Atlast
Forward and backward integration are common in business and
some brands smartly execute it and some clearly stay away from it. Large Brands
tend to experiment a lot and they realise sooner or later if it is their
territory or not. But the best part is they do try! Milk brands venture
liberally into various categories such as Ice cream, Butter, Ghee, Curd, Milk
Shakes, Panner, Cheese etc., Chocolates have extended to biscuits and health
drinks, Food brands have moved to spices and masalas. The category examples can
be many, but the point i wanted to highlight here was the launch of “Coffee
Decoction” by Nescafe SUNRISE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eebrivkj9a0
Brooke Bond and Nescafe has been fighting the Instant Coffee
market for ages and they have been launching variants under different names :
Sunrise, Green Label, Bru, Nescafe Gold, Nescafe Original. Both the brands were
keen on benchmarking themselves to “Filter Coffee” positioning hence the visual
identities such as “Filter” “Dabara and Tumbler” etc., More competition in the
form of Lavazza, Levista, Cothas started attacking these MNC brands
aggressively. But the jolt to them came in the form of local brands trying to
sell Decoction through bottles & sachets : Mambalam Iyers, Vivekananda
Coffee, Leo Coffee, ID etc.,
These started eating into the
shares of MNC brands as the “Instant” promise becomes questionable. I think
after a lot of deliberations Nescafe has reacted with its Sunrise Liquid Decoction and a communication
too to gow this category. While the pricing might be on the higher end, but
that’s the premium the brand deserves. With this I am sure Brooke Bond too will
jump into the race making this Liquid Decoction category a lot busier. Leaders
in a category should have led this with their innovations , unfortunate that
they have been pulled into it through the smaller brands. We need to wait and
see how these perform in the long run.
