Brands
Barbeque Nation to firm up mass media communication plans for fiscal 2015
BENGALURU: Indian casual dining restaurant chain Barbeque Nation (BN) opened its 39 restaurant in Ahmedabad on 22 October. The chain has six restaurants in Bengaluru. A typical opening is preceded and followed for a while by radio jingles, outdoor billboards within the catchment areas of the new restaurant and print ads in mainline media in that city.
So far, industry sources say that, the chain had no firm media plans or strategy for brand building. All that is going to change says BN India head of marketing Vikram Varma. The company plans to come up with marketing and brand building plans for fiscal 2015. While Varma could not disclose the ad and sales promotion budgets that BN will set aside since this is still in progress, industry estimates peg spends of restaurant chains at between 5- 8 per cent of revenue.
“On an average, we serve about 400 customers per day per restaurant,” revealed Varma to www.indiantelevision.com at the ‘Pat Chapman Grills the World’ festive season experience at BN’s flagship Indiranagar, Bengaluru restaurant. “The average area of our restaurants is about 4000 square feet, and we spend anything upwards of Rs 2 crore for setting up a restaurant,” said Varma.
“We find radio to be quite an effective medium, especially during a new launch or for an event such as the one by Pat Chatman. We use mainline print, because we find it a lot more effective, and at present haven’t allocated funds for culinary publications. We are also on social media, contact customers through SMS and direct emails. Generally we’ve found that a campaign in a city adds about 30 per cent new customers, while about 70 per cent are repeat customers,” informed Varma.
BN closed last year with revenues of about Rs 270 crore, and is expected to close this fiscal at about Rs 300 crore – based on industry estimates, this pegs its ad spends at between Rs 15 crore to Rs 25 crore for FY-2016, figures that would tempt any agency to pitch for the account. Fisheye handles the creative duties for BN. The company does its own media buying.
At the Pat Chapman Grills the World festival, Chef Chapman presents his marinades range from the British Yorkshire and Jamaican Jerk Marinades to the Spanish Valencia and Albuquerque Atomic Marinades. BN has taken Chapman’s festival to its various restaurants in NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
Brands
Faber-Castell India appoints Sunaina Haldar as director – marketing
With stints at Tata, SleepyCat and ADF Foods under her belt, Haldar is primed to redraw Faber-Castell’s brand story
MUMBAI: Faber-Castell India has poached Sunaina Haldar from ADF Foods, appointing her director – marketing as the German stationery brand looks to muscle up in a category that is rapidly reinventing itself around creativity and self-expression.
Haldar hit the ground running. “My first couple of weeks have been incredibly energising, understanding consumers, visiting markets, engaging with retailers and immersing myself into the world of Faber-Castell Group,” she said.
She arrives with considerable firepower. At ADF Foods, Haldar ran marketing across India and international markets for a portfolio spanning Ashoka, Aeroplane, Camel and ADF Soul. Before that, she was vice-president – marketing at direct-to-consumer mattress brand SleepyCat, where she helmed brand, content and performance marketing. Her résumé also includes a stint leading marketing, new product development and CRM for Tata SmartFoodz at Tata Consumer Products, no small proving ground.
Between corporate roles, Haldar also operated as a fractional CMO for early-stage startups, building marketing strategy and operational structures from scratch, a signal that she knows how to move fast with limited resources.
With 18 years straddling FMCG, D2C and the startup world, Haldar now takes the reins at a brand that has long owned the classroom but is clearly hungry for the living room. In a stationery market where the pencil has become a lifestyle statement, Faber-Castell has picked someone who knows exactly how to sell that story.
