When it comes to describing the success of the 15-year-old brand Kurkure, the Rs l,000-crore-plus snack brand of PepsiCo India, old timers often talk of providence. Over the years, Kurkure has come to be identified as a quintessential family brand and has brought joy to many families, consistently highlighting thought-provoking contemporary points of view on the Indian family and its myriad interactions. Right from the beginning, Kurkure has been steering between tradition and modernity: Made with familiar kitchen ingredients but in shape and format and flavour delivery; of ‘twist on tradition’.
It was launched in 1999 and has since then transformed the way Indians snack. At its core, it questioned the existing norm that salty snacks were divided into two large segments, traditional and potato chips. Kurkure introduced a new sub-segment within namkeens, creating a new palate experience for consumers. Armed with its unique product proposition: ‘Familiar taste in an innovative format’, the brand broke category codes and transformed the landscape of snacking in India, both sensorial and visual. It introduced a sub-segment that was not palm food, but finger food so if namkeen was eaten in a bowl, Kurkure was eaten out of a bag.
Brandishing a strangely addictive, intense chatpata taste, it was launched as lehar Kurkure, a sub-brand under the umbrella of lehar. It used traditional Indian ‘kitchen ingredients’ like rice, lentils, corn and Indian masala seasoning; and the story goes that it took 220 trials to make Kurkure. Consumer testing had people loving the crunchiness and saying it was very ‘kurkura’ (crunchy) — and from there came the name.
When it was launched in Chandigarh, the sales team literally ‘painted the town orange’ with all three-wheelers carrying the packs being painted in that colour. One of the fastest market placements, Kurkure had near 100 per cent coverage in 10 days, something that was repeated in many other markets soon after. The small packs hanging in ‘ladis’ (hangers) outside shops rather like shampoo sachets, was another innovation that became a category norm.
With its zesty, multi-sensorial taste that was energising and mood transforming, and as a consumer once put it, an ‘item number in the mouth’, it was launched with the tagline: ‘Kya karen, control nahin hota’ to drive home the addictive taste of the product.
In a country so rooted in family values, few brands came across as truly ‘family brands’. Kurkure rooted itself in the family social context and became a commentator on the changing Indian family, always bringing its own insightful observations on quirky truths of the great Indian family. It professed that families that snacked together and laughed together, stayed together. It portrayed a family that was happily, unabashedly idiosyncratic and playfully imperfect, always accepting that ‘we are like this only’ and that ‘in our family it happens like this only’.
When other players started trickling in, sensing the opportunity, Kurkure had to reassert its uniqueness and elevate itself above the mass of copycats. It did a re-jig of the product (extra spicy) and linked the product’s transformational experience to the ‘twist’ in army regular arid staid situation. The ‘twist on tradition’-centred promotion continued till 2004 even as the brand then signed on the bubbly actress, Juhi Chawla in 2004 in an attempt to target housewives who were the ‘gatekeeper’ audience for the brand.
Kurkure wanted to do something special with Juhi and decided to leverage her cheerful personality, her amazing sense of comic timing, her non-glam doll image and the fact that she was a mother and housewife too. Since housewives were generally hooked on TV serials, Kurkure decided to target them by making a spoof on Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, a popular TV soap at that time. It continued with many a spoof, be it of Bollywood classics or TV soaps that helped tell product stories of ‘Kahaani mein twist’ (A twist in the story).
Starting with 2005, it also strategically targeted evening teatime, at the time the largest occasion for snacking-consuming macro snacks, ie biscuits and namkeens-as the consumption occasion. It reached out to the homemaker who desired ‘evening tea’ as the moment for changing gears and to other members who looked forward to evening tea as a moment of relaxation and a joyful collective family huddle. Kurkure stepped in not just as a snack but as a bonding factor that brought the family back into the same hying room, creatively rendering, ‘Chaitime masti bole to Kurkure!’ The timing could not have been better with the large family as a unit beginning to disintegrate into nuclear set-ups.
To further enhance its share of teatime, it launched two sub-brands ‘Kurkure Solid Masti’, as new-age substantial snack options for that ‘evening peckishness’ and ‘Kurkure Masti Squares’, as an aid to the homemaker who desired versatility in teatime snacks. Both sub-brands, however, did not find much traction with consumers.
It kept raising its standards in terms of variants, flavours, formats, occasions and communication to deter copycats that posed serious threat. Disruptive large-scale consumer engagement programmes like ‘Kurkure Mast Family Jackpot’, ‘Kurkure Jupp for the Cup’ (during the ICC World Cup 2007) and ‘Kurkure Chaitime Achievers’ were launched to drive consumption.
‘Kurkure Chaitime Achievers’ (family face on the pack communication) was not just engagement, but consumer-generated participation, another first from the ever-innovative Kurkure. The winning recipe made out of Kurkure was the ‘family’s passport to fame’, with the winning families having their photograph featured on one million Kurkure packs. This was the first-ever consumer-generated participation in the history of advertising in India; and with over 100,000 responses, it lead to a surge in business.
To leverage yet another consumption occasion, Kurkure came up with ‘Zyada meetha ho gayaIJ Muh Kurkure karo’ for Diwali, which was traditionally a sweets-centred feasting time. This was again in line with the brand DNA: a twist on tradition.
It launched its ‘X-treme’ edition of flavours to connect with the youth, which in turn reinforced its positioning as ‘always doing the unexpected’. Unearthing yet another insight into the great Indian family, Kurkure launched its iconic tag-line ‘Tedha hai par mera hai’ in 2008. ‘Tedha hai par mera hai’ became a part of everyday conversations and advertising folklore. Some of the novel initiatives during this period included new, unusual ingredients; introduction of regional variants; flavours inspired by master chef sessions around chutneys/pickles; and creating rituals — Kurkure bhel via on-premise bhel carts at PVR.
Many of its other flavours were co-created with chefs who specialised in regional cuisines, or those who loved experimenting with fusion food. It also introduced the puffed range, again stealing the show with new shapes. Puff corn has been one of the most successful launches for Kurkure in the puffed segment.
It revamped its communications strategy in late 2012, scaling up its ‘Tedha hal par mera hai’ proposition, creating a first-of-its-kind ‘Kurkure screen family’. With a very modern ‘remix bahu’ at its centre, India’s Most Crooked Family is a joint family, bubbling with conversation and energy; disagreements and conflicts, negotiating between the individual and the collective, balancing tradition and modernity, and always looking for ways to resolve everything with warmth and laughter. And this quirky family told every new story, be it new taste, new pack size, or new price point. To help drive sales in the large pack segment, the family gathered in the living room and tapped into the insight of ‘the making of the guest list’ — that, in an Indian family, there is no such thing as a ‘small family party’! Kurkure thus managed to get on to the kitchen shelf where the housewife stored it and then served it with pride.
Excerpted from Storm the Norm by Anisha Motwani, Rupa Publications
