Brooke Bond to lead HLL's umbrella branding

Here's one company that's still hot on umbrella branding. HLL plans to make Brooke Bond the master brand for Red Label, Taj Mahal, A1 and 3Roses and consolidate it with a single ad agency. This apart, in a shake-up of sorts, Lever is moving the Rs 10-crore Pears from JWT to McCann Erickson. The move comes soon after HLL awarded the Rs 70-crore Close-Up account to O&M. The account was previously handled by JWT. The account shift has raised eyebrows, given that JWT handles the brand across the globe and HLL brands in India tend to follow the international alignment. For Brooke Bond, Lever had invited three agencies JWT, O&M, Lowe to make presentations and the closely contested pitch has now narrowed down to JWT & O&M. As of now, JWT handles Red Label and Taj Mahal while O&M handles A1 and 3Roses. "The idea behind giving Brooke Bond to one agency is to promote it as an umbrella brand and create sub-brands out of the rest. HLL, most probably, has taken a cue from Unilever's Paint the World Yellow campaign for Lipton, where, only the Lipton brand was showcased across the globe. The campaign is now going to start in India," an ad agency source told marketing. The source says the master brand strategy will also rationalize HLL's ad spend on Brooke Bond. Consolidating the account with one agency and promoting the umbrella brand will help save costs in the long run. Also, an underperforming sub-brand can be discontinued anytime without much noise. Lever has decided to dump the club agency concept as it feels a new agency can give a fresh lease of life to an ailing brand. Thus, sources say, a few more HLL brands may change hands.

The move has industry sources believe this could open the floodgates, with agencies of underperforming HLL brands finding themselves in similar positions regardless of global alignments. Mumbai, May 21 with tea as a category growing at 4 per cent, Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) has been taking the functionality route for marketing its Brooke Bond franchise. Mr. George Koshy, Marketing Manager, HUL, said, Having functional teas is one of the legs of our strategy. So its 3 Roses brand, with Ayurveda ingredients, is positioned on the mind sharp category, as is its Red Label brand, with its Natural Care offering, while the Taaza brand harps on its Thanda concept with its cooling herbs. Consumers feel there is a need for functional teas. Since 2005, we have had Ayurveda ingredients in our teas and this has formed one of our strategies for this category, said Mr. Koshy. On the occasion of completing 130 years and having 100 crore consumers, Brooke Bond has announced a special promotion to reward its loyal consumers by giving away 60 cups of 22 karat gold with assured prizes of Rs 15 crore. Meanwhile, HUL has been trying to control its tea prices in times of inflation. There is also inflation in the tea category and three months ago, we did raise prices between 3-4 per cent for the Brooke Bond franchise, Mr Koshy said. THE elephant is dancing and is dancing to the tune of the market. Four years of flat topline at around Rs 11,000 crore a year is forcing the FMCG major Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) to look internally into its each category of business to reinvent, reengineer, relaunch and reposition them according to the changed market for creating new excitement and faster growth. One such major business is packaged tea where the Brooke Bond brand was quietly relaunched last week by HLL. After working on the project for nearly six months from HLL's Bangalore office at Whitefield, company's Executive Director (Beverages) Mr S Ravindranath is now closely monitoring the consumer feedback from the launch. Says Mr Ravindranath The relaunch of Brooke Bond was so important that Unilevers (HLLs Anglo-Dutch parent) global CEO for food and beverages, Mr Patrick Cescau and Asia Business Group President for food Tex Gunning flew

down to Bangalore for the event. In the new initiative, HLL has promoted Brooke Bond as an umbrella brand with four sub-brands under it. Fading aroma But before we get into the details of the new strategy, let us examine why HLL is attaching so much of importance to the brand Brooke Bond. Nearly 80 per cent of HLLs Rs 1,345 crore packaged tea business comes under the Brooke Bond range and the balance is accounted by Lipton which will also be relaunched in the near future. The situation too is desperate as the packaged tea industry is under attack from several quarters. Dwindled export demand led to oversupply and crashing of tea prices in the domestic market in the last four years. Low prices fuelled entry of small regional players into packaged tea market (estimated to be around 250 million kg accounting for 37 per cent of the total tea consumption in the country) offering branded tea at prices much lower than large organised sector players like HLL and Tata Tea (the second largest after HLL). Market became commoditised and many price-conscious consumers moved to cheaper brands. Then the invasion of the carbonated soft drinks, spearheaded by Pepsi and Coke, caused a major shift in the tea-drinking habit, specially for the younger generation. As a result, the teas share of throat dropped again. Taking a hit Naturally, big players took a bigger hit. Tata Tea's total sales for 2002-03, for example, dropped to Rs 761 crore from Rs 777 crore in the previous year. Similarly, HLLs tea sales dropped 18 per cent to 100 million kg in 2002 from 123 million kg. In value terms the business lost was Rs 270 crore in one year as packaged tea sales dropped to Rs 1,345 crore in 2002 from Rs 1,615 crore in the previous year. The company also lost market share down to 33 per cent from 37 per cent two years ago. Even marketing gimmicks like Gold coin in tea packs or Go to world cup failed to reverse the trend. Admits Ravindranath, Our domestic sales dropped about 10 per cent last year. Exports to Russia also suffered badly due to discriminatory import duty on packaged tea imposed by that country.

