SR no Title

1 History and Origin (Scenario before launch, after launch,

brand foundation)
2 Brand Competition, Product Differentiators and SWOT
Analysis
3 Understanding Consumer Profiling
4 Advertisements and Consumer Involvement Techniques
5 Marketing (Internet/ Digital/ Social Media/ E-
Commerce)
6 Market Share and Analysis of Current Covid Times and
Targeting the Bottom of the Pyramid
7 Consumer Response, Attitude, Trust, and Influencing
Factors
8 References and Conclusion

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 1. History and Origin (Scenario before launch, after launch, brand foundation)

The tale to tease your buds, here is the legendary story of Parle G, the much-loved humble biscuit. It
is even today that many people across the country prefer to wake up to cup of tea and Parle-G. And
no wonder for millions of Indians, Parle G isn’t just any other biscuit but a comfort food!

Cut to the year 1929. Mohanlal Dayal of the Chauhans, Mumbai-based family of silk traders, had
bought and refurbished a decrepit, old factory to manufacture confectionery. Highly influenced by
the Swadeshi movement, Chauhan had gone to Germany to learn the art of confectionery-making.
After his return in 1929, armed with the required skills and the machinery. Located between the
villages of Irla and Parla and Irla, a small factory was set up which employed just 12 men
with the family members themselves serving in multiple capacities. It is believed that founders
were so busy managing the factory that they forgot to name it, and so with time, the first Indian
owned confectionery brand in the country came to be known after its place of birth, Parle.

Parle’s first product was an orange candy, soon followed by other confectioneries and toffees.
However, it was only 10 years later that it began its biscuit making operations. Even as the bugle for
World War II was sounded in 1939, the company baked its first biscuit. Back during those times,
biscuits were mostly imported, were expensive, and were meant for consumption only by the elite
classes. United Biscuits, Huntly & Palmers, Britannia, and Glaxo were the prominent British
brands that ruled even the Indian markets. To counter this trend Parle Products launched
Parle Gluco as an affordable source of nourishment for the common public. Made in India,
meant for Indian palates and accessible to every Indian, the Parle biscuit became popular within the
public. It was also much-in-demand by the British-Indian army during World War II. However,
in 1947, a severe wheat shortage (where India was left with only 63% of its wheat cultivation area
after Partition) immediately after Independence meant that the production of Parle Gluco biscuits
had to stop for a while. In an ad saluting Indians who had sacrificed their lives for the freedom
of their motherland, Parle urged its consumers to make do with barley biscuits till wheat
supplies were restored.

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Parle G|17030520019
 2. Brand Competition, Product Differentiators, and SWOT Analysis

In 1960, Parle Products felt the pinch when other players in the market began launching their
own glucose biscuits. During this time, Britannia launched its first glucose biscuit brand, Glucose
D, and had it endorsed by Gabbar Singh. With similar brand names confusing people, most
people would just ask shopkeepers for glucose biscuits. Battling the flood of knock-offs, the firm
created a packaging that would be unique to Parle Gluco while patenting its own packing
machinery. The new packaging was a yellowish wax-paper wrapper with a plump little girl
imprinted on it (an illustration by Everest Brand Solutions), along with the brand name and
company’s red-colored logo. However, while the new packaging clicked with the biscuit’s target
audience — kids and their mothers, it still failed to distinguish Parle Gluco from the horde of “me-
too” glucose biscuit brands in market. This prompted the management to rechristen the biscuit and
see if it helped it stand out from the crowd. Hence in 1982, Parle Gluco was repackaged as Parle
G, with the ‘G’ standing for glucose, of course. To avoid duplication by small biscuit-makers (who
sold their low-quality biscuits in a similar yellow wax paper), the packaging material was a
change to low-cost printed plastic.
Brand Competition of Parle G are:

 Britannia: Tiger, Good Day

 ITC: Sunfeast Glucose, Sunfeast Dream Cream,
 Surya: Priya Gold, Marie Lite

The competitive strategies that helped it stand out can be viewed as follows:
Price: Priced at as low as of Rs.5, it is one of the most affordable snack items with its low pricing
strategy. Although positioned for smart kids, the biscuit hence touches all the strata and is
consumed by everyone, as the brand ensures it is available to the people in the remotest of
locations. Parle G with its constant innovation has even beaten inflation ad it hasn't risen its price
above a certain extent, resulting in more sales figures.
Packaging: Wrapped in red and yellow wax paper with the image of the small girl on it, the
packaging of Parle G hasn’t changed much over the years. This helps Parle G build brand association
and I crease its brand recall value through its packaging.
Product: Although low price is the reason of high acceptability, the good taste, and a maintained
quality of the biscuit is something that kept the consumers coming back. The success of the biscuit
is reassured when Parle G is rather used as a verb in any shop when asked for a biscuit.
Branding and Communication: Parle G brands itself as “Bharat ka Apna Biscuit” creating
memories since its inception. It ensures to reach all the target audience from kids to young adults
strengthening is dominance in the market.

