While many companies were facing crunch time or laying low this festive season, PepsiCo embarked on a high impact campaign for one of its Rs 1,000 cr-plus brands, Kurkure. Vidur Vyas, Director - Marketing, PepsiCo India, Foods, tells us how the company plans to conquer the snacks segment, despite the current economic scenario
Q] PepsiCo had come out with a new festive campaign for Kurkure. Can you give us your insights behind this campaign?
Kurkure is a family brand and through the years, it’s offered consumers a point-of-view and led change in an inclusive way. It’s always been socially relevant and festivals are a platform that Kurkure has built on consistently.
In this campaign, Kurkure encouraged consumers to enjoy festivals in a chatpata way, instead of only celebrating with sweets. Every year around this season, we bring in new flavours and innovative gifting options that strengthen our muchloved proposition of ‘Zyaada Meetha Ho Gaya? Iss Diwali Muh Kurkure Karo’.
This year, we started the festive season with Durga Puja in the East, and culminated the celebrations with an action-packed Diwali campaign. For Durga Puja, the brand ran a massive consumer engagement programme, where consumers got the opportunity to win the ‘money can’t buy’ experience of going Pujo shopping with celebrities like Raima Sengupta and Swastika Mukherjee.
Moreover, our power-packed festive campaign brought alive a new twist to Diwali celebrations. We revamped the gift box with a new range of special ‘Raja Rani’ gift packs designed by Ray and Keshavan, South Asia’s leading brand and design consulting firm. We also offered limited edition gift packs by renowned fashion designer Manish Arora. We also launched four new chilli flavours too, namely Chilli Garlic, Chilli Saucy, Chilli Achari and Chilli Mustard.
Q] How are you extending this campaign across various touch-points?
Our initiatives are supported by a widespread marketing campaign including a high-impact print campaign in the big dailies, powerful radio activation including interaction with our brand ambassadors, and a large social media campaign, with some fun and engaging formats on Twitter and Facebook. In fact, since the launch of the campaign in the third week of October, we’ve been trending regularly on Twitter.
Q] What percentage of your marketing budget is reserved for festival campaigns? Does the weak consumer sentiment translate to higher marketing spends and activations to engage consumers?
As per company policy, we cannot comment on investments. But we can tell you that the brand has invested significantly into its festive campaigns this year, as this is an important consumption period for the brand. We have invested in both refreshing the offering via new designs and products, and also marketing them efficiently.
Q] What’s your market share in the potato snack segment especially with Lay’s & Uncle Chipps in your portfolio? Looking ahead, what more can we expect in this space?
As a company policy we do not comment on market share. Lay’s, one of the marquee brands from PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division, has always been known for bringing in flavours of the world along with Indian flavours that our consumers love. The brand has always stood for indulgence and great irresistible taste, and has created innovative consumer-engagement campaigns. As a result, Lay’s is a lovemark brand today.
Over the years, Uncle Chipps has been built on three key pillars: familiarity of Indian taste at great value, building consumer connect by developing innovative local palates and driving regional connect by leveraging local festivals. The focus on enhancing local relevance has had Uncle Chipps introduce innovative Indian flavours uniquely created to cater to regional tastes and preferences.
Both our core brands and our new introductions are doing very well and we continue to innovate and diversify our portfolio of potato chips, Kurkure, baked snacks and traditional namkeens.
Q] The traditional snack food market has strong local players. How does PepsiCo differentiate itself?
PepsiCo has been in India for over 20 years and in this span of time, the company has pioneered the creation of the organized snacks market in the country, on the back of constant innovation, robust distribution network, and backward linkages for procurement (our agriculture programme) and most importantly, developing a deep understanding of the Indian consumer. In the snacks business, we operate with lovemark brands such as Kurkure and Lay’s, which are household names. Our strong growth in the market is a result of successful product innovations, effective marketing and consumer engagement campaigns. Both Lay’s and Kurkure are Rs 1,000 cr-plus brands.
Q] What are the challenges faced in the Indian market?
India is a diverse country, and in the food business, this diversity offers plenty of opportunities and challenges. Our large, growing portfolio caters to these variations —in product format, in multiple flavours, and by fulfilling various consumer occasions.
Q] Various sectors have witnessed a slowdown in consumption. In this scenario, what are you doing to increase consumption?
Despite the market sentiment, there are pockets of opportunity and growth. We’ve leveraged our wide portfolio to make the most of the current economic scenario. We’ve used sharp targeting of packs for specific consumer occasions, such as the Kurkure XL pack, that celebrates the typical Indian ritual of inviting practically everyone we know, for a ‘small party’ at home. Similarly, our diverse festive offerings have exciting new flavours and designs that break the clutter, and cater to the consumer need of special festive indulgence and of gifting exciting new packs.
Q] What are the opportunities that you see in the slowdown?
We see consumers seeking new experiences in product format and flavours. They love innovative taste experiments and also look forward to brand experiences that are relevant and engaging. Our continued focus on innovation has enhanced our offerings year-on-year and helped the brand to be on the top of consumers’ minds. Therefore, the opportunity in today’s scenario remains in staying relevant to consumers and offering them new products. We are cognizant of the huge penetration opportunity that continues to exist, across market segments, especially for the lower priced packs.
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