Linked to the concepts of Positioning, Experience marketing, Customer purchase decision journey
The pandemic brought sway of changes in the lives of everyone, with massive impact in the behaviour of consumers. Every change acts as a trigger for new launches, and marketers need to capitalize on it to grow in the market and stay ahead of the competition. Brands need to connect with their consumers, invest in understanding the consumer behaviour, not just to meet their expectations but strive to exceed those.
Mondelez’ Cadbury was in news recently, for its yet another innovative marketing strategy, the launch of ‘The Purple Room’, a premium experience zone with 3D Cadbury chocolate printing technology. Through this unique step, it is aiming to create a new market and woo its consumers all over again, at a time when they are just coming out of the prolonged state of distress posed by pandemic.
Time plays a critical role in the success of any strategy and judgement on right timing defines the impact. Now connecting this creative marketing strategy of Cadbury’s to right time and to its positioning, are few lines from the Business Insider article, “The launch date was reflective of when it is a safe situation, firstly, allowed by the authorities to open and then of course, the right time for the consumer also starting to feel okay to step out. Now, they're kind of coming back. The likelihood is that they'll come back with a bang because there's a lot of pent-up feeling, ‘oh, I'm cooped up at home and I really want to step out, I really want to go somewhere and watch a movie.’ So as that feeling comes back, we see this as a great time to leverage as the momentum is gonna come back,” said Anil Vishwanathan, Senior Director, Marketing, Mondelez India.
This statement relates the right timing to the right assessment of consumer psyche, when recovering from pandemic effects.
In a news piece covered in IndianRetailer.com, Viswanathan stated, “With the country slowly inching back to normal and planning for the much-awaited festive season, the store is our way of giving consumers a ‘Meetha’ start to the festivities.”
This statement relates the timing of the launch to the positioning of the brand, which makes the strategy even more effective. Since last many years, Cadbury’s communication has focused on its festive positioning and established strong association with the word ‘Meetha’. And now the launch of The Purple Room at the onset of festive season with an intention to give ‘Meetha’ start to the festivities, further extends & strengthens the positioning of the brand. Cadbury’s has managed to continue on the legacy of its festive edition by bringing in a new wave of happiness for the consumers in times of uncertainty and sadness.
Success finally depends on the response from the customers and here as well, right timing plays an important role. Cadbury has launched ‘The Purple Room’, as a premium experience zone and today it will find easy acceptability with the customers. The reason being the way brand has been built & progressed over a period of time, it has garnered the meaning of being premium in the minds of customers. This is clearly stated & covered in the news by IndianRetailer.com, Anil Vishwanathan says, “Over the years, Mondelez India has created and grown the premium end of the chocolate market and owned the chocolate gifting space, with products like Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk, Cadbury Bournville, Cadbury Dark Milk, Cadbury Celebrations, etc. As the next leg to this journey, we are thrilled to introduce ‘The Purple Room’, a premium Cadbury experience zone, that also houses India’s first-ever 3D Cadbury chocolate printer.”
At one time, terms like customer experience, engagement & personalization which were more associated with service sector, in today’s world, have a key role to play in all stages of brand-building process in all different sectors. Nescafe moved coffee from commodity to brand and Starbucks moved it further to experience & lifestyle product. This newly launched experience zone, ‘The Purple Room’ will enable Cadbury’s to shift the basic chocolate product from the FMCG sector to the premium experience space with personalised touch added to it. This move will definitely add new vigour to the brand Cadbury’s and evolve the category as a whole.
It’s a long, consistent effort in a focused direction which assigns a desired meaning & image to a brand. Along with product & communication strategy, right placement also helps in building the required image. So is seen in case of “The Purple Room”, which is stationed in a new experiential gourmet food store, the Freshpik store, launched by Reliance Retail. This store marks its foray into ultra-premium grocery segment in India and provides a completely right fit to “The Purple Room” therein.
This first store has come up at the Jio World Drive in Bandra-Kurla Complex, Mumbai.
About The Purple Room, Vishwanathan says, as covered in the news, “Through this store, we aim to provide our consumers with a unique and memorable Cadbury chocolate experience. The zone not only showcases some of our much-loved products in the premium & gifting segment but also helps us to elevate Cadbury’s premium credentials and generate brand love.”
Cadbury has always been the forerunner in filling the right need gaps and capitalising on the changes happening around. Pandemic has brought massive change in consumer behaviour, with many shifting to online for most of their shopping. As markets have opened, customers are looking for refreshing enjoyment & new experiences. People are no longer stepping out just to make purchases, but looking for avenues to get rid of the boredom which they went through when caged within homes. With changing times, and the shift towards digital media which engages extensively, it has become necessary for brands to focus on the engagement aspect of their stores rather than just making the product available. “Shoppertainment” i.e. entertainment while shopping is the new trend which is getting popularised.
‘The Purple Room’ is designed to provide this kind of entertainment. This experience zone is not into selling chocolates so much but is into giving customers the experience of making their favourite chocolates. The idea behind this 'The Purple Room' is to get consumers to curate their own box of exquisite chocolates using a 3D printer. In the current times, when personalization has become the buzzword in marketing and digital media has opened up immense opportunities for the same, this innovation by Cadbury’s meets the trend and supersedes the expectations of customers.
