NEW DELHI: What started in 1956 as a small, organised attempt to bring international baking products like cornflour, baking powder, and custard powder to local Indian markets, WeikField today is one of the most successful brands in the space. It has also grown its product portfolio immensely in the past few decades, incorporating baking essentials like pudding mix, cocoa powder, icing sugar and diversifying into sauces, pickles and condiments, health foods and beverages, organic tea, and pasta. The brand enjoys a great number of dedicated patronage, distributors and consumers who are associated with it since its inception. However, to gain the attention of the modern-day young consumers, WeikField is now taking up a distinct marketing approach. It started with a complete brand revamp in the middle of 2020 and is now continuing with two beautiful TVCs launched last month. 

In a recent telephonic interaction with Indiantelevision.com’s Mansi Sharma, WeikField Foods Pvt Ltd CEO Dipy Sachdeva talked in detail about the brand’s marketing plans and the way ahead. Edited excerpts follow: 

On brand history

WeikField was established by a family of refugees from Rawalpindi, the Malhotra brothers,  who made Pune their home post-independence. The male members used to work as auctioneers and started buying government and military surpluses in auctions to sell it within the country. One of the things that they purchased at one such auction, in 1955, was custard powder. Impressed by the products, they decided to manufacture it. After battling the initial challenges of popularising a seemingly western product in India, they grew their product portfolio immensely. The latest addition was pasta, launched in 2015. Today, we are present in 400 towns pan-India, in close to 70,000 outlets, and on all the major e-commerce platforms. Cumulatively, it is around 300,000 retail counters.  

On the brand revamp and latest marketing campaigns 

We realised that while we have a very loyal consumer base, the younger generation does not know our product by the name. While they might be buying it often off the shelf, there is a lack of brand awareness and affinity in the market. That is something we wanted to improve on. 

So, last year, we did a brand refresh, introduced a new logo, new packaging, and rolled out a new website to connect to this TG. Our products are already well-trusted; we are using that trust factor to further appeal to the crowd. We went ahead with the brand slogan of “Weik Up Life’s Little Moments,” to promote the message of living each day with a positive mindset. 

The little pun in the spelling of “wake” is done with the idea to help people understand how to pronounce the brand name right, which many people faltered at otherwise. 

The two ad films that we have launched for our custard and pasta range are designed to wake up little positive moments in the day, with short slice-of-life stories that everyone can connect to. 

The whole exercises are being handled by Madison Media, which is our AOR for media buying, and Grey digital, which oversees the digital and creative part for us. 

On the media plan for the latest campaign

We are spending nine-ten per cent of our overall revenues in marketing right now. We were going 100 per cent digital for our revamp campaign, till the last year. We partnered with a lot of influencers and digital properties like Gobble, promoted recipes via our own website and social media channels, and in fact, did a very good programme with first-time cooks on digital platforms. 

Starting this year, we have started utilising television too, with the fresh TVCs that we have launched. Right now, 80 per cent of our marketing spends are reserved for television. 

We are currently targeting the Hindi-speaking urban belt with the initial campaign and have brought 200+ slots per day on all the major GECs. We have activated our Custard product on kids channels too, as it is more centred towards them. The TVC has also been curated keeping the children in mind. 

Apart from that, we are spending some money on OTT platforms where we are strongly emphasising on local languages. A lot of BTL promotions are happening on e-commerce channels where we have set up our own stores, pushing banner ads, and featuring all our products. 

On B2B marketing strategy

We are not spending extensively on our B2B marketing strategy. The business is roughly 20 per cent of our overall presence, which I feel is significantly strong already. Our baking powder, custard, cornflour, pasta, cake mixes are going to a number of bakeries and five-star hotels. 

The B2B marketing in the food space is all about the demonstration, so we have a strong and ever-growing network of chefs who we are utilising to connect with chefs at the target outlets. 

On D2C sales of products

We contemplated this during the Covid lockdown last year but figured it is not the right way for us to go. First, we are a low-ticket product range; our cheapest product is priced at Rs 20 the maximum it goes up to is Rs 140. So, I don’t think many people wo uld like to pay delivery charges for such small orders. We are therefore using all the digital grocery platforms and partnering with them to drive our sales.

On plans for the year 2021 

As I have mentioned, we have a quite strong distribution and retail network but we are in the process of increasing that. From a presence in 70,000 outlets, we are expecting to grow the 100,000 outlets this year. Despite Covid, we clocked a 20 per cent growth in 2020. We definitely want to build on that further. 

We are currently focussing on promoting our custard and pasta products. Following which, ideally in the second half of the year, we will be launching TVCs for our other products as well. We are planning to go even stronger on our digital promotions as well. The only challenge I currently see that can deter our objectives is the inflationary pressure we have on the economy right now. If the costs increase for us, we might have to cut that from the marketing side. 

However, we will be launching a number of products in the coming months and we are pretty excited about that. All in all, 2021 looks like a strong growth year for us, in which we will be able to grow brand saliency and increase our geographical footprint, too.