Feeling hungry and don’t know what to eat? Want flavor at an economical price? In such cases, potato chips come in handy, more often than not! According to the Ministry of Food Processing, the snack food industry is worth Rs 100 billion in value and over 4,00,000 tonnes in terms of volume. Of the wide range of snacks available, potato chips constitute a sizeable segment of the Indian snack food industry, according to India Infoline.
About Bingo!
ITC Limited – Foods Division launched its new snacks brand Bingo! on 14th March 2007. It marked the company’s foray into the fast growing branded snacks segment. Bingo! represents ITC Foods’ fifth major line of foods business after the highly successful Staples, Biscuits, Ready-to-Eat and Confectionery businesses. The launch of Bingo! was symbolic of ITC Foods’ distinct approach of introducing innovative and differentiated products in a largely undifferentiated market place. The offerings from Bingo! include an array of products in both Potato Chips and Finger Snacks segment. The Potato Chips offerings comprise of four innovative variants inspired by the snacking habits of people from different parts of the country as well as Masalas, Salted and Tomato flavors. Additionally a south-inspired dairy option has also been introduced under the potato chips offering.
Bingo! ‘s Business Objectives
Bingo! was strategically introduced around the World Cup to leverage the tremendous popularity of leisure and cocktail snacks among Cricket lovers in the country. The brand was launched with an aim to capture at least 25 percent of the Rs. 2000 crore branded snack market within five years. Speaking on the foray into this new category, Mr. Ravi Naware, Divisional Chief Executive, ITC Limited – Foods Division said, “This is an exciting and fast growing category with a big untapped market. We have extensively studied the market and our product development team has created products with variants that will hold tremendous appeal to the Indian consumer. We are confident that our retail distribution strength and our insightful understanding of consumers will help us redefine this category just like we have done in other categories. An added source of advantage is the strong farm linkages that ITC has developed for sourcing the selected grades of potatoes that go into the making of the chips.”
Strategy Adopted by Bingo!
Bingo! ever since its debut with the revolutionary triangle shaped munchies, has been associated with craziness and non-conventionality. Bingo!’s #CraziestPlacesToEat campaign beautifully draws from the positioning of the product and further adds to it. . With #CraziestPlacesToEat Bingo!, the brand innovatively used its image and made that into a campaign.
Fans were encouraged to share the craziest places they could think of where they would like to have their Bingo!s, and the brand made illustrations of the best and the quirkiest ones. Using illustrations to feature the best entries not only bridged the gap of unequal communication from the brand but challenged the audience to come up with the craziest entries that could earn them the coveted 15 seconds of fame on social media.
The campaign had been conducted efficiently, especially on Twitter, where the illustrations followed the entries pretty fast. Considering the fact that the campaign was live on Twitter only for one day, it was effective in its impact as it managed to nationally trend on Twitter.
Mr. Hemant Malik, Head – Marketing, ITC Limited – Foods Division talking about future marketing plans for the product, said “The brand will leverage the retail and marketing expertise of ITC Foods to establish reach across the target markets. The communication strategy encompasses a multi-media campaign for the entire product range including the use of new media for enhanced visibility. A spate of on-ground promotions distinctly communicating the product attributes and brand essence will further supplement Bingo!’s communication strategy.”
Results Achieved by Bingo!
Bingo!’s creative campaign garnered tremendous response. Following are the figures to corroborate the same.
- Total reach of posts on Facebook – 4,302,968 (total reach during activity increased by around 300%)
- Over 23,000 Interactions on the page (including likes, comments and shares)
Twitter: One day activity #CraziestPlacesToEatBingo!
- 562 Mentions – Trended in India, trended for 24 hours in Mumbai
- Total Tweets (including retweets)– 819
- Total Reach – 456,878 people
Learnings
In recent times, brands that have invested more in building relationships than promoting products, have obtained better results on digital platforms. Most campaigns fail because they do not include an equal participation and interaction from the brand. Bingo! was successful in engaging with fans and its catchy illustrations were more than enough to attract eyeballs. On the other hand, the brand could have utilized other social media platforms like Pinterest, YouTube etc. to expand the campaign and connect with more people. Furthermore, the online environment can only be leveraged by persistent campaigns. Given that the one day activity did exceedingly well, the brand should have continued with it for a longer period. After all, it is good to gain attention but more important to sustain it.
Image Credits:
Brand logo: itcportal.com
Other images: socialsamosa.com
