Maggi is one of the most iconic brands in Indian business history. And for our generation, it’s even more special because it has been an integral part of our childhood. But from the business point of view, the most fascinating thing about Maggi is that way back in 1983, both Maggi and instant noodles were completely different from Indian Culture.
And yet, Nestle single-handedly created a Rs 937 crore market and has been a market leader in the domain for 38 years. And despite giant rivals like ITC, Marico, and Unilever, even today, Maggi has a whopping 60% market share in the instant noodle segment.
The question is, how did Nestle create a market in India? And the lessons you need to learn from nestle’s marketing strategy.
This is a story that dates back to the 1950s, in Japan. During that time, the country was still recovering from the downfall of world war II. So noodles were one of the most affordable foods in the market. But because the demand was too high, and it took a lot of time to be prepared, it resulted in long lines and long wait times.
This is when a curious Japanese man named Momofuku Ando decided to make a type of noodles that could be prepared quickly and cheaply. And after hundreds of repetitions, he was finally successful in making a revolutionary product that you all know today as the instant Ramen noodles.
Although the newly invented instant ramen did not enter until 1958, this became a game-changing business during the economic boom in Japan. And as the country started developing rapidly, instant ramen became such a big hit that despite costing 6 times more than ordinary noodles, the Japanese still bought instant ramen in large quantities.
And soon enough, the instant ramen products started traveling abroad to the US to again become a massive hit. And even today, the parent company of ramen Nissin accounts for 50% of the billion-dollar instant noodle market in Japan. Nestle carefully observed that instant noodles were not performing well in the Japanese market.
Well, Nestle started creating the biggest markets for instant noodles in India. And that is how friends, Nestle entered the Indian Market in 1983.
Both the concept of instant noodles and the Maggi brand were completely different to us. While the western influence over us was very less.
Well, that is because Nestle clearly understood both its customer and the consumers. To tell you about it if you look at instant noodles as a product, anyone and everyone could have noodles, right? It doesn’t matter whether it is a school kid or a 40-year-old man. And noodles have become the most and favorite dish shared by the people.
Well, Nestle was not an ordinary brand.
And they understood the fundamental marketing principle that if you try to sell to everyone, you will end up selling to no one. So Nestle's marketing team started finding the best niche profiles to see who could be their ideal target audience. And that is why when they carefully picked two categories, and those were mothers and children.
Now, this makes a question in your mind, what was the thinking behind this?
In the case of Nestle, there were two primary concerns, that is customer and consumer. The consumer is the child who eats Maggi and the consumer is the mother who buys Maggi.
And during 1983, there were two categories of mothers, working mothers, and homemakers. Both of them had one major problem which is to give their child something tasty and healthy when they come back from school.
On top of that, the child had just eaten chapati-gravy in school, so giving them the same for evening snacks would not be good enough.
So this is friends, Maggi gave a perfect solution for mothers as a super easy and tasty meal alternative for their children.
As time passed by, Nestle even began advertising on TV channels during peak times when people like you and me were watching Power Rangers, Dragonball Z, and Ninja Hatori.
This is how the tagline “2-minute Maggi” was born. Apart from that nestle reached out to school kids sponsored quizzes and events and even gave them a free hamper of Maggi products. 4 million new customers were increasing every year.
For middle-class customers, they even launched Chotu Maggi which was priced at just Rs 5. There were times when Maggi disappeared from the stores for five long months.
As soon as Maggi came back they came up with something called the ‘#WeMissYouToo’ campaign wherein the brand asked fans to share their stories about how much they missed Maggi on social media.
Now you see, this is not some Nike product or iPhone that we are talking about.
It is just an instant noodle brand expecting fans to share their memories.
The snap deal sold out a large amount of 60,000 Maggi welcome kits within five minutes of the Maggi flash sale. And hashtags such as ‘#DilKiDealwithMaggi’ started trending on Twitter after the sale resumed.
And not so surprisingly, it was very difficult for Unilever and Nissin to achieve this level of connection with a player like Maggi in the market.
Moving on, the lessons learned from Nestle are the target market, specific target audience, problem and interest of the audience, and connection with the audience.
It is said that “ people might forget what you said but they never forget how you made them feel“. That’s it friends. If you learned something valuable, please make sure to share it with your friends and leave your view in the comment section below.
Written By: Nivetha
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