Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

Sunrise Masala engaged with over 5000+ women in the Kolkata market through a four-stage competition - Sunrise Ajker Annapurna - with an aim to act as an enabler in their journey to start a restaurant or a kitchen to become self-sufficient. Participants were shortlisted and trained by the Sunrise team in different skills - creating a menu, live kitchen, social media promotions, and managing finance. Participants created their cookery videos that were pushed on social media channels. Following a 10-member on-ground contest, the final winner was chosen by judges where participants were asked to prepare a meal using Sunrise products.

Background

Sunrise is a legacy brand in Kolkata market with over 50% market share and a very high recall among the audiences. Although it had a strong distribution, it never really focused on creating a brand. Hence, post its acquisition by ITC in 2020, it decided to position itself as an enabler for women in the Kolkata market. As part of the new positioning, the brand decided to engage women who were passionate about food. It crafted a contest to identify women who were keen to kickstart their entrepreneurial journey by opening restaurants or kitchens, especially the ones who lost their jobs due to the pandemic. The activity had two-fold objectives - First to ramp up brand recall among women in the Kolkata market and secondly to kickstart the brand’s digital journey by engaging women and creating content that could be shared in the fraternity to increase the brand’s digital presence.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

As per Indian mythology, Annapurna is the goddess of food and also one of the avatars of Goddess Durga, who is the most revered deity among the Bengali community. The Bengali community draws a lot of parallels between different avatars of Goddess Durga and females. As Sunrise decided to engage with women with food as the central element, it decided to keep the Goddess of food at the heart of its communication - Annapurna. With Aajker Annapurna, the brand meant ‘Today’s Goddess of Food’, which can be any female in the society. The campaign was kickstarted right before the Durga Puja, the most widely celebrated Bengali festival, as huge amount of ongoing conversations around Goddess Durga during this time and people are keen to engage with any and every activity around Goddess Durga. Further, the campaign was stitched into four phases to create high engagement and create enough buzz.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Sunrise wanted to target females across Kolkata between the age group of 25-45 across all SEC and hence kickstarted the first phase of engagement at the most visited local touchpoints across the city - beauty salons, markets, general trade outlets, and neighborhood community centres. It deployed people to explain the contest to women. WhatsApp was used to take contest entries. Brand trained them in menu creation, live kitchen, social media promotions, and managing finance. Participants became overnight heroes in their neighborhoods by sharing their cookery videos on social media that were widely shared where they used Sunrise products and brand logos. These videos solved two objectives - first they ramped up the brand’s recall in the market and secondly it infused energy into its digital channels giving it a good spike. The contest was named Annapurna, another name for Goddess Durga, and kickstarted around Durga Puja to generate maximum engagement.

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

The four-month-long contest started prior to Durga Puja & was divided into four phases. Recruitment: Sunrise placed personnel at general trade outlets (50), Neighbourhood centres (30), Markets (5) & salons (50) to explain the entry process. Training: 50 shortlisted women were trained in multiple skills on ITC Connect Platform. Digital Amplification: All contestants shot a YouTube cookery video that was shared on social networks. Final Contest: 10 finalists were chosen based - likes on Youtube videos, and future plans in culinary Business. They took onground cooking challenge to cook a dish in 75 mins using 1 out of the 5 key ingredients presented by Chef from a surprise box (Obak baksho). The winner was chosen basis - taste, presentation skills, Innovation, & effective use of spices - each with 25 points weightage and took home INR 1.5 lakh. Contest will be broadcasted as a 4-part reality series on a GEC.

List the results (30% of vote)

- Deeper engagement with women - Building new positioning - Incremental follower base in YT with the brand crossing 10K followers within a year of merger - TOM shares moving to 58% - Improved market share in Kolkata by 2 percentage points.