The $2b brand working on pack designs, product positioning & event promotions to target 18-22 age group, which forms 51% of consumers

SHRAMANA GANGULY MEHTA AHMEDABAD

    Last week, 22-year-old Aayushi Sachdeva called brand Amul a “Rockstar” on Twitter, impressed by the 55-year-old brand’s spoof on Pakistani fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar who said Sachin Tendulkar was afraid of him.
Amul’s tongue-in-cheek advertisements have always been popular, but the five-decade old brand would be glad to have made it to the social networking space of a youngster just when it has initiated its first image makeover, targeting the youth.
“The dull and conservative image associated with Amul products has to be rubbed off the minds of the youth. As a strategy, we have decided to communicate with the new generation more aggressively than ever before,” says RS Sohi, managing director of the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation, which owns Amul.
So the $2-billion brand is working on pack designs, product positioning and event promotions to target the 18-22 age group, which forms 51% of Indian consumers.
Its “Tab bhi phekta tha, ab bhi phekta hai!” (Used to fib then, and is still fibbing) spoof on Akhtar seems like a big leap in connecting with the youth. Amul has not stopped trending on Twitter since.
Almost simultaneously, the brand has announced its sponsorship of the Sauber Formula 1 team in the forthcoming Airtel Indian Grand Prix, the first ever Formula 1 race in the country.
ET, in a report published on June 29, had pointed out that the country’s largest food brand, born out of a cooperative movement in Gujarat, is found wanting in its communication with the new generation.
Amul is moving fast to change that by “communicating with the youth in the language they understand and doing things that appeal to them”, says Sodhi.
So, be it repositioning an orthodox dairy product like ghee as something which could bestow glowing skin, or TV commercials showing youngsters spoilt for choice while buying Amul icecreams, the company is doing everything for the youth eyeballs and wallets. “The moment you say that a product like ghee could help in digestion and give you glowing skin, the youth takes note of you,” says Sodhi. Backing of the young generation will be key for Amul to achieve its target of becoming a $3-billion brand by the end of this fiscal and joining the ranks of Nestle, Danone, Lactalis and Fonterra as an international dairy major. “Amul is now increasingly associating itself with the passions of the Indian youth,” says marketing expert and Future brands CEO Santosh Desai. “The brand has now realised that being youthful necessarily does not mean you are shedding away your legacy.” Amul enjoys 90% market share in the Indian butter market, 80% in cheese, 40% in ice-cream and 25% share in the pouched milk market. It spends less than 1% of its turnover on marketing and has always bet on umbrella branding.