With no alcoholic beverage advertising permitted under Indian law, the only way such products can connect with consumers is from the shelf. This makes the way brands are expressed through their bottle and label even more important in the Indian market. The sheer size of the Indian market makes it very attractive to drinks brands, and there a large number of domestic products on the market, but with the increasing spending power of the Indian consumer international brands are increasingly targeting the market. One very strong local brand is McDowell’s No.1 whiskey, which is distilled in India using a blend of some of the finest Indian and Scottish whiskies. In fact, it has proved so popular that it has become one of the best-selling whiskies in the world.
However, McDowell’s, which is marketed by UB Group, has faced two major marketing challenges over the last decade: the first came from an increasing influx of Western whiskey brands, while the second resulted from the need to appeal to India’s growing demographic of young high earners. Strategic brand positioning of its look and feel by Claessens International helped it to successfully overcome these issues, boosting sales significantly in each case.
Strategy
Much of McDowell’s foreign competition in the early 2000s was coming from Scottish brands, which were entering the Indian market at a higher price, but still attracting consumers. McDowell’s could not claim to be a Scotch whiskey, yet needed to appeal to those who were buying the imported brands.
We built more emotion and depth into the McDowell’s No.1 brand,” explains James Boulton, creative director at Claessens. “We couldn’t change the bottle, because it was a key part of the brand, but we made it more sophisticated.
The aim was to bestow higher quality whisky credentials by giving McDowell’s an international feel so it could compete with the foreign whisky products coming into the market, and raise price expectations. Suddenly the local brand stepped up to look as good if not better than the imported brands.”
The aim of the second brand development five years later was to add modernity and a more iconic feel to capitalise on a new lucrative market – the rise of the young Indian consumer with a growing disposable income.
We had to carefully evolve the brand further,” says Boulton. “One key development was to subtly lengthen the neck of the bottle to make it look elegant, but not dated.”
The combination of refinements carried out by Claessens resulted in a McDowell’s brand upgrade that appealed to a younger aspirational audience, while still connecting with the product’s existing customers.
Results
The two stages of brand development work more than doubled sales of McDowell’s No.1 whiskey over a five-year period. When Claessens began working with the brand, it was selling around five million cases a year. Repositioning McDowell’s to compete with imported products resulted in a further three million cases sold, while a similar sales increase was generated by modernising the brand’s look and feel five years later. This meant that by 2007, around 11 million cases of McDowell’s No.1 were being sold.
Since then the brand has continued to go from strength to strength, selling 15.4 million cases in 2010 and becoming one of the top 10 most popular spirit brands in the world*.
Commenting on the success of the rebrand, Vijay Mallya, chairman of UB Group, says: “Volumes rose 18% to reach 73m cases for the nine month period [after the relaunch] across the group. This was attributed to the rise of new packaging for a number of whiskies including our flagship McDowell’s No.1.”
Vijay K Rekhi, president of the spirits division for UB Group, adds: “We would like to acknowledge the excellent work rendered Claessens International to upgrade our McDowell No.1 range of brands, namely McDowels No. 1 Whisky, Brand and Rum. Their value equation and imagery have been uplifted considerably and we believe this gives us competitive edge.”