Bringing imagination to life!

We all dream and we all imagine! And our imagination is at its best when we are reading, mostly fictions. When these are brought to life through movies, cartoons and even games we all get engrossed into it so much that we forget the real world. For that period of time, we would have started relating ourselves to the characters and roles and virtually living that life. Such is the power of fiction!
Even as I am writing this, the first fiction that comes to my mind that captivated most of the youth in this world is Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling did a brilliant job and thanks to her that most children started referring other fellow human beings as muggles. I was only praying that my younger sister doesn’t refer to me as a “mere” muggle after going mad about the fiction. So when we have such a wonderful group of target consumers, imagine the kind of stir a manufacturing company would cause if it launched a product that these heroic characters use.
This method has long been used by these manufacturers to promote the products. However, recently these manufacturing companies also have started launching products to promote the movies/cartoon/games through Reverse Product Placement. In this article, I will be covering some of the brands that have been launched to promote something else, as a part of the company’s reverse product placement stint.


“Booty Sweat”! Sorry, am not discussing any gross topic over here. This is a product’s name that is going to be launched soon in the US! Are you guys wondering what this is all about? It’s apparently an energy drink that is based on the action comedy (to be released) Tropic Thunder!
The company Paramount Pictures thinks that this product can exist as a stand alone and will promote the upcoming movie. They have come up with this product because the movie matches up the demo that gulps a lot of energy drink. This fictional product from the movie is launched as a premium product and is sold only through some of the exclusive boutique retailers in the US.

This is called reverse product placement, where a fictional brand created in a fictional environment is released into the real world. One of the early examples of reverse product placement is the establishment of the restaurant chain Bubba Gump Shrimp Co (1996) that is inspired by the movie Forrest Gump (1994). Bubba is the name of a black friend of Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump.
The reverse product placement is extensively used to promote a product or generate buzz among people about the product. There are many more brands or products that have been launched on similar lines.
Cap Candy, a division of Hasbro, created Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, a candy first created in the Harry Potter books. There are about 150 varieties of these with flavors that sound gross. Somehow, attracting consumers has become so important to manufacturers that they have resorted to all unpleasant names for their products. Although in this case we can relate those candy flavors like, earwax, rotten egg, dirt, earthworm, cockroach clusters to the world of Harry Potter, I don’t understand what paramount pictures is trying to indicate with their product named that way. Anyhow, this will only generate further curiosity among consumers go and watch the movie (I guess!).
Talking about a few pleasant things in life, let us look at a few more brands that have come to life from the animation world. I am talking about the famous cartoon strip The Simpsons! They were basically created to generate buzz among viewers about The Simpsons movie that was about to be released. They were available in exclusive stores called 7-eleven; a Japan based convenience stores in the US. The promotion for The Simpsons movie was enormous where about eleven 7-Eleven stores in North America were modified to resemble the fictional convenience stores Kwik-E-Mart from The Simpsons animation series.
The brands that came into being from the fiction are Buzz Cola, Duff Beer, Krusty-O’s, Squishee and Tomacco.
So these are just a few of the brands to name that have employed reverse product placement. While the whole marketing world is busy coming up with various strategies to position and promote brands, Indian market also has witnessed a few of such tactics. Tanishq coming up with its “Jodha Akbar” jewelry range is one such example. Although there have been a few similar stunts for some of the movies, none of them were as successful as that for the movie Jodha Akbar.
It not only promoted the movie but also boosted the jewelry sales to a large extent. But India has a long way to reach when it comes to marketing and various strategies.
However, the point is that these products placed under reverse product placement strategy may or may not work. They may reach out to consumers but they sure cannot guarantee that they would be impressive. In any case, it will surely generate buzz! So I really wonder, although not very keen, how Booty Sweat may work in the market.