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The SWOT Analysis of the brand can be shown through the following figure:

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 3. Understanding Consumer Profiling

How Parle G segments its consumers?

Parle G is consumed by people of all ages, all the economic strata, and all the geographic
location. Its target audience and hence, a major audience it sells its biscuits (almost 60
percent) is children. For some it is a best accompaniment with tea, for others a glucose boost
when low on energy. It is a mass product, and hence has a mass production, distribution, and
promotion. Although it does place itself as a children’s biscuit using the G of Genius for them, and
the consumption comes maximum from children, they do not stop having it after they have grown
and hence the sales don’t stop. Although now, they have moved from mass marketing to giving
an emotional and personalized touch to their campaigns.

The psychographic calling: The most obvious reason and motivation of consumers choosing Parle
G is to feed their hunger as it is a cheaper value product, that is considered as healthy and can be
used as a snack Apart from this, the posh restaurants have started using Parle G as a cheaper
innovative substitute making innumerable recipes that sell because of the consumer’s emotional
attachment to the product, building on the sales figures.
Hence, its market segmentation is in retail because of mass production capacity, is institutional,
targets all income groups and socio-economic class and age groups.

Who are the real consumers of Parle G?

Children are mostly the consumers and influencers of Parle G making them its basic and target
audience of priority. This is also the reason why every Parle G ad campaign keeps children at their
center stage, as they form a humongous 50% of heir TG. Also focusing on the middle-class income
strata, they, being the largest consumers, it has also gone institutional by collaborating with
hospitals, railways, and being there as the staple snack anytime when needed, especially recently in
2020, during the times of pandemic which we will see in detail later.

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 4. Advertisements and Consumer Involvement Techniques

From a TV commercial in which a burly Dadaji and his grandchildren sang in chorus — “Swaad
bhare, Shakti bhare, Parle-G”, to in 1998, when Parle-G found a quirky brand endorser in Shaktiman,
the desi superhero from a television screen who was popular with Indian kids, Parle G through
right kind of ads has kept swooning its TG.

Parle products have not looked back, and the success also goes to its campaigns. From “ G Maane
Genius” and “Hindustan ki Taakat” to “Roko Mat, Toko Mat”, Parle- G’s fun and relatable ads helped
it move its image from mono-dimensional to multi-dimensional that is, from an energy
biscuit to a source of strength and creativity. Also, its 2013 ad campaign encourages parents
to give their kids a free hand in pursuing their dreams, the ad which is added further in this
assignment in the ad section. The jingle, for which Gulzar lent his pen and Piyush Mishra lent
his voice, celebrates “Kal ke Genius”.

Its one of its recent campaigns, “Woh Pehli Waali Baat”, Parle G has people from different scenarios
talk about the changes that has taken place over the years.

These perfectly executed campaigns and the biscuits’ reliable quality are among the key
reasons for the brand’s success over the years. Today, the company boasts of astounding sales
figures of over a billion packets a month. That is around a hundred million packets of Parle G every
month, or 14,600 crore biscuits in the entire year, which adds up to 121 biscuits each for 1.21
billion Indians.

In fact, the biscuit is so popular that some restaurants have started using it to make high-end
desserts. For example, Farzi Cafe has invented a Parle G cheesecake and Mumbai’s 145 has a Parle
G Eatshake!

Nonetheless, despite its swift growth and heavy demand, the brand has remained true to its
philosophy. People from every strata of society consume it; from a person sitting in an urban high
rise to a person in the smallest of towns. It is also the only brand that is easily available at places
like a village of 100 people near the LoC.

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Maybe that is the reason this humble glucose biscuit has retained its special place in the heart of
all Indians, despite new biscuits entering the market every other day.

Here’s some interesting facts to end the story of the world’s largest selling biscuit which help us
understand how it has marketed itself so well by giving out even these facts!

