,” she concludes.

By Aditi Popat [aditi(at)adgully.com] - AdGully

DY Works at Comic Con Mumbai 2011

DY Works at Comic Con 2011

How Packaging communicates a Brand Refresh

I had a journalist from Business Standard call me to ask - why do you think they have done this hoarding - in a plaintive voice. She had already asked many marketers, brand strategists and other sundry thinkers; and no one seemed to be able to give her an answer.
I confessed to being stupefied myself! What I told her is that when Fair & Lovely radically changed their packaging, they needed to tell the consumer about the change.
When Rin changed to Surf,consumers needed to know of this seminal change. But when 5 Star changed to more-of-the-same-5 Star, there seems no need whatsoever. Indeed, if you put the old and the new packs side by side, you really have to play the "Find the Differences" game.

New packaging rejuvenates brands. Makes them fresher, younger and more relevant.They make the competition look old and not 'with it'.' It is also an opportunity to correct old flaws and build great brand assets.The new 5 Star packaging under-whelms - specifically on two counts.
The first:The logo covers only about half the pack. This is an impulse category - and it has to shout out to consumers. The entire real estate of the pack could have been used for the branding. And dwarfed other wannabes on the retail shelf

The second:The cross-section of the 5 Star bar has been dropped to show some drippy caramel. Consumers want to know what a product looks like when they are asked to put it in their mouths. Whether toothpaste, biscuits or chocolates. The cross-section is critical to cuing the unique 5 Star experience. Dropping it is dangerous.Brands - like people, grow old, atrophy and die - unless continually rejuvenated. A pack change is the most visible aspect of brand rejuvenation and is an opportunity to appeal to younger consumers entering the market. "New 5 Star packaging underwhelms "
Those readers of this column old enough to remember the launch of the ICICI bank will remember it as the challenger brand that shook up the bureaucratic world of banking. From long lines in a crowded sweltering branch, and endless waiting for a peon to carry your cheque from one cubicle to another before a withdrawal could be made, there came a banking experience so customer friendly and literally so much cooler, that an inertia-prone, low-priority decision of choosing your bank and going through the hassle of transferring your bank account, suddenly became top priority. That was some 20 plus years ago.The same bank has grown in size and done very well. But today, the service and ambience it offers is hygiene for the industry. And the same challenger brand appears old and fuddy duddy to the younger consumer. It is time for ICICI to rejuvenate the visible face of the brand. Otherwise, it could see its share eroded to challengers offering a fresher experience.

When Dabur embarked on a rejuvenation exercise close to a decade ago, it faced the same problem. How does a hundred-year-old brand become relevant to a younger India? And so, the old banyan tree was replaced with a younger fresher tree, the iconic Vatika packaging single handedly redefined hair oil as a category and over time a slew of old and new products made the brand relevant to the Gen X consumers. The rejuvenation helped Dabur stand up and be counted. And the rest as they say is history

Alpana Parida is currently President of DY Works (erstwhile DMA Branding) and was previously marketing and merchandising head for Tanishq. The author can be reached alpana@dyworks.in

Why Colour Matters In India

Why Colour Matters in India


Suma Joshi
GM - Marketing - DMA Yellow Works


The ripe purple of a ‘baingan’ ready to be turned into a bharta. A peacock fanning out its lustrous turquoise plumage in anticipation of a thundershower. From a slate gray sky heavy with the promise of the monsoon. A Gujarati Thali, a whole spectrum, with yellow dal, orange aamras, red chhundo, green chutney, pale cream kadhi. The vivid hues of a bandhani dupatta or a Kanjeevaram Sari. Even the Tricolour, our national standard, the Tiranga. Is there any aspect of our country that does not immediately invoke colour?

Design is the King

By - Urmimala Banerjee - Mid Day, Feb 12, 2010

ALPANA   Aria   has   recently joined Future Brands as the president of DMA Yellow Works. An IIM-Ahmedabad graduate, Alpana has worked with firms like Rediffusion and Titan. She tells B2B how the tight design makes a huge difference

The right design

While verbal language is easy to define and evaluate, a visual language is very hard to decide. And yet, visual communication has the power to get embedded deep in consumer minds in a way that no amount of words can. A picture speaks more than a thousand words.

I remember working on an Amul Shrikhand campaign. Now, shrikhand was found only in traditional Gujarat and Maharashtra homes. It was a baring dessert, but it had on opportunity to enter homes as a replacement to ice-cream. Design was entirely responsible in successfully generating trials for shrikhand in national markets and becoming

part of a household's purchase as well. The new design helped to achieve a change in consumer behav¬iour and generate volume.

Brands with great designs

The new Citigroup logo and its simple arch that communicates brand values and houses all verticals for a highly diversified set of services in B2B as well as B2C space, is fabulous in its simplicity and conveying of an overarching broad value.

Google — for its use of inclusive design makes it a 'living brand'. Us regularly changing face underwrites its brand values of customized experience and people friendly values.

Changing perceptions

In India, we still live with transposed design, whether it is airports, most of the retail chains or even products. We do not create for the Indian context. I am still hoping tor on Indian solution to our contextual needs.

Businesses designed around the understanding of the Indian consumer behaviour have done phenomenally well. For example, Big Bazaar or Muthoot finance or Nano yet we transpose design.

However, I do think that the Indian consumer is demanding and rewarding design that caters to his/ her needs. It is up to the marketers to wake up to that need.

Future plans

We want to partner diverse organisations to provide solutions that accrue quantum gains. We are picking up business aggressively — nationally and internationally.

We are also growing rapidly employee strength (85 and counting 2nd 2010-11 will see the emergence DMA yellow Works as a serious player in providing complete brand solutions — from brand strategy advertising, BTL and direct marketing. We hope to help create a launch innovative products and service formats in the country.

urmimala.banerjee@mid-day.com