Marketing review

UB to introduce new drinks, packaging
United Breweries is planning to introduce new drinks and different packaging for its existing products to rope in more consumers. The company is planning to introduce the new drinks keeping women in mind such as low carbonated beer and other liquids.

The beer company is looking at pulling out a few brands from certain markets and strengthening the presence of a few others. Brands like Zingaro have been withdrawn from a few markets while its marketing was increased in a few others. The company has achieved a good amount of success with its mild beer. Its sales in the mild beer segment have grown 13 per cent compared with the industry average of 9.4 per cent. The strong beer segment has grown 36 per cent while the rest of the industry grew 16 per cent. Kingfisher Strong sold over 17 million cases during 2005-06 while Kingfisher Lager sold over 20 million cases.

Pizza Corner plans expansion
Pizza Corner is expanding operations and plans to add another 40 outlets across the country by the end of FY '06 and bring in more GFA brands into the country. These include setting up of 30 new Pizza Corner outlets and 10 Coffee World outlets in the next one year.

Tata Teleservices launches 'Don't Stop' mobile
Tata Teleservices has started another mobile tariff war, by launching a two-year package of free outgoing calls to all Tata Indicom connections within a State, without the customer having to recharge every month. Called the `Don't' Stop' offer, this builds on the "tremendous success" of the `Non-Stop Mobile' offer introduced by the company last year, said the company. Targeted again at the popular segment the `Don't Stop' scheme offers free outgoing calls for two years to mobile, fixed-wireless and landline phones of Tata Indicom within a state, subject to a maximum of 3,600 minutes.

Incoming calls for these two years would also be free. Existing customers can enter the scheme by paying Rs199 and subscribers can then recharge with any prepaid voucher starting at Rs50. All vouchers come with 100 per cent talk time. For new customers, the offer is bundled with the handsets Indicom Ace (bundled offer for Rs2,299), Kyocera Prisma (Rs2,499) and Indicom Star (Rs3,749).

The company says that its `Non-Stop' schemes last year (the two year non-stop scheme and the Life-time non-stop schemes) have come up with average revenue per user of Rs200 per month, which is more than its original expectations.

TTSL and its listed subsidiary Tata Teleservices Maharashtra together have 9 million customers in over 2,500 towns. The company clarified that since this was a promotional offer it would not come up against any problems with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

Airtel comes up with `Easy Lifetime Pre-paid' plan
Bharti Airtel has launched the Easy Lifetime Pre-paid plan wherein customers can go mobile for life for Rs99 per month in 12 instalments.

The company says that when it introduced the Lifetime Pre-paid last year, it marked the beginning of unprecedented growth in mobile telephony in India. Now with the Easy Lifetime Pre-paid, it would take customer convenience and affordability to a new level. It says that the new plans especially comes as a boon for the B and C class SECs.

New ad campaign from Tata Tea
Tata Tea has launched an advertising campaign featuring tennis player Sania Mirza for Tata Tea Premium.

The company is positioning Tata Tea Premium as the tea that activates one to take on challenges with the tagline `Taste Kaamyaabi Ka.' The campaign communicate Tata Tea Premium's brand essence — "energy to succeed", the company said in a news release. Filmmaker Nagesh Kukonoor has directed the ad and the concept of the ad has been devised by advertising agency Dentsu Marcom.

SriLankan Holidays' launches promotional offer
Srilankan Holidays the leisure company of SriLankan Airlines, has announced a special promotional offer on flights from Thiruvananthapuram. It has launched a `stay over and shop over' package that offers passengers a return, economy class air ticket on the Thiruvananthapuram-Colombo route and a two-night stay in Sri Lanka at prices starting from Rs5,230 per person, excluding taxes, according to an airline press release. A special shopping spree is also part of the package. Passengers who opt for the package can choose to stay in a hotel in Colombo, Negombo or the South Coast of the country. The special package is available till June 30. As part of the package, passengers can also opt to buy an `extension fare' and extend travel to destinations like Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Maldives and Beijing, the release adds.

