Strategic Battle among Top Noodle Brands

Noodles market in India is not any smaller. Its around Rs. 1500 crore business in the country. Even one percentage share in this big market is worth the investment and time. When you say noodles, it pretty much mean Maggi Noodles in India. Yes, over the past one decade Nestle has been a monopoly in the noodles food segment. Maggi is the market leader with 70% market share ( Business Standard). A huge market with one major market leader is definitely an attractive one. That is one of the reason why so many players have recently launched their brand in this segment.

Few years back Reliance tried to capture the Maggie’s market with its Noodles under the private label of Reliance Select but it was not successful in doing that. Now this year the two well known FMCG players HUL and GSK have introduced their own brands of Noodles. Knorr is from HUL and Foodles is from GSK. They have launched their Noodles in variants of tastes and ingredients. Nissin’s Ramen Noodles is the most renowned brand in the World for Noodles but that is for Non Vegetarians. After all Sunfeast. Between, where is ITC in instant food segment? Yes, ITC entered the Noodles market with its Sunfeast Yippee.

So this was all about their Strategic Battle, now let us talk about their Advertisement Battles.

MAGGI(Nestle)

What do you understand from the advertisements of Maggi?? Watch them carefully…  The ads indicates towards something, and the ads are informative.

The ads of Maggi are micro family oriented especially Mother and Kids. The special focus is on the time saving factor that the noodles get prepared in 2 minutes only. One thing is very common in the ads of Maggi. Moms are wearing yellow in all the Ads- Yellow, the Maggi Color.

Maggi after establishing itself in the category of Instant Food, now launched Atta Noodles ‘Taste Bhi Health Bhi’. Yes the ad is emphasizing on the 2 factors, one is Health and other is nutrition. But we cannot ignore the main factor that is the main reason of targeting it esp. to Mothers(wearing yellow), that is it can be prepared in 2 minutes only. So, it also attract kids and children so that whenever they will demand the food will be ready.

Maggi Atta noodles contains processed vegetables in it and it promises the diet equal to 3 chapattis, with this it gave birth to the competition bringing other players to come up with noodles having vegetables in itself.

Now the companies are trying to bring more variants to this sector. Now watch he ad campaigns of Knorr.

KNORR(HUL)

Knorr in order to compete Maggi followed the same Funda of targeting Micro Family esp. kids and mom but here the message is different to some extent. The ads indicates towards Fun and Entertainment and the variants in flavors.

The ads are cartoonised  in order to attract kids, so it is very clear that the target audience are kids even here. So that Moms can serve delicious food to their children. The cartoons are used to indicate the flavor – Lemon & Tomato- Iska Magic Hee Aur.

Knorr is the king of Soups as Maggi is of Noodles. Now maggi has launched its soups and knorr has launched its Noodles to show their rivalry. But knorr gave a new dimension to the category of soups and noodles by launching its Soupy Noodles-  khaa ke pio, pee ke khao.

 

Knorr endorsed Kajol for the ad of its soupy noodles. The reason behind taking Kajol is her Motherly figure. Kajol is married and has kids so the product could not have been advertised by any other icon. Everyone has seen the Mania of endorsing Kajol in the ads of Alpenlibe. So taking Kajol as the Brand Icon of Knorr is not a bad idea.

 

Lets see what targets Knorr will achieve in the category of Instant Food.

 

Horlics Foodles(GSK)

 

The Ads of Horlics Foodles doesn’t make it clear that what different or extra it is providing to its customers. A child is eating Noodles and Mom is running behind him saying that Noodles fir-se NO, and then there is tug of war using Noodle fibre between Moms and Children – NO Bunty NO. The reason of war is that Noodle word starts with NO that itself says that don’t eat noodles. Then Foodles appear sliding the earth in the same style as in out Mythology during Samundra Manthan. The line Noodles mein NO nahin … Ab aa gaye Foodles  doesn’t gives any message but the purpose of the ad is just to catch the attention of TV viewers rest it is just emphasising on the word Foodles so that the customes doesn’t get confused between Noodles and Foodles, leading to the purchase of Foodles only, saying that we should not eat noodles but only Foodles. This is the new style of competitive branding in which a new name is given to the whole category i.e. Noodles is given the name of Foodles.

 

Sunfeast Yippee(ITC)

 

The Yippee is challenging the market of Maggi directly. Maggi noodles gets very sticky after a few minutes of cooking. So Yippee giving that message through its ads that Yippee noodles don’t get sticky even after a long time. And the ad is taking help of Cricket to catch the attention. Yippee as targeted Kidz

Yippee has come up with a sort of innovation in the size and design of it Noodles. As Maggi slices are rectangular one but the yippee noodles are round shaped, to give the ease in cooking. The round shape is for the purpose so that there should not be any need to break the noodles into pieces while cooking and the noodles come into the pan as it is. There is one more advantage of that, it gives the real feel of eating noodles because the strings don’t get break and the long noodle treads get into the mouth.

This was all the Advertisement Battle in Instant Food sector, that has just started breaking the monopoly of Maggi. And now lets see where it will come to end.