Mumbai: Starting 15 March, beverage maker Parle Agro will unleash a new Rs.100 crore marketing campaign for its non-fizzy mango juice brand Frooti.
The company has overhauled the look and feel of its flagship brand away from its sweet and child-centric image to give it a bold and contemporary look with the help of London-based design firm Pentagram. This is the first time in the brand’s 30-year existence that the company has radically changed its logo and design. The new packaging and identity was announced on social media last month.
The new design has done away with the white and green logo as well as the old font, opting instead to go for a bold rectangular logo in a shade of dark green with Frooti written across in bold font. The design of the bottle has also changed. Price points and pack sizes continue to remain the same.
“It’s been a very conscious and calculated decision to bring about this change,” explained Nadia Chauhan, joint managing director and chief marketing officer, Parle Agro Private Ltd.
“Talk to any consumer on the street and they will relate to Frooti as a memory of their childhood..,” she said, adding that looking at the brand strategy over the next 5-10 years, it was important to fit Frooti into the varied consumer lifestyles of today. “That’s a very challenging thing for any brand—to have appeal across such a wide target audience,” said Chauhan.
Frooti has not only changed its logo and design, but there will also be a full-fledged marketing campaign with a budget of Rs.100 crore, starting with the rollout of a new television commercial from 15th March.
The creative campaign will be driven by New York-based ad agency Sagmeister & Walsh on a project basis for one year. The brand’s creative mandate was previously handled by Creativeland Asia for a period of nine years.
The company said that the primary reason for choosing an international agency was to ensure a fresh and objective approach to brand Frooti, given how almost every Indian has had an association with the brand.
Chauhan said the process of choosing a new logo and design lasted over 10 months. The client brief to Pentagram, which has also designed packaging and identities for brands such as luxury jeweler and specialty retailer Tiffany & Co, luxury department store chain Saks Fifth Avenue and Citibank, among others, dictated that the agency could change everything about the brand except its name. In addition, the new logo and packaging should be able to contribute about 50% to the brand’s growth.
The mango-based juice drinks segment is estimated to be Rs.3,500 crore at the end of 2014 and growing at the rate of 8% per annum, according to research by Wazir Advisors, a management consulting firm.
The mango juice segment has had the slowest growth rate in the non-alcoholic beverage market with categories like coffee, tea, carbonated juices, health drinks and powdered drinks growing at a faster rate of 12-20% per annum, said the research.
Competitors in the mango juice category include Coca-Cola’s ‘Maaza’ and PepsiCo’s mango drink ‘Slice’. In the year ended 31 March 2014, Parle Agro’s annual revenue stood at Rs.2,500 crore.
