Marketing review

Titan to service mobiles
Titan Industries is planning to start servicing more brands at its watch care centres. The company is exploring more opportunities especially in the servicing of mobile phone brands. It says it gets several brands for servicing but it will work with only the top few national brands.

Apart from mobile phones, Titan is also open to the idea of offering its servicing network to other Swiss watch brands, pens and cameras.

Sushmita to star in S Kumars new commercials
S Kumars Nationwide has signed up former Sushmita Sen to endorse its new brand Carmichael House. The brand will offer total solutions in the home textile segment, including bed linen, bath linen, table linen, kitchen linen, curtains and upholstery. At present, the campaign is being shot for print and television.

The new campaign is likely to break around mid-April. There is a tremendous gap between the growing demand and the supply of quality products in the home textiles segment. The company says that with its thorough understanding of the Indian customer and proven expertise in the textile sector is offering total solutions for the Indian home. The brand will be available through multi-brand outlets, large format stores and exclusive brand outlets.

3i Infotech gives new brand name to banking solution
Mumbai: 3i Infotech has given a new brand name to its banking solutions product under the `KastleTM' brand. The exercise is aimed at consolidating its various erstwhile banking products, which would now onwards be known by a single brand name - Kastle. The company says the word `castle' signifies a secure environment and to reiterate this, the brand name Kastle also carries a tag line: Secure Banking Solutions.

3i Infotech has undertaken the rebranding to emphasise security in banking software and offer its customers a secure banking environment. "Banks prefer a one-stop-shop solution, wherein a single vendor caters to their varied technological requirements. Through this exercise we will be in a position to address the software products requirements of banks in a more comprehensive manner."

Electrolux launches new range of ACs
Electrolux Kelvinator Appliances has launched a new range of air-conditioners branded as Oxigen with an eye on the summer season. The company has also launched an ad campaign to promote the new range with the tag line, `Thinking of You'. The company claims 7 per cent of the AC market growing at 20-25 per cent annually.

his year the AC market is expected to grow to 1.8 million. The company says the Oxigen range offer value-added features such as dust deactivators and multi-stage bacterial filters. Also, flow of water is re-directed to prevent formation of water droplets and maintain optimum airflow.

Quaker Oats launched
PepsiCo group company Fritolay has launched its new breakfast cereal - Quaker Oats. The product comes with unique taste mix sachets in two flavours - sweet and savoury. The new offering marks the company's foray into the breakfast market.

Fastrack launches 'Fall Collection'
Titan Industries' youth brand, Fastrack, has launched 'The Fall collection,' consisting of a range of sunglasses. The company said, "Fastrack, the well accepted youth brand from Titan is escalating towards leadership position in the eye wear category. The new Fall collection is mainly focused on sporty and trendy collection embedded with latest innovative styles in multiple variants that that meet the fashion and lifestyle needs of today's youth.

With 120 variants available the collection is priced in the Rs695 and Rs1,995 range and is available at all World of Titan showrooms as well as Shoppers' Stop, Lifestyle, Westside and Landmark. The new range would also be backed by a 360-degree marketing campaign that includes a TV commercial featuring Fastrack brand ambassador, John Abraham.

VVF launches new skin care soap
Mumbai-based Vegetable Vitamin Foods Company better known as VVF, a leading player in personal care products market, has launched a new brand of skin care soap - Shiff, with "nourishing moisturisers and anti-bacterial properties".

According to the company the 75gm Shiff pack is reasonably priced at Rs12 and contains no animal fat, nor has it been tested on animals. According to the company, ''Shiff is the result of understanding the needs of our consumers and providing them with a soap that will pamper and protect them everyday. Shiff is a combination of beauty soap with germ-fighting qualities. "For the first time consumers will have a product that combines the best of these two properties."

The product will be available across the country at all retail outlets. The company has roped in TV host and celebrity Pooja Bedi to endorse its new brand.

''With Shiff now, all of us can be the proud owner of a beautiful and healthy skin. I love the feel of the soap on the skin. Bathing with Shiff is definitely an exhilarating experience,'' said Ms Bedi.

According to the research undertaken by the company, Indian consumers needed a soap that not only provides adequate moisturisers but also protects the skin against the omnipresent bacteria.

Candico launches mint candies
Candico has launched XXX, a new range of hard-boiled mint candies priced at 50 paise a piece. The company claims the product is different from other mint candies available in the market. The company's market research on mint candies found that the category is the highest growing segment in the industry today.

The research found that almost all mint products were competing in the same brand space with little or no product differentiation in terms of product attribute or consumer offers. It found that the current mints in the market are based on either medicinal or breath freshener platform and are around the same taste index and even similar packaging.

Candico&'s xxx targets the mint consumer who is looking for that extra strong mint hile packaging the product.

Candico manufactures four categories of confectionery - candies, toffees, lozenges and gums in addition to hard-boiled mint candies, the highest growing segment in the industry today. It is the second largest Indian confectionery company and has 13 brands.

Candico owns India's largest integrated confectionery manufacturing facility, located at Nagpur in Maharashtra with a production capacity of 45,000 tonnes and undertakes contract manufacturing for Nestle, HLL, ITC, Nutrine, Dalmiya Consumer Care and Euro Gadhia (London).

Limca launches campaign for summer
'Limca Fresh Ho Jao' is the new advertising campaign released this summer by Coca Cola India to promote the largest carbonated soft drink brand in the cloudy lemon category. The campaign features actress Riya Sen. As part of the new campaign, a 40 second advertisement will be aired during the India-England cricket series on Doordarshan and Sahara One, and is expected to hit all other leading TV channels shortly.

According to the company, "The new Limca Fresh Ho Jao campaign aptly expresses the feeling of youthfulness and freshness." The company claimed that the brand enjoys over 11 per cent of the total carbonated soft drinks market in India and has doubled its volume growth in last three years.

New security tool from Trend Micro
Anti virus software company Trend Micro India has launched the Trend Micro InterScan web security appliance, a new gateway-based hardware solutions.

Niraj Kaushik, country manager, Trend Micro and SAARC, said that the appliance would act as the first line of defense against spyware, grayware, viruses and phishing. It also has the ability to trigger automatic agentless end-point clean-up through collaboration with its damage cleanup services (DCS).

He noted that the appliance also provides detection and blocking, URL filtering, anti-phishing and other features to prevent threats such as spyware from entering the network.

Reliance offers 10-year validity plan
Reliance Infocomm, a part of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), has introduced a new incoming call scheme valid for 10 years priced at Rs795. The launch of the new 10-year scheme comes after TRAI's order last month that the `lifetime validity' or `unlimited' schemes by cellular companies would remain valid only till the licence period of the telecom operators.
The new scheme will run parallel to the company's existing `lifetime validity' scheme which will be valid till 2021 or about 15 years from now, considering that fact that the company has a longer licence period remaining compared to other mobile operators.

According to the company its `lifetime validity' product has a longer validity than those offered by other mobile operators since they had received their licence in 1994 and hence the license are valid only till 2014, which is less than 10 years from now.