I’m not a big fan of fried snacks. No, I don’t bother to look if it is a fried or baked snack…anything in a glossy, handy pack seems oily to me and I’m off consuming them, mostly. Particularly after this.
But I do try most of them. I still have fond memories of growing up with Fryums!
So, when I stumbled on this…
…last weekend, at the nearby Total Mall, I was amazed! This is one of the most impressive packing designs I have seen in the instant foods category in India yet! The point-of-purchase display adds oomph to an already cool pack!
Understandably, people were picking it off the shelf in droves!
I noticed Perfetti as the brand behind it and picked 4 packs, one in each variant.
There are many things going for the product, but there are many issues too, in my opinion.
1. The packing! Get a closer look in the product’s microsite. This is the killer – it just is so curiously attractive that it successfully has people staring at it and picking it up. On closer look, I wonder why the 2 people featured in the packs are not Indians! They don’t look that Indian for an Indian snack.
2. I like the fact that they’ve covered all bases with Fofo’s (not-fried, mind you!) and Gol’z (deep fried, I suspect). Fofo’s is the better one, in my opinion – the thing comes filled with ‘spicy paste’ (according the website), while Gol’z seems like the circular, sourer version of Kurkure. But both taste no different from any other snack already available in the market. Seeing my excitement with the pack, my son was equally excited and went on to open a pack of Gol’z. He loved the first bite, but forgot to eat anymore and left the pack on the table and ran away to play. When he returned I asked him why he left it…and he had only this to say in response, ‘It was just ok!’.
3. The ingredients read the same, like Kurkure and their ilk – Indian kitchen, besan, rice, wheat and blah. The last snack to really differentiate with its ingredients was Hippo, I suppose.
4. Another case of why the website is truly dead – the Perfetti page for StopNot says that this product is available in Andhra Pradesh and Punjab and I don’t remember living in either state. I understand that it is being rolled out in phases and may soon be available across India. But someone’s got to inform the three monkeys residing below the table to update the website.
5. The same page also has a small ad video and a ‘making of the ad’ link! Why?? Who would want to see the ad (that it is bland is another topic altogether) in a website? And why bother adding the ‘making of the ad’? Unless it is an enormously engrossing ad, I see no reason why people would want to see something online (giving all their attention) that they don’t give any attention to, in other forms of communication, like television. I suspect such pages exist for industry folks – advertising, marketing, sales etc. Unfortunately, the general public can see these pages too!
6. The microsite! A single page with a ‘Watch this space for more’. Nice…you had my attention and you blew it with that line. I’m not sure I see any reason to come back to this microsite again…not when I (we) have sooooooo many other things to see online, day in and day out.
7. Mandatory mention: Perfetti India’s Facebook (last update on May 13, 2011, when I checked today) and Twitter (last update on May 4, 2011, as I checked today)Â profiles. You know what is strange? When a brand creates an office, it houses it with people. When they invest in a phone, they have someone sitting beside/behind it just in case it rings. When the same brand makes a website, considering such activity is outsourced, it is done once and ‘updated’ occasionally. In this context, I’d simply like to point out that the Facebook page and Twitter property is NOT like the website, it is more like the phone! While it is perfectly fine to outsource handling of a Facebook/Twitter page too, the outsourcing deal has to be imagined in a different way and not like the website creation deal. A website is still considered more a creative job than a content-focused one and such content is largely assumed to be static. A Facebook page or a Twitter profile is hardly a creative job – all kinds of creativity comes in the form of content creation! Consistent content creation, that is!
To sum up, I bought a product in a category that I’m not really keen on – packaged snacks (fried/baked) due to the pull from packing alone. I did not see it tasting any different from what it available in the market – that, after such a strong package-based pull is disappointing! Your mileage about the taste of the product may vary, I do understand. Try it and let me know!