Jas Business Blog

They did it with Perk about a decade back and they have done it again with ‘Ulta Perk‘ now. Cadbury brought the chocolate coated wafer category to the Indian cocoa confectionary market with launch of its highly successful brand – Perk, then popularized by brand ambassador Priety Zinta.

Perk was launched in the market in 1995 and has seen consistent growth through the years. The cocoa confectionary wafer market is around 35 % of the total chocolate market and has been growing at around 13% annually. Perk has been one of the best sellers in impulse buy market. Priced at Rs5 these days for regular size and at Rs10 for ‘Bada Perk’ (Bigger Perk), the Perk set the trend for Nestle’s Kit Kat and Munch to be followed.

Cadbury has come up with a new innovative product line extension now, by having wafer on outside and chocolate inside. Lucratively priced at Rs.5; the new concept is surely going to pull many consumers. According to Cadbury, extensive consumer research and testing has been undertaken to determine the product taste, format and the communication campaign. ‘Ulta Perk’ has been test marketed in the South Markets – Tamil Nadu & Karnataka (South of India) for over 6 months and has received excellent response from the consumers.

Even the advertisements are really interesting ones. The problem with these impulse buys is that in starting, a good amount of money needs to be pumped in marketing activities before a significant return can be achieved. And Even after you have done, you still need to keep pumping a decent money to make it rememberable on impulse. The TVC is featured below while the print adverts take on the mantra of situations in a totally opposite context than it would be normally. Like man chasing a dog up a tree, a fly complaining about a man in its food, a balloon playing with a child floating in air etc; all going with the tagline -
“Cadbury’s reverse bar. Wafer outside, chocolate inside.“

What is best part for Cadbury is that its a festive time in India and according to the recent urban practices, people have started giving dry fruits and confectionery items instead of traditional sweets / mithai. So in assortment packages, which by the way are quite popular from Cadbury, may be having few Ulta Perks embedded adding to sampling opportunity. This may soon give it desirable sales, provided the taste and texture is nice.

Sources: Cadbury India website, Ads of the World

Here I come on the with one of my most awaited posts, the writeup on the adverts of WonderBra. The brand has been criticized by many for the obvious but the sales of the brand has always been successful to make the brand have the last laugh. It comes as a default choice for many for functions and social interactions; while others are still wondering what the hoopla is all about. What ever, the only ‘point’ am concerned over here is the advertising done by the brand. Its brand are one of the most subtle ones and many times are requires a long perplexed view by people to understand them.

Question is are these adverts targeted at the consumers? A majority feels against it, they say that the ads are made just for the jury of advertising awards. Ask me and my opinion is – Maybe yes, obviously not! Why do you think such a product will be sold? Or lets answer what is being sold by WonderBra? Is it just an inner wear? I register a denial. An inner wear is for a personal use, the use here is for others, the product’s money spent will be taken recovered by the consumer when she gets the glances being promised by adverts. So target one is the base consumer here who is wearing the product. Target two is the rest of public, especially men. With these adverts they actually will be recognizing the use of such a product whenever they see one, this builds up the response that the consumer of the product is actually looking for, hence drives the sales in other way. So target two here is the intended evaluator of product (not necessarily the men).

Hence to make it an iconic brand, the marketers have done the best thing : attach it to the behavior, derive the impact of social cognition and consumer behavior. Who doesn’t want to be recognized ? and thats where these marketers target. And when we say that intended impact is on social cognition, then it in itself encompasses both the targets, making the mental constructs or schema in consumer as well as the evaluator (society and esp men). Just look at this – there was one print advert which shows just a blonde model wearing a black WB, and only one sentence

I can’t cook, who cares!

But I wont deny that some of these ads are more inclined at awards’ jury rather than any of the two targets. And not to mention that even after guessing the meaning you are not very sure in some adverts that if you got the meaning! Here are some of the ads, though I couldn’t find some of my favorites coming from WonderBra‘s stable -

Some video adverts, really interesting -

This ad was launched at the 10th anniversary of WB in 2005:

Now this is one of the ad campaigns for which I appreciate the ad agencies of WB, see if you can understand it