Polo : Mint With A Hole

Brand : Polo
Company : Nestle
Agency : Lowe


Polo is the market leader in the mint candy category in India. This is a brand that has created lot of excitement in the market with its smart advertising and promotion.
The history of Polo dates back to 1725 when Rowntree opened a tea and coffee shop in York. In 1948, they began selling Polo Mint candy. The company changed hands and in 1988 Nestle bought the company over. Polo was launched in India in 1994.

The word Polo is said to be derived from the word Polar . The word points to the cool and fresh feeling gained after taking a freshener like Polo.
Polo comes under the Adult confectionery market which is estimated to be around 1100 crores. Polo is the market leader in the mint based lozenges category.
Polo is famous for its positioning as a " Mint with a Hole " which created lot of excitement for the brand. The campaigns portrayed the unique shape as a differentiating factor. The campaigns was humorous and the product gained instant market.

The category is now facing lot of competition. Big players like ITC and Perfetti is eyeing this category seriously. ITC have acquired MintO from candico in 2002 and aggressively promoting the brand with the positioning " unusually Cool". Candico earlier pitted MintO as a Mint without a hole thus challenging Polo headon. Then ITC repositioned Minto as a cool brand. There are other players like Chlor-Mint getting aggressive in this market.

Nestle recently have done away with its successful positioning based on the Hole. The brand changed the agency to Lowe. The current campaign talks about the cosmetic benefit and value addition. The ads talks about whistling while eating Polo with the baseline " Polo ghao seethi bajao" which does not create any meaningful impact on the TG.

Polo was successful in the market because of smart ads and some innovative product strategies like Polo holes in sachets at a very low price point. But recently the company has discarded the age old positioning of Mint with a Hole . This shift together with some ineffective ads can prove to be a watershed for the brand. The fresh breath proposition is already taken by the competitors.The competing brands are also making innovations in the products like coming out with flavours other than mint, sugar free variants etc.

Polo will have to work hard on its product strategy to keep the market it had created.

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Maggi : Its different

Brand : Maggi
Company: Nestle
Agency" Publicis

Maggi owned by Nestle is a brand that created a category for itself in the Foods market in India. The brand which is famous for the Noodles has evolved into the umbrella brand for Nestle in the Food segment.

Nestle launched its noodles in the Indian market in the early 1980's. Nestle wanted to explore the potential for such an Instant food among the Indian market. It took several years and lot of money for Nestle to establish( I would say create) its Noodles brand in India . Now it enjoys around 50% market share in this segment which is valued at around 250 crores.

Maggi has faced lot of hurdles in its journey in India. The basic problem the brand faced is the Indian Psyche. Indian Palate is not too adventurous in terms of trying new tastes. That may be the reason why we are still stuck with Idli and Sambhar.
So a new product with a new taste that too from a different culture will have difficulty in appealing to Indian market.

Initially Nestle tried to position the Noodles in the platform of convenience targeting the working women. But it found that the sales are not picking up despite heavy promotion .Research then showed that Kids were the largest consumers of the brand. Realising this, Nestle repositioned the brand towards the kids using sales promotions and smart advertising.
Now Indians are the largest eaters of Maggi Noodles in the world. Maggi Noodles is a marketing success story.

During 1997 Maggi changed its formulation. It was during that time that Indo Nissin - a Japanese company launched its Noodles brand "Top Ramen" with lot of promotion and with SRK endorsing the brand. TopRamen gave Maggi a run for its money. The change in taste of Maggi was a mistake. The consumers rejected the new taste of Maggi. And in 1999 Maggi relaunched Noodles with the original taste. Nestle was ready to accept the consumers verdict and it paid off handsomely. Top Ramen could not sustain the growth it had for long.

Maggi's campaigns were revolved around its "convenience to make and good to eat " qualities. Ready in " 2 minutes " was a proposition that was well received by the market.

In 2005 Nestle made a very smart move. It knew that although kids love noodles, the parents were bothered about the health aspect of Noodles which was made of Maida. Hence Maggi launched Maggi Atta Noodles with the baseline " taste bhi health bhi" .Reports suggest that after 10 months of the launch , the product has been well received by Indian consumers. Maggi noodles is an example of a brand that knows the customer and willing to learn from the mistakes.

Maggi also tried to leverage the success of the Noodles to other food products like sauces , tastemakers , soups etc.
Maggi sauces needs special mention because it is another success story. Maggi have a market share of 45% in the 180crore ketchup market in India. Maggi leveraged the brand equity very effectively. The product quality was good and the communication was excellent. The brand was positioned as a "Different" sauce with the baseline " Its different".

Customers was intrigued as to what is different about the brand and was curious to try the sauce ( may be surprised to find nothing different,but that is marketing honey!). The ads featuring Javed and Pankaj kapoor was superb and funny. It was created by JWT. The new campaigns are handled by Publicis and the baseline has been changed to " enjoy the difference".

There was no need to change the baseline,may be ad agencies have an ego problem in accepting the creativity of another agency. So agencies change the baseline even at the cost of the brand.In this case even though the new baseline " enjoy the difference" was not very different from the old one, was it a change for the sake of change ?

I strongly feel that the brand managers should take the ownership of the brand and the way it is communicated. If it is left to agency alone, every time the agency changes, the communication changes.

Maggi after its long and tough journey is enjoying its well deserved success. Let us wait and watch for more journeys of Maggi.

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