Wagh Bakri spends $45 million on new campaign for Mili

India's third largest tea brand, Wagh Bakri, would soon roll out an advertising campaign for its mass tea brand Mili to reach out to consumers in North Indian states. The company that has an overall annual marketing budget of $2000 million will spend $45 million towards the Mili campaign for which it has signed TV star Sakshi Tanwar as brand ambassador.

India is the biggest packaged tea market in the world and Wagh Bakri is the third largest tea brand in the country with a turnover of over $ 10,000 million and 42 million kg of tea distribution.  

“The intent of the new campaign is to promote Mili as a quality tea at an affordable price and to communicate this message in the simplest yet convincing manner. Our overall marketing objective however, is to make strong inroads in the Northern Indian market,” said Parag Desai, Executive Director, Wagh Bakri Tea Group.

The Wagh Bakri Tea Group currently has four brands under its umbrella. Good Morning is its super premium offering, Wagh Bakri is placed in the premium category, Mili is the brand’s popular/mass segment brand and Navchetan caters to the economy segment and is positioned against non-branded tea.

Mili is largely targeted at SEC B & C categories, predominately the homemakers.

The campaign, created by DDB Mudra, stars TV’s favourite bahu Sakshi Tanwar in a whole new, rustic avatar. The film begins with a female consumer walking into a local store and calling for the grocer – only to be addressed by Tanwar who plays the role of a ‘local shop owner’ – one of the biggest influencers in the lives of grocery buyers in India. The consumer then asks for a packet of tea, and to her surprise, is offered a freshly brewed cup of tea instead of a pack. In her Haryanvi accent, Tanwar confidently advises her to sample the tea as an exercise to prove its superior flavour, before mentioning its reasonable price.

Rajiv Sabnis

“We got down to the core benefits of the product and delivered it in the simplest manner possible. The convincing power of the retailer was proven in our market visits, so all we had to do was create an interesting conversation between the retailer and consumer. The product insight – that if you try Mili once, you’ll be convinced of its quality – was effortlessly integrated,” said Rajiv Sabnis, Executive Director, DDB Mudra Group.

Desai describes his target audience as “educated, progressive and rooted women”. Which is probably why casting Tanwar makes a lot of sense for the brand.

“Sakshi was the perfect choice for this campaign since she is known for her confident, progressive and yet rooted personality. She personifies the brand’s attributes. We are confident that her popularity among Indian households will surely help the brand resonate with the target audience, especially in tier II and III cities.”

According to Desai, the brand spends more than $2,000 million on marketing per year.

Speaking about their media mix, Desai said, “Our target audience has an elaborate media consumption pattern. Hence, for Wagh Bakri, the media mix needs to be a perfect balance of all mediums. Depending on the brand in question and the messaging we intend to convey, our combinations of mediums keep varying.”

The ad film:

Credits:

Client: Wagh Bakri Tea Group

Brand: Mili

Agency: DDB Mudra

Creative: Sharat Kuttikat, Vinayak Dubey, Bibeesh CP

Account Planning: Shekhar Pandey

Account Management: Rajiv Sabnis, Ronak Shah, Ameya Inamdar, Pranshu Jadon

Films: Pravin Misal

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