Marketing the socially responsible way
Cause-Related Marketing (CRM) is making strides in India. Professor Nagendra Chowdhary (IBSCDC) looks at how Tata Tea revamped its image and increased market share by using CRM for its Jaago Re! campaign
In a short span of time, Tata Tea has gone from owning only 3 per cent of market share (1980s) to becoming the number one tea brand in India. How has it risen so fast and what role has CRM (sometimes also known as Social-Cause Marketing or SCM) played in the rise?
Tata Tea history
Tata Tea’s origins lie in a UK-based company, James Finlay, which played a vital role in the development of the tea industry in India starting in the 1850s. In 1964 Tata and James Finlay entered a joint venture to form Tata Finlay and not long after, in 1976, Tata Finlay took over the production and marketing operations of James Finlay. Tata went on to acquire the entire ownership by 1983 giving birth to Tata Tea.
The challenge that lay ahead was for Tata Tea to brave the fierce competition from the Hindustan Unilever brands, Brooke Bond and Lipton. It devoted its advertising efforts to emphasizing the quality of its tea and how it controlled the entire value chain to ensure that quality. It devoted its investment efforts to expanding its manufacturing facilities in India and Sri Lanka, and establishing subsidiaries in US and UK. Then in 2000 it acquired the British giant Tetley Tea, thus moving to the global level as the second largest tea brand in the world. Along with operational synergies, Tata Tea could now also fall back on Tetley’s expertise and distribution facilities, worldwide.
Tata Tea continued to communicate various functional properties like freshness and taste. “Actual freshness” (Asli Taazgi) and “Say no, regret later” (Na kahoge toh pachtaoge) were some of the slogans that portrayed the tea as an energy booster and refresher.
In a bid to target customers from all regions and stratas of society, Tata Tea’s product/ price portfolio comprised tea for each segment. This entailed innovation and the regular introduction of new flavors and new look products such as flavored tea under the Tetley brand in 2003, sold with the ad line “A twist in your tea, a twist in your life” (Chai mein twist…. Life mein twist).
By the mid noughties, top management felt that there was a need for a combined marketing strategy covering all its national brands- Premium, Gold, Agni and Life, which could promote the mother brand as a whole. They seized upon Cause –Related Marketing (CRM) which had taken off in the US in the 1980s. In CRM a corporation allies itself with a non-profit social organization, typically by donating receipts from sales to the non-profit. In this sort of alliance, the corporation builds brand image while the non-profit increases its funding (see box for more on CRM).
Campaign with a social initiative
For its foray into CRM, Tata Tea wanted to associate its brand with civic consciousness. Moving away from positioning tea as just a revitalizing drink and instead stressing social responsibility, they also wanted their campaign to target young Indians.
To conceptualize the idea Tata Tea hired the advertising agency Lowe Lintas. The agency came up with the Jaago Re! campaign and its theme “Every morning-don’t just get up, wake up” (Har subah sirf utho math- Jaago Re!). The slogan raised in a memorable way the idea of social awakening.
A series of 10-second advertisements brought to the forefront several problems- corruption, improper roads, responsibility of political leaders, role of police. The first commercial, for example, featured a young man investigating the credentials of a political leader involved in an election campaign. The idea was to connect with the consumers on emotional issues, to get young people fired up about questioning the system. Given the target group, the ads were promoted using media favored by young people. The Internet was foregrounded- social networking sites and blogs, and a website, www.jaagoindia.org, promoted the campaign.
The campaigns were a huge success and helped drive Tata Tea’s sales from approximately $910 million in 2007 to over $970 million in 2008. Seeing the monetary benefits and increase in brand loyalty, Tata Tea decided to take the campaign further and focus even more on social issues.
The second phase
Thus was born the second phase of the campaign, which focused on the Indian general elections (Jaago Re! One Billion Votes). For the campaign to be powerful, it needed to penetrate down to grass root levels - to achieve this Tata Tea partnered with Janaagraha, a Bangalore based NGO.
The aim of the campaign was to alert citizens to their voting rights. Besides bringing out the votes, the campaign also guided the youth through the voting process. A website, www.jaagore.com, was set up to enable registration for voting. Several ads were designed in this phase, which urged the citizens, especially young ones towards a transformation of Indian society through voting. The most popular ad featured the message “If you are not casting your vote on election day, you are sleeping” (Election Ke din agar aap vote nahin Kar rahe ho, to aap so rahe ho).
That ad helped pull over 600,000 people towards the website to register for voting. IT giants with large numbers of young employees such as Infosys and Wipro supported the campaign; most of their employees registered for voting through Jaago Re. The campaign also generated support from Bollywood celebrities.
Tata Tea’s market share increased from 19.4% in 2007 to 20.6% in 2008. The sales, brand loyalty and increase in market share clearly showed that these social marketing campaigns were well received by the customers.
The Jaago Re! campaign also brought about a response from the competitors. HUL re-launched Lipton Yellow Label tea with the campaign Stay Sharp in 2009. The accent here was more on intellectual rather than social energy since the plan was to position its product as a tea for sharp minds. The campaign gained attention as 20,000 people registered on the Stay Sharp website (to solve their jigsaw puzzle).
Professor Nagendra Chowdhary leaves the readers of the case with two questions to ponder. The first concerns the longevity of CRM tools – might the efficacy of CRM fall sharply with time? The second asks at what stage of its brand life cycle can a company turn towards CRM. Must the brand be well anchored before CRM campaigns can be launched?
Reference:
ECCH 509-075-1
“Tata Tea’s Jaago Re! Campaign: The Social-Cause Marketing Initiatives and Long-Term Branding Initiatives”
R. Naga Sandhya, P. Girija, Professor Nagendra Chowdary
IBSCDC (Icfai Business School Case Development Centre)
By Sunaina Anand
Published November 2009
