question hour. Which World Day is yours?

Which World Day is yours?

Brands are using branded days to sell themselves deep. Does this work?

Mumbai

Trupti, branded days are great days to sell, great days to market, and great days to run your PR programmes deep and wide.

Brands that tie themselves to these days monetise themselves hugely. If your brand of beer owns and marries itself to the International Day of Beer, you gain. If Cafe Coffee Day, for instance, creates and markets globally the International Day of the Cappuccino, its sales of Cappuccino on that day can be a blockbuster one. It can help focus world attention on its cappuccino and more. It can monetise all this not only with the coffee but coffee accoutrements as well. Think of your category, try and search out a day that is close to it. If you find a day, well and good. If you don’t, better still, invent one. It works. You need to work on it for years before you make it run, though.

Rooh Afza has made a re-entry. What are the challenges ahead for such an old and forgotten brand?

Hyderabad

Subhash, old, yes, but I don’t agree with the forgotten bit.

Rooh Afza is a heritage drink in this country. In many ways, it all began with Rooh Afza. The revolution for coloured and flavoured that wanted an alternative to the boring nimbu paani, chaas and other home-made concoctions is today a very old revolution. It started decades ago.

In these many decades that have passed, much cola has flowed under the bridge of consumption habits in India. At one end is the fizzy branded water of every kind and at another end is the niche movement of “back to the basics” drinks such as the ones that Paper Boat and Yoodley sell.

I do believe Rooh Afza has a shot at success if it can reflect in its positioning the Indian consumer’s new-found quest for a return to the past in search of lost treasures and good old familiar tastes. It is quite like what we see in the snack food market today. In the old days there were home-made snacks that brought in diverse options. Then came the clonal snack foods that MNCs brought in. In many ways the potato chip and the extruded eats became the lowest common denominator snacks that robbed the market of variety in the search for snacks. Now, it’s back to the basics, with companies such as Maiyas in the South and Haldirams and Bikanerwala in every part of the country offering the taste of the forgotten snacks of India.

The same holds true for the beverage. Rooh Afza is a taste that has occupied a share of palate in the past, and there certainly is an opportunity if the positioning stance is intelligent, nifty and based on real solid consumer insight. You just can’t write off a Rooh Afza!

Harish Bijoor is a brand strategy expert and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. Mail your queries to cat.a.lyst@thehindu.co.in

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