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Pepsi extends Miranda Orange variants

Ratna Bhushan

NEW DELHI, July 3

PEPSI Foods Ltd, has extended its Mirinda Orange brand to 500ml PET bottles in the Delhi market. Prior to the brand extension, Mirinda Orange has been available in the capital in 1.5 litre PET bottles, apart from regular 300ml, 1 litre and half-litre gla ss bottles and 330 ml cans. The 500ml PET bottles are priced at Rs. 15 each.

Mirinda Orange is already available in 500ml PET bottles in the southern states of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Top company officials told Business Line that this variation of Mirinda Orange will be extended to other cities within the next few month s.

``Since this variant is doing well in the South, we decided to extend it to other cities beginning with Delhi,'' the officials said.

In another first-time foray, Mirinda Orange has been introduced in 2-litre bottles in the Delhi market. As is the case with the 500ml PET bottles, this variant of Mirinda Orange has also been available in southern markets. Priced at Rs. 45 a bottle, this variant, too, is expected to be rolled out nationally in the next couple of months, company officials said.

Pepsi proposes to extend the lime variant of Mirinda similarly, but at a later stage.

The domestic soft drinks market is estimated at roughly 250-270 million cases, of which the orange segment accounts for the biggest share, after the dominant cola segment.

The orange segment commands a bigger share than the lime segment in the domestic market, which explains why Pepsi has opted to expand the former first.

Early this year, Pepsi Foods had given Mirinda a makeover by changing its logo. The brand's advertising, too, was changed last month. While Mirinda Orange centres around the theme `taste pe atka' (stuck on taste), the advertising theme for the lime varia nt has been `zor ka jhatka' (forceful impact).

Steering clear of cricket

WHILE the controversies dogging the game of cricket -- and more importantly cricketers -- get murkier, one marketer which had played the cricket card in full swing all along has distanced itself from the game, for the time being at least.

The Pepsi brand, which has been advertised by a whole lot of team members of the India XI at some time or other, has strategically sidestepped from all cricket-related advertising.

Meanwhile, the marketer is consistently airing commercials featuring Shah Rukh and Cyrus Broacha, and this scenario is likely to continue till September.

Company officials justified that the absence of cricket-related advertising is only to do with the fact that no major cricket tournaments are being held currently. They added that they could possibly shoot fresh cricket-related promotions to coincide wit h the Sahara Cup, slated to be held in September.

However, the officials were non-committal on whether they would continue to use cricketers as models. While Azhar has been associated with Pepsi for five years, Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid have been brand endorsers for six and three years respectiv ely. The latest additions to Pepsi's list of cricketing models have been Debashish Mohanty and S. Ramesh.