Lessons of Leverage from Cadbury & Oreo

When you have two very popular brands, how often you think about leveraging the strength of those two brands for mutual advantage? Lessons are to be learned from the two most popular brands from Kraft foods - Cadbury and Oreo. When Cadbury was taken over by Kraft foods, many saw synergy in the business and not brands. However, Kraft foods have very cleverly leveraged the strengths of both the brands by launching variants exploiting the strength of both the brands.

Take the two products - Cadbury Silk Oreo which has Oreo biscuits inside and Oreo biscuits dipped in Cadbury chocolate. Consumers have different tastes, some like their chocolates to be crunchy while others would like creamy chocolates with no interference in between. But more importantly, consumers are craving for more consumption experiences. They are willing to experiment with different combinations and here loyalty seldom matters. 

So when the two brands which have powerful equity decide to collaborate and bring new products together, the experiences multiply manifold. Of course, there will be consumers who don't like these variants, there are original products for them. However, a large set of consumers of this category of foods love new varieties and combinations. 

While many FMCG brands bring out variants and combinations, it's very rare that such brilliant leverage of brand strength has occurred in the Indian market.