Marketing Case Study-Increasing Consumption of Red Label

How did Red Label Increase its Consumption by Bridging Divides ?


Prem Narayan, Chief Strategy Officer at Ogilvy India talks about his experience of working on Red Label ’Taste of Togetherness’ , a Hindustan Unilever campaign, one of most celebrated Indian advertising campaigns by Ogilvy.  


Need for Salient Advertising 

Red Label was a brand that was trying very hard to take share from the local brands. It tried all kinds of platforms without much success like taste, health, emotional, functional etc. When the marketing team looked at data over 15-20 years, the data said that whenever Red Label had very salient advertising, market shares had gone up. So it was imperative to create famous advertising.


Targeting Existing Users 

Red Label shifted its target audience from people who were users of other local brands to Red Label users who were drinking Red Label infrequently (say, two out of 10 times ). These consumers would often flirt with local brands if the local brand had an attractive promotion like a spoon free etc. However these consumers were favorably predisposed to Red Label and if they could be persuaded to buy Red Label more often ( say 5-6 times more in a year), it would result in significant increase in market share.

 
Tea & Hospitality

The marketing team had done a study where taste had come out as the most important attribute. The team investigated to find out when does taste really matter ? They found out that there was a link between hospitality and taste. Lots of people said that “when guests come home, I want my tea to taste good”.  

There were some wonderful stories like one consumer said “There are some people who come home and I just give them a glass of water. There are some who come home and I give them a soft drink. And then there are people who I really wish would came and spend time with me. And I always put tea on the boil because then you get more time to chat with them and serve them tea and that’s the advantage of a hot beverage.” 


Bridging Divides & Breaking Stereotypes

One of the scripts presented to Unilever was a Hindu Muslim ad. The client was brave enough to go and show the script to both factions of religious groups to ask ‘Are you guys okay’ And they said ‘Yeah, this is a good message’ . That film set the tone for ‘Bridging Divides’ theme and became quite a popular film.

The agency started moving to other stories where they genuinely felt that a cup of tea could bridge differences like an intergenerational struggle with old people, transgenders, english speaking, veg non-veg . The team looked at the big divides that the country had and assess whether tea could genuinely solve some of them .

Listen to Red Label & Other Campaigns by Prem Narayan