MARKETING SPECIAL ..........................Aam Wrestling

MARKETING SPECIAL 

Aam Wrestling

Frooti and Slice have slapped on war paint via new packaging and branding. But will that be enough to take down market leader Maaza?

Word is that the aam aadmi might not get to seeeat many mangoes this season because of the unsea sonal rains and the recent lift on the export ban for the king of fruits. One hopes the A-Team of the mango beverage category -Maaza, Slice and Frooti -have enough pulp ready, for their marketing stunts suggest they're ripe to slug it out mano a mano.

As per industry estimate of the packaged mango drinks market, Maaza: Slice: Frooti = 40:20:15 Let's understand the discrepancy of their respective shares:

Is it the Taste?

Ask any category expert what's the one thing that defines who rules this game and pop comes the reply -taste. `Give them the taste of real alphonso mango and you have your consumer captivated'. We too believed it was the case till we took the test ourselves. The three are exceedingly similar.

Must be the Advertising then.

Slice has had Katrina Kaif making love to mangoes for half a decade now. If her Aamsutra wasn't enough, Frooti threw the celeb might of Shah Rukh Khan at consumers two years ago.Call it succumbing to the fad, Maaza too signed Parineeti Chopra and Imran Khan to voice their `Har Mausam Aam' philosophy but even aliens know better than to believe this move could've dented the Kaif and Khan charisma.

So, if it isn't the taste or the advertising, what makes Maaza the king of the ring?

It's the distribution, silly

Maaza reaches close to 15 lakh outlets in the country whereas both Slice and Frooti make it to about 10 lakh each. The mango drink from the Coca-Cola stable has twice the number of distributors or channel partners as compared to its counterparts from PepsiCo and Parle Agro.

Now, this doesn't mean the challenger brands have surrendered. In fact, this season, both of them have brought in fresh armour to fight the fruit juice war.

Getting a bigger Slice?

Slice, as we know it, doesn't exist. Before you begin to mourn its passing, know that the overlords at PepsiCo have merged it with their global juice brand Tropicana. It's now called Tropicana Slice. “Where Slice has been about indulgence, this will bring the brand in a unique space of nutrition and taste,“ says Vidur Vyas, senior director marketing at PepsiCo India. Good move to lure the health-conscious-mango-juice-loving segment to the brand. Starting April'15, they'll be heavily marketing Tropicana Slice Alphonso to the top-end of the market (1,50,000 outlets).Katrina's love story with alphonso will carry on, albeit with Aditya Roy Kapur in the frame but Aamsutra isn't going anywhere.

The hiccup: The birth of Tropicana Slice doesn't mean the death of Tropicana Mango juice, either. End result: A confused consumer, perhaps? If only there was a mirror on the wall who could tell him which is the healthier option?
Plus, Tropicana Mango juice is only available in tetra pak, which is good. Tropicana Slice is only available in PET bottles and RGB (returnable glass bottles) for now, which is not so good. Historically, Slice has made more revenue from RGB and PET bottles as opposed to tetra pak packages. But if you ask Maaza, small towns are increasingly opening up to juices as beverages and new packaging innovations like tetra pak enable the brand to sell low-priced SKUs easily. No hassles on returning the bottle, you see. Says Debabrata Mukherjee, VP marketing and commercial, Coca-Cola India and South West Asia: “Ever since Maaza has started selling tetra pak units in rural areas, their incremental transactions for the `7-`12 packs have gone up by 25%.“ Now, Tropicana Slice tells us they're hugely investing in enhancing their sales and distribution but some thought will have to be given to the packaging mix as well.

Forget Brand Rejig, Frooti undergoes a Brand Relaunch

“I've always been nervous about Frooti,“ confesses Nadia Chauhan, joint MD and CMO of Parle Agro. “Launching a new brand is easy. But growing a brand with such a strong legacy brings you under a lot of pressure,“ she adds.Right from the time she started handling Frooti, her biggest worry has been the fact that it's presumed to be a kid's drink. That even if your elder brother likes it, he won't admit to it. To change the perception, they attempted a packaging re vamp in 2005 but the stomach to take risks was limited. This time around, Chauhan hired the UK based design studio Pentagram and briefed them to change everything but the brand name.“We wanted the packaging to look edgier, so that our target consumer in the age-group of 15-30 would look cool while holding the pack and sipping from it,“ she says. Their TVC, created by US-based Sagmeister & Walsh, tries to draw attention with its catchphrase `suck-ita lick-ita.' The industry is polarised on the rationale of the ad but Chauhan is content with the sales figures so far. The January to March quarter that saw the new packaging, witnessed a 60% spike in sales compared to last year. Who's to complain?

The extra effort: For the past year and a half, Frooti has been trying to enhance its distribution via sales force automation. The distributors have been allotted tablets so they can feed sales data in real time. “It also makes their monotonous jobs a tad interesting,“ Chauhan feels. Fol lowing the results of the data mining, they were able to make a strategy shift when they realised their 250ml tetra pak was doing better in outlets where they majorly sold only 600ml packs. The initiative has helped them grow double the category average growth, she claims.

The hiccup: An ex PepsiCo employee, who's worked on Slice, commented that Frooti was a mass brand nurtured by Prakash Chauhan but the current campaign looks like it's made to please a few elite colony and party friends. It might also confuse the consumer feels KV Sridhar, CCO of SapientNitro India. “It looks like they've been trying different things while all they need to do is stick to making Frooti look like the next best thing to eating a mango.“ The move to grow the consumer base beyond kids is welcomed by him though.

There's a maxim in advertising that nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising.Since Frooti is trying to ramp up its distribution, one certainly hopes the converse of above-mentioned maxim doesn't take them down.

Shephali Bhatt

 ET15APR15