MAM
How Bikano successfully shed its traditional mien for a modern positioning
NEW DELHI: Uprooting themselves from the comfort and security of home sweet home in Bikaner to the narrow, bustling galis of Delhi 6, the forerunners of Bikanervala believed in taking measured risks and ensuring that they paid off. It’s probably the reason why they were able to make their street-side stall in Chandni Chowk into a Rs 1,000-crore enterprise with outlets dotting nearly every metro and town in the northern half of the country, and a diverse range of packaged snacks – Bikano – flying off the shelves in grocery stores and supermarkets.
It didn’t take long for the brand to make the leap from national to international presence, and the Indian diaspora in Canada, US, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and the Gulf countries welcomed Bikano – the taste of home in a bag – into their lives. Over the course of 70 years, the brand has stood the test of time and taste, and to underscore this fact, it came up with the Barson se Bikano campaign, which invokes nostalgia and goodwill enjoyed by the sweet and savoury manufacturer.
“Bikano is one of the major brands in the F&B category, specifically in the traditional snacks or namkeen category. Our main competitor is Haldiram’s and what we are doing in terms of volume, no one else comes close. With Barson se Bikano campaign we wanted to put across the message that there’s a legacy behind the brand, it comes from a strong position which delivers quality and authentic taste. It gives us that edge over the competition,” stated Dawinder Pal, head of marketing at Bikanervala Foods Pvt Ltd.
It was Pal who conceptualised and deployed the Barson se Bikano campaign to great effect. He is confident that going forwards, the brand will remain a force to be contended with when it comes to marketing in the F&B space.
“Given the current scenario and the way the consumer is changing, their behaviour is changing, innovation and differentiation will be a key factor for us. It’s going to be in terms of products and taste. First, we are working a lot on distribution and the second driver for us is availability and visibility. So we are focusing on evolving our network across the country,” he said.
In the west, the namkeen maker is focusing on Gujarat and Maharashtra because these markets contribute 27 per cent to the total category, as per Singh. Apart from this, it is setting up a facility in Hyderabad from where it will cater to the south markets and Maharashtra.
Acknowledging that there are big players who have a firm hold on the palates of the southern states, Singh said, “Bikano is presently not looking to move in aggressively in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. But we are going to start with Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.”
Not only is the brand expanding in the traditional ways, it’s also gaining traction on social media with upbeat and topical creatives. From Covid2019 precautions, to work from home readiness, the IPL opener or the new season of KBC, Bikano’s social media handles are shooting from the hip when it comes to timely and on-point marketing vignettes.
“We have a digital agency – Bytebox – on board with us for our digital media marketing. We have initiated a lot of BTL activations, and in the near future, we’ll go into ATL channels also. For a brand like us, retail visibility is very handy because impulse buying takes place at the retail counter itself. We’re also targeting consumers in their homes, especially those who are family-driven. For them social presence is also important,” he elaborated.
While the Covid2019 pandemic threw businesses across the board into turmoil, Bikano was one of the few brands which managed to weather the crisis and emerge relatively unscathed, related Singh. In fact, in his own words, the namkeen manufacturer has done “decently well.”
“There have been certain challenges in terms of procurement – of raw material, packaging material, etc. The team managed to overcome the hiccups. Otherwise the market has been fair enough to cater to consumers. In the last two quarters, we have registered double digit growth. During and even after lockdown, there’s been no negative or lasting impact of Covid.”
There has also been a marked shift in consumer behaviour from the pre-Covid to the post-Covid phase. “Earlier, buyers preferred fresh products and felt the packaged ones weren’t as fresh. But come the pandemic, and products like packaged sweets and gol-gappa sets started taking off. People are more hygiene-conscious now, they want the things they consume to be safe,” he said.
In order to cater to a new generation of consumers, the brand has introduced a range of diet namkeen mixtures – for those who don’t wish to skimp on taste for the sake of health. And for those with a sweet tooth, there is the option of Bikano multigrain cookies, and other tinned confections.
“We’re trying to deliver taste with health. With the millennial population in mind, we’re also targeting taste with convenience in the form of ready-to-eat products,” said Singh. These ready-to-eat meals – such as dal makhni, matar paneer, jeera rice – can already be purchased in markets, both offline and online.
Bikano’s extensive catalogue of products is available on leading e-commerce sites, something which contributed immensely to the brand’s sales during the lockdown period. In the sale of gift packs alone, the company in the last three-four months has registered 10X growth as compared to last year.
Going from strength to strength, the brand has now set sights on the festive season. As is its custom, Bikano introduced a fresh range of products and gift packs in time for Diwali, the festival which is the biggest money-maker for the traditional snacks category. In a market that is chock-a-block with delectable festive offerings, Bikano stands apart with its bright packaging in jewel-toned hues; even from a distance, the consumer is able to identify Bikano goodies, and makes a beeline for them. Is the choice of colour and packaging a conscious decision by the brand, we wonder. 
