Sunfeast Dark Fantasy : Escape into One

Brand : Dark Fantasy
Company : ITC

Brand Analysis : 529

Sunfeast Dark Fantasy is the story of a brand which started its journey as a sub-brand and later acquired the status of a standalone brand. ITC forayed into the  biscuit market in 2003 and Sunfeast Dark Fantasy was launched in 2005. It was only after four years, that ITC thought of taking the brand to the next level.

Dark Fantasy's success can be attributed to the careful detail with which the brand was built by ITC. ITC took a risk in positioning Dark Fantasy as a premium biscuit brand. The premium space was vacant in the Indian market and marketers was unsure how consumers would react to a premium biscuit offering. 

To do this, Sunfeast tried to build the brand among emotional platform taking on the proposition of   ' Indulgence'. So here is a biscuit which would appeal to your sensuous self and take you through an experience of indulgence. It was a risky proposition and ITC backed the theme through some heavy campaigns. 

The brand had the tagline " Pure Indulgence " when it was launched. The USP was the packaging. Dark Fantasy in a way assured in a new wave of packaging in the biscuit market. The bold use of colors and calligraphy supplemented the brand's positioning as a premium biscuit. Later the tagline was changed to " Escape into One ". Dark Fantasy had twin packaging - there is an outer cardboard box and individual choco fills had wrapper packaging. That gave the brand a premium feel.

Watch the ad here : Dark Fantasy 

Rather than restricting itself as a premium biscuit, Sunfeast Dark Fantasy tried to create a space for itself by launching a new variety called Choco fills. Choco Fills are essentially biscuits with   chocolate filled inside. Although these types of biscuits were available, through smart packaging, Dark Fantasy brought lot of interest into this category. Now choco-fills are very popular that competitors like Parle had to launch a new brand in this category.

Buoyed with the customer response to Choco Fills, Sunfeast has extended this packaging strategy to its Cookie category by launching Delishus brand of cookies.
Dark Fantasy can be termed as a packaging success story. The brand has showcased the power of packaging and its influence in the positioning and brand image. Its not the first time that ITC has leveraged the power of packaging , it had tasted success in the FMCG category with Fiama and Vivel which differentiated  through smart packaging..The success of Dark Fantasy has created a freshness wave in the biscuit category with lot of colors and forms emerging from the leading brands. For consumers, shopping for biscuits is becoming  a delightful experience.  

Read More

Brand Update : McVities Gets into Celebrity Endorsement

World's first digestive biscuit is now banking on celebrity power to stay in the fiercely competitive Rs 9000 crore Indian biscuit market. The brand has roped in Bipasha Basu and Shriya Saran to endorse the Mcvities Digestive brand. Both the actresses are known for their " Health Consciousness " and are well accepted by the people who would like to be fit and healthy as these celebrities project themselves to be. 

The endorsement from the celebrities also marks a shift in the positioning of the brand. During the launch phase , McVities was harping on the taste and had adopted the tagline " The new language of Taste". For the Digestive variant, the brand has adopted the tagline " Habit you would love to keep".

Watch the new campaign here : Mcvities Digestive

The ad has tried to make the brand appeal to the younger audience ( 25 + health conscious adults). The brand is also trying to impress upon the audience by showing its international acceptance.

McVities Digestive has playing on a very difficult market. Despite a very visible trend towards health, Indian consumers are yet to put that into actual buying. According to recent research, Indian consumers doesn't compromise on taste. So rather than indulge in a taste-less healthy food, Indian consumers prefer to take less of tasty junk food. This has forced many companies to scale down their ambitious plans to launch healthy snacks and foods.

McVities is trying to create more usage for the biscuit by asking the consumers to indulge in more occasions. Although theoretically  the strategy is sound, it will be very difficult to make Indian consumers to compromise on taste.  I don't think that Bipasha or Shreya is going to make much impact on the sales of McVities Digestive among the intended target segment (25+ adults). The presence can definitely increase the visibility of the brand and thus more trials. But for biscuits, the success is in making the consumers return to the brand again. McVities definitely will thrive in the niche market but may have to wait long till healthy biscuits will become a part of the mainstream.
Related Brand
Mcvities

Read More

Brand Update : RIP Sunfeast Fit Kit

Even God was not able to save this brand. The much hyped sub-brand of Sunfeast - Sunfeast Sachin's Fit Kit is dead. The brand is not available in any of the shops in my state and sources say that the brand was discontinued shortly after it was launched.

  The company so far has not given any hint ( in any media) about this brand being discontinued. I am making the assumption that the brand is being discontinued for the reason that it is not present in an important  market like Kerala. 

So how can a brand which is co-created and endorsed by none other than Sachin Tendulkar himself suddenly went out of the market ? That too when the market is flooded with "healthy biscuits " ? Fit Kit was touted as the first celebrity co-created brand in India. The brand had everything going for it - the marketing muscle of ITC, brand Sachin, etc but still it was not well received by the Indian consumers. The question baffles me. 

In the case of Sunfeast Fit Kit, one probability can be that the brand was too early for the market.The market size is too small for such a large investment and the quantity the market can absorb was limited to justify such a huge investment. Sunfeast thought that with Sachin's endorsement, the brand will grow and will carve out a niche of " Multi - grain " biscuits. But the product did not grew as big as the brand thought it would be. 

Secondly , the target market for Fit Kit was the kids and they would not eat a biscuit just because Sachin endorsed it. The taste and the variety matters more than the health benefits. With a plethora of brands and variants available in the market, getting kids to stick to a variant is near impossible. The poor volume offtake may have prompted the company to relook its investment in this brand. 

More than anything , the category demands heavy continuous investment in brands and ITC may have decided to route the investment to the entire basket of biscuits rather than only Fit Kit. 

These are only possibilities. Only the company officials know the exact reasons why such a much hyped brand be taken off quickly. The failure of the Fit Kit is a grim reminder of the weakness of  celebrity driven brands.

Related Brand

Sunfeast Fit Kit

Read More