Besides accommodation in a `star class' hotel on a twin-sharing basis, the package includes breakfast on two days, airport transfers and special discounts at several prominent stores and restaurants in Colombo.

Titan plans watches that give stock prices, news
Titan Industries' tie-up with technology company, Innoviti Embedded Solutions will bring aq new kind of special kind of watches that give out information on stock market, business, and general news. The company said that excess bandwidth with the FM channel will be used for this application.

Titan officials have in the past expressed concern about the boom in mobile telephony, which they feared could shrink the market for watches. Hence, this tie-up is aimed at countering the threat.

Innoviti, which was launched three years ago with funds from an angel investor, has already filed patents for `Vaayu' and `Payezee'. The latter allows customers to pay hotel bills and other bills through wireless while `Vaayu' uses the same wireless technology to allow people to use their laptops or handhelds to connect to the Internet

WorldSpace expands to four more cities
WorldSpace Satellite Radio expanded into four more cities including Goa, Jaipur, Nagpur and Thiruvananthapuram. The company is targeting a nearly 2.6-million audience base and a total population of 6.2 million. Nearly 100 retail outlets are there across the new markets and more are expected in the near term, the digital radio service provider said in a release. The expansion, it said, gives it a potential market of nearly 38 million across the nation.

On offer over the sub-continent are over 40 channels spanning music, news, sports and information. The Indian programming has classical channels Shruti (Carnatic) and Gandharv (Hindustani), regional services such as Tara (Bengali), KL Radio (Tamil), Sparsha (Kannada), RM Radio (Malayalam), Spandana (Telugu) and Tunak Punjabi.

Dravid to endorse Citizen watches
Japanese watchmaker Citizen India has signed up Indian cricket team captain Rahul Dravid as its brand ambassador in India. The company has announced an investment of about $3-4 million over the next two years to expand its business in India for retail expansion and brand promotion.

The company is looking at doubling its sales in India from 200,000 units last year. The company has also set a target of opening 350 retail outlets by the end of the year.

NDTV signs up Dhoni
The Prannoy Roy-promoted news channel NDTV has signed an exclusive one-year contract with sensational wicketkeeper- batsman Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Under the terms of the contract, starting May 7, Dhoni would be available exclusively on NDTV for all interviews, views and special shows.

According to Roy, chairman, NDTV, "Our viewers would now be able to watch and hear one of India's most adored youth icons. The decision to sign him was taken in view of his immense talent, maturity and exemplary display of sportsmanship," he said. To mark the commencement of this special relationship, Dhoni presented an autographed bat to NDTV. Commenting on the tie-up, Dhoni said, "It is a privilege to be associated with India's most reputed and respected media house. I am sure that through this platform I will be able to reach out to all cricketing fans in India and across the world. I look forward to a successful and fulfilling relationship".

HAL gets its employees to play brand ambassadors
Bangalore-based Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd will for the first time hit the campaign trail, with testimonials from a few of its year-old design engineering recruits. The two-phase campaign, with the tagline `Join us, propel your dreams,' will have five print ads in phase 1. Following this will be a national and international brand campaign for the company.

This year, the company plans to hire 500 management trainees, 450 of them from various engineering streams, which is 200 more than last year.

The ads have been conceived, scripted and shot in-house and feature five young men and women design engineers training at the HAL Management Academy, talking proudly about how their childhood dreams of aircraft making have come true.

Also on the cards are hoardings and television campaigns over the coming months.

Tata Motors comes out as forerunner
Tata Motors has been adjudged as the forerunner in the first TNS TruckTrak2006 a syndicated study on customer satisfaction of trucks that maps customer expectations in the dynamic truck market. The company leads in the medium and heavy truck category above 10 tonnes with a truck industry highest index of 90 in the tractor-trailer segment.

TNS TruckTrak lets manufacturers prepare themselves to meet the expectation of truck buyers. The study analyses the responses of over 5,000 truck customers in the areas of `sales satisfaction' and `service satisfaction', across the country.