Posted on : 2023-07-14 03:28:59
Article : Good evening Friday Management TASK 250 - Yesteryears FMCG products marketing and sales were successful with strong efforts of employees through their planning and execution, as technology was a far tomorrow. It was a different, but very knowledgeful experience for life.
Evolution is a natural process that happens with the progress of time. In every business sector and segments one can observe that the evolution is a constant factor which otherwise we call it as change constant. With the passing of time, population growth, technology deeper penetration with extended connectivity makes global market into a small village. With happening of many changes, consumer behavior, markets also change and marketers will be more curious to adopt to the changing need. With the present scenario and future gesture, let us look at the past -recalling late 70’s and early 80’s markets, products, marketer’s winning working styles with low number of employees yet with profits and vertical and horizontal growths of markets. In this article we discuss about those times Parle soft drink brands operation of a plant in the united Andhra Pradesh. More or less, every FMCG product might have had a similar remembrance of their past. Those times marketing aids were limited to retail outlets wall painting, radio jingles, hoardings, on premise POPs and brands short commercials for cinemas interval screening and special events (from August to October) as sponsored events like musical evenings, fashion parades and winter time bar nights promoting Cola or Soda brands. Those times no technology existed, it was only sincere learning skills through hard work and guidance of the seniors/superiors to progress in job.
Main focus used to be on brands sale and distribution. In 1977 global market leader Coke exited from India leaving market vacuum for cola flavour drinks. Few former bottlers of Coca Cola have launched their own Campa cola and Nova cola brands and the domain leader Parles have launched Thums up as their cola flavour drink. Those times Parles had large number of franchise bottlers for their Brands development in the allotted franchise market areas. Junior Sales Management positions were key in the sales and Marketing department which used to be selected by Parles for the franchisees. Bottler from Vijayawada in the united AP was considered to be stronger with great vision for market vertical and horizontal development, sales volumes growth and brands establishment. The plant franchise area of 5 districts covers nearly 10,000 sq kilometres with nearly 30 million population during 70’s.
With this area of operation, the plant was selling well known Gold Spot, Limca, Bisleri Soda brands in great volumes along with Kismet and Maaza in low volumes. With launching of Thums up, plant’s management decided to have sales, distribution and marketing support to work as Three independent divisions. Two divisions with Three brands each for distribution and sales while the third one is to support these divisions with marketing inputs. Gold Spot, Limca and Bisleri soda as One division and newly launched Thums-up, Maaza and Kismath (pineapple flavour) as other division. The two sales divisions used to fight in competition in the market to win better market shares. While brands of first division had good consumer brand recall in all the markets enjoying a long-time national marketing support, second division with just launched brand Thums-up was supported only with limited marketing and other Two brands Maaza and Kismet were left to depend on retail market visibility for sales through consumer brand pull. Gold Spot division being an established one had 165 distributors and whole sellers in the franchise area and Thums-up division had only 5 key town distributors. First year sales target for Thumsup division was to achieve 50% of Gold Spot division sales volumes. Coming to staff structure all three divisions were given 2 supervisors each and One Junior Manager as a team. In market already, there were Nova cola and Campa cola from earlier Coke bottlers, and Double Seven from Spencer was launched in 1977.
With this staff structure increasing distributors and wholesale sellers in 1978-79 itself (First full year of Thumsup division in the market) all the job challenges were well handled to cross the given yearly targets (Jan to Dec) and the unit has crossed one Million cases sales to win an award from Parles. This achievement gave an opportunity and confidence for establishing Two more bottling units in this AP franchise area by 1982-83 for more wide coverage to reduce the travel time to markets and to add more remote rural markets. Totally to bring more horizontal growth of more market’s coverage and vertical growth for volumes.
Post your comments on this market operation and performance or refer any other FMCG products sales team performance of yesteryears development of markets. Our version of the key points performance for achievement will be posted on our Management Solution post to this TASK 250 on Monday 17th July 2023.
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