IMPACT Annv Spl: Devendra Chawla’s push for private brands

Let me start by stating, “A label on the shelf is a brand in the trolley, after all it’s the consumer’s choice which gives a meaning to what’s his/her brand. All brands, including private brands, are choices for the consumer in the end and only on merit will they be picked up by the consumer.”

India has the dubious distinction of being the most under-branded and under-penetrated country, but on the other hand, we all recently learnt that we are also one of the most brand conscious countries too.

The second set of challenges faced by brands is that of flickering customer loyalty. Rural markets notwithstanding, urban consumers, who, we marketers think have crossed the initial steps and are evolving – still switch brands rampantly with new brands and categories emerging everyday.

At Future group, our constant endeavour is to decode the Indian consumer in terms of insights, communities, culture and festivals which is put to use to develop our brands as well as grow consumption. Owning the retail theatre allows ‘live creativity’ and unique brand building toolkits, including a multi-sensorial engagement, in-store brand campaigns, sampling drive and visual merchandising. Our “mind to market”, the time taken for new launches, is 3-6 months. Most decisions by consumers are taken at the final consumer touch-point, the store, where given new information, brands may ‘Interrupt’ the decision-making process and enter the consideration set. The Indian consumer is ‘culturally rooted’ and modern doesn’t always mean Western, as we discovered consumers taking to soup, but preferring it in mugs over bowls at home.

So how can the so-called ‘labels’ transform into ‘brands’ by crossing the distance between the shelf and the trolley? Here are some pointers, though not in any particular order:

The big challenge is to engage the consumer: The landscape for brands is undergoing a transformation. While the media is proliferating, brands need to shout louder to get consumers’ attention. Yet, the bigger challenge for marketers is to engage with this consumer.

Retail, on the other hand, is converging in the sense that a brand can reach and interact with more consumers under the same roof. Though in its nascent stage, modern trade is contributing in a major way towards the growth of categories such as breakfast cereal, cheese, packaged rice, toilet-cleaners, liquid soaps, air-fresheners and hair conditioners, to name a few.

A retail store in that sense is the new media vehicle to create awareness about new brands/ products for a large number of consumers. Marketers are continuously looking to identify need gaps in the consumption pattern. In the process, big monies are spent on research, but not every great consumer insight has come from complex surveys.

At Future Group, while designing go-to-market strategies for its various new product launches, conversations with the consumers shopping in its stores have thrown up out-of-the-box ideas of launching a soup and pouch ketchup, which are a leading brand in our stores. For example, kids’ engagement with products is much higher in a supermarket environment, where products are displayed at their eye level. For example, in the ketchup category, we learnt how kids are dependent on “grown-ups” for usage, thanks to the heavy and breakable glass bottle. Consumers were indirectly asking for innovative solutions here as the bottle is consumer-unfriendly for the primary consumer, the child.

We pioneered easy-to-use standee pouches with a spout for our ketchup brand, Tasty Treat. Mothers loved it since it made them anxiety-free and their kids self-sufficient. It also reduced packaging cost by 30 per cent and supply chain cost by 40 per cent due to lighter weight.

The store as a retail theatre: A modern trade store offers guaranteed eyeballs. Any brand worth its salt simply does not stand to lose this as an opportunity to talk to its TG. Test-tasting or taste-testing – the private brands’ outreach programme must quickly grab this as an opportunity to run the last mile. At Future Group, our private brands have led this multi-sensorial engagement with consumers. The importance of touch, feel, smell and taste far outweigh any other form of engagement. We used this toolkit while launching our in-store campaign ‘Ab soup ka mazaa mug mein’. The moment of truth for the brand is when the consumer places the potato chip on her tongue. Private brands should be made to flirt unpretentiously with the consumer – the chances that the consumer would give in to the seduction and come back for more are high. Each method of communication adopted by the private brand marketers must be unique.