● If you line up all the Parle-G biscuits consumed annually, end to end, you can go around the
Earth 192 times.
● The amount of sugar used to make 13 billion Parle-G biscuits — 16,100 tons — can cover
the streets of the world’s smallest city, the Vatican City.
● 400 million Parle-G biscuits are produced daily, and if a month’s production of the biscuits
is stacked side by side, the distance between the Earth and the Moon can be covered.

Following are the list of few ads that I really feel made a difference in branding the Parle G
brand and taking it forward. The links to the dame are mentioned below:

● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVKG44TDT0A This ad beautifully brings us back to

why Parle G came into existence. It positions itself well as the biscuit of the nation using the
metaphors of how some people (Indian army) become the Parle G of India. Making the
audience realize that everyone can afford maintaining their glucose and filling their tummy
with as basic as the 2Rs Parle G biscuit that would stay with you during your toughest times,
considering India is no more that “Sone ki Chidiya”.
● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZc2FqHh13Q The “You are my Parle G” ad reinforces
the brand image that Parle G is similar to that intricate person in your life whom you
cherish, miss, and trust through and through, being your person, the same way Parle G is
your biscuit.
● https://youtu.be/C6T7W47JPEk “Aap hai to hum hai” campaign film saluting and showing
gratitude to the frontliners during the pandemic.
● https://youtu.be/O5oqa0kDxqE , https://youtu.be/nA8OnoH9KeQ , and
https://youtu.be/o8VRzzHpNwM are from the “G maane genius- Jo auro ki Khushi me
paaye apni khhushi” campaign - encouraging children to help and find happiness in others
happiness. It keeps the core philosophy of Parle G alive and passes emotionally binding
message to both children and their parents.
● https://youtu.be/MHI32f0dRlw - Using the success of Taarein Zameen Par movie, they
created a campaign using stars Darsheel and Aamir Khan as the movie related to the core
values of Parle G biscuits.
● https://youtu.be/Uie4FVymPMY Its one of the bests “Roko mat took mat” Campaign that
got the maximum attention with greatly meaningful jingle and conceptualized ads.

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Parle G|17030520019
The old Parle G paper ads of the past for reference of how it has changed its communication
strategy over time according to the need:

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 5. Marketing (Internet/ Digital/ Social Media/ E- Commerce)

The Integrated Marketing Communications of Parle G as on digital platforms, Twitter, and all the
other mediums to Targeting New Generation include the following campaigns.
Talking about the genesis of the campaigning of Parle G, Shah told on an interview with Brand
Equity, “Before 2003, brand Parle-G was quite one-dimensional" and focused on functional aspects
and benefits. When the company’s marketing team came together to redefine strategies, they
realized the need to “humanize and provide depth” to the brand. That sparked the ‘genius’ idea to
celebrate intelligence and goodness in children.

The first ‘G Mane Genius’ campaign which ran for almost 10 years had two iterations. In 2013, with
‘Roko Mat Toko Mat’ ads Parle-G addressed the philosophical aspect of ‘how to raise a genius’
narrative. Two years ago, in the second version of the campaign, ‘Parle-G Digital Genius’, the brand
showed ‘how the new generation is adapting to the latest technologies, using and learning from it’.
The campaign: Kal ka Genius - “Bachpan se Bada Koi School Nahi, Curiosity se Bada Koi Teacher
Nahi” was an extremely successful campaign that encouraged parents, the buys of Parle G for their
kids, on appreciating their kids for the genius they hold in different things. This was a User
Generated Content which encouraged the target audience to bring out the positive skill of their
child. It urges parents to allow their children to explore their curiosity, to view things in
different/creative perspectives, which in turn will help them become future 'geniuses'.
Conceptualized by Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai, the television commercials (TVCs) showcase children
who come up with amazing solutions to problems in a creative manner.
This campaign had amazing response through twitter and other social media channels.

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Apart from this, Parle G has an active digital presence, which helps hem keep interacting with the
newer generation through modern mediums shifting from rational to communicative emotional
communication.
Its #ZiddiChhoriya, #GeniusPhotographer, #GeniusCricketMoments etc. have been greatly
successful campaigns that have gained traction over Twitter.
It also tries to beat the summer with its Parle G recipes attracting millions to buy Parle G in the
following ways:

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It also engages by creating contests which involve boosting its sales and online presence like:

This is how Parle G strides forward through digital mediums and TV Commercials in engaging and
attracting and reaching the audience through interactive or emotional building stories and contests.

