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Ramanuj Vidyanta, TAPMI
"Positioning Dairy Milk as a dessert will generate more business"
The Indian palate has always been famous for the variety and quality of sweets that it contains. No matter from which part of this vast country you belong, the taste of sweets has always been successful in exciting your taste buds. The Indian cuisine is virtually incomplete without the presence of sweet as the dessert. The profitability of this industry has also attracted companies like Haldirams, Monginis etc to venture into this arm of the Food and Beverage industry.
This diversification of the national players along with the entry of new vendors has further intensified the competition for the local halwai or mithaiwala. The attraction of this industry is the surety of the demand owing to the preference of sweets in the Indian cuisine.
When Cadbury’s launched its campaign of “Kuch meetha ho jaye”, it directly targeted in positioning Dairy Milk as an alternative of the traditional mithai and in turn it made Cadbury’s as the direct competitor of a Haldiram’s, Gangurams’, Sweet Bengal etc. So what is in it for Cadbury’s? Positioning Dairy Milk as a dessert allowed it to portray Dairy Milk as a chocolate which can be consumed daily which is a smart strategic move to ensure sales growth. It also differentiated Dairy Milk from other chocolates in terms of the target customer as a dessert for the whole family and not only for the kids.
Hence Cadbury’s decision to position Dairy Milk as a dessert opened up new avenues of marketing it in terms of a new target customer and instances of purchase. This could lead to generating higher business by an increase in sales within the newly formed target customer or the newly created purchase occasions.
Counter-view
Rahul Sehgal,IIM S
"Cadbury’s move may not be the smartest since it could cannibalise its own USP”
There are very few brands in the world which make their presence felt so strong that the brand name gets synonymous with the product itself, Cadbury is one such brand. The most commendable achievement of Cadbury has been its unique marketing communication through which it has been able to position its products appropriately .
The most recent campaign launched by Cadbury is the ‘Meethe mein kya hai?’ campaign. This campaign clearly intends to portray Cadbury Dairy Milk as an alternative to the dessert or the traditional Indian sweet. This move has been taken up with a very clear intention of pepping up sales by competing with the traditional Indian sweet. However, this may not be a very right move to make and it may have its own negative repercussions.
So far, with all its campaigns, Cadbury has tried to portray Dairy Milk as an offering for a joyous occasion and that has been its USP, but with this campaign it’s clearly taking a different stance hence exposing it to a potential risk of cannibalizing its own USP. The food habits of a common Indian man have still not evolved greatly and if given a choice, he would still prefer having a Rosagulla, Jalebi or a Gulab Jamun rather than a chocolate (read Dairy Milk), after his meal. Even after this campaign, the target audience will mostly remain the kids and the youth, but not the middle aged and the elderly members of the family. Also, the belief of a common man to use a sweet as an offering to the deity during a traditional Indian Puja or celebration drives a Mithaiwala’s business, and it’s hard to imagine Dairy Milk take that position. So, there is good reason to believe that Cadbury’s strategy to portray Dairy milk as a daily proposition will face a stiff challenge and only time will show if this strategy has enough mettle.
