White Gold – The unstoppable rise of alternative milks. With increasing awareness, many people across the world have chosen to become vegan. Therefore no milk products and no meat. The increase of Vegan population means a decrease in milk products. In 1975, the average American consumed 130 litres of milk per year; in 2017, it was just 66 litres In the US, milk sales have fallen 15% since 2012. Consumers shifts from conventional to alternatives also presents large opportunities for brands to capitalise upon. One such example of a large scale brand is Oatly Milk.
The demand for this brand grew phenomenally so much that they could not supply to the growing demand. Consumer awareness coupled with Oatly's creative advertising campaigns propelled this. This is the power of a brand that genuinely captured the emotions and feelings of vegans and served them with the alternative. Here are a few examples of their campaign.
The vegan movement is gaining ground in India too. Celebrity adherents from popstars Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus to politicians Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and even sporting greats Venus Williams, Novak Djokovic and, more recently, Virat Kohli, are upping its popularity. Supermarket shelves and restaurant menus boast vegan offerings, startups from Mumbai to Udaipur are selling meat and dairy alternatives,and vegan festivals are pulling large crowds. “The vegan movement is slowly gaining a lot more traction and turning into an industry,” says Palak Mehta, founder of online media portal VeganFirst. While numbers are hard to come by, she estimates that there are 20 to 30 lakh “vegan-curious” people in India—a term used to describe those who are considering the lifestyle but aren’t yet committed to it—while the purists would be “a couple of lakh” in number but growing fast.
Currently the market is niche but with immense potential for growth in the years to come. These are early days and despite that we are witnessing many brands entering the market. None of them are mainstream brands as yet but a few among these brands will emerge to become one. Some of the brands that are in the market are:
Our perspective
Raw Pressery established itself in the cold pressed fruit beverages and more recently forayed into Almond Milk. Apparently, as per the founder of the company, Almond milk (vegan) already contributes 7% of the revenue.
Only a few brands make it big
For every opportunity the market presents there will be many companies entering the category and launching brands with or without a deeper understanding of the trade or the commodity. In the case of oil all the successful oil brands have a deep understanding of the edible oil business from a commodity trade perspective, supply, global prices etc and therefore these brands have been able to withstand supply inconsistencies or price. And those without this understanding suffer and end up making losses.
To the advantage of your company is this very understanding in edible oil, cashew, almonds etc. This is knowledge acquired over several decades and nobody can replace that. The backward integration is well oiled and what we need is the forward integration in terms of getting our brand, its proposition, positioning and the overall marketing mix right. This will come from a holistic approach to brand building and that is what Brand harvest can bring on board.
”After a doctor’s hour-long presentation on how diet can prevent 15 common fatal diseases, I was convinced about veganism.”
Aamir Khan
Induction and workshop with key stakeholders
As a process we will begin with an induction into your business where we learn about your company, people, your journey, your current and future plans from business, marketing and brand building perspective. Post our induction we will subsequently conduct a workshop with the key stakeholders to determine and identify our vision, our short and mid-term goals and what we wanted to accomplish though the strategic branding exercise. The workshop will be an interactive full day program where the agency will bring about a lot of stimulus for discussion.
Our approach
Branding is holistic and we would like to approach it with a 360 degree perspective on category, consumer, competition, emerging societal trends and all other factors that will shape our business. The given model outlines broadly the four stage process beginning with the exploration of the category (in our case edible oils, vegan milk products and other healthy snacks) followed by discovery of key industry, competition and consumer insights. Post this analysis we will look at articulation of the overall brand strategy followed by looking at detailing every single aspect of individual verticals. Specifically the vegan products market. The edible oil market and the regional play makes the task less complex and more focus.
