Del Monte's Taste Like Never Before

Del Monte Sauce

Category- Ketchups & Sauce
Company- FieldFresh Foods

Campaign- "Taste like never before"

The campaign, breaking the tradition of caring mothers, hungry children and funny characters in the TVC’s of ketchup and sauces’ category, is here by Del Monte. Ketchup and sauces category hasn’t seen much activity in recent years & at the same time consumers are very eager to try out new things in every category including foods and beverages. This acted as a trigger for Del Monte to come up with two new flavours of sauces, Zingo and Twango. Twango is a fruit based sauce and Zingo is the traditional eastern style sauce with garlic, ginger etc. Let’s see how these sauces would tempt the taste buds of consumers.

Del Monte was brought to India in 2007 by a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and Del Monte Pacific Ltd. The JV is called FieldFresh Foods Pvt Ltd. The Del Monte product range is very exciting; it has foods that are different from the routine and tastes that are different from the usual. This formed the base of positioning & communication strategy for Del Monte sauces. The sauces are positioned on the unique taste with the tagline, “Taste, like never before”. Till now this category has targeted women & children but Del Monte is focussing on youth & women as their target. According to me this is good thinking because when you are inviting consumers to try out new thing then, who would be better than youth as a target group that too in the category of ketchups & sauces. And it’s mother who buys the ketchups and sauces.

Now the challenge lies in communicating this unique taste to the target group who is also very choosy and dynamic in picking up the ideas expressed in the communication. But fortunately the idea came at the product test stage itself as whoever tasted the sauce wanted to know “What is this sauce?”

TVC which is the part of communication opens with a shot a woman sitting in a passenger train, about to bite into a piece of samosa. Her co-passenger who is about to get off the train, offers some sauce to spice up her samosa. The woman tries the samosa with the sauce and finds it so delicious, that she is hell-bent on finding out what sauce it is. She jumps off the train, searching for that passenger - who, by then has already left the railway station - and overcomes an obstacle course of sorts to eventually find him again. She asks him which sauce was it. That's when the voiceover introduces the brand and its variants.

According to me the TVC is very apt in communicating the idea of unique taste and also achieves the objective of appealing the target group. It is based on the basic human insight that whenever we try new and exciting thing we want to know the source of it, and sometimes adapt the things which are out of way to know the source. But if you interchange the characters of women & boy, according to me it would become more relevant & apt. Your primary target group is youth and if you show the temptation of knowing source with that boy then it would be more appealing to that group. And as mothers buys the ketchup and sauce, showing the sauce with that women in the TVC would carry good message. Also Del Monte wanted to give the Indian touch to the communication, which is achieved by showing such a track and suitable background music.

The inaugural television campaign is being supported by print and digital promotions. Since the brand's target audience is primarily the youth, the online space has been used extensively, with launch announcements on portals and activities on social networking sites.

The brand, as part of its BTL activities, has worked on in-store visibility and merchandising in modern retail and general trade stores, and has also carried out sampling exercises among consumers.