The document discusses strategies for an upstart snack brand to build brand awareness and compete against larger competitors. It provides background on Forbidden Foods, which launched a new line of popped chips. It seeks cost-effective marketing solutions, especially to influence offline purchases through digital efforts. Suggested areas for solutions include online marketing to drive in-store sales and innovative packaging designs that engage consumers. Submissions should consider how well the idea reaches the target youth audience, provides cost-effective ROI at scale, and allows for consumer data collection.
The document discusses strategies for an upstart snack brand to build brand awareness and compete against larger competitors. It provides background on Forbidden Foods, which launched a new line of popped chips. It seeks cost-effective marketing solutions, especially to influence offline purchases through digital efforts. Suggested areas for solutions include online marketing to drive in-store sales and innovative packaging designs that engage consumers. Submissions should consider how well the idea reaches the target youth audience, provides cost-effective ROI at scale, and allows for consumer data collection.
The document discusses strategies for an upstart snack brand to build brand awareness and compete against larger competitors. It provides background on Forbidden Foods, which launched a new line of popped chips. It seeks cost-effective marketing solutions, especially to influence offline purchases through digital efforts. Suggested areas for solutions include online marketing to drive in-store sales and innovative packaging designs that engage consumers. Submissions should consider how well the idea reaches the target youth audience, provides cost-effective ROI at scale, and allows for consumer data collection.
The document discusses strategies for an upstart snack brand to build brand awareness and compete against larger competitors. It provides background on Forbidden Foods, which launched a new line of popped chips. It seeks cost-effective marketing solutions, especially to influence offline purchases through digital efforts. Suggested areas for solutions include online marketing to drive in-store sales and innovative packaging designs that engage consumers. Submissions should consider how well the idea reaches the target youth audience, provides cost-effective ROI at scale, and allows for consumer data collection.
We are the underdog, the David in David vs. Goliath. We are looking for a slingshot to defeat the much larger giant. We are calling upon you to come up with a slingshot for us. Will you help us?
Company Introduction – Forbidden Foods
Forbidden Foods aspires to delight the new-age Indian consumer with innovative and contemporary snacking products. The company has introduced a range of novel packaged snacks under a fun, exciting and quirky brand identity – BRB – that resonates with young and discerning consumers. Founded by seasoned entrepreneurs with a proven track record in the Indian consumer sector, Forbidden Foods targets to establish a leadership position in the modern packaged snacks industry in the country.
The company launched its first range of products - BRB Popped Chips - in Jan 2020 starting with Delhi- NCR. The products are Not Fried, Not Baked, but Popped Chips - an innovative and better-for-you snacking alternative. The launch portfolio comprises 4 SKUs - 2 flavours each on Potato and Sweet Potato based popped chips. While the products are very tasty, they are also significantly healthier compared to other chips in the market as they contain 60% less fat as compared to regular fried potato chips.
Beyond this initial range of products, the company has developed a strong NPD pipeline which will be released at a regular cadence. With this product innovation, Forbidden Foods is pioneering the popped chips category in India.
BRB Popped Chips are currently selling through 600+ retail outlets across Delhi-NCR. Further, the products are also listed on all major e-commerce platforms such as Milkbasket, BigBasket, Amazon (pan-India), Supr Daily etc.
Target Audience and Positioning
While the products are expected to appeal to a wide demographic breadth, we are defining our core TG from a branding and messaging perspective to be 15 - 25 year old, relatively affluent adolescents. The ambition is to create a brand that resonates with this target group and becomes the go-to, and cultural identity defining brand for this consumer set, not just for snacks but across product categories.
The products will be positioned as premium but affordable indulgence, perfectly suited for the discerning consumers who are ready to trade-up from the mass market brands. A single serve pack is priced at INR 20 and a sharing pack is priced at Rs. 40.
Background Packaged savoury snacks in general and more specifically chips is an impulse purchase category. Hence it is important for the products to be widely distributed and easily available in the offline retail environment, within easy reach of consumers, so that impulse purchases can be catered to.
The vast majority of this market is in the Rs. 5-10 price point range. So, BRB Popped Chips are priced at a premium to the mass market products. But at the same time, the price point is still quite affordable to open up a large market opportunity.