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 6. Market Share and Analysis of Current Covid Times and Targeting the Bottom
of the Pyramid

Parle G is the highest sold biscuits in India and has been so since its inception. This has in fact
largely increased in the times of the global pandemic. Distributed nationally during the pandemic
by the government to the poor and needy, aligning towards its humble and caring narrative.
In 2020, the 82-year-old Indian company achieved a unique milestone of selling the maximum
number of biscuits during the lockdown. Reports of migrant workers who trekked hundreds of
kilometers to get back home sustaining themselves on Parle-G and common households hoarding
biscuits made headlines last year.

According to Shah, despite all the challenges of last year, 2020 was also a year full of opportunities.
He adds, "Consumer behaviour changed in many verticals, which usually takes a few years. Our
vision for Parle-G is to let go of the traditional strategies and outline content to suit the individual
(as opposed to mass appeal) for more personal engagement.”

Becoming India’s comfort food, Parle G biscuit tells its story through the pandemic, and had won
hearts over for the same. The company announced to donate 3 crore packets of Parle G biscuits
when the pandemic intensified in India. In fact, the company also gained a market share of around
5% in the extremely competitive organized biscuit sector. Owing to its economic proposition 2Rs,
and being considered as a good source of glucose, it gained traction being considered by
government agencies and NGOs working to distribute food relief packages and people stocking
their pantries with Parle G.
Apart from this, its mass production allows a low pricing strategy enabling it to feed the hunger of
hundreds of thousands of people during harder times, or even a normal day keeping in mind a
noticeable number of population in India living below poverty line. Parle G’s efficient distribution
channels also make its availability to the lower and the middle-class people easy, making it an
omnipresent and powerful.
It also had a digital film “Aap hai to hum hai” thanking all the frontline workers in the time of
pandemic and appreciating them.
Refer the following article to know better:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/06/india-biscuits-coronavirus-
pandemic-migrant-workers/612619/

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 7. Consumer Response, Attitude, Trust, and Influencing Factors

Parle G has been the favorite amongst the biscuit brands by being used as a verb when asked for a
glucose biscuit. It catering to the lower and the middle-class audience majorly, had faced hurdles
when Parle G biscuits started being taken as dog biscuits. It eventually changed this perception
through its campaign and gained traction. The trust on the biscuit brand kept on building during
the times of pandemic due to its economic packet of Rs2 which fed the hunger of millions, while it
was also distributed to the needy and poor during the covid lockdown. With maintained quality and
taste, being the energy boosting healthy biscuit, it is savored by everyone who looks for an anytime
snack. Parle G henceforth has always had an overwhelming response from the audience and its
consumers not only because of its functionalities, but also because of how it moved its consumers
(Children and Parent buying for their children) towards an emotional experience be it about
appreciating the kids for their creative skills or supporting children to take whichever career path
they desire to take. It has the right touch points, influencing people to and keeping them connected,
boosting sales figures throughout. The brand is always positively perceived be it because of its
CSR activities, or covid time help, or the memories of childhood and positivity and energy it
associates itself with.

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 8. References and Conclusion

The references used in this assignment are mentioned in the list below.
https://www.thebetterindia.com/118788/p8arle-g-story-mumbai-chauhan-glucose-biscuit-
swadeshi-movement-india/
https://www.nextbigbrand.in/parle-g-records-best-sales-figures-in-3-months-of-ongoing-
lockdown/#:~:text=Brand%20Parle%2DG%20falls
%20into,36%2C000%2DRs37%2C000%20crore.
https://www.trendook.com/parleg-story/
https://www.behance.net/gallery/56919551/Strategy-Design-Parle-G
https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/business-of-brands/brands-that-built-
india-parle-g/48440494
https://www.scribd.com/document/405749549/A-STUDY-OF-CONSUMER-PREFERENCE-
TOWARDS-PARLE-BRAND-docx
http://www.socialsamosa.com/2019/10/brandsaga-parle-g-advertising-journey/ Adding this link
of the article about how Parle G really made itself a common man’s biscuit.

To conclude the assignment, Parle G insights helped me understand the marketing concepts and
consumer behavior and has made me fall in love with the brand Parle G, and the way it has
unfailingly and unfalteringly, never shifted from its basic vision and mission of being the biscuit of
the country and serving its purpose right winning millions of hearts at every chance.

THANK YOU

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