Amul versus Nestle

Utterly Butterly Delicious Amul!... The taste of India…Swaad India Ka..are some of the most famous and wonderful ads that we have seen. Also..Mummy badi gazab ki bhook lagi..maggi chahiye mujhe abhi (I can never forget this line ever!) has also been the very popular line amongst people here in India.
Then the consumer world in India had not been exposed to as many brands as we are today. There were a handful of brands which when came up with any advertisement, just remained on people’s mind. Every jingle was by-hearted and it was easy too! Some of the most famous jingles in India were (and the ones I remember even now!) from the brands Nirma, Limca, Coca cola, Liril (my favorite!). Then came the whole range of advertisements in the form of jingles and one of my favorites are of course Amul, the taste of India. Jingles apart, I would like to bring in my comparative perspective of the TWO major milk products industry that is burgeoning in India.
Amul India and Nestle India has been the TWO major players in the milk products industry since a very long time. While Nestlé’s ties with India dates back to 1912 as an export unit operating under the name The Nestlé Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company (Export) Limited where it imported and sold finished products in the Indian market, it set up its first factory in 1961 at Moga, Punjab. Nestle developed a milk economy in Punjab (per the request of Punjab government) as against the milk economy that was set up in Gujarat by Amul. Amul was set up in 1945 as Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). It is a state level apex body of milk cooperatives in Gujarat that helps farmer get good remuneration on his produce.
While both have established themselves on the similar lines, the impact that they have had on consumer minds is totally different. Amul has a more Indian appeal than brand Nestle, which still carries its Swiss look and style. To get a fair look into what exactly I mean, I would like to bring in some facts and my observation here.
Let me start with Nestle, because I think this brand has had a great distribution. Nestle to start with launched its Nestle Milkmaid and Nestle Everyday range. The Everyday milk powder which is popular even now among people all over India (especially in rural India, although rigid, they have very easy acceptance for this brand) is exclusively bought by consumers not as a whitener but as a baby food. I say the distribution is great because, I come from a rural part of India where even the newspapers were rarely available but these products were available to consumers even then. However, they were considered to be premium products (my knowledge is that of about 20 years back) and were purchased on the rare and special occasions. However, their milk products line did not expand much for over few years from then. During those days even the product launches were not many as we witness now. Then Maggi Noodle was launched. I remember one instance which I can never forget from my childhood. Then I was in class 6. One evening loads of free sample packets (what we have as singlet now, that was the only form available then) of Maggi noodles were distributed among students. You could take home as many as you could! I had seen the advertisements on the TV that showed noodles being cooked in a very delicious manner and served by a mom to her two hungry kids from school. The noodle looked really delicious. But I had never tasted it till then. So I was all excited and took those packets home. My elder brother at home cooked it for me and also educated me (for free!) as to how to cook Maggi noodles. Guess I am making good use of it now. Although it tasted yuck then and my uncle made up for it by getting an authentic Chinese noodles for me (tasted really yummy!), now I eat Maggi atleast once in a week, after the whole make over of the flavor. No kidding! To many Maggi is the staple food in India. However, Maggi Cuppa tastes bad! Now they have launched quite a few milk products. They also have a range of beverages and Nescafe classic is another most popular brand and Nescafe Sunrise is my favorite. It’s really tasty and refreshing. Even the advertisement for Sunrise is very refreshing and the Nescafe (Classic) Jingle still rings my head! Nescafe has become so synonymous for coffee here in India that many restaurants have on their menu as “Nescoffee”! Nestle Milo has been another success story. The other range is chocolates and confectionery. Although they have quite a collection Kitkat has only been impressive to me so far. Solely on the basis of the quality products and not a very “Indian” image of the brands, they have surely endured and have been quite popular. Nestle has great marketing strategies that maintains good distribution reaching out to the mass. However the number and variety of products and category ranges are limited here.
Amul launched its butter way back in 1945. However, it was perceived to be a premium product in India. Mostly because a majority of Indians preferred preparing fresh butter at home or buying from the local diary or milkman not many households were open to buy this products. In my place we got butter for 20 Rupees per Kg (heheheh…during those times!!today the rate of inflation has marked 11.5%!!) Only when you traveled by first class in trains or flights you got the Amul butter to taste. I had not heard of Amul butter for a long time. The first I got to know about this butter was when I was in class 10, when my uncle had just returned from Delhi and I was at his home for my vacation in Bangalore.
It was a small packet of butter covered in silver foil. Till then I had not seen this butter packet in any shop, at least down south. I don’t think the distribution of this product was that good and even now in most villages you still don’t get Amul butter. Amul first became famous for its butter among the mass and slowly began to expand itself in other milk products category. It has now about 8 different categories. This organization has a very Indian feel to it and this is more emphasized by its positioning as “the taste of India” as well as its Indian products range like Malai paneer, Amul Lassee, Shrikhand and many more. It has a whole catalog to it. Amul also bags the image as “savior of farmers”, “a milk revolution” and this got only more popularity with a movie made on the organization. Anand, the town where it is situated got all the fame and recognition after this movie was made. Hence, Amul has a very strong patriotic feel (very evident in the ad “the taste of India”, wonderful ad I must say!) to its image. Additionally, it gets only utterly butterly delicious with the moppet girl with the cute frock and round eyes endorsing the brand!
When we look at these two Industries, we know that Nestle has reached out to the masses by quietly maintaining its international image but with a great taste and quality. It has some of the most popular brands effortlessly (Maggi ketchup, its different! Javed Jaffri endorsement)! Where as Amul has this “desi brand” image but the amount of the advertisement that happens is enormous I think. The various activities Amul has got into like sponsoring various programs, hosting many competitions and many more. It even has its own exclusive parlors! Amul has grown a lot bigger and international yet maintaining its exclusive image. But definitely this has bagged a special place in every kitchen in India! While Amul has responded very quickly to the various niches in the market locally as well as internationally by launching products like Amul Kool (targeting the youth) and Amul Masti (Buttermilk educating youth against carbonated drinks!) Nestle is slowly traversing this path by launching Nestle Jeera Raitha! Amul is slowly transforming from the very “cute” image to the “yo” and “yippie” image reaching out to the young crowd stirring them up with their confectionery range too! However, I think Nestle has a mile to reach by getting more versatile in terms of categories and Amul has to shun its premium image and reach out more to the rural parts of India. All said and done, with these two giants competing in this industry we can only expect more goodies to savor! Leaves me with a great feeling! :)

