Paras' dairy products to go national in six months

Delhi-based dairy products marketer Ved Ram & Sons, owner of the Paras brand, is planning to go national. As Tapas Gupta, president & CEO, Confluence Communication, Delhi, the agency handling the Paras account, puts it, "Paras will bloom into a full-fledged milk products brand in six months' time adding products such as butter, cheese, flavoured milk etc to its portfolio." With Mother Dairy breathing down its neck, Britannia getting aggressive with Milkman, and Nestle already in the packaged milk market, Paras' decision couldn't have come at a better time.

Topmost on the company's agenda now is strengthening the Paras brand image. And second, tapping into new markets for Paras mineral water and ghee. The company plans to go south with Paras ghee. Currently it is available in parts of Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Pune and Assam. As for Paras mineral water, the company is in the process of tying up with distributors to exploit markets outside Delhi and Haryana. Paras will not take its perishable milk-based products too far out of Delhi.

Explaining the reason, Gupta says, "Venturing into markets outside Delhi and the NCR for milk and paneer, is a remote possibility as it requires huge investment in supply chain, setting up plants etc."

To get the brand top-of-mind, the company plans to launch a new campaign for Paras milk, created by Confluence Communication, nationally. The ad campaign, which is estimated at Rs 2 crore, is a mix of print, TV and in-film insertions. To amplify the impact, the mass media campaign will be supported by some high-voltage ground level activities. "The purpose of the campaign is two-fold," elaborates Gupta. "First, make Paras the strongest brand in Delhi, and second, increase the Paras brand recall across all socio-economic segments by creating a perceptual difference. Our USP is health; we have pegged the communication on ‘Natural Taste' and ‘Extra Energy'."

The advertising will also emphasise the fact that Paras milk is the freshest. "The time taken to procure milk from the collection centres (which are within 25 km of Delhi), purify it (at the Sahibabad plant) and distribute it in and around Delhi, is just about 12 hours. This is in sharp contrast with the lead-time of Mother Dairy and Britannia. Mother Dairy procures milk from in and around Gujarat and Britannia procures it from Karnal (125 km away from Delhi city)," claims Pankaj Bhasin, account group manager, Confluence.

While the print campaign of Paras broke on September 30, 2001, the TV and cinema commercial is slated for release around October 10. Though Gupta did not say which TV channel would be used, he did mention "the channels would certainly be the ones viewed most by Delhiites". The entire campaign will run for two months.

The on-ground activities are elaborate too. "Ground activities are the backbone of the entire campaign. Right from organising trade promotions, retailer incentive programmes, and consumer promos to conceiving and planning of road shows - everything has been done by Confluence. Even the milk pouch has been spruced up to announce Paras' intentions," says Gupta.

The task for Paras is immense indeed. The market size of packaged milk is estimated at 1.2 million litres per day and Mother Dairy commands a market share of 62 per cent here, while Paras has a market share of 20 per cent (according to figures supplied by Confluence Communication). However, Gupta is confident that his 12 years of experience of working on various milk-based products of Nestle, coupled with the three-months' of intensive research by the company, will do the trick in getting "the brand the desired place in consumer mind space".

© agencyfaqs! 2001