Scope Of Work: Market Research, Brand Strategy, Understanding Consumer Psychology, Product Packaging.

Kokuyo Camlin is a legacy brand that has defined what stationery means to multiple generations of Indians. Everyone has some memory or association with it. So when Kokuyo Camlin’s CMO, Rishi Kakar, reached out, it was a dream come true for CC.

The brief was simple: change the packaging for the kids’ range. The answer was not. The project demanded extensive consumer study to understand why a child chooses a particular product, and what truly drives that decision. Almost a year later, that insight-led journey resulted in a refreshed and cohesive kids packaging range for Camel.

THE MARKET GAP

What excites kids? How do they decide what they want? What is new?

The Indian stationery market is worth over ₹4,000 crore and is dominated by four major brands. Among them, DOMS, which only entered in 2005, rose rapidly despite competing against legacy players.

They got FOUR things absolutely right. Product innovation, a distinct brand, exciting packaging, and powerful distribution. Naturally, DOMS quickly became the preferred choice.

Shopkeepers preferred displaying DOMS because of its high margins and growing popularity. Which raised the question the whole project turned on.

44 Parents. 40 Kids. 28 Shopkeepers. 4 Metro Cities.

The decision isn’t made by the child alone, it is a triangular decision between the child, parent and shopkeeper.

The child makes the final choice but is heavily influenced by the other two, along with external triggers like friends or spotting something new at school or tuition. So, to understand the ‘WHY’, it is important to understand the purchase behaviour.

The child makes the choice but not the decision.

Before finalising, we took the new packaging to the real world to understand how parents, kids, shopkeepers responded.

We again interviewed 40 participants, used their feedback to perfect the design before finally launching. The response was reassuring, overwhelming and made us do a happy dance.

We collaborated with remarkable Indian artists.

The research had already told us kids judge the quality of a product by the artwork on the pack. So we collaborated with Indian artists, each of whom grew up using Camel themselves.

We wanted the new generation kids to have real role models as artists, so each artwork was created by an Indian artist using the insights our research told us.

The messy, the fun, the not-so-pretty part of the project!