Go Green..!! P&G

Mother Earth! That is how we refer to this planet on which we live. Many poets have written innumerable poems praising her power. But over the period of time, we have forgotten to take care of our own mother earth who gives us food and shelter and as a result we have also witnessed her wrath! Even after all this we are attacking our own home incessantly.
"Some day the earth will weep, she will beg for her life, she will cry with tears of blood. You will make a choice, if you will help her or let her die, and when she dies, you will die too."- says John Hollow Horn, Oglala Lakota, 1932.
It is high time that we all get aware of the dire consequences. Many of our neighboring countries have already started taking effective steps towards conservation of our environment. People in most countries outside India have adopted methods and use products in their day to day life that are very eco-friendly.

In response to this and to cater to the need of the hour (this is my favorite line these days, need of the hour!), many FMCG manufacturing companies have come up with ideas to contribute their bit. To name a few companies that I know working towards this are P&G and Clorox. Luckily, even I got an opportunity to work on some of their concepts before they launched the products in the market, and the surprising fact that even I was somewhere a part of their great step towards conservation got me excited.

Basically their idea is to offer all the benefits of the product and additionally also offer the benefit of conserving the environment. So there is no trade off between the eco friendly benefits and the overall efficacy of the product. Because there are about 50-75% of the consumers out there in the US and UK who are for this kind of initiatives and intend to purchase them when there is no compromise involved, manufacturing companies leverage this aspect to pump up the consumer purchase interest. So this not alone boost the company’s profits, but also helps the company to build good will among people, reduces manufacturing costs and most importantly protects our planet.

