Top Ramen slurps in the crowds with 'Be the Champion' activation

Mudra Max's Terra carried out activities across 57 Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar outlets in three metros, to promote the re-launched noodle brand.

Top Ramen, the noodles brand from Nissin, which has been around for a while, underwent a re-launch recently, and signed up badminton player Saina Nehwal to endorse the brand.

To promote the new Top Ramen, Nissin recently concluded an extensive consumer engagement activity to help enhance brand visibility at the retail level. With the fresh positioning of 'super noodles' and 'enriched with vitamins', the brand has now acquired a new tagline 'Be the Champion'.

In order to promote the rebranding, Mudra Max's bottom-of-the-pyramid-marketing agency, Terra, helped carry out activities across 57 Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar outlets. MNV Prasad, general manager, sales and marketing, Nissin Foods, adds, "The Mudra team's involvement and skills were really a plus point in building up the Top Ramen brand through BTL activities. Its understanding of end consumer and client needs are well-appreciated."

This activity was mainly targeted at children and mothers, with the idea to educate them about the right method of preparing instant noodles through live preparation and wet sampling.

Aman Bhatia, director, brand communication, Terra, says, "The taste of the noodles depends upon the way you cook it. We had live demonstrations to show this exactly, and served it to people."

Additionally, innovative merchandising was done at the store level, and children were invited to play certain games, thereby increasing the interaction and engagement with the brand.

Bhatia adds, "In fact the promoters also asked mothers what they would like their children to be when they grow up, and 90-95 per cent of mothers replied that they wanted their kids to be 'sportspersons' or 'achieve name and fame by a certain age'."

According to Bhatia, the reason behind conducting this activity only at the venues of Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar is because Top Ramen's target group encompasses everybody, across generations and markets, and these locations served as the ideal platform for their congregation and high footfalls.

The activity was done in three metros, namely Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru. Bhatia claims that going by the good response of the activity, Nissin now plans to take this to tier II towns as well.

Discussing the scale of the activity, Ajay Sundaram, country head, Terra, points out, "Top Ramen is a challenger brand in India, and therefore, requires much more aggression in experiential planning and execution."

There's much action happening in the noodle category. Things are heating up with players like long-time leader Nestle's Maggi, GlaxoSmithKline's Horlicks Foodles, Hindustan Unilever's Knorr Soupy Noodles, ITC's Sunfeast Yippee, Wai Wai, and more, clamouring for attention space in the minds of consumers.

According to reports, the Indian instant noodles market is set to grow from the current Rs 1,300 crore, to approximately Rs 3,000-3,500 crore by 2015.