2. Situational Analysis
Company and Product History:
Product History
Mehran Spice & Food Industries started its journey in 1975 and within a few years of its inception,
the company grew to become one of the leading spice & food industries globally. As time passed,
the product range at Mehran increased from spices by adding ready mix recipes, rice, pickles,
chutneys and sweet items.
Mehran is a world leader in quality rice, equipped with the most advanced rice plant from
Germany. The plant, which is one of the few in Pakistan, has enabled Mehran Super Kernel
Basmati Rice to become one of the top selling basmati rice in the world.
Over the years, Mehran's production facilities have been set up locally and globally.
Chronologically:
• 1975, Mehran Spice & Food Industries S.I.T.E Karachi-Pakistan
• 1988, Pure Food Ltd. Jebel Ali Free Zone-Dubai
• 2002, Thar Roller Flour Mill Naukot, Tharparkar District, Sindh-Pakistan
• 2003, Mehran Spice & Food Industries Korangi Industrial Area-Karachi-Pakistan
• 2007, Gul Mohammed Spice Factory Jeddah-Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Keeping in view the global success of Mehran, the company aims to establish itself in Pakistan as
well. The spice market in Pakistan is ever expanding and penetration into such a huge market is
an arduous task. Nevertheless, Mehran was up to the challenge and is currently working on
establishing effective distribution networks all over Pakistan.
Past Advertising Themes
Mehran spice and food industry pose itself as a family oriented scenario. So, in its advertisement
it mostly highlights the family get together. And highlights the fact of eating along with your
family is the best thing ever…..!
The very first advertisement was based upon an offer
“Buy One……Get One Free”
3. The next theme was around
“Mehran…..Hunar Dilo Pe Raaj Kerne Kaa……!”
After these kinds of ad campaigns….Mehran spice and food industries took advantage of the
events like cricket to promote their brand
4. The company also made best use of the recently played Asia Cup Final 2014
The company also presented a new ad featuring a housewife serving tasty and nutritional food
for the whole family.
The whole ad was themed upon a lovely, happy and healthy family enjoying food prepared from
Mehran spices.
5. Significant environmental influences.
Mehran Spice & Food Industries is an ISO 9001 & HACCP certified.
Mehran Spice and Food Industries have been honored with "The Best Export Performance Award" from
FPCCI every year since 1984, besides other national and international awards. Mehran has also been
awarded the "The Best Export Brand of the Year Award" from FPCCI for the year 2009-2010.
Mehran being awarded the PSQCA certification.
Providing GMO free standard products.
ISO9001:2000 certification.
HALAALAN THOYYIBA standard exclusively for the Malaysian Market.
Strengths.
Largest exporter from Pakistan.
Enormous market share in the rest of the world.
Greater production capacity.
Unique taste and blend of spices and recipe mix.
Top quality assurance.
37 years of expertise.
Weakness.
Lack of advertisement.
Poor distribution system.
Poor positioning.
Opportunities.
Exploring the rural market.
Jams and marmalade section is still untouched.
Fruit juices to be introduced.
Threats.
Counterfeit products could damage Mehran spice and food industry.
New entrants in the market.
Negative consumer perceptions due to lack of advertisements.
Slow supply chain system could hamper the growth.
Relevant Marketing Data.
NA
6. Product Evaluation
Competitors.
Major competitors for Mehran spice and food industry is
National Foods.
Shan Foods.
These are the major players that are neck to neck for the market share. But instead there are some
minor players as well and these include the firms that sell loose or unpacked spices at the local or
small stores, these firms act as indirect competitors.
Customers’ Perception and Satisfaction.
Customers pay a lot of interest and confidence in the big players mentioned above because they:
Spend heavily on advertisements.
They are in the business for a long time.
They have developed a great amount of goodwill among the customers.
They have exceptional distribution system.
Customers perceive that they give the best taste.
Due to all these factors the acceptance level of Mehran Foods in not up to the customers’ mark.
And they perceive National and Shan Foods to be the best. Mehran Foods needs to work on its
positioning in the customers’ minds.
Retailers’ Perception.
There is a complete NO when it comes to retailers’ perception about the brand specifically in
Punjab province. This is all due to negative response from the customers which relies highly on
lack of advertisement, poor positioning of the brand and followed by slow supply chain and
distribution system.
Retailers’ always give a thumbs up to a running item, despite getting huge discounts retailers also
enjoy a free pack on the bulk purchases but these kinds of attractive incentives failed to change
the perception regarding the brand. The result is that no retailer is willing to shelf the product.
Distribution.
Mehran spice and food industry is slowly gaining on the distribution system. The company has
covered most of Sindh province but is struggling to make a sound stand in other provinces
especially Punjab which is a huge market and already saturated with big players like Shan and
National.
