Brand Update : Ferrero follows Kinder Joy with Schoko Bons

Its interesting and often painful ( as a parent) to see how marketers try to squeeze the money out of your pocket. After successfully launching the chocolate egg - Kinder Surprise, the Italian confectionery major Ferrero has followed it up with Kinder Schoko Bons Crispy which is essentially Kinder Joy minus the toy. 

As usual, the pack is pretty expensive at Rs 60 for a pack of 9 chocolates.

The pack with has the same color combination of the popular Kinder Joy is widely available across various retail formats thus ensuring that it will not miss the kid's eyes. 

Ferrero has been expanding the Kinder franchise and Schoko-Bons is a step in that direction. Kinder has many products under its belt like the chocolate bar, milk slice etc. I suppose the brand will be bringing in these variant in the near future. 

Related post

Kinder Joy

Market Statistics :A/C &Refrigerator

Season :April to June accounts for 35 percent sales
A/c Penetration around 3.8 percent. Voltas and LG leading the a/c market ,Voltas share is 20% and LG at 17%. Samsung at 10%  & Panasonic at 8.5 %.
A/C sales stand at 3.4 mn units p.a of which 80% are split a/cs.
Refrigerator sales is around 7.5 mn units p.a of which 70% is direct ciol category.
Source :Business Standard

Brand Update : Prestige transforms itself !

Prestige in recent years has made a transformation from a pressure cooker brand to a premium kitchen appliances company. The transformation was executed by promotions and distribution. In the promotions front, the brand roped in the celebrity couple Aishwarya Roy and Abhishek Bachchan . The expensive branding campaign was intended for  establishing a premium image for the brand. Prestige is a brand which is very strong in the south. With the famous couple celebrities, the brand hopes to make itself popular in the North as well. The 2013 campaign also saw the coming back of the original tagline of Prestige -  ‘Jo biwi se kare pyaar, woh Prestige se kaise kare inkaar’.

Watch the campaign here : Prestige campaign

The small kitchen appliances market is highly fragmented and this calls for the creation of a powerful brand. The choice of the celebrities were motivated by the need for creating a powerful brand and also to bring in a premiumness to the brand. The campaign had six commercials which introduces the new products of Prestige thereby establishing Prestige as a kitchen appliances brand.

Along with the high profile brand campaign, Prestige also started a chain of Prestige Smart Kitchen stores across the markets. The stores brought all the products of the brand together thus reinforcing the brand's positioning as a appliances company.

The company in the branding perspective has made the right moves but the small appliances market is very tough nut to crack with highly localized competition and also lot of low price warriors. Its still a long-term play.

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Prestige 

Market Statistics

Branded Tea market :Rs 9500 crore growing at 5%
Branded Green Tea market :Rs 150 crore growing at 21 %
Retail Market size : $500 bn ~Rs 30 lakh crores
e commerce market excluding travel :Rs 18600 Crore
Home and Furnishings market Size :Rs 1.2 lakh crore
Furniture market :Rs 600 crore
Total Households in India ~234 mn
Household with Television ~ 153 mn
( Source :Business Standard, Businessline)

Brand Update : 5 Star repositions as the cure for seriousness disease !

Rest in Peace : Ramesh and Suresh

5 Star, it seems, is on a repositioning mode. In the new ad released recently, the brand has found a new disease that is creating havoc in the entire world- Seriousness. And the only solution for this is 5 star !

Watch the campaign here : 5 Star 

5 Star  has been promoted for the last 3 years on the " lost in taste" platform anchored by two characters- Ramesh and Suresh. The brand had the tagline " Jo Khaaye Kho Jaaye ". Ramesh and Suresh ads had mixed reviews from the ad world . Although the characters had recall effect, I personally felt that the theme did not do justice to the brand. The first ad featuring the duo was funny but later these characters became irritating.

Characters that are shown in the advertisements have lot of relevance to the brand's personality. Ramesh and Suresh were depicted as stupid guys and hence that had a rub-off on the brand also. 

Now the brand decided to change the positioning and hence I suppose that Ramesh and Suresh will be taken off the air.

The new  positioning theme is " Anti-Seriousness". The brand is now positioned as a fun brand which cures seriousness . As an idea, I feel that anti-seriousness is a good platform with lot of creative options. The first ad featuring the new positioning is not that great. 

Although the ad theme is good, the question arises as to what  the brand try to convey to the consumers ? Earlier theme of  'lost in taste' had a credible reason or attribute focus. But being a fun-brand is some thing very commonly used by many brands across categories. Example Mirinda. So 5Star , trying to move from a product-based focus to more abstract proposition has taken the risk of being losing focus in future. Further, I have doubt whether positioning 5 Star as a fun-brand  fit into the 5 Star's brand personality.  

Along with the repositioning of 5 Star, Cadburys have also launched a variant 5 Star Chomp in the Indian market. The variant or Product Line Extension is expected to fight the Snickers brand of Mars International. In other markets, Chomp is promoted as a stand-alone brand while in India it is launched as an extension. 

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5 Star

Marketing in Practice : The Online Marketplace Conundrum

The blistering growth of e-commerce in India (estimated to be around a size of $ 1.6 billion) has thrown up a Pandora's box of problems for marketers. The channel conflict has become intense between the traditional brick and mortar channel members and the online market place. The conflict is real and brands are caught in between the fight for the customer's wallet. 

The issue has come to the forefront  with brands like Toshiba, Lenovo and Cannon publishing advisory to customers on purchasing their brands from online retailers. ( read news here : Lenovo, Cannon). The basic issue between the online retailers and the traditional channel members is the predatory pricing adopted by the online retailers. Traditional retailers with their huge overheads and investments are not able to match the pricing of the online retailers.

The issue has become more complicated with large online retailers like Flipkart, Snapdeal adopting the 'market place' model . The eCommerce market has two models- Inventory model where the online retailer owns and controls the inventory and the market place model where the online retailer acts as the platform which connects the consumers and the retailers. 

In India, the trend is that many major players like Flipkart, Snapdeal etc have moved to the market place model. So these big online brands using technology as the enabler connects the customers and retailer partners and ensures seamless transactions between them. 

Online retailers like Flipkart and Snapdeal are able to patronize large number of retailers to its market place thus offering a huge spread of categories and brands to the customers. The online market place is a Two-Sided market where the success of the online retailer lies in his ability to increase the number of partner retailers and also the number of shoppers to the site.

Because there are large number of retailers in the online market place, the pricing becomes predatory and huge discounts can be offered to the shoppers. This has proved to be the point of contention. It was impossible for traditional channel partners to match the price cuts offered by the market place. With increasing popularity and adoption of e-commerce in India, its normal for the traditional channel members to cry foul.

To pacify the traditional channels brands has been adopting major initiatives like

• offering additional services like additional warranty on products purchased through traditional channels.
• Policy on uniform discounting across channels. 
• Issuing advisory to consumers on benefits of purchasing through authorized retailers.
• Issuing certification to authorized retailers who agrees to abide by common rules.
• Advisory against un-authorized retailers. 

However in many cases, consumers overlook the advisory and take the risk of purchasing from unauthorized retailers. The price takes the front seat in comparison with the warranty offers. 

Experts opine that these issues will be sorted out but will take time. Brands are now increasingly asked to provide clear differentiation to traditional retailers so that their business is not suffered . It has to be noted that traditional retailers offer many valuable services to consumers in terms of information , product display etc. Consumers being smart avail these services at the traditional retailers and make the final purchase at the online retailers.