Too Yumm!’s ‘aloo bhujia’ spot deviates from its healthy snacking aura

Mullen Lintas’ Garima Khandelwal explains the unexpected turn.

Snacking is yum. Seeing snacking ads is fun. Making an ‘aloo bhujia’ ad, when the brand is known for chips, can also be fun.

Mullen Lintas must have felt the heat when it decided to create communication for Too Yumm!’s ‘aloo bhujia’ offering, one of its six namkeen flavours.

It must have been a challenge because Too Yumm! (marketed by RP - Sanjiv Goenka Group's Guiltfree Industries) is all about healthy snacking.

'Eat Lot, Fikar Not', said cricketer-cum-endorser Virat Kohli in 2018, after being seen munching on finger snacks much to the onlookers’ shock. The snacks were baked, not fried. This was after Kohli dropped the carbonated beverage Pepsi from his brand endorsement list to amplify his fitness-first personality.

To see a brand sell ‘aloo bhujia’, thus, deviating from its healthy snacking ethos, seems surprising. afaqs! spoke to Garima Khandelwal, chief creative officer – Mullen Lintas, about this new ad and much more.

Edited excerpts:

For the ‘aloo bhujia’ variant, why did you go with the fun trope we’ve grown accustomed to seeing in Too Yumm! ads?

For the new Too Yumm! namkeen launch campaign, we landed on an articulation ‘yumkeen’, which is in the brand portfolio of snacks comprising Karare, multigrain chips, potato chips and veggie stix. We wanted ‘yumkeen’ to carve its own vertical. We had a sharp single-minded insight of putting one’s hand out when anyone opens a namkeen pack. Everything else followed and fell into place, in terms of the pitching, the relatability of the insight and the catchy track.

The health benefits of Too Yumm! products are still seen in its ads. How do you plan to promote the ‘no palm oil’ aspect of the namkeen?

The brand name itself was conceptualised to make a healthier brand, taste forward. The work that was done with the iconic Too Yumm! ads through the years, has made a deep-rooted impact in the minds of consumers that the snack is healthier. With the commercials in the recent past and the brand’s foray into categories such as chips and namkeens, our attempt is to always lead with taste, keeping the health benefit as an RTB.

Similarly, in the case of namkeens, ‘no palm oil’ reminds the consumers of the core health benefits that are the signature of Too Yumm! products, but not to supersede the taste cues sprinkled across the communication.

Namkeen brands position their variants as snacks for a particular time or occasion (tea time or when guests arrive). How do you plan to position the ‘aloo bhujia’ variant in an upcoming ad or campaign, if there is one?

Aside from time, snacks have also owned anti-boredom. The positioning of Too Yumm! products has been – ‘Anytime, Anywhere and As much’. That has always been a constant and we haven’t tried to format the product to any time-bound hunger pangs.

What are the plans of Too Yumm! as for as the namkeen category goes?

The category is largely owned by loose players or local giants. Namkeens play a strategic role in the endeavour of Too Yumm! to bring genuinely “better for you” products to every Indian household.

Are there any ads for other Too Yumm! namkeen variants, in the pipeline? 

While the communication depicts the entire range of six namkeen variants (‘aloo bhujia’, ‘moong dal’, ‘khatta meetha’, ‘all in one’, ‘ratlami sev’ and ‘Kolkata masala mix’), ‘aloo bhujia’ is the lead variant due to its widespread popularity. But the larger idea of ‘Haath Nahi Sambhlenge’ is apt for the entire namkeen portfolio. We will have various exciting renditions of this theme around other variants of Too Yumm! namkeen, going forward.