Brand Track: Bingo

ITC’s Bingo brand of chips was launched on 14th March 2007 at a time when the market was dominated by the Frito Lay group. They had a plethora of brands like Lays, Kurkure and Uncle Chips which collectively held 50% of the market share. The Haldiram group had 25 % of the market share. Ten months after ITC entered the category with its wafer snack brand, Bingo, it had grabbed 16% market share in the branded snacks category across the country.

Bingo’s success story is about how a combination of leveraging synergies, building on consumer insights and high decibel advertising can win the game. The company leveraged its existing distribution network and relationship established with farmers. Its earlier foray into categories like atta and biscuits had already given it access to the supply chain.

Once this decision was made, a cross-functional team of eight individuals were sent across the country for a thorough research into the snacking habits of the Indian consumer. After travelling to 14 cities and speaking to more than 1,000 people, the team came back with an insight that Indian consumers were looking for novelty and excitement in existing snacks.

The team found that while vada pavs and samosas still sell vada pav with cheese and paneer-filled samosas, or for that matter, tomato-flavored khakra were the ones that excited the Indian consumer. Based on this information, the company decided to look at chips with innovative flavors.

For the recipes, the company went to the chefs in its hotels. The chefs came up with 16 flavors with innovative twists like bindaas masti chaas, chatkila nimbu achar and tandoori paneer tikka-flavoured potato chips, chilli and tomato-flavored mad angles — inspired by khakras — and other snacks.

Let us look at the analysis of Bingo’s branding strategy using the 4Ps: - 
1. Product - Assortment of flavours and eye catchy packaging.

2. Price - Pricing Strategy.

3. Place - Widespread availability at big and small retailers across the country.

4. Promotions - T.V. Advertisements, Viral Marketing.

1. Product 

Bingo! positioned itself with its Indian flavors such as Tandoori Paneer, Tikka, Spice Paneer etc. For the South Indian market, Bingo! had flavors such as Chatkila Nimbu Achaar, Achari Masti etc.

The segmentation was mainly done on basis of the age of the people. The primary target for Bingo is 18-30 year old people, who are willing to try out new flavors more easily than the small kids. 

The initial offerings from Bingo include an array of products in both Potato Chips & Finger Snacks segment. The Potato Chips offerings comprise of four innovative variants inspired by the snacking habits of different parts of the country as well as Masala, Salted and Tomato flavors. Additionally a dairy option has also been introduced under the potato chips offering.

The offerings under the Finger Snacks segment are equally unique presentations with innovative finger foods like the pakoda inspired Live Wires, Khakra inspired Mad Angles and the specially developed time pass snack in the form of Tedhe Medhe. Each offering under this segment is available in two variants making it a total of 6 products in the Finger Snacks portfolio. 

Packaging- ITC has done the packaging such that the product attracts the buyer. Apart from it has also launched packs with different quantity keeping in mind the specific consumer demand.

2. Price 

Initial pricing of ITC bingo is a direct frontal attack on Frito Lays with pricing of Rs 5, 10 and 20. Now Frito Lays has launched small packs of Rs 3 each. It needs to be seen whether ITC can leverage upon its huge distribution network to counter this.

3. Place 

ITC has adopted a Market Challenger strategy with the launch of Bingo! and has chosen a combination of flank and frontal attack against the market leader Frito Lay’s. The Company has distributed more than 4 lakh large racks, to display the brand at all points of sale. The racks created so much impact that even competitors like market leader Frito-Lays introduced its own version of wafer racks. Within six months of the launch, Bingo was available in more than 2,50,000 retailers across the country. 

ITC has made a strategic alliance with Future group according to which all retail stores of Future group like Food Bazaar, Big Bazaar, and Kishore Biyani’s Fair Price etc will stock only ITC’s Bingo. HORECA (hotels, restaurants and cafes), entire cigarette distribution network including betel shops are being used to distribute the product to a wide range of consumers. Initially Bingo sponsored many Bingo Remix nights in various clubs as well.

4. Promotion 

T.V. AD Campaign: Bingo’s launch was strategically timed around the World Cup to cash in on the tremendous popularity that such leisure and cocktail snacks would find among cricket lovers in the country. The idea was to get the consumer to take that first bite. Not only the flavours but also the advertising was supposed to have an Indian touch. Within a month of the launch of the initial advertisements, 70% of the viewers could recall the brand thus capturing a share of the mind of the consumers. Brand recall along with 16 flavors in three SKUs helped ITC to capture 16% of market share in just 18 months.

The advertising strategy used humour to sell Bingo. Bingo!’s advertising follows the AIDA model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action). The clutter-breaking ads with their slapstick humour and irrelevant themes garnered enough eyeballs to create awareness of the product and generate an interest towards the product in the minds of consumers. The ads are simply insane & nonsensical to the point of being bizarre & utter crap. And that is why they are so funny. This resulted in high product trials.

What’s interesting is the fact that Lays uses a brand ambassador approach with the celebrities having mass appeal such as Saif Ali Khan, Juhi Chawla & M S Dhoni whereas Bingo has managed to do well without one. It still doesn't have an ambassador.

Viral Marketing: It has recently developed its first viral ‘petkapaap.com’ for ‘Bingo Mad Angles - Achaari Masti’. In the short span of five days, this interesting viral has already got a view of 25,000!