For Ravindranath and his beverages-business team, the only alternative left was to work out a battle plan to recapture the market and rejuvenate the century old tea business that contributes a significant 14 per cent to HLL's topline and 11 per cent to bottomline. A detailed market study unleashed in the first quarter of 2003 revealed some interesting results. Though the company sold its tea under four major brands, such as Red Label, Taj Mahal, Taza and Three Roses, with a small Brooke Bond symbol on the pack, it is the Brooke Bond name that has the most powerful but latent brand equity. The market research revealed that this 130 year-old brand embodies strong heritage, understanding of tea blending and provide a range of tea appropriate to thetaste of Indian consumers. In fact, the research shows that for consumers Brooke Bond is almost synonymous with tea, explains Vineet Taneja, general manager marketing (Beverages). A new brew Armed with these findings, the crack team at HLL decided to bring in a radical change in the branding by making Brooke Bond an umbrella brand with a dominant display of the name along with a strong logo newly created for the company by the Bangalore-based brand consulting firm Shining Emotional Surplus. The logo brings out strongly the promise that Brooke Bond Cheers your senses in all moments of life and also encapsulates Brooke Bond's expertise in selecting the best tea for the consumer (see box: Cheer Up). Along with the logo, new pack-graphics have also been developed for the subbrands. The principle in designing the new pack-graphics has been to make them a part of the Brooke Bond range while retaining any strong icons/cues that the subbrands have had. Simultaneously, the pack dimensions have also be changed to make them more modern and also bring in differentiation across the various subbrands in line with the prices they command. The company will also introduce small pouches to induce testing and to reach out to consumers with lower income. In the new plan the sub-brands of tea maintain their earlier positioning as follows: Taj Mahal, at the top of the pyramid stands for exclusive and premium quality. Red Label and Three Roses are for general family caring and at the bottom is Taza for

individual recharge with attributes garden fresh and strong. In all these categories, the quality of tea will be enhanced by blending superior variety. Though the packs under Brooke Bond will have a new contemporary sleek look, the price positioning will be maintained at the old level, reveals Taneja. The message is: better value for money at the same price. Smart move HLLs new initiative is certainly a tidy plan though a bit late to exploit brand synergy to the max. An Umbrella Brand strategy has several positives. It gives a caring mother brand feel to sub-brands when they are from the same category (here its tea). Helps building brand equity at a lower price because expenditure is less compared to advertising for the every single brand. Says Harish Bijoor, a private label brand consultant, It also helps in the long run because mother brands remain for ever while individual brands may come and go. There are, however, a few limitations to this strategy. Every sub-brand must have a minimum quality standard that must be maintained strictly. Or else, lapse in one sub-brand will create bad image for the mother brand which in turn will affect other brands under the umbrella even if they are of excellent quality. Another shortcoming is that mother brand concept should not be extended to products of different category (for example bringing in coffee under Brooke Bond) even if they are consumed for similar needs. In short, category association should be strong. Big plans HLL will support its new move with a huge ad campaign and mega brand promotion activity. It will use both print and electronic media for the ads do extensive door-to-door sampling in all cities and smaller towns to create maximum amount of awareness possible. Points out Ravindranath Our ad spend will double. We will create high pitch and wide spread excitement that will reach an unprecedented level. The new launch will be backed with a strong supply chain management initiative the company is currently working on. It is setting up a Tea Excellence Centre at Kolkata that will take care of selecting, buying, grading, blending and tasting tea to create the best blend for all its packaged tea.

The centre that can handle 100 million kgs a year will also help in creating new blends of tea the company is planning to introduce in the coming months. A variety of special tea with special flavours and some linked with health proposition are on the cards. All these efforts, Ravindranath is confident, will not only bring back HLLs tea business back on the growth path but will result in significant improvements in profits in a couple of years. The old Brooke Bond logo was simple and inconspicuous A green oval with a visual of tea leaves and the words Brooke Bond and Established 1869. The new Brooke Bond logo tells a story of its own. Designed to bring out strongly the promise that Brooke Bond Cheers your senses in all moments of life, it tries to depict brands expertise in selecting and blending right teas to deliver a great experience. The logo, from bottom to top transforms from green to red representing: the tea leaves being hand-picked from tea gardens, which are then blended with Brooke Bonds expertise to create a good quality tea with the red colour being the colour of the liquor standing for strong, rejuvenating brew. At the top of the logo, there is a visual of the sun in the sky, which could be either a morning sky or an evening sky. The message here is two-fold: the sun represents the uplifting and cheering feeling resulting from a good cup of tea. The shape of the logo represents an upliftment of spirit as the shape of a butterfly with its wings spread out. Another way of looking at it is in the shape of a book which represents Brooke Bonds knowledge about the art and science of creating teas. The name Brooke Bond itself comes out strongly in bold, white letters which stand out against the greenish-red background. Since HLLs market research revealed that Brooke Bond is a trusted and powerful name when it comes to tea, it was logical that the name of Brooke Bond be brought to the forefront, through the logo. The Since 1869 plays a more subtle role in this logo because it is already well recognized that Brooke Bond has been around for a long time. The Cheers Your

Senses means exactly that - Brooke Bond cheers your senses in all moments of life.