Monday, June 09, 2008

Surrogate Advertising and Mineral water

Surrogate - noun
1. One that takes the place of another; a substitute.

Since the ban on alcohol and tobacco advertisements, liquor and tobacco companies in India have resorted to a interesting way of marketing... using surrogates. This is not something new. But what I find interesting is the side effects of this, especially in mineral water segment.

Alcohol companies took to manufacturing (outsourced mostly I guess) and selling branded mineral water. KingFisher, Fosters to name a few. And thanks to this, today we consumers have a lot of choice. In the beginning, BISLERI was synonymous to mineral water. Now you ask for BISLERI and more often than not you get a mineral water sold by liquor gaints like UB. Some of the ads do not focus on the mineral water.... more on the brand, obviously since they do not intend to dilute (but pun intended) their main product.

But I wonder why they did not opt to use non-alcoholic beverages as a surrogate instead.

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