Marico hypes health for Saffola family

Namrata Singh in Mumbai

MARICO Industries Ltd (Marico) has decided to create an umbrella value for its edible oil brand Saffola, to be extended to other product categories in the future. To this end, the company is running a new theme campaign for Saffola as a brand on the current positioning ‘swastha parivar ki dil ki dhadkan (Heart of a healthy family).

The decision is based on an extensive equity research conducted by Quantum, which revealed new insights, reflecting the attitudes of the current generation of women/housewives, and the way they perceive the brand.

Says Marico CEO (healthcare) Mr Pranab Datta: “In order to appeal to a wider audience, we have now decided to switch Saffola from problem-solution to a higher order health platform for the whole family. In doing so, we have tried to take care of some of the values, which were found to be lacking or were weak. We have also tried to bring about a greater emotional connect between the target group of the brand.”

The earlier advertisement focussed on the housewife’s concern about her husband’s cardiac health (a scene of a birthday party, where an active husband is the centre of attraction and is dancing away to glory, till he suddenly becomes breathless which makes the wife feel concerned about his cardiac health). The new theme communication — sehat se jeena hai — deals with the health of the entire family (for instance, within the theme commercial an elder brother is shown putting a comforting arm around his younger sibling).

Research revealed that consumers pegged Saffola more on the problem-solution plank — as a brand which involves high technology, which explained the price premium over other edible oils. A kilo of Saffola is priced at Rs 87 against the price of Rs 63 for the same volume of Sweekar. The new theme communication attempts to simultaneously bring upfront the second positioning that the brand is at the centre of a healthy family, even as it delivers the brand value of problem-solution.

“The theme communication will enable us to add new categories to the umbrella brand. All products under the Saffola brand will share the same values,” adds Mr Datta.

The company had repositioned the brand three years back from the previous ‘Good for the Heart’ positioning to ‘Heart of a healthy family’. The repositioning done then involved a new campaign, new pack design, change in pack graphics as well as extension of the brand to other oil/categories. The umbrella value creation for Saffola was not done in the previous repositioning.

The “heart” positioning statement has dual connotations: physical heart and centre of the family. In a second connotation, it also identifies the brand to the housewife, who is the pivot of a healthy and happy family. The objective now is to inject the new values, while simultaneously reinforcing the positioning.

Since the brand has a high aspirational value attached to it, the company believes that this will help bring in more consumers in the Saffola ambit.

Marico’s objective is to distinguish the brand from competing brands, without changing the positioning or packaging/design of the brand. In the edible oils industry, the advertising still revolves around food, family, taste as the attributes to induce consumer buying. The new Saffola communication therefore, delivers certain values which uniquely places Saffola vis-a-vis other brands, on parameters such as energy, vibrancy, emotion, contemporariness, expertise etc.

“The first step endeavours to develop a common brand theme for all the products in the portfolio. This would be followed by product-centric communication campaigns,” says Mr Datta. Hence, there would be a separate communication for Saffola Kardi Oil, which is the flagship product, and a separate one for Saffola Kardi Corn Blend, which has seen volumes growth quite sharply in the last one year. “A complete brand/product architecture has been developed arising out of which we are contemplating expansion of the portfolio in the near future,” he explains.

Salt is a new category for Saffola with more new categories in the pipeline.

The Sehat se jeena hai campaign created by Grey India is expected to run three-four months followed by relevant product campaigns. While the learnings of the equity research have been suitably deployed in the new strategy, a quick market research conducted in Mumbai by the same agency to gauge consumer response to the new campaign has revealed a “good” early acceptance.

The new positioning aims at broadening the consumer base even as Saffola registered a healthy growth of 25 per cent in volumes last year. “Growth is not a problem for the brand. We, however, would like the brand to grow at an even faster rate and to expand the franchise,” adds Mr Datta.

In the 22,616 klpm refined oils in consumer packs (ROCP) market, the market share of sunflower oils is 55 per cent, and that of soya oil is 11 per cent. While Saffola has a share of 6.5 per cent, the share of Marico’s Sweekar is 4.7 per cent. Competing brands Sundrop, Godrej and Flora have a share of 13.2 per cent, two per cent and 2.5 per cent, respectively.