Amul takes ghee to young India

After ‘Utterly Butterly Delicious’, it’s now ‘Health-a-licious’ for Amul. The country’s leading dairy products player has re-launched Amul Ghee (butter oil) in what the company calls a ‘Gen-X’ avatar.

“The younger generation tends to associate ghee with their parents or grandparents and think it is not good for their health or fitness,” says S Sodhi, managing director of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) which owns the Amul brand.

So the goal is to reposition the category itself. As a first step, Amul has changed the packaging and pack graphics of its two most popular ghee brands — Amul Ghee and Sagar Ghee.

It makes ample business sense as nearly 50 per cent of India’s population is below 35 years of age. A senior Amul official points out that the decision is aimed at giving a push to exports as well. “We currently export nearly 10 per cent of our ghee production to around 25-30 countries across the globe. The re-positioning will, indeed, help in brand building. The West too is waking up to the goodness of Indian ghee,” he adds.

Amul at present enjoys a 20 per cent market share in the packaged ghee market, which is estimated to be around 100,000 tonnes per annum. Banking on the new ‘avatar’ of ghee, the company is eyeing a growth of 20-22 per cent in the segment this fiscal, beating its five year compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10-12 per cent. The industry CAGR, as Sodhi points out, is way below at 4-5 per cent. Ghee demand growth is always in line with growth in milk production, he explains.

So, what was the brief for the designing firm? Mumbai-based brand solutions and designing agency DMA Yellow Works (D Y Works), which has bagged Unilever’s global re-packaging deal for its detergent ‘Rin’, was chosen by Amul to come up with a trendy design of the ghee packs. “When we took up the project, we looked at Ayurveda and came up with the ‘one-spoon-a-day’ mnemonic,” Alpana Parida, president, D Y Works, says.

One of the corners of the packet was flattened out and highlighted in green to prominently display the mnemonic. The new packet also carries the picture of an energetic consumer. “We have tried to build an entire fitness story around the design. In contrast, the earlier design had an old-worldly charm with a lady churning ghee,” she says.

According to Parida, package designing can play a critical role in the positioning of a ghee brand, as the product usually lies in one’s kitchen for a period of one to four months.

As for Sagar Ghee, a traditional brand that is hugely popular in Gujarat and Maharashtra comprising nearly 35-40 per cent of Amul’s net ghee sales, the pack graphics have been changed with caution. “Since 1960, Sagar ghee has enjoyed a very high brand equity in the western region. Loyal consumers of Sagar ghee have a strong emotional bond with the brand. The brand is time tested and handed down in the family as ‘apna ghee’. The pack graphics of Sagar ghee has also been redesigned to reflect all the love and respect that the consumers have for the brand,” Sodhi says.

After an in-depth research of the category and consumers, the platform chosen for the brand was ‘Sadiyon se khara’. To start with, a ‘stamp of purity’ was designed to establish the heritage of the brand. The motifs and strokes were distinctly Indian to reflect the culture to which the brand belongs. “Sagar ghee enjoys a special place in consumer’s heart and it is important in her various facets of life. It is also a mark of prosperity and it was important for us to manifest the same on the new pack design in all its grandeur and richness. Therefore, a golden casing was added to the design to truly reflect its premium stature,” Sodhi says.

Going by the initial response, the efforts have been worth it.