Tracked by KUMAR RAUNAK
Saffola the flagship brand of fmcg major Marico in the cooking oil space has over the years become well-entrenched in the minds of the consumers as a health and wellness brand. This led the company to extend this brand name to its other offerings in the packaged foods category. The company sought to leverage the positioning of Saffola as a health brand for other products in this category. The obvious logic behind this was that in a fiercely competitive market with players like HUL, Pepsico, Conagra and Nestle, it was essential to use the health plank for positioning as consumers became more health conscious. It first started with Saffola low sodium salt and atta for diabetics which did reasonably well and created a niche market segment. In feb 2010, Saffola Arise, a low calorie and low carbohydrate packaged rice brand was launched after being successfully test marketed in the high rice consuming states of Maharashtra and Andhra pradesh. So far the response has been good and according to company sources there are a good number of instances of repeat purchases. Seeing the good response the company has also started test marketing Saffola oats from june 2010 in some select cities especially in southern states where oat consumption is high. But in this brand extension spree there was one launch which failed miserably and that was Saffola Zest, a salty snack with different flavours. It was launched in mid 2009 but was withdrawn from the market in dec 2009 after it registered low sales and could not generate good consumer response.
What could have gone wrong ?
Brand extension works well when there are certain core similarities that seamlessly connect two or more products via the brand being used for extension. This basically means when a consumer buys a new product with brand name borrowed from an existing product, he/she should be able to connect this product to the existing one through some core value propositions. In case of Saffola Arise and atta this value proposition was firmly pronounced , just as we consume cooking oil everyday in some or the other food item and yearn for fried food items , in the same way we prefer to consume rice everyday and yearn for it, and in both the case health concerns should be taken care of and saffola brand name reassured consumers about this. But in the case of salty snacks it is the taste of the product which is the overriding factor since snacks are not consumed in bulk and thrive on impulse buying, so health concerns take a backseat. This could have rendered Saffola brand name irrelevant to a certain extent. So the lesson that could be learnt from this is that brand extension exercises have to be undertaken while taking into account the synergies that would be created as a result of this and not merely a common umbrella name.
I cannot divine the reason for teh failure of Saffola Zest.
ReplyDeleteHowever another line of thinking different from yours is possible while making snack selections and perhaps was the reason behind adding the Saffola brand to Zest.
When you are health conscious but yet get tempted to have a snack, what could hold you back is the fatty substance, calories etc that may come along with the snack. If a snack with Saffola brand name connoting health is available, the buyers resistance is broken. IMO, what failed is not the brand but the 'taste'.