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Turning back from pull to push

Two recent campaigns deserve attention from marketing enthusiasts, one of Campa Cola (reenergised by the Reliance Group) and of Tata Sampann's species. The challenges these two brands face are too distinct from one another. Campa, on the one hand, aims to fight the global brands like Pepsi and Coca-Cola, whereas Sampann looks to create a market in indian spices that has been dominated by local players like MDH and Everest. However, their strategies have something in common: getting the distributors to stock more of their products on the shelves. Campa is offering the distributors twice the margins, while Sampann is leveraging its vast portfolio to make stocking only Tata products a win for the distributors.

Image credit: Economic Times
To understand why this is happening, and what makes this interesting, one has to look back on the history of marketing, more specifically the shift from a push to a pull-based marketing, where the focus of the brands shifted from pushing their products to users to making the customers ask for it. This happened without changing the media for communicating with the customers. TV ads began to nudge customers towards indulgence with their product, anticipating the demand to move upwards across the value chain. This has worked for years, and continues to be a dominant form of advertising, albeit in its move from TV to mobile screens and social media. 

However, two more changes have begun to sweep the FMCG space, one of quick commerce and the other of digitisation. With quick commerce, customers are now somewhat constrained to Zeptos and Blinkit's catalogue if they are willing to get the service. It's very unlike the local kirana owner, who should be told to stock SKUs in TV ads but not on his shelves. Similarly, with digitised ads becoming cheap and accessible to almost all brands, the difference created through ads is pretty low; therefore, the brands with deep pockets are looking for another way to sway.

Image credit: Tata Sampann
The answer looks like going back to the distributors (the dark storekeepers and the supermarket stores). In a way, pushing their competitors off the shelf, and thus from customers' habits. What do you think of this look back at the history of marketing ideas? Is this a re-invention or a new one in the making? Are there any potential risks associated with relying heavily on distributor relationships in the current FMCG environment?


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