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Figuractive - Creating a buzz with collectables

By Fairy Dharawat | April 27, 2013

The UK-based brand recently launched its range of figurine collection modelled around Indian cricket stars, by partnering with Reliance Home Video & Games. Neer Modha, AVP, Marketing, Figuractive Ltd, shares the brand's positioning in the market and his upcoming retail strategies.

Figurines collection is a popular culture in the West, where popular sport personalities and comics stars are created in miniature figures. In India where cricket is more like a religion than a sport, Figuractive Ltd chose the IPL season to launch their very first range of figurines in India - Cricket Stars, 2" Collectables which include collectible figurines of popular cricketers playing in the Indian Premier League. Neer Modha, AVP, Marketing, Figuractive Ltd talks more about the brand's plans for India with Point-of-Purchase.

Q) Could you tell us about the brand and your product?

The 2" Collectable is based on our tag line "Bring your star home". This optimises our aim of bringing Cricket Stars to homes, as we literally are giving the consumer the chance to bring home their star.
Cricket Stars are unique in many ways; it is the first time cricket figurines have been produced for the Indian market and they are instantly recognisable. Cricket Stars, launched by Figuractive, will be the first product to start and create the culture of collectables and enable swap and sharing of these collectibles. The company has paid a great deal of attention to creating these figurines, in order to make them as accurate and life-like as possible.

Q) Could you tell us more about your tie up with Reliance Home video and games?

Our tie-up with Reliance Home video and games will be beneficial as they have an extremely strong distribution reach that will help us in taking the products to potential buyers across the country.

Q) How did you plan to position yourself in the market?


We plan to position ourselves as a company with vision to expand the Indian market with best-in-class products and vision to create culture of collectables.

Q) What kind of in-store communication you plan to use to carve out an in-store identity?

We plan to carve out identity by developing a very strong online campaign, press conference at launch, national PR campaign, BTL activities and in store promotions. All the communication will focus on positioning the Cricket Stars products as unique and offering value for money. The long-term objective is to create a new breed of fans that collect action figures. The idea of our in-store communication is to get Cricket Stars products maximum visibility in the stores using attractive CDU's with team logos and figures displayed.

Q) What kind of marketing strategy are you planning at retail to engage with the shoppers?


There will be heavy branding in store, with the aim of making Cricket Stars a household name.  There will be numerous mall activities within the regions of the select teams. We will use players to help promote the brand.  BTL activities will be in conjunction with Reliance Home Video. The POP will consist of attractive stands and display material apart from placement of products at vantage visibility points.  Our primary aim is to make the brand recognisable in the market and we feel this has been achieved.

Q) What kind of challenges did you face while launching a new brand in a competitive market?

The main challenge has been in educating the consumer about the swap and share collectable aspect of the game. This message will be highlighted and drilled across using various marketing technique, paramount of which will be in-store branding and TV commercials.  

Q) What are your growth strategies and expansion plans?


We have many new products under various licenses in the pipeline, which we are sure the Indian market will love! At the moment it is important for us to focus on Cricket Stars and getting the Cricket Stars' message out. There will be a number of competitions and prizes for the consumers to enter and win. The prizes will be issued on them completing and collecting certain numbers of figurines as well as types. Prize examples include signed merchandise, match tickets, cricket hampers etc.
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