Mktg - Pepsi's New Snack Kurkure Desi Beats & Kareena

Suvi Dogra

Pepsi launches a new snack with a new campaign to take on ITC’s Mad Angles.

For quite some time now, market analysts have wondered how Pepsi will respond to the challenge thrown at it by ITC. For long, Pepsi was the undisputed leader in the snack food market with brands like Lays, Kurkure, Cheetos and Uncle Chipps in its portfolio. All competition was from local brands and nothing seemingly could challenge it.

Then, some two years back, ITC, the Kolkata-based FMCG, hotel and paper major launched a string of new flavors under the brand Bingo, backed with catchy commercials, which have all done well. The one that did the best was its triangle offering under the sub-brand Mad Angles.

The wait is over. Pepsi has decided to come out with its own triangle-shaped snack under the brand Kurkure Desi Beats. And to extol the virtues of the product to customers, the snack food and beverages major has roped in Bollywood actress Kareena Kapoor for a whopping Rs 7 crore.

Clearly, the company wants to leave no stone unturned in the Rs 2,000-crore snack food market. While Pepsi’s market share is 45 per cent, ITC sits on 16 per cent. The plans are ambitious, but the story board for the Desi Beats campaign has been kept simple — the age-old Cinderella story tweaked to contrast the foreign and Indian match of flavours.

The campaign, which breaks on television today, will show Kapoor as a simple girl who finds her own stature as a young vibrant Indian woman after her fairy godmother introducing her to Desi Beats. Pepsi is bullish on Kapoor’s chiming ‘No fun without desipan’ campaign to take the market by storm.

“Desi Beats is our answer to the triangle proposition in the market. Kapoor’s vibrant persona, pan-India appeal and confident attitude make her the right fit for endorsing this new Frito Lays creation,’’ says Gautham Mukkavilli, the managing director of FritoLay and now also the president (India region) of Pepsi.

While Saif Ali Khan and cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni are ambassadors for Lays, the Kurkure brand was endorsed for long by Juhi Chawla in a family situation. The image was that of a snack the whole family could enjoy. With Kapoor on board, Pepsi can hope to create a vibrant image for the brand as well as renew its connect with the youth of the country.

Pepsi is not alone when it comes to young celebrities. In the recent past, several consumer-facing companies have roped in younger faces in order to revamp their image. Thus, Nakshatra has replaced Aishwarya Rai with Katrina Kaif to endorse its diamonds, state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam has shown the door to Preity Zinta and signed on Deepika Padukone and Dabur has got Mahendra Singh Dhoni for its chyawanprash in addition to ageing legend Amitabh Bachchan.

For Kapoor, 28 and one of the highest paid actresses in filmdom, Pepsi is the eighth endorsement to fall in her kitty this year, making her the highest paid actress from tinsel town in the ad world. After a brief hiatus from films last year, Kapoor returned with her newly sculpted figure last year and the cash counters haven’t stopped ringing for her since then both in terms of films and endorsements.

Brands dealing in cosmetics, personal care products, jewelry and lifestyle products have lapped up the opportunity to leverage her star power given her connect with the youth. This year she was roped in by brands like ITC for its Vivel soap, Head & Shoulders, Globus, D D’mas for Geetanjali, Anne French and Emami and Airtel, even as her contracts with ICI Paints and Citizen Watches drew to a close. Her contract with ITC, which at Rs 5 crore was thought to be the highest for her this year, has now been topped by Pepsi, putting her in a commanding position in her peer group. You could call it Kapoor power.