“Wagga Wagga wants its adex to match up to Sundrop & Saffola in 1 year”

Agro Global Resources is bullish on carving out a niche for its recently launched Wagga Wagga brand of cooking oil. Wagga Wagga gets its name from the Wagga Wagga region in Australia, from where the cooking oils are sourced and brought to India. 

The brand is launching in India with four variants – Wagga Wagga Diabetes Care, Wagga Wagga Heart care, Wagga Wagga Sautés & Salads and Wagga Wagga Superfry. Wagga Wagga has forayed in the Indian market with their Diabetes care variant first and recently rolled out their ad campaign, conceptualised by DDB Mudra West. 

To establish the origins of the product, the brand is personified through the character of Lucy Kaur – an Australian by birth and an Indian by heart. She is married to a Sikh man and is determined to win the hearts of her new Indian family. The opening film takes the viewers through Lucy’s introduction to her new family, where she undergoes a series of disapproving confrontations until the day she cooks aloo tikki (potato patty), her father-in-law’s favourite dish. The subsequent films seek to establish Wagga Wagga Diabetes Care oil as a tasty way to control Diabetes. 

Watch the Wagga Wagga ads:

Entering a market that already has several established players, strong regional flavour preferences and also a growing use of healthy oils like extra virgin olive oil, Wagga Wagga has a lot of ground to cover. 

However, Sujay Naik, Project Director, Agro Global Resource, believes there is an equity association with bigger brands in the edible oil segment and people associate the brand with wellness and health and that is the space the company wants to be in. Wagga Wagga is 100 per cent natural and pure; the company claims it to be free of any chemicals, pollution and GM. 

He further said, “With a brand name like Wagga Wagga Diabetes Care Oil, you pretty much get the idea what the product is all about. This makes life simple for the consumer – but for the marketer is also a challenge. We didn’t want the brand to come across as medicinal or being exclusively for the diabetic patients. We didn’t want it to be preachy or prescriptive. Plus, the brand and product have multiple differentiators and we wanted to do justice to all of them without diluting the core proposition.” According to him, the biggest challenge is creating communication which consumers will actually register, rather than the paint-by-the-numbers approach which is so prevalent, and so happily ignored by consumers. 

Speaking about the distribution strategy planned out for the brand, Naik informed that the focus is only on modern trade during the initial launch plan, with the brand being available at Reliance Store, Big Bazaar, Hypercity and other hypermarkets. Wagga Wagga is already present in over 150 outlets across India and is expected to be available at 2,500 retail outlets soon. The company at present is metro focused as it is easier to distribute the product in these areas. 

Wagga Wagga has not taken on board a celebrity as a brand ambassador as Naik feels that instant recognition often tends to be for the celebrity and not the product. “We are selling a distinctive premium product and not just another me-too product, where we need a celebrity to create distinction for the product. Our products are distinctive enough on their own,” he affirmed. 

The ad communication for Wagga Wagga has been digital first and the initial digital campaigns were created by the Delhi team of Indigo Leo Burnett. The TV campaigns were shown to the digital team, who was asked to create communication along similar lines The communication will be supported by radio campaigns, which will be launched after a few weeks. The brand is already leveraging print to reach out to its TG, although the company does not want to take the outdoor advertising yet. Wagga Wagga wants its adex to match up to brands like Sundrop and Saffola in the next 12 months.