In Punjab there is a poor system of distribution, where that of the competitors’ the team visits a
store after every two days for the orders but the Mehran’s team visits after every 10-14 days. This
7. is not how it’s done, the company has to make sure the availability of the product without any
delay.
Consumer Evaluation.
Mehran spice and food industry’s products are designed for households from every walk of life.
The products are not certain “Class Restricted” they can be used by anyone. Mehran promises to
bring a healthy lifestyle to the families through quality food products. Families who use Mehran
products share love and happiness over the dinner table. And this is what Mehran promises to
deliver by enhancing the quality of life for its customers.
Customers can also use Mehran products at a certain event like Ramadan, Eid, or a Feast. It has a
complete range of products, only customers have to choose the best one that suits their needs.
IMC plan Target Market Specification
Demographics:
Mehran Foods is targeting households from all walks of life. The product is not restricted to a
certain class, income group or gender. It is intended to bring hygiene, quality and taste in the
traditional way of preparing meals.
Psychographics:
In psychographic segmentation we discuss the attitudes and lifestyle customers have in their
routine. So, Mehran Foods is targeting that segment of customers that does not want to spend
hours while preparing food…..Mehran Spices saves time in the kitchen.
Mehran also caters to the needs of those customers that want quality ingredients that they cannot
get in loose spices.
Behavioral:
Mehran carefully observers the buying behavior of customers and analyses the buying patterns
and therefore Mehran makes the best use of occasions. The buying and consumption patterns
fluctuate on different occasions.
When monsoon starts, people want to eat more chatpatta, they want to enjoy more biryani at their
dinner tables and Mehran acts accordingly in its ad campaigns.
Mehran designs its ad campaigns according to the prevailing occasion for example in Eid
Moments, during Ramadan etc.
8. Brand Positioning
Mehran wants to position its products according to the product attributes and benefits sought
from it. For this very reason the whole positioning strategies and ad campaigns focus on the
attributes and benefits the product will deliver to the customers.
While positioning the brand, Mehran answers some of the statements as:
Location in customers’ mind………Mehran wants to capture the minds of the
customers and make them believe that Mehran is a kitchen expert. It also wants to be the
first among customers’ minds when it comes to cooking.
What Mehran wants customers to perceive……..Mehran wants the customers to
believe that Mehran is a name of Quality, Hygiene and Taste.
What Image Mehran wants to convey…………After making a launch in Pakistan, the
CEO of Mehran Group in an interview stated that “Mehran ko Dunya Janti He…Ab
Aap Ki Baari He”. So, Mehran wants the people of Pakistan to know that it is brand of
worth, the world knows Mehran as a name of quality, hygiene and taste and now its time
for the people of Pakistan to make their choice.
IMC objectives w.r.t AIDA
Right now Mehran focusses mostly on two objectives Awareness and Sales. There are other
objectives as well but most of the focus is on these two because Mehran has entered the market
not long ago.
The need for awareness is because it is a new product and customers need to be best informed
about the product. To increase the awareness, Mehran Foods is organizing promotional
campaigns, sponsoring events and sponsoring live cooking shows to inform the customers and
create brand awareness.
To talk about AIDA model, then Mehran’s ad messages are well equipped with AIDA model.
The messages have been clearly prepared keeping in view the Attention, Interest, Desire and
Action.
The very first ad of Mehran Spices featured a tagline “World knows Mehran…..Now it’s Your
Turn!”
AIDA features of Ad
We have created an ad that can be related to AIDA in this way
Attention….When the Ad film starts, a beautiful lounge decorated with exotic accessories
featuring a women watching a television gains attention.
Interest…….but what was she watching on the television? The answer comes when the camera
zooms into the tv and shows that she was watching a cooking show where the chef was telling
the recipe ingredients.
9. Desire………The chef was too fast to tell the ingredients on-air and somehow she lost the trail
of the ingredients and feels annoyed because the chef was too fast and she failed to note down
the perfect ingredients for the recipe.
As she throws down the pencil in anger……Chef suddenly replies that if you don’t want to mess
up with the ingredients, You can use Mehran Recipe Mix for a perfect recipe.
Action……. And at the end of the commercial a tag line appears compelling the customers to
show some action.
In this way AIDA model is truly justified.
The USP
Right now Mehran Foods claim to bring to their customers a product that justifies Quality,
Hygiene and Taste. Therefore Mehran claims to be a perfect recipe mix which is full of hygiene.
Mehran promises to bring the BEST…..! And the customers need not worry because Mehran has
37 years of expertise in producing quality products.
Mehran also claims to be farming their own spices. The company has mechanized farming
system and uses selected variety of seeds to produce spices locally to ensure quality and taste of
the finished product.
Creative Strategy
In creative strategy we will discuss the following.
Campaign Theme…..In their campaign themes the main focus is on highlighting the
benefits the customers will get “Mehran bnae Lazzaton or Ghizaiyat se Bharpoor
Pakwaan…Jo lagae Dastarkhan ko Chaar Chaand.”
