As a curious fan of anything new on the supermarket shelves, two new drinks (the non-alcoholic and non-carbonated variety…sorry!) top my list now – the thick-mango drink, Galla and Parle’s new packaged lemonade, LMN.
Galla has been available in Bangalore for over a couple of months now and I LOVE it. So much that I’m spreading the word quite actively. Its far thicker and tastier than the fake thick mango drinks in the market – Maaza and Slice…its almost thick pulp. In fact that Maaza ad where a middle aged man yearns for his dose of mango, is so damn apt for Galla and not Maaza. A cursory glance at the package (a 200 ml mini pet bottle that is quite nice to hold!) reveals that the makers have quite a good sense of humor! It goes,
“A relationship works two ways. If you ain’t taking care of your mango, your mango ain’t taking care of you. Luckily, a mango is less fussy than us humans. All it wants is to be kept in a cool dark place and never left unfinished, make sure you tuck it away safely in a refrigerator at 5 degree C. But remember, you’ll need to get back to it within 5 days. And yes, be willing to give it a good shake.
Don’t let anyone come in the way of you and your mango. If people give you an earful of how too much of anything can be bad, here’s a mouthful you can throw back. Start by telling them that mango is loaded with Vitamins A and C, which in fact makes it really healthy. If that’s not enough, tell them it also has B-Complex which keeps you alert and beta-carotene that acts like sunscreen. And if they’re still not convinced, it’s clear they’d rather talk you out of it so that they can drink all of it. At times like these, we suggest a ‘bottoms up’.”
No, I’m not making all this up – this is really what’s written on the bottle! The first para is a very well worded substitute for the usual instructions found on most of these bottles/ packs! And, I really like the way they address it as ‘mango’ and ‘fruit’ and not just as a ‘drink’ based on mango! That’s a far more valid claim than Dabur’s Real which shows an orange in place of its orange drink. Galla is from the Amara Raja Group, more known for their Amaron car batteries! Strange diversification, huh? But Galla’s official website shows that they’ve been in the fruits and vegetables business for quite some time!
Perhaps buoyed by the success of the flagship Galla Thick Mango, there are more variants in the market – Galla Thick Mango Cocktail (Mango with mixed fruits) and Galla Thick Mango Magic (2 variants, one with Mango + Orange and another with Mango + Apple). Needless to add, I’ve tried it all and they’re all YUM!
But wait, what’s the social media connect here?
Oh yes, Galla actually has a Facebook page with 104 members (started in May 2008!) as of this post! The page addresses some of the basic updates – availability in select stores across cities. They’re giving away ipods in Hyderabad for a contest and there are a lot of photographs of in-store launches. Its a small start, but at least they’re doing something! But, quite sadly, the ‘Connect on Facebook’ link in the official website is broken – hope someone notices it!
The other drink is from Parle – LMN. Its perhaps India’s first packaged lemonade! And, its tastes incredible with a sweet and salty combination that I found very unique. On a hot day noon, this one is blissful. Parle made a fabulous marketing success out of Appy Fizz, but strangely there’s zero advertising (there seems to be a TV ad, haven’t seen it on the telly yet, but here it is on YouTube…neat, but nothing that stands out, to me at least!) for LMN’s launch! It comes in 2 packs – a neatly designed slim 500 ml pet bottle and a standard 200 ml tetra pack. Ankita has some good points in this post in The Tossed Salad and she highlights the lack of visible marketing too!
Parle Agro’s official website gets quite a few things wrong – its static, there’s nothing really interesting and it gets an Economic Times journalist’s name wrong on the ‘What’s new’ page (its Moinak Mitra and not Moinik Mitra). Nitpicking aside, the LMN page has all of 13 lines – nothing moves in the page, no links to the ad or TVC…nothing! Are they planning something? This is summer guys – you need to be doing something to promote your brand. Social media is a great start…folks at Parle!
The drink is a clear winner. The marketing…a terrible start. Hope Parle wakes up to the potential of this drink!
Unrelated footnote: All this mango talk reminds me of Maaza’s ‘Bina guthli waala aam’ TVC starring Satish Shah. For its Tamil version, someone in the ad circles clearly knows his language well – ‘guthli’ is ‘kottai’ in Tamil. Kottai is also a very popular Tamil slang for a man’s..to put it mildly, balls! The Tamil TVC stresses ‘guthli’ as ‘Maangottai’, a combination of ‘maambazham/ maangai’ for ripe/ unripe mango and ‘kottai’ for the seed. Now, maangottai, as a phrase is used only when consuming the fruit and this TVC could have done with just ‘kottai’ – ‘bina guthli waala aam’ is simply ‘kottai illadha maambazham’. But some smart soul at the agency took regional sensitivites into account and made this nuanced change!