The results are quite evident! The P&G sustainability head, VP, Mr. Len Sauers comments when asked about their achievement in this regards as "Over the past five years, we have reduced by 30% per unit of production our CO2 emissions, energy/water consumption and disposed solid waste. We have set a goal of reducing an additional 10% over the next five years, leading to total reductions over the decade of at least 40%. We are well on our way to achieving this goal." This is truly remarkable and laudable!

So, how did he do this? Incorporating a few manufacturing and form/formulation changes he was able to achieve a BIG difference. First off, the liquid laundry detergent was made more concentrated than it was, so that people could use just half a liter instead of 2 liters of the detergent. This reduced the raw materials, operation costs and the container size. More containers could be transported because of the less space occupied overall and thus reduced the transportation charges. This automatically improved your product, reduced costs and increase profits. Does that sound simple and logical?? We care for the nature and in turn we get all the benefits! Nature has always been very generous to the mankind!

Getting back to the point, although the whole thing sounds simple, there is a hell lot of technology and science involved and implemented to do this. Understanding the processes in our everyday world is the first step towards it. Like for example, let us consider the two products I would be discussing now. One, Tide from P&G and the other line of cleaners called Green Works. Although I did get a chance to work on Green Works and some other similarly positioned initiative from P&G, I dint work on the Tide brand specifically.

However, I would like to bring about some points that I noticed when I worked on these initiatives. The P&G initiatives talked about working efficiently at the low temperatures like 15 degrees (In the countries like US and UK the temperatures are generally low and hence they used hot/warm water to wash clothes, consuming more power and energy to wash the laundry) and a concentrated formula which gave a impeccable wash with lesser quantity of the detergents. This saved power and energy ensuring compactness too. Moving the entire U.S. market to concentrated liquid laundry detergents will eliminate 140 million pounds of materials from being used and transported. This is a lot!

Talking of the Tide which is already doing all these things without the efficacy trade off, Len wants to say that "if everyone in the U.S. switched from hot/warm water to cold water for machine laundering, we would eliminate up to 34 million tons of carbon dioxide from being released. This is nearly 8% of the U.S.'s Kyoto target. A product like this shows the great value of bringing sustainability to the vast majority of consumers." So they not just ensure the manufacturing and usage benefits but also research on the process that takes place when washing the laundry. They have an estimate of the CO2 released in the environment when the detergent is mixed in water. Excellent!!

Green Works also has similar claims, where it says that the line gives uncompromising results without releasing harmful fumes in the environment. As a result it attracts maximum consumer interest.
So many products have gone green and are showing best results. As we now know that even the smallest thing that make a big difference, even we need to contribute our bit. Many companies are also employing many initiatives towards conserving environment.
So let us all do our bit and collectively bring about some change!

Pirates of the American....!!

