Adgully Exclusive | We make people happy, this is our brand promise: Baskin Robbins' Ashwin Uppal

Baskin Robbins, a leading brand of Ice cream Parlors worldwide, licenses you to taste the delightful flavors of Ice creams. A 65 year old ice cream island though much younger in India is known for its innovation and excellent flavors across the globe. They are leading the way with their concept of "Flavor of the Month', offering "Free Taste' of Ice Cream and delivering Ice Creams at our doors through a unique "Home Service' model.

Adgully caught up with Ashwin Uppal, G M- Marketing, South Asia, Baskin Robbins to get acquainted more with the brand and their strategies of attracting the towns.

Talking about the new Tag Line, "We make people happy", Ashwin said, "It came from a worldwide research that we did last year and we learned that Ice cream is a product which is all about fun and wherein people indulge collectively. With such an indulgence "Happiness' was the closest word and then this tag line developed."

You always love to have a company over a scoop of your favorite ice cream, don't you?

On further elaboration, Aswin said, "This is more of a brand promise rather a tag line. With an intension of taking this brand promise into every aspect of our business we want to ensure that anybody who comes close to our brand, interacts with us, engages with us may it be our consumers, our traders, our employees, carries this promise. Also this culture of making people happy is now being embedded in our way of working.

In every business especially the moody ones like Ice cream, you need to make people gaze your brand. Explaining skills for attracting customers, he said "We have started doing many innovations like we now have so very colorful menus which are consumer friendly with much more life. The new boxes have been installed all over the parlors. These changes have been brought about a month ago making the parlor environment much more colorful, attractive and more sparkling."

The most confusing moment is when you enter an ice cream parlor, "WHAT TO HAVE??? NO I will have this¦.no no this one¦.phewwww¦.what? What? ", But Baskin Robbins has come up with all new colorful flyers wherein all the ranges and categories of flavors have been segmented very nicely making it easier for us to choose from their ample collection. The flavors for chocolate lovers, fruit flavors in one row and separate row with flavors for kids¦With such innovations the brand is gearing up in terms of consumer attraction and satisfaction.

Ashwin added, "Moving on we also brought changes in the uniforms of our staff making them more vibrant and livelier. We are even planning to launch loyalty programs for our consumers so as whenever you come and transact with the brand you get something delighted. We are even working on our home delivery services, our logos so as to enhance clear communication outside the store. We have started holding get-togethers internally with our traders, marketers, franchisers."

With the most unique feature of "flavor of the month' the brand is really climbing up. Elaborating the point, he said, "In our menu offerings in order to make people glad we came up with the flavor of the month for the people being price sensitive and which will be served at Rs 39."

"The reason for launching this price point is that it becomes expensive for the ones who are price sensitive and also for the ones with big families. The concept is unique because of the fact that every month the brand essentially launches a new flavor which has not been introduced before and also at such affordable prices," added Ashwin.

On asking about the seasonality in the business, he said, "Essentially for us seasonality is not as big aspect as for cooler brands etc. in our category there nothing much being seasonal but yes there is definitely a marginal drop but that is often countered by intensifying our marketing activities during that time."

Talking about the key focuses of the brand Ashwin said, "Focus is to delight our customers, to keep them in high spirits which is the vision of our company as well. At business level, the intention is not to increase the number of stores but to increase the gross sales at our existing stores."

"We are working on the backhand of launching a new website. There will be a consorted effort on social media as well. We will be putting in a lot more in that direction," said Ashwin.

While signing off Ashwin spoke about the target audiences. As more of families are associated with the brand, the TG will be families and also at second level they will be closely relating to youth for their association as well.

Baskin Robbins entered India in 1993 and is today spread across 58 Cities having more than 200 Ice Cream Parlors. From the ages of one to ninety-nine, people visit Baskin-Robbins with the delight of enjoying their favorite ice creams served as per their wants. Baskin-Robbins distributes comprehensive favorites like World Class Chocolate and Strawberry Cheesecake, but also local favorites, such as Green Tea and Rum Raisin. No matter where you are in the world, you will definitely find your favorite ice cream island. | By Aanchal Kohli [aanchal(at)adgully.com]