MAKEOVER OF BRITANNIA

Case code-MKTG-006
Published-2001

DONNING A NEW LOOK

As a first step in its makeover plan, BIL hired a Paris based design studio- Shining Strategic design, to craft a new logo and corporate slogan. Its work involved understanding the perceived and potential value of the brand where everything from colours and symbols to the typeface, was evaluated.

The work also involved looking at the potential of the market and seeing where BIL could venture in future. Research[1] showed that the brand 'Britannia' was synonymous with trust and quality, and the wide portfolio of products was seen as a source of strength. But, BIL was aiming at faster growth, by expanding its business within the bakery segment and in select synergistic areas. Consumer research conducted with these specific objectives in mind, brought to the fore two key issues: 1. Although the brand had tremendous strength associated with it, it needed to communicate modernity strongly. 2.

It needed to assure the customers that apart from being a trusted and a familiar brand, it was also a contemporary one, and changed with the times. The fact that the existing brand was too closely associated with the bakery business, could have been a hindrance to BIL's diversification efforts. Therefore, Britannia needed a more dynamic expression. So there was a need to restage the logo, with the twin objectives of communicating modernity and dynamism. While developing the new logo and brand statement, the existing red and white shield like unit was retained with a modern rendition.

The new corporate identity had three colours red (symbolising energy and vitality), green (nutrition and freshness) and white (purity) which collectively represented what consumers looked for in foods and beverage. Research had shown that the brand statement, Eat Healthy, Think Better, captured the essence of the Indian concept of the unity of body and mind. During the developmental process, care had to be taken to ensure that there was adequate representation of all social economic strata in urban and rural India, for 'Britannia' as a brand, cut across a cross-section of consumers. The red wave communicated the dynamic and energetic movement of BIL. Analysts felt that the redesigned shield made BIL powerful and was the identifying stroke that communicated the innovation and futuristic power of BIL and that the redesigned typography made BIL very contemporary and less industrial. The roundness communicated the value of nature Eat Healthy, Think Better. The concept communicated perfectly BIL's potential value from physical to mental benefits. Said Alagh, " The new corporate identity will testify to the implicit (good) quality of all our products and all our products and colours stand for things we look for in all foods and beverages…"

THE BALANCING ACT

For BIL, the new identity, laid the base to project its future as a successful food company- a company that provided high quality and tasty, yet healthy foods and beverages. Analysts felt that BIL seemed to have realised that its customers weren't really buying biscuits; they were buying health, nutrition, and food. If it was nutrition, not biscuits, that the customer was buying when he bought Britannia, BIL could easily extend the brand to other markets where the customer looked for nutrition in every purchase. It was a repositioning that did not have any intrinsic boundaries and BIL, by taking a heath platform could enter other markets. Said Alagh, " A key reason for re-engineering the brand was not only to make it more robust and contemporary but also stretchable."[2]

With the new identity in place, the next step in BIL's makeover plan was embodied in a two-pronged agenda: to bolster BIL's strength in biscuits and to reduce its dependence on biscuits (Refer Table I).

TABLE I
BIL'S TWO-PRONGED AGENDA

Bolster BIL's strength in Biscuits	Reduce dependence on Biscuits
Differentiate products ↓ Reposition every brand ↓ Enlarge market ↓ Wider & deeper distribution	Enter new but related businesses ↓ Increase profits share of other businesses ↓ Make BIL a complete food company

As a part of its makeover plan, BIL reinforced its strength in biscuits (and more broadly Bakery business) by seeking to consolidate and improve its leadership position using aggressive marketing strategies. Said Alagh, " The bakery business is our pillar and we want to strengthen that first." To ensure that the core business was not sidelined, BIL brought about changes in the management structure until that there were two clear divisions: Bakery and Dairy-each operating as independent profit centres.

To meet the objective of bolstering its bakery business, BIL re-positioned each one of its biscuit brands on a new platform and ensured that each brand had a base statement making clear the 'higher order benefits' of the brand. BIL used combinations of price and appeal to straddle every segment of the market, challenging all levels of competition. BIL had structured a wide range of price-points: from Re 1 for a sachet of Tidbits to Rs 12 for a pack of 10 Good Day Pista Badam cookies, to Rs 15 for a 100 gm pack of Cheezlets. Likewise, BIL had straddled the spectrum of segments with different product-benefits, all of which only reinforced the mother brand's new platform. In regard to brand building, BIL followed the strategy of 'brand clustering'. The strategy was to let 'Britannia' remain the mother brand under which a cluster of sub-brands would be present for specific product categories. While the umbrella brand would act a guarantee for the consumers, the sub-brand was used to give focus and distinct images for its new product categories and businesses to get economies from brand building. (Refer TABLE II)

Analysts felt that a company like BIL, whcih wished to cater to a varied customer-base, needed to possess a large portfolio of brands, with different USPs, positioned at different price-points, yet unified under a uniquely differentiated mother brand. With this in view, BIL revamped its biscuit business. At the low-end price-point, was the 'Tiger' brand, a "calcium-enriched" glucose biscuit launched in 1997, which acted as the umbrella brand for the mass market. Until then, BIL had focussed on the middle and premium segments of the biscuit market, leaving Parle's Parle G to rule the mass market. With the mass segment accounting for half of the unorganised market, it seemed strategically important for BIL to make inroads into the same. Therefore, as a part of its new plan to attack the mass market, BIL launched the 'Tiger' brand and positioned it as a 'healthforce biscuit' as consumer research showed that good health was the overwhelming consideration when mothers chose snacks for their children. Analysts felt that since Glucose had become a generic brand, BIL by establishing a new brand was clearly differentiating its Glucose biscuits from others. The 'Tiger' brand eventually seemed to have been a huge success with its products, Tiger Glucose (Rs 5 for a 100-gm pack) and Tiger Cashew Badam (Rs 6 for 75 gm) together, achieving within a year of their launch a turnover of Rs 100 crore and a marketshare of, 30% in the glucose biscuits segment.

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DONNING A NEW LOOK-Page2

THE ROAD AHEAD

[1]Between late 1995 and early 1997 BIL conducted qualitative and quantiative research surveying over 5000 consumers to find out how they perceived the brand.

[2] BIL felt that with its strengths and Danone's partnership it could easily build on its existing competencies and position itself as a comprehensive foods and beverages company offering health and nutrition.