Foster's, the beer from Australia, is doing it again. After its "Foster's, Australian for beeah (beer)" advertising campaign running on television for two years, it's launched a new one that's as wacky, spoofy and as Australian as the first one.

The new campaign, which started airing in India very recently, is a spoof on the Sydney Olympics 2000. So you have this bunch of people going for the "Opening ceremony", landing up at this place whose front door is shut. They hammer on it and it takes some time to be opened. Inside is a pub, into which all these people surge.

Or take the one where these guys are seen heads-and-necks-deep in sand, their bodies straight out, at a slight angle, feet soles facing the sky. The text-over says "Javelin". Or cut to two swimmers swimming fast and powerfully, their arm movements synchronised, much as any trained swimmers would be. The screen widens out to show them being chased by a shark, and the text-over says "Synchronised swimming".

Adding to the library of Foster's "How to speak Australian" award-winning campaign which has been running across the world, the Olympic spoof series is made up of nine ads totally and includes others such as "Discus", "Shot putt" and "Hundred meter dash".

Executed in the same spirit as the "How to speak Australian" campaign that Indian television viewers are by now familiar with, the new campaign does bring a new sense of noticeability to the brand, Foster's, at a very crucial time. The brand is to launch in New Delhi next month. For Foster's India Limited, Delhi is a very important market and marks the forward march for the brand in its bid to spread across the country.

Market expansion January 2000 saw Foster's launching in Goa, though the company had tried to enter the state from almost the beginning of 1999. The issue behind the delay was the Goa government's asking for an import pass fee if any liquor company did not have a manufacturing facility in the state. "Add to that the fact that Maharashtra charges an export pass fee if the alcohol brand is going out of it into another state. The two levies would have made Foster's price in Goa unattractive," says Pradeep Gidwani, the 36-year-old managing director of Foster's India Ltd.

Faced with this issue were other liquor companies that did not manufacture in Goa as well. So companies such as Seagram, Shaw Wallace, International Distillers India and Foster's got together and made a representation to the Goa government to do away with the import pass fee. Finally, the government agreed; the fee has been removed for everyone.

Delhi itself is a very difficult market to enter because of another rule: you can't launch your liquor brand there unless you have sold five million cases in India (without Delhi) first. Foster's, which has managed to sell 1.2 million cases so far, went to the Delhi government, asking for permission to launch. According to Gidwani, the Delhi government's argument in favour of the rule is that it wants to ensure that the consumers gets good quality brands.

Foster's counter-arguments were two: one, that it is an international brand that sells 100 million cases worldwide, so how can the product not be of good quality? And two, how can it sell five million cases in India if it is not allowed to sell in a big market like Delhi? Permission to launch was granted and next month, Delhi will see a lot of blue (coloured, silly, since Foster's label colour is a rich, deep blue) activity, much as Mumbai saw in the months following the mild beer's launch in July 1998.

One year plan Over the next one year, the plan is to launch in at least four markets, including Delhi. "We're trying with every state," says Gidwani. "Liquor marketing varies state-by-state and there are roadblocks. Which markets we crack open first will depend on where we get our permissions first. The same issues exist in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Though modified to some extent, they also exist in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan."

But plans have been made for market expansion and there's no going back on that. Though Gidwani is unwilling to comment on what the plans are for more manufacturing plant locations (you can't market across India from just one plant in Maharashtra, which is what Foster's currently has), he does say that one each in the north and the south are on the plans.

Gidwani feels that so far, Foster's has done well for itself, growing to capture 24 per cent market share by volume in Maharashtra in a year since it launched. Last year too (Foster's fiscal of July 1999-June 2000), it grew by another three per cent in a stagnant market: "According to Maharashtra's excise figures, there was zero per cent growth in beer. That is, mild beer (the category Foster's is in) sold five million cases overall in the state, the figure the same as the year before. Strong beer saw growth by one per cent," says Gidwani.

Incidentally, between July 1999 and May this year, Gidwani himself took a break from Foster's India Ltd, which he had joined as vice president marketing and sales when the company was established in the country. He had gone off to Moet Hennessy (India) has chief representative, South Asia. Foster's managing director, M. Natarajan, quit in March this year and the parent company approached Gidwani to return as managing director. Gidwani thought the offer over and came back, attracted by the challenge of expanding Foster's presence across India.

Since his return, a five-year plan has been drawn up. Undoubtedly, it is ambitious since Gidwani's desire is to make Foster's the number one beer brand in India. At a personal level, besides believing in sound planning, broken up to month-by-month activities, Gidwani believes strongly in gut feel. "It is very important as part of a company's growth and activities. The 'Australian for beer' campaign did not score well on research in India, for example. I insisted on it's being run, based on a gut feel that it would work, and backed by a conviction that the research done in a controlled environment, with the wrong guys, could not throw up the right results."

Well, he was proved right -- the campaign recording high on acceptability and recall. With such confidence in his own gut feel, clubbed with his past -- acknowledged -- success at Foster's India Ltd, Gidwani and his team are all set to storm other Indian state markets. "We just have to try hard. We are managing our business in a complex environment," admits Gidwani.

And while still working on expanding Foster's presence in the country, he is looking forward to the government of India fulfilling its assurance that by April 2001, liquor imports will be taken off the negative list. "There are other brands in the Foster's Brewing Group's basket," he concludes, already thinking ahead.