Or it could be Ghar ghar ki pehchaan…..mehran dastarkhan….!
There is a mention of a Home, a Family, Dining Table full of tasty and hygienic food
prepared from Mehran Spices and an emotional attachment to Mehran Spices.
10. It means that Mehran is a name of Quality, Hygiene and Taste as described in USP
section of this document. So, the campaign themes revolves around these statements.
Promotional Appeal…..We will use Emotional Appeals in the ad films. The motive is
getting emotionally attached to the customers.
Execution Technique…..The executional technique used in Mehran’s Ads is Slice-Of-
Life.
IMC Program
The first point that we are going to discuss in this section is:
Advertisement.
Considering ATL advertising activities, we will select following mediums for advertising.
Electronic Media.
While selecting electronic media for advertisement, careful selection of timings is very
important. Here we will focus on selecting only those tv channels that are airing
Dramas/Soaps etc like Hum TV, ARY TV, GEO TV and PTV.
We can also select morning shows that have higher ratings.
More to say, we have Masala TV to air our advertisement.
Print Media.
The biggest viewership of females read Magazines and Digests. We can post our print ads in
them. The magazines could be Masala Food Mag, Akhbar-e-Jahan, Sunday Mag, Sunday
Plus etc.
For BTL activities we can use brochuresFlyers, Banners, billboards etc.
PR Activities.
For strengthening our PR profile we will use services of PR Agencies for their expertise.
Following are some well-known PR Agencies with high professional profile.
Orient.
Shamrock.
Momentum.
These will properly guide us in PR building for our brand.
We can also associate our brand with Zubaida Aapa to improve our PR.
11. Sales Promotions.
If we look at our competitors (National, Shaan Foods) they are giving huge discounts to retailers.
Apart from regular discounts they are giving 2 free packs on the purchase of 24 packs. It seems
really attractive to them.
This can be considered but we have decided something else for Mehran Spices.
Buy One…..Get One Free is an all-time favorite tactic to boost sales. And especially we are
having Ramadan ahead of us. So, an attractive advertisement followed by such offer will boost
sales in no time.
We can also add some premium upon buying our product i-e a free sachet of Mehran Ketchup
upon buying any of the Biryani Masala etc.
There will be a lucky draw in which people can win exciting prizes by sending any empty
packing of Mehran Spices along with valid CNIC Copy to a designated address. This move will
also boost sales.
In this way we make the best use of opportunity in the month of Ramadan.
Exhibitions and Trade shows
Masala Channel regularly organizes Food Festivals Food Mela all over Pakistan. And we will
best use of it by taking part in such kinds of exhibitions.
We will also take part, on a regular basis, to setup our stalls in food courts of different shopping
malls Dolmen Mall, Hyper star, Ocean Mall etc where we will serve food prepared from Mehran
Spices.
Sponsorship
Mehran Foods will sponsor cooking shows on Masala Channel. The shows it will target are
Haandi.
Live at Nine.
Masala Mornings.
Daawat by chef Zakir.
Mehran will also sponsor some morning shows as well.
12. Advertising Schedule
Following are ad timings and their rates of some TV channels.
ARY Digital
Day Parts 50 Minutes
Prog
Commercial
Time
25 Minutes
Prog
Commercial
Time
Premium 1800-2200 $2500 180 sec $1500 90 sec
Regular 1600-1759 $1500 180 sec $750 90 sec
2201-0000 $1500 180 sec $750 90 sec
0700-1000 $1500 180 sec $750 90 sec
value 1001-1559 $750 180 sec $500 90 sec
Masala TV
Leader Board (728*90) Without Video PKR 200000
Medium Rectangle
(300*250)
Without Video PKR 200000
Leader Board (728*90) With Video PKR300000
Medium Rectangle
(300*250)
With Video PKR 300000
GEO TV
Slot Timing Dollars &
Off Peak 0000-1759 150
Early Peak 1800-1859 350
Peak 1900-2159 400
Media Schedule of HUM TV is not among others, because access to the information is limited to
only professionals. Although we will also consider HUM TV for our advertisement at peak hours.
So, we will select a mixture of timings mostly from prime time and some from off peak timings
between 9 am till 3 pm.
13. In the month of Ramadan we will bring a little change in our advertising timings. In Ramadan we
will include timing before Aftaar and we will also advertise during Seher. We will also sponsor
Sehar and Aftaar Transmissions.
Promotion Budget.
When it comes to allocating the budget to the campaign, we will make use of Competitive
Promotion Budgeting technique. Because right now there are other big players in the market and
we need to get ahead of them. So, the need is to get into customers’ minds and successfully craft
an image into the minds of the customers. And for this very reason we need to allocate budget that
is competitive, that will allow us to fight with our competitors on fair grounds.
