MOTHER DAIRY: BUILDING ON LOVE AND CARE

BY NEETA NAIR

The 45-year-old Mother Dairy brand recently underwent a brand refresh for its dairy products vertical with the launch of the Rishton Ka Swad Badhaey campaign. Randhir Kumar, General Manager, Marketing (Dairy Products), Mother Dairy Fruit and Vegetable tells us why it was needed

Q] What was the insight behind your latest campaign, Rishton Ka Swad Badhaey?
We undertook a few studies to understand the consumer’s perception about Mother Dairy products. As per the findings, it was not that we didn’t have a great relationship with our current generation, but we needed to be a little more contemporary and relevant to them. We found that consumers view Mother Dairy as a care-giver brand and that is an archetype which we should build on. To identify the insight, we did a lot of brainstorming with our agency, Ogilvy and realised that food is something that helps in bringing people together; it helps create a social bond. Food is just not meeting your hunger needs or it’s just not nutrition, it is much more than that. And if Mother Dairy has got care-giver as an archetype, we try to bring it together with the consumer insight that gave us a brand essence for dairy products. The Mother Dairy brand is all about stimulating togetherness. The line we decided to go with was Mother Dairy products Rishton Ka Swad Badhaey.

Q] Why did you decide to have a brand refresh just for your dairy products vertical and not overall?
In milk, there is largely just one relationship, between the mother and child, but in the case of other dairy products, there is this whole range, and an offering meant for all age groups and relationships. So, we felt that the brand refresh was a little more apt for the products business as compared to milk. As of now, this is just a campaign idea, Rishton Ka Swad Badhaey is not the landing line, which could be different. We also felt that we should first try it out with this campaign, and then see how to take it forward. It’s a brand rejuvenation, to make the products more contemporary and to have more connect with the people.

Q] What is the marketing mix for this campaign?
We did a campaign in Mumbai which was a combination of Print, Outdoor, Digital and also Radio. We did the same campaign in Delhi. As we speak, there is a campaign on ghee on similar lines. We are also working on something for ice-creams on the same positioning platform or with the same campaign theme, which will be unveiled in due course of time. The ice-cream season is not very far away. So, we are taking forward this campaign idea for the next season. It will only help us to strengthen our position.

ABOUT THE BRAND

Mother Dairy is a leading dairy player which manufactures, markets and sells milk and milk products, including cultured products, ice-creams, paneer and ghee under the Mother Dairy brand. The company also has a diversified portfolio with products in edible oils under the Dhara brand and fresh fruits and vegetables, frozen vegetables, range of unpolished pulses, honey, pulps and concentrates under the ‘Safal’ brand. With evolving consumer needs towards healthy intake, Safal has also ventured into its varied range of ‘Organic’ produce.

FACTS

CREATIVE AGENCY: OGILVY
MEDIA AGENCY: WAVEMAKER
SOCIAL AND DIGITAL MEDIA MARKETING AGENCY: WATCONSULT
PR AGENCY: ADFACTORS PR

Q] So a 45-year-old brand has attempted to rejuvenate its dairy products business. Are you also going to relook at the way you approach advertising as a whole?
Certainly, it has to be relooked into. Mass media has its own importance but today our target consumers consume a lot of digital media. So, Digital has become very important. We have got a separate agency which takes care of only Digital media, and therefore you will see that even in terms of our investment, gradually our share of investment on digital platforms or Digital media is also increasing.

Q] How much will it be, approximately?
Print is very expensive and so is Television. So, Digital is still about 10% to 15% of our overall ad spends which is the industry standard as well. But it is now shifting more towards Digital. Having said that, mass media will still have its own advantages in terms of reaching out to a larger set of consumers.

Q] Which have been your most popular brands across the years and which is that one product you are really betting on in this year?
See for us, all products are like my babies, each with their own set of strengths and challenges. But certainly I would say that products such as yogurts have been popular. There is also a new range of ice creams that we are planning to launch which we have big plans for this year. We have also done some work as far as our milkshakes are concerned, and then our mishti doi is popular too.

Q] How many new ice-cream varieties will you be launching this summer?
We are working on about 10-15 more variants which will be launched from March onwards.

Q] What kind of growth has this value-added dairy product segment seen in the past one year?
We have been outpacing the industry in most of the categories. We operate within more than 20 categories in value added dairy products. And for all the categories, we have been outpacing the industry growth rates, so I can comfortably tell you we would be growing at about 23% to 25% year on year, including this year.

Q] Which are the biggest markets for you within the country?
We are certainly a very strong brand in Delhi and also in the North. In most of the categories in Delhi NCR and in the North, you will see we would have market-share as high as 60%, 55% and 35%. So, almost in a monopolistic kind of situation, and a lot of categories in which the other brands are not even there. Apart from the North, the next biggest market for us would be the West. In Mumbai and Pune, we are doing pretty well. South, the current presence is very limited, but we are building our national footprint. We have seen an extremely good response in whichever geography we have entered in the last couple of years. We have been one of the fastest growing brands in those new geographies.

Q] How much do you spend on advertising year on year?
We spend anything between 3% to 4% of the overall revenue.

Q] Owing to shortage of fodder, milk prices have gone up. How will that affect the dairy products range?
You would have already seen that there is a very standard practice that we follow at Mother Dairy. These are inevitable things. There is an increasing input cost, which we are aware of. The industry people are also aware of this. And what we try to do is, partially we have tried to kind of absorb the same by bringing in some productivity, cost efficiency and so on and so forth and partially it will be passed on to the consumers. At the end of the day as an organization we have to make sure that what we give to the farmers is good and at the same time, the pricing for consumers should be affordable. In an attempt to balance these two, we have hiked the prices by 3% to 5%. The increase of input costs would be higher than that.

Q] What are the new product categories that you will be looking at?
We have got a product pipeline of three to five years. There are two extremes. One is on health, and then there is the other extreme that is indulgence. We want to be on both sides and have defined value spaces in both.

MARKETING TIP
It is very important to understand the pulse of the consumers

PROFILE
Randhir Kumar is the General Manager – Marketing (Dairy Products), Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable Pvt. Ltd. With a stint of close to two decades, Kumar has worked on various brands across the food and beverage industry. As a part of the marketing machine behind the billion dollar Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable Pvt. Ltd., Kumar is responsible for the entire range of value-added dairy products across the country and has been known as a growth manager, having grown every category he
has managed.

Tags : interview CMO marketing Neeta Nair Randhir Kumar Mother Dairy