Makeover of Britannia

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The Balancing Act Contd...

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, which 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. BIL then focused on its core biscuit brands- Marie, Thin Arrowroot, and Milk Bikis-which faced competition from similarly branded alternatives like Bakeman's English Marie, Milka Biscuits, and Priya Marie. In order to overcome the competition, BIL differentiated its brands by bringing them under the 'Eat Healthy, Think Better' banner and giving them clearly-defined positioning.

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