It’s easy to say, “Take it lightly, friend,” but it’s tremendously difficult to do. PepsiCo India’s salty snack brand Kurkure has a new sub-brand to help you practice what you preach.
Kurkure Playz is Kurkure’s first venture into the soft-textured snack sector. This has historically been categorized as a puff, with flavours such as Masala Munch, Chilli Chatka, Green Chutney, and the six-month-old Chatpata Cheese.
Kurkure’s New Venture!
Kurkure Playz is expanding the mother brand’s presence in the pellet sector of the soft-textured snacks market with the already existing puffcorn flavour and the new Pasta, which is a creamy, herb, and onion flavour in a pasta-shaped bite.
“Pellets have grown more than puffed in the last several years,” says Neha Prasad, associate director and brand lead at Kurkure. She reminds everyone that Kurkure first arrived in India with extruded items. “That’s how the category was developed, and now that the light-textured snack has emerged, we have to play in this segment as well.”
The brand has already launched an advertisement to promote Kurkure Playz, and another is on the way. Unlike previous Brand advertisements, which explored chaotic, funny, and wink-wink cliches, this one opts for the horror-comedy genre.
The ad, created by Leo Burnett, which got the creative mandate for PepsiCo India in 2022, portrays a person who, despite seeing a ghost in the room he’s about to move into, can keep his cool after taking a mouthful of puffcorn with his quivering hands.
What comes next? He is able to soothe the tense mood by negotiating a rent-sharing deal with the ghost.
“Halke Mein Lo,” says the advertisement.
“Today’s generation doesn’t take things too seriously, and this is the fact we can claim,” says Vikram (Spiky) Pandey, Leo Burnett’s national creative director. He claims that the team opted to move forward with this mindset and the aspect of the sub-brand being a light snack.
“Halke Mein Lo” is a colloquial phrase that travels well, according to Pandey. “When people use it in casual conversation, it tends to remind them of your product or communication.” That’s where the line originated.
According to Pandey, if someone dismisses something as weird as meeting a ghost in your room, “it’s a story worth watching and telling everyone else.”
According to Prasad, the two Kurkure Playz products have the most distinct flavours in the category. “The concept was written, tested with consumers, and different proposals were required.” This is how we came up with this concept. “
It’s worth noting how the advertisements and communication strategy were created. Pandey says that they created a discourse that was distinct from the basic DNA of the Kurkure brand. However, Prasad and her crew, despite enjoying it, would return to Terrafirma.
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Last year, Kurkure introduced Chatpata Cheese. Instead of embarking on the time-consuming job of developing a new sub-brand, the company could have done the same with Pastax.
According to Prasad, the cohort, placement, and competitive landscape of this light-textured snack are unique. “It’s critical that we (Kurkure) establish a portfolio, so we must keep it all together under a sub-brand.”
When asked about the possibility of cannibalizing existing Kurkure flavours and snacks from the PepsiCo family, Prasad admits that it is possible, but she believes that the new soft texture snacks under Kurkure Playz will provide “greater business potential.”
Kurkure Playz will primarily target a young demographic. While Prasad knows this customer segment isn’t on TV, the medium, she adds, “is still the most effective way of getting out to the masses.” As a result, it will be included in the mix, along with digital, social, and on-the-ground activations.
The brand has already appeared on “The Kapil Sharma Show” and “Indian Idol” and is available through key retail and online platforms.