With the old ad of the 90s on the jingle, "Kitna mazza aaye re, duniya Dairy Milk bann jaye" Cadbury’s brought excitement by showing on screen, the fanciful world made of chocolates. Now in 2021, with technology available at hand, that fictional world of being surrounded by chocolates, a dream of every child, has been brought into a reality in The Purple Room created by Mondelez India's Cadbury India.
As very well expressed in the Business Insider article, as to why the brand chose to launch an experiential center, Anil Vishwanathan, Senior Director, Marketing, Mondelez India, said, “It's been a constant journey of bringing in new concepts and experiences from a premium standpoint, because that's what the consumer is looking for. Over a period of time, it has also translated into the way we are offering personalised and customised experiences on e-commerce and D2C side. Now, The Purple Room is yet another such initiative in the same context, where we are bringing in new experiences to the country and some of these experiences cannot just be done in the regular retail way. We want to offer novel experiences and we're starting with the whole 3D Chocolate but this is one of many interesting new things to market experiences that we want to bring to consumers. The pandemic has proven how the value of personal attention may be far greater than we gave it credit. So, Cadbury’s The Purple Room is designed to consistently give customers more reasons to return by offering a personalised experience. It houses the whole Mondelez India range, a few exclusive products that are not available in India and also prints customised chocolates as requested by consumers in front of their eyes.”
Such initiatives will give a new direction to retail. Makeovers in retail formats will be seen in times to come.
Immense awareness will get created on all different products under Mondelez India range.
Through such initiatives, brand loyalty gets a bigger boost. As Cadbury gives customers interesting opportunities to engage with the brand, as customers would visit to experience & interact more with the brand, it would increase brand love, strengthen the bond and keep them loyal for long.
When consumers walk out of The Purple Room, Vishwanathan is optimistic that they will be wowed. That's what the brand is aiming for. Getting consumers to feel a little bit of a wow and leaving the Experience Centre saying `oh, this is what I would expect a Cadbury to be doing.’
Brands need to move “above and beyond” the consumer needs, embrace the emotions of individuals and Cadbury so very aptly stands true on this.
Now if we relate such unique initiatives to the consumer decision making process, we find these entailing big benefits to the brands. In the conventional decision-making process, consumers make the purchase decision by evaluating different brands based on their own need parameters. Real experience with the brand comes only after the purchase is made. But now with the experience centres coming up, customer exposure & experience with the brand happens way before the actual purchase stage, thus creating a customer base who are aware, have engaged with the brand, are largely satisfied and thus tend to stay loyal.
Article from Business Insider states that,
Cadbury is relying on word-of-mouth to do its magic and bring in organic footfall. It has also planned a few local activations to spread the word about the new center.
This clearly indicates it believes in the power of customer-generated content, which has grown into a reliable and most sought-after source in the current age of social media. Individuals today, especially the millennials who when come across a strikingly appealing product, service, place, or an experience, make a noise about it on social media, spreading the information to a large audience. This user-generated content is extremely important for brands as it builds brand advocacy. In case of Cadbury’s Purple Room too, as this “experience zone” is going to provide immense enjoyment to customers, as they would interact with different products, curate & customize chocolates through 3D printers, have fun moments with gaming in the zone, all this will eventually go across on social media and increase awareness & attraction towards this new entity created by Cadbury's.
As and when people are provided opportunities to enjoy with the brand, they tend to become advocates of that brand. These brand advocates are the ones who promote the business through word-of-mouth. Indian consumers are known to heavily rely on brands that are considered the best by their reference groups and this, in general, helps brands reach out to more customers. The brand advocates, continue to bond with the brand, buy, re-buy, influence others and bring in many more customers for the brand. With growth in digital space, customer purchase decision journey underwent a complete transformation, with different stages in customer purchase journey revolving in a loyalty loop unlike the funnel approach in the conventional journey.
New customer purchase decision journey process post Internet Evolution
Conventional customer purchase decision journey
There is a lot that the brand zone 'The Purple Room' is doing to elevate the customer’s experience and bring back higher growth for itself. Its already existing products are being presented in new forms.
Shoppers will get to consume their favorite brands in a new avatar to enhance their Shopping experience as original milkshakes made from Dairy Milk, Bournville, 5 Star, and Oreo at the store.
Such initiatives reignite charm in the already existing products and bring in new growth for the brand. A live experience to watch their favourite chocolates being made and to see all different products in new version is going to engage not only the kids segment but also the adults. For millennials, it is going to be a thing on social media that will help this store gain a wider reach.
But why ‘The Purple Room?’ “In partnership with Ogilvy India, we wanted to bring in a very recognizable element of our brand. And then also give a little bit of the premium feel to it. So pick up something which people can recognize, but it still evokes a little bit of a premium feel,” Vishwanathan told Ad and Media Insider.
Every time we think of chocolates, we think of Cadbury’s and every time we think of Cadbury's, its the color “Purple” which flashes in our mind and has been deeply engraved in our hearts. Colours are strong associations of a brand and in case of Cadbury's its Purple, which represents creativity & also the premium choice of customers. Most of the products of Cadbury's carry its trademarked purple colour, which also gives identity to the brand.
Experiences are the moments that consumers often carry with them. This new store by Cadbury's brings in a new touchpoint with the brand. A touchpoint that the consumers are going to remember and carry in their hearts for long.
Content support by:
Ms Itika Samar
Student - MBA Tech, NMIMS, Mumbai
References:
https://www.indianretailer.com/news/cadbury-3d-prints-the-experiences-with-the-purple-room.n11963/
Harvard Business Review Dec. 2010
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