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Sunday Dec 15, 2024
Wednesday, 13 June 2012 11:18 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
When most of the population of the country revolts against the cost of living and a minority cares less, there is very little ‘brands’ can do to stand up to make life any better. Leaving apart budgetary constraints and various Government imposed taxes vs. corporate plans on generating brand visibility, most of our brands neglect obvious methods of truly beneficial marketing.
Clearly, food is a luxury for the masses. Having said this, urban as well as rural population alike crave home-grown fresh vegetation and for most the only chance of it would be when they are on holiday out of town.
Tapping into this gap in consumer choice is a unique offering – Grow Food Nuwara Eliya. It helps anyone purchase a plot of land from Nuwara Eliya for cultivation and the crop could either be taken for own utilisation or resale.
Home-grown vegetables could soon be a necessity rather than a delicacy. Move towards a more health conscious lifestyle rings a bell to brands that they have more than one way of creating brand awareness among the masses.
The Government encouraging bank loans for agriculture is a cue to where a considerable portion of people presence would be concentrated on in times to come. The following are a few options brands could look at to leverage this opportunity;
Supply chain
Following the Starbucks strategy, retailers without doubt benefit from home grown farmers. Having about 10 acres of cultivatable land would ensure low cost guaranteed purchases at regular intervals. Health conscious, fool proof consumers would know the difference of the use of chemicals versus organic manure. This opens doors for retailer to encourage the latter so that the concept would be a campaign of its own, maintaining consistent quality of benefitting a health conscious shopper.
Branding
Corporates who promote child nutrition and dietary food could seize opportunity in home cultivated plots by enlisting the cultivators in a database.
They could later be used for testimonials on authenticity of their produce and benefits that are gained by the consumers. Consumers and media values brand presence over a worthy cause with a payback value to society.
Promotion
Fast food brands can benefit by having dedicated blogs for innovative dietary delicacies by famous chefs. Facebook as an interactive and measurable tool for generating ROI can be used as a support promotion. Sufficient BTL presence at events supported by PR and testimonial interviews would put the cherry on the icing. Taking a brand to the limelight can be costly and tedious but necessary at the same time. But many brands can work its way towards promoting a healthy life style and carbon neutral environment. These methods also come with constraints of limited time and lack of interest.
However, creating the importance of understanding environments is a part of its challenge.
Fact over figure is that unless this message is driven to the wider society calling for smart planning of capital to make use of the many resources it has on offer; it will only be pointing fingers and overlooking opportunity.
(The writer is a Chartered Marketer and holds a BBM from the Bangalore University. She could be reached via [email protected].)