Ignorance is bliss! and Ehrlich proves it right. The founder and owner of the snack company Robert's American Gourment http://www.robscape.com/, is all blissful because he is ignorant of the stereotyped and overused strategies that every other company uses to earn profits. As a result he owns a $50 mn company of just about 15 employees!! He believes in doing things differently, creatively, and in a cool, funky manner, BUT never goes off tangent with the consumer needs. He always has his one ear to the consumer needs and all of his other senses working towards meeting those needs.
The article which I read about this one guy who does things SO creatively had my eye-brows up all the time I was reading it. One amazing guy(to put in his own cool terms!), a visionary and an entrueprenuer who is high on creativity and energy all the time.
Ehrlich not alone did things differently by coming up with this "pirate's booty" concept for a corn snack but also kept it very relevant to the consumer's need of the hour. By identifying this niche in the healthy-snack market in the US, he immediately came up with an idea that met the consumer needs by providing them not alone with the snack that was extremely tasty, but also that has all the healthy ingredients in it.
With 15 people in his company who are creative, talented and equally committed as he is, he ensures that he uses only "original" ideas to market his products. He has about 132 SKUs. Thats a lot! His marketing strategies involve using all catchy names, images and captions that attract consumers of all ages and groups. Some of the names he has got on his products are... "Pirate's Booty" (A pirate's image with a parrot, I must say this guy looks all happy and smart), "Small Puffs", "Chaos", "Dude's Chips" (I like this one!), "Antique Potato Chips (Party like it's 1985!)". These are only a few of them to name. Just imagine the kind of names that all his 132 snack products may have! I really am curious to buy all the 132 snacks, just to read their names! ;) I think while the snack is " food for good health" the captions are very well "food for thought".
Ehrlich personally feels that most of the snacks that are already available in the market are not having the qualities that his products have and sometimes even have totally unwanted information (like, one's laundry list behing Dorito's packet), that may put some consumers off. I think the laundry info on a snack pack is weird because I definitely would not want to think of my laundry when am munching on something. All I would want to do is enjoy the snack!
Adding some more points to the catchy names thing, I want to bring out a point here that with these names like "Dude's Chip" and "Antique Potato Chips (Party like it's 1985)" he is reaching out to varied groups of consumers of different age groups. He also uses many mascots and not just one (even here he breaks the rule of conventional marketing of using just one mascot to create and promote a brand image) to reach out to people. These mascots are very interesting, because some are fictional, some are real and some are even intellectual! This man truly knows his business and his people really well! A pirate, a beach bun, Vanna white lady, Albert Einstien are some of his mascots. He has chosen them so wisely that all kinds of people and of different age groups can identify themselves with the mascots. The fact that images make more impact and have greater and effective recallability is very well used by Ehrlich to reach out to his consumers. Even for an ordinary product like snack he takes so much care that people start identifying themselves with the product. These images are very artistic(created by his cartoonist friend) lively that gives a whole lot of energetic, cool, whacky and sophisticated look and feel for the product. But at the same time he offers consumers quality food, differently!
After reading all these "cool" things about Ehrlich and his snack company, I felt like visting his website http://www.robscape.com/. A real funky and entertaining site...truly!
The first thing I noticed about it is that it is very colorful site with cartoon images all over! It is very user freindly too and has links that will connect you immediately to things which you would mostly look for. Most importantly "Pirate in red"...I have apparently started liking his appearance a lot! :) They even have a link where in it suggests that they support a social cause too. Very nice!
The most I liked about this site is that it takes new recipes from the viewers and I dint fail to give my idea. They promised they will be back to me if they liked my idea. So let us wait and watch :)
However, I would also suggest them a few things that will help improve the overall appeal. I felt that the site has somewhat unclear images and at times while browsing some content was blocked by overlapping images (which I think they need to fix immediately!).
And while I was browsing through all those cartoon characters completely mesmerized, my imagination was at its heights and so even I just came up with some ideas there. I would suggest that they could come up with nice comic series in which they can show those characters like Einstein or the Pirate himself eating the snacks and introducing any new snack by talking about it or the ingredients and their benefits through dialogues in the series could help attract more viewers to the site and as a result can boost their purchase.
They also can come up with some flash games with those characters and have some online contests/or even offline and then can give away their snack packs to the winners. This will attract more gamers (considering we have a lot of them these days, its a new trend!). They can also offer the person who either is a big fan of Robert's(like me, :) now) or buyer to make him one of their mascots for say a few days or something, like "mascot of the month" offer/contest. They can also come up with the toy concept (I have a feeling that Ehrlich may not like this idea, because he believes in originality and this is in line with Mc Donald's promotional activity). Oh my god!! I am bubbling with ideas!! I think I should visit his site more often :P.
But for sure, I am definitely all inspired to believe in my gut feeling (like Ehrlich does) and go ahead and bring my idea to life! (Yeah, even I have one, definitely!).
Innovation and Creativity is surely in!!!
And guess what, while I was busy drafting this blog, I already recieved their reply on the recipe I sent them over. They will forward my idea! wow! That is really encouraging! :)