Milk Industry: Endangered Beverage Brands Fights For Survival

The milk industry is no doubt saturated, but those that have created niche for themselves still enjoy high patronage from consumers. The future of the new entrants is so endangered that most of them don’t even know who there target audiences are and which location they should see as there strength while some are in extinction.

Some consumers claimed that the endangered brands in the beverage industry include Nunu milk, Jago milk, Blue Boat, Coast and Olympic milk.

Nunu Milk from the stables of PZ Cussons, makers of a host of other household market brands, in a vast and highly competitive market structure is to be ‘groaning’ under the overwhelming weight of other beverage brands who have either advanced new marketing strategies or accepted the ‘olive branch’ that  brand extension option offers.

Barely four months ago, precisely 10^th September, 2011, Nunu milk was re launched with great promises for the future in its bid to withstand troubled waters of cut-throat competition.

Speaking at the re-launch of Nunu milk products, Mr. Judson, Public Relations Officer said the milk has proven in the last three years to be the fastest growing brand currently enjoys a 10 percent market share in relation to the other milk brands in the market. His statement makes one wonder how good is the brand doing even before the relaunch.

A newspaper quoted him to have said “We are pushing forward with our strategies to ensure that our brand does well across the length and breadth of the country and the re-launch was aimed at creating brand awareness and patronage among the public and we promised consumers will save money in terms of price compared to the other brands’.

In a sharp contrast to Mr. Judson’s panacea for putting the beverage brand in focus on the maps of enviable beverage brands, the turn of events in recent times has proved otherwise. Even after relaunch. One can ask; as Nunu milk gotten to the mind of most of its target audience? Some claimed that Nunu milk has most of its consumers in the northern part of the country which make one wonder how successful can it be rated if out of 36 states in the country less than five states is aware of the existence not to talk of patronage.

Other milk brands like Jago from Sosaco Nigeria limited is almost in extinction. The ones nation wide celebrated milk brand can now be visible on places like Onitsha, a less that 3% of milk consumers population. Likewise Coast, Blue Boat and Olympic milk are so endangered that the new generation of consumers don’t even know the name not to talk of consuming it.   

Some consumers of beverages are of the opinion that the endangered brands has failed to the extent that some of them now distribute their products in schools just to familiarize the products with children. A visit to some schools where such products was distributed revealed that most of the pupils who consumed the products call it another name, Cowbell, a competitor name in the industry that is doing fantastic well.  This makes one wonder if the content of these endangered brands are of high quality like that of its competitors what then is the problem: is it the packaging or marketing strategy employed by the manufacturers?

Speaking to some major distributors, Suppliers and traders in the suburb of Lagos shows a dismal patronage of Nunu milk especially.

Obinna, an apprentice at a supermarket shot his eyebrow in a fit of repulsion at our reporter when quizzed about the Nunu milk. He said ‘We do not buy Nunu again because people don’t buy anymore. As you can see from products on display, the competition is much and we have stopped buying it since customers prefer others.

It might interest you to know that of the four major distribution channels and five grocery stores in Ikeja, only one distributor and a grocery store had a few sachets of Nunu milk on display.

Outside Lagos, Sokoto precisely, the likes of Jago and Coast milk makes sway but in Lagos, the first determining location of a successful brand, these brands are not making shelve presence not to talk of paronage.

According to Yinka Olaito on his blog (http://networkedblogs.com), competing on brand survival, he is of the opinion that brand survival today is dependent on sound strategy. He added that the level at which the brand intimately knows its competitors is a good a factor and one of the best weapons in building sound strategy which aids brand’s prosperity is competitive intelligence.

‘Many brands have overlooked the importance of competitive intelligence and had never bothered to find out how competitive intelligence’s ingredients help build strong and healthily lifestyle for the brand.  It will be important to first examine the four processes involved in Competitive intelligence. The first step is information gathering. Brand must understand the need to gather relevant industry information and how it affects its existence. From here, a viable information analysis process must be able to indentify brand’s opportunities and threat. After this, the process should naturally move towards creation of actionable steps which may aid objective achievement. When this is properly done, efforts must be made in ensuring actions conform to objectives’ he wrote.

He added that ‘But for a lot of brands, competitive intelligence is confused with market research. It is important to note, while competitive intelligence may incorporate some of the same tactics used in market research, competitive intelligence answers are highly targeted and specific, rather than reflecting broad market or product trends.

One fact we must keep in mind always is that the level of brand communication success and by extension brand success is directly related to how personally you know your competitors, and what’s going on around them.  A good grasp of how fairly well researched and you can analyze all these will help in no small way’.

As daunting as the challenges of these endangered milk brands, Nunu milk, Jago milk, Coast, Blue Boat and Olympic milk may seem, efforts can be geared and sustained by the makers to create a winning brand.

Chima Nwuke, a Marketing expert and Brand icon posits that developing a brand from the scratch and relauching a brands that were almost extinct does not come cheap.

Furthermore, he stated that the process of building or sustaining winning brand is a painstaking one and too important to be left under the whims of a brand manager alone. In fact, the job of all employees is to deliver a winning brand that the future of a business is assured.

To get to this point, there are certain factors to be considered. Mr. Chima pointed out that a deep knowledge of the brand is very important in building winning brands. It is when you have good information that you can afford to be a good brand custodian and be able to differentiate it clearly in the market.

He advised that good knowledge of product costing helps innovation pricing and sometimes communication decisions when there are challenges especially in markets full of uncertainties like ours is vital.

Hence, the makers of these endangered milk brands must realize that the dynamism in consumer taste will create a winning brand.