Indian origin agencies work best for Indian brands: Piruz Khambatta

Rasna last week unveiled its latest ad campaign – ‘Pyarelal Ka Bachpan Ka Pyar’. Conceptualised by Scarecrow Communications and produced by Chrome Films, the campaign aims at celebrating the brand’s journey of spreading love for decades across generations. 

Considered as one of the most trusted original Made in India brand, Rasna is a market leader with 85 per cent share in the powdered drink segment. Now, Rasna has strong plans to chart its next phase of double digit growth and expansion of overall product portfolio. Rasna has also announced the setting up of a new powder facility at Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, which would add another 20 per cent to its capacity to its double digit growth plan. Remarkably, Rasna has not increased the MRP of its product from its launch in 20 years and is still available at Rs 2 per glass. 

The company has now ventured into the snacks segment with the launch of Rasna Vitos, a baked sweet snack. According to market researcher Euromonitor, sweet and savoury snacks have grown by 26 per cent, highest within the packaged food segment between 2010 and 2015. Sensing this opportunity, Rasna is planning to target the sweet snacks segment with focus on kids coming from school. As of now, Rasna Vitos will be available in chocolate and strawberry flavours. 

Piruz Khambatta, Chairman & MD, Rasna Pvt Ltd, commented, “Vitos is our answer to the huge opportunity in the evening snacks and kids back from school segment. This product will drive the proposition of evening snacking in a tasty and healthy manner. Unlike fried chips and namkeens with 40 per cent fat, Vitos is not fried but baked and made with Ragi and wheat with 14 nutrients, making it an ideal health supplement for kids. Rasna has kept its promise of healthy tasty product for the masses that too at an affordable price of Rs 10 per pouch. The focus will now be on increasing the penetration of Vitos by levering our robust marketing and distribution network.” 

Watch the ad film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2CpM2kYMNk

In conversation with Adgully, Piruz Khambatta speaks at length about the factors contributing to Rasna’s market endurance, the changing communication over the years, digital strategy and much more. 

How has Rasna maintained its appeal over 4 decades of its presence in the market?
I do believe that in any consumer market, the easy part is that you need to have the emotional connect and the rational connect. But the difficult part is that emotions and rationalisation change year on year. So if you think that you will have an emotional connect with a kid of the 90’s and the same connect will happen with the 2017 kids, that’s not possible because the way children think now is different. So we need to reinvent the emotional and rational part of it. We have now changed the way we advertise. Today, people want more health food, people want products to look good for them, the packaging needs to be appealing and even the kids have changed. Earlier, when we showed a child of 7 or 8 years, we could reach up to the age group of 15 to 17 years. Today, if we use a 7 or 8 year-old, we will only reach the 7 or 8-year olds. Anybody who is over 8 years will say, ‘this is for kids and not for me’. That’s why we roped in Akshay Kumar, because he appeals to a 2-year-old as well as an 80-year-old and there is no gender bias in Akshay. That’s why we had to move to such role models with time. 

We have sustained because we have always adapted to change, we have never stagnated. A lot of old Indian brands have stagnated in old styles of marketing, distribution and packaging. But we have reinvented ourselves. To be very honest, Rasna has relaunched itself every year with new packaging and new products. So for the consumers, there is always something new. 

How challenging is it to establish a real connect with today’s digital-savvy generation?
We are still learning and experimenting. We put up a teaser of our latest ad just three days back as an experiment and we hit 1.2 million views on YouTube. Ninety per cent of the people saw the ad on mobile and I was surprised that the hits were coming from small towns. We soon learnt that if your creative is good, then your cost goes down. This I never knew about digital. 

Secondly, if you filter it well, your cost goes down. There is no need to reach everyone. So, I believe we are still learning and so is our agency, but as we go along, maybe by 2020 almost 20-30 per cent the adex will be on digital. Things are changing rapidly. That is why I have told my agency that we will have a flexible budget this year. We are not putting a cap on spends and will see how it goes. 

What made you go for hiring an agency on a project basis than the usual retainer basis?
Agencies and brands have to be partners with each other. We have been partners with Mudra for 15 years and the needs of the agency and brand have to be met. Luckily, Manish (Bhatt, Founder Director, Scarecrow Communications) is from Gujarat and even Rasna is a Gujarati brand. So, I think he understands Gujarati brands. He has worked with Wagh Bakri, which is again a Gujarati brand, so that helps. 

Secondly, I always believe that for Indian brands, agencies with Indian ethos are much better. Someone asked me, ‘Why are Indian companies more successful in the food segment?” I replied, “That’s because we know taste”. So, I think Indian origin agencies work best for Indian brands. 

What is the objective of the latest ‘Pyarelal’ campaign?
The campaign is not about Pyarelal or the lady. A brand lasts for decades because of its emotional connect, and this time the communication that we want to make is that Rasna is Rasna because it has come a long way and has seen many generations. Could an 8-year-old boy have conveyed that message? It would have looked out of place. If we want to make an ad who’s USP is about generations, we can’t have an 8-year-old. That’s why we needed somebody who could convey that ‘I love Rasna since my childhood’ and the whole story was such that we needed an adult to play the character. My firm belief is that if you show an 80-year-old in the ad, it doesn’t mean that only elderly people will drink it. Take for example the Flipkart ads, which use small kids, it doesn’t mean that the website is only for kids. 

That’s why we have two ads – one is the theme ad and the other is the functional ad which will launch 15 days from now. That’s more like the typical traditional ad. 

What is the digital push for Brand Rasna?
As I had said earlier, we are learning and we are experimenting. I have asked the agency to get more finetuned to out TG and let’s see how we can take it further. 

What is the budget allocated for the latest campaign?
We spend around Rs 30 crore on advertising every year as topline budget, but this time we are looking at spending 5-10 per cent of that on digital.