Understand community: The share of palate and plate of an average Indian is now crowded with regional cuisines too, apart from the traditional foods. Why, in the last one week, I had appam at a Marwari home, dosa at a Gujarati home and paratha at a Maharashtrian home. We are experimenting as much with pizza or burgers as with foods from other parts of India. Private brands from retailers operating on a national scale can actually work towards strengthening the regional cross-connects. With job and business opportunities uprooting people from their native place and making them settle in diagonally opposite geographies, the need to provide for community requirements have gone up. From a retailer’s point of view, developing and nurturing a community brand, which is available exclusively in its outlets, would definitely work. Future Group stores connect with customers across the country. With its innate ability to understand the communities that its stores serve, a wide range of products are being launched under the umbrella of the community private brand – Ektaa. So from a Bengali’s favourite ‘Kasundi’ to the ‘Khakra’ of Gujarat to the ‘Ambe Mohar’ rice of a Maharashtrian or ‘Red Matta’ rice of a Malayalee – Ektaa brings into its fold every Indian under one roof.

Solutions rather than only products: Every usage occasion in the life of a consumer involves an interplay of many product categories – tea time involves tea, biscuits, sugar, snacks and crockery. This multi-category consumption lens comes naturally to us as a retailer while for product brands; this is not an easy leap to make. Thus, in consumer interaction for brand-building, retailers have a unique plus over brand distribution companies. We have used it fully by promoting brushing kits, home-cleaning kits, tea kits, soup and mugs, etc., for connecting our brands with the consumer. Our ‘Solution’ language stands out well against the TVC-led single product language of regular brands. It’s the retail theatre where imagination and buying experience can be fired up. Our gift of mugs during the campaign ‘Ab soup ka mazaa mug mein’ saw a category expansion of 25 per cent. Traditionally, the category expansion role was played by the advertised brands. Future Group has re-written some of those rules. So, why can’t selling be tuned to consumption occasions and not to products only? Retailers can leverage the multiple categories that they operate in and look at creating a consumption prism rather than a brand prism.

Use ‘conversation’ medium: Generic consumer research throws up clinical analysis of consumer needs and wants, culled out of prepared questionnaires. A lot of statistics go into deciphering what the consumer has been saying. While these are standard practices, a heart to heart chat with the customer always acts as icing on the cake. In all probability, an informal talk in the aisles of a store would reveal more insights on preferences, wants, shopping behaviour, etc. This approach has helped design the go-to-market strategies for most new product launches in the Future Group private brands. Retailers have thousands of associates speaking to thousands of consumers everyday, use it to advantage and collect trends, shifts in consumption patterns and need gaps in current categories.

Understand the Indian-ness of the Indian consumer: The last 5-8 years have seen a proliferation of products and categories – all trying to woo the consumer by getting down to previously un-thought of levels. From car models to toothpaste, to biscuits to detergents, there are hundreds of examples.

We are inherent value seekers, it does not really matter whether the consumer earns an eight-figure salary or pushes a vegetable cart. India’s leading auto-maker drove this point rather straight – a prospective customer of a multi-million dollar yacht asking the dapper salesman ‘Kitna deta hai?’ So, even this HNI, who’s in for a very high value purchase, still looks for the best mileage, the value proposition in the product and will not mind shifting loyalty if the same is not fulfilled by the brand. Recent news of luxury cars going for CNG kits and diesel cars being in demand is a reminder. Owing to a simpler ‘direct route to market’ supply chain from the manufacturer to the retailer, private brands stand to gain immensely from de-layered distribution. With lower cost of experimentation, private brands can offer very highly differentiated pack sizes, products, etc., in a limited geography with little cost of failure. Coupled with the trait of sampling out in the stores for any new introductions, conversion and upgrade of consumers to larger packs is quicker.

Challenge the given: Often, the biggest challenge is the marketer’s own mindset that retailer-grown brands won’t succeed in so-called high involvement categories. Our experience has shown this is more a myth than consumer-side reality. Another big challenge is with designers and brand managers to deliver complete marketing communication on pack and in-store, which makes up for conventional mass advertising. We Indians are unique and unconventional. Speaking to consumers regarding the ideal soup serving size brought to light the fact that 70 per cent of them preferred drinking soups in mugs, in the comfort of their homes and not in public places! We legitimised the ‘soup mug’ as I said earlier, and the category has been growing fast. There will be TV-built brands and there will be shelf-built brands. Both will co-exist. As media proliferates, brands will find newer ways to reach out to the consumer. That the consumer is closer to the retailer is a fact of life, and thus modern trade will continue to discover new consumer insight, receive cues on consumption and need–gaps.

(Devendra Chawla is President – Food & FMCG, Future Group.)