Avesta Good Earth Foods awards creative duties for Farmhouse cereal to Contract

Contract, Chennai, has been assigned the creative duties for the re-launch of health cereal brand Farmhouse. The product was launched as a cereal for the health-conscious, over a decade ago by Bollywood actor Waheeda Rahman and her partner Ashraff Sattar. She had, back then, floated the brand under the company name Good Earth Foods. Avesthagen, a Bangalore-based integrated biotech company, acquired Good Earth Foods in 2005 to form a wholly owned subsidiary – Avesta Good Earth Foods. Farmhouse now falls under the custody of this company.

Post this acquisition, Sandip Dang, CEO, Avesta Good Earth Foods, was in talks with several agencies for the advertising for Farmhouse. “We chose Contract as it is a fairly aggressive agency and fitted well with our business objectives,” Dang remarks. “We liked their ‘unboxed’ or lateral approach to our brand, apart from the kind of work the agency has done in the past for other clients.”

The pitch for the media duties is on the verge of closure. MPG, Starcom and mediaedge:cia are the agencies that took part in the pitch process. A decision will be made soon. Avesta Good Earth Foods is also in the midst of launching some functional food brands in the market.

Dang refuses to divulge any figures regarding the ad spend for Farmhouse. “This year, we’re planning a mid-size spend, but as our scale of operations and product portfolio expands, we’ll be looking at substantial figures,” he says. The media mix for the new campaign is yet to be worked out.

The company also has full plans on leveraging the equity of the brand, as it was associated with Waheeda Rahman quite strongly not so long ago. However, the branding exercise will go beyond just that. Avesta Good Earth Foods has also beefed up its distribution, to ensure that Farmhouse is available pan-India. Packaging too, has been revamped.

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