“We want to have that vibrancy in the entire product range. When the products get packed into the retail shelves, it sets you apart and gives you that edge over other brands. When it’s time to pick the packaging, we prefer strong, vibrant colours and yes, it’s a conscious decision,” explained Singh.
Another reason why customers stick with Bikano is the brand’s adherence to quality. Be it namkeen or sweets, there is strict quality control by in-house as well as external agencies to ensure hygiene and consistency of taste. The company takes feedback on product and marketing, studies it, compares its offerings against competitors’, and keeps improving, asserted Singh.
“With too many options available with the consumer in every category, the consumer is becoming more-fickle minded and shifting preferences more often. Marketing and innovation is key, yes, but what keeps the brand going is the patrons’ trust, and we are grateful that they have been with us consistently in that regard,” he signed off.
Digital
The creative cull: how AI is coming for the marketers, ad men and researchers
Robots aren’t taking over yet, but the writing may already be on the wall for some of the US’ most glamorous white-collar jobs.
CALIFORNIA: The robots are not, it turns out, storming the factory floor. They are sitting quietly at a MacBook in a Soho agency, rewriting your copy, summarising your focus groups and generating your mood boards, and nobody has been sacked. Yet.
A new report from Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude chatbot, offers the most rigorous look to date at what artificial intelligence is actually doing to jobs, as opposed to what doomsayers and boosters claim it might. The verdict from economists Maxim Massenkoff and Peter McCrory is nuanced but pointed: there is no mass unemployment so far, but some sectors have good reason to be nervous. Marketing, market research and the arts are squarely in the crosshairs.
The researchers introduce a new measure called “observed exposure.” It goes beyond theoretical speculation about what AI could do and instead tracks what it is already doing, drawing on real Claude usage data. The approach is clever. They weight automated uses, where the machine performs the job entirely, more heavily than augmentative ones, where it merely assists. They then map this onto roughly 800 occupations, weighted by how much time workers actually spend on each task. For now the target user base has been the US market, but the findings offer a glimpse of what may be happening in other countries as well.
The results are sobering for the creative and analytical classes. Market research analysts and marketing specialists clock in at 64.8 per cent observed exposure, meaning nearly two-thirds of their daily tasks are already being performed, at least in part, by AI in professional settings. The leading automated task is preparing reports, illustrating data graphically and translating complex findings into written text. In other words, this is the kind of work junior analysts spend most of their days doing.
Arts and media fare little better. The sector shows meaningful theoretical exposure, as large language models can in principle handle the lion’s share of tasks, though observed usage still lags behind capability. The gap is narrowing, however, and the direction of travel is unambiguous.
Here is the sting in the tail. The workers most exposed to AI disruption are not, as popular mythology suggests, low-paid drudges. They are older, better educated, more likely to be women and considerably better paid, earning 47 per cent more per hour on average than their least-exposed counterparts. Graduate degree holders are nearly four times as prevalent in the high-exposure group. The creative professional, the senior analyst and the market researcher with an MBA are precisely the people who should be paying attention.
“We’re not talking about the checkout operator,” the paper implies. “We’re talking about the account planner.”
The most alarming signal in the data concerns not those already in jobs, but those trying to enter them. Among workers aged 22 to 25, hiring into highly exposed occupations has slowed measurably since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. There has been a 14 per cent drop in the job-finding rate, a figure the authors describe as “just barely statistically significant.” Young people are, in effect, finding the door to exposed professions quietly closing. Whether they are staying in education, taking different jobs or simply giving up is not yet clear.
For a bright graduate eyeing a career in market research or media production, this is not merely an academic data point. It is a flashing amber light.
The paper is careful about what it does not find. Unemployment among highly exposed workers has not risen in any statistically meaningful way since the ChatGPT era began. The apocalypse has not arrived. Even in the Computer and Math category, the most theoretically exposed of all, Claude currently covers just 33 per cent of tasks in practice. The gap between what AI can do and what it actually does at scale in professional workflows remains vast.
Think of it less like a tsunami, the authors suggest, and more like a slowly rising tide. The internet did not destroy journalism overnight. It took 20 years and the collapse of a generation of classified advertising revenue. The China trade shock also took decades to fully register in unemployment statistics, and economists are still debating the numbers.
What does this mean for the luvvies, the admen and the pollsters? The honest answer is: not much yet, but watch this space. AI is already doing the grunt work, including data summaries, draft press releases and boilerplate creative briefs. The question is whether it stops there or continues climbing the value chain.
The authors are building a framework to track exactly that and promise to update it as new data arrives. If the tide does come in, they want to see it coming before the sandcastles are already gone.
For now, the creative industries can breathe, but perhaps not too deeply. The machine is not at the door. It is already at the desk.