While several new F&B brands, especially from young startups, have taken a D2C-first approach to build a direct sales channel online, given the product category and price points, Forbidden Foods’ strategy is to be widely distributed and focus on offline retail as the primary go-to-market channel. In addition to retail outlets (both modern trade and premium general trade stores), the company will also augment its sales and distribution with several alternative channels such as vending machines, corporate cafeterias and tuck shops, school and college canteens, hotels, restaurants and cafes (HoReCa), and movie theatres.
The company targets to reach over 20,000 retail stores across the top cities in India over the next 3 years. This approach puts the company in direct competition with the big and established players in this industry that have dominated the retail environment and also have large marketing budgets to maintain brand recall and high consumer mind-share through regular ATL campaigns.
As a young startup, Forbidden Foods obviously lacks such large marketing budgets to splurge on big advertising campaigns. Hence, one of the key challenges for the company is to figure out innovative guerilla marketing techniques to create brand awareness, recall, product discovery, and trials in a cost effective and scalable manner.
While digital and social media marketing works well for D2C online brands where the sales is also happening online through a brand’s own website, we are looking for innovative and cost-effective marketing strategies and solutions that can influence consumer purchase behaviour in offline stores.
Industry Landscape The branded and organized packaged snacks industry in India is an approx. US$ 5bn market, of which the potato chips segment is roughly one-third. The vast majority of this market size, roughly 85-90%, is in the mass market segment with products priced at Rs. 5-10. The competitive landscape in the market comprises of broadly 4 types of companies and products:
i) Local/ regional mass market players: These are brands dominant in a particular state or region, typically operating in the Rs. 5 price segment. The primary value proposition of these products is value for money or more weight at the same price point. ii) National branded mass market players: Both Indian and MNC brands that have a national presence, strong brand recall, and significant marketing spend. These players have products both in the mass market segment (typically Rs. 10 price points) and have also attempted to introduce products in the slightly more premium category (Rs. 20 for a single serve pack). iii) Niche premium brands with limited retail distribution or online only presence: These are ultra- premium products priced upwards of Rs. 60 for a single serve pack with limited retail presence, if at all. Some new-age brands with a very health focused positioning or an exotic ingredient (for example Quinoa) based value proposition fall in this category. iv) Affordable premium and widely distributed: This is the category where BRB is playing and attempts to create a large franchise and market leadership position with an affordable premium offering. We believe there is a somewhat of a whitespace in this price category with very limited consumer choice both from a brand as well as product perspective. The few brands of any significant scale in this category include Doritos and Cornitos, both of which are nachos products. In this category, single serve packets are typically priced at Rs. 20 and sharing packs at Rs. 35-40.
Objective Develop strategies and solutions to enable an upstart in the packaged snacks industry to build brand awareness in a cost effective and scalable manner to compete against the big boys in the space.
Solution Categories Strategies and solutions can be proposed around any one of the following directions:
1. Online Marketing for Offline Conversions
From eyeballs to footfalls
How can we effectively leverage online/ digital marketing channels to nudge and influence consumer purchase behaviour in offline retail stores. The advantage with digital marketing is the ability to narrowly target consumers based on demographics, geography, interests etc. and also the ability to personalize the marketing message. Further, budgets for digital marketing can be scaled up or down based on the requirement and effectiveness, unlike, say a TV ad campaign. However, the challenge is to leverage this digital marketing to get consumers to buy the product in retail stores. Your mission is to come up with a solution and strategy to achieve this. Not just pure brand awareness but also brand awareness linked to availability in a targeted retail footprint.
2. Packaging Driven Marketing
Packaging that talks to you Explore unique packaging formats or consumer engagement techniques on the primary packaging to both incentivize consumer trials and purchases as well as drive engagement with the brand. This could involve technologies such as QR codes, AR etc. integrated with the primary packaging.
In case you are feeling particularly creative and have solutions to propose for both the above directions, we welcome you to submit two separate entries for each of the above categories.
Parameters to consider For each of the above categories, think about how your solution or strategy benchmarks against the following parameters:
• Reaching the core target audience
• Overall cost and ROI • Scalability and virality • Consumer data collection
So, put your thinking hats on and get cracking. David really needs your support.
