Adding a new flavor

Retailer: What was the purpose of re-branding Café Coffee Day?

Alok Gupta (AG): Well by and large, it all started as a consumer understanding exercise, as in to figure out how consumers see Café Coffee Day (CCD) as a brand, and what emerged was that consumers see us as a place where conversations take place and that’s why “A lot can happen over coffee”. When we started to look at re-branding, we thought there is a powerful insight that could be leveraged, and moreover  if we look at the brand CCD,  it has a global aspiration and we wanted to create an identity that is  ‘culturally neutral, globally relevant’, and now these two things have come alive in this new identity.

Retailer: Basically the brand, CCD, has earlier been positioned as a brand catering to youths, so is this re-branding meant to capture a different set of consumers?

AG: I think we are in a market creation game. India is not a coffee drinking nation and here CCD is acting as a social platform. We are currently present on the highways, on airports, corporates, and therefore, we’re trying to tap into existing consumers’ needs in different verticals. And also by increasing penetration, we are already present in 140 towns, we aim at reaching 200 towns. It’s about providing a platform across the country. So yes, the idea would be to reach the new consumers along with the existing consumers at different needs and occasions.

Retailer: What is CCD’s plan for the next five years?

AG: See, currently we believe India is a reasonably under-penetrated market.  We have 1000 cafes in India and plan to extend to 2000 cafes by 2015. So the idea would be to grow from 140 towns to 200 towns and also find non-traditional high streets and grow there.

Retailer: How much are you planning to pump in for this re-branding strategy?

AG: We have marked about Rs 150 crore for expansion and re-branding.

Retailer: Don’t you think there is a risk involved while re-branding an already established brand?

AG: Well I think, whenever you reposition a brand there is an amount of risk involved in it, but I think the important thing is how to involve the consumers along, and that is what we have done. Every step that we have taken in the re-branding is along with the consumers, so we don’t see any risk. Currently, the cafes where we have done the re-branding have seen a 50 per cent higher growth rate, so that validates the point that the branding of the new identity has been put in the right direction.

Retailer: Are you tying up with the retailers like gift shops, music stores to boost the sales of your merchandise?

AG: Absolutely, we have multiple partnerships. We have partnerships with bookstores; we are currently with Odyssey, Crosswords, apparel stores, Lifestyle and Shoppers Stop; we are inside multiplexes like PVR cinemas. So we have significant number of such strategic alliances.

Retailer: Will re-branding result in prices going up?

AG: CCD has always been positioned as an affordable lifestyle and our pricing strategy has always been true to this belief. So question of pricing going up doesn’t arise.

Retailer: What kind of changes one can expect from the new CCD outlets?

AG: There has been around 80 different touch points where the re-branding has been integrated, but by and large the central purpose remains to provide an ecosystem where people are more comfortable and are comfortable having conversation there.

Retailer: What is the USP of this particular evolution?

AG: Well the USP of the evolution is very simple, that’s culturally neutral; so, whether it is Latin America or India, the conversation has to take place over a cup of coffee. This conversation is captured by a dialogue box. That’s how the idea of a dialogue box has cropped up. So, it’s absolutely symbolic for the very reason why consumers come to our café, which is for conversation. The vibrant colours, like red and yellow in the dialogue box, represent multiple and vibrant conversations that happens in a café. 

Interviewed by Suranjana Basu & Varun Jain