Will India wake up to a quick-fix latte? Nescafé hopes so...

The brand is looking to simplify the coffee drinker's morning routine with a new product - a premix latte.

Nestlé India has come up with a new ad for its recently launched Nescafé Ready-to-Drink range. The new coffee premix is available in three flavours, customised specifically for the Indian palate - Chilled Latté, Hazelnut and Intense Café.

The ad has been conceptualised and produced by McCann Erickson and Breathless Films, respectively. The crisp 20-second video delivers the message - 'The cup that gets you going' - in a jiffy, perhaps symbolic of the product's instant nature.

Arvind Bhandari, general manager, Dairy, Nestlé India, says, "Nescafé has always been at the forefront of coffee innovation. We continue our journey as pioneers by customising not just the taste, but also the mode of consumption to deliver 'Anytime Coffee' for today's active lifestyle."

According to an official statement, the thick and milky Nescafé Chilled Latté captures the taste of the Indian cold coffee; Hazelnut brings the nutty indulgence of hazelnut for the youth and for those who love their coffee strong, Intense Café delivers the kick of cappuccino with every sip.

Priced at Rs 30 for 180ml, this new product delivers the coffee experience in easy to carry packs. All three flavours of Nescafé Ready-to-Drink Coffee are available across the country, both in-store as well as on e-commerce platforms.

Is India ready?

While Nestlé is trying its best to change consumers' preferences and/or habits, will Indians lap up the new product format? Usually there is a perception of premixed coffee not being authentic, and therefore people prefer to brew their morning fix, just the way they want it, themselves. Moreover, the execution seems to present the product as a solution only for occasions when one is rushed. It does not talk of habit change or experience as such. And so the question - How effective will it prove to be? - remains.

According to Harish Bijoor, brand expert and founder, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc., while the fleetingly done ad conveys the quickness of the format of a premix coffee for sure, a lot gets lost in the quick execution.

"This is a relatively niche format for now. The ad could have been a wee bit longer just to establish the product that much more," he says adding, "the weakness of this execution is that it does not establish the superiority of the premix format versus the close-enough instant coffee language, leave alone the very-distant filter coffee tone, tenor and decibel... The synthetic and too-quick-for-comfort issue is not addressed at all."

Bijoor thinks that the ad being a 'life-style piece of advertising', positions the brand as just another instant coffee. Possibly, a quicker instant coffee than them all! "While the use case offered by the ad is niche, you are seldom in such a rush as the one portrayed. The instant premix coffee gets labelled by the manufacturer, albeit unwittingly, as a niche product for an extremely niche moment of need. It kills the success quotient of the communication and the brand," he rues.

James Cornelius, associate creative director, DigitasLBi, partially agrees. "Most people use pre-mixed coffee/tea while travelling or on vacations. The new approach makes the product a back-up plan to have at home (always) in case you don't have the time to brew. While that's nice, the ad nowhere emphasises that a pre-mix is as good as brewed coffee, neither does it address the 'synthetic' issue," he says adding that a few seconds could have been devoted to dispelling the notion.

However, Cornelius does believe that after seeing the spot, consumers will surely want to stock up on pre-mixes for the month, thereby triggering behaviour change. He also appreciates the twist at the end, and the fact that the ad finds new consumption opportunities even as it reinforces existing notions.

"The duration is perfect for a YouTube pre-roll, so I hope they use data to target the TG more effectively,'' he adds.

For Vipin Dhyani, founder and chief creative director, Thoughtshop Advertising & Film Productions, it is a simple, straightforward ad, appropriate for the intended target segment - people who are always in a hurry, yet they can't afford to miss their coffee. However, he feels that it lacks the richness brand Nescafé is known for.

Commenting on the execution, and whether it will get people to change their habits, he adds, "you win some, you lose some. Long-time back when cola came in takeaway bottles, there was a strong notion that compared to glass bottles, plastic ones had less fizz, but it was all compensated for with the portability factor. 'Takeawayness' won over fizz. In an impulse category like this, comfort does win."

While Dhyani agrees that this format is a good solution for the time-strapped, he believes that there will be also be those who would love to shift to the "lets quick fix this coffee urge instantly" space. "Consider this move as 'more is merrier' since you have two options for coffee lovers now, instead of just one," he surmises.