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“Heightened placement works best for us in visibility game”

By Satarupa Chakraborty | October 31, 2018

A biscuit brand that started in the year 2012, Unibic was quick to revamp its packaging in the very following year and worked around their shopper marketing strategies, unique to selective channels. How does it constantly gear up to survive and stay afloat in terms of visibility, when their contemporaries are veterans close to 100 years old? Point-of-Purchase attempts to find the answer and more in conversation with Kartikay Mehta, Vice President – Sales & Business Operations, Unibic Foods.

How have you designed your packaging to stay afloat in the visibility game amidst the clutter?

Yes, you are right. Biscuit is a category that is not only cluttered but also has heritage players, existing since 100 years. We crafted our shopper marketing strategies depending upon retail channels. Needless to say, packaging does play a pivotal role. Here, I would like to throw some light on the consumer behaviour in GT and MT. In GT, consumers come inside the store and shop for monthly replenishments, whereas in MT, impulse buying has a bigger role to play. Now, for impulse buying, we focus on smaller packs. On the other hand, in MT, a brand sells well if it’s bulk packaging and is slightly liberated in terms of the price point.

What kind of placements and shopper marketing strategies have you practiced in both the channels?

See, placements play a very crucial role in both the channels. One of the guerrilla marketing strategy that has worked for us in GT is not depending on posters. Because, in a store, where 20 new brands are welcomed every day, a poster has a life of not more than 2 days. For a GT store, which has 1000 SKUs to present, what worked really well for us is the height of the placement. We placed our products at a height of 5’-7’ to ensure that no other brand can place their product over and above and the height also ensures visibility from a 360-degree point of view.

For MT also, because the audience is captive and repetitive, we targeted higher shelf space and also employed store-based consumer promotions time to time.

What’s your overall business reading for both MT and GT channels?

We are present in 400,000 outlets, out of which only 3000 are MT stores. Though GT is every FMCG marketer’s go-to channel, you also have to consider that a store has umpteen number of SKUs and therefore, it’s challenging for any new player to ensure visibility. MT is challenging in terms of margin but it gives any FMCG player good mileage instead of ATL marketing activities.

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