Background
Rascal is an Indian RTD alcopop beverage brand. They focus on bringing easy drinking options to the market, with no frills. Having developed Rascal’s branding, packaging, naming, and tone of voice earlier, the strategy systems we worked on next came to us naturally.
Challenges
Rascal as an identity was clear. Both our teams agreed that we knew exactly who Rascal was, yet this ‘vibe’ needed actual documentation.
The team approached us to come up with consumer profiles, usage, product differentiation, and social strategy so they could use these frameworks as their north star for all marketing henceforth.
The main notion, and challenge, with Rascal was to be loveable at the end of the day — and not in any way, a negative influence.
Work
Positioning
Brand matrices
Consumer personas
Variant mapping
Product usage
Value proposition
Apart from this, our team also worked on their social media and event activation ideas for the brand.
Research
Our initial market research for Rascal consisted of primary and secondary research. This was done during our first phase of branding work, yet was the backbone for our next phase of strategy work too.
For the former, we tried to gauge what people usually associated with the word ‘rascal’. Responses showed repetitions and synonyms of rude/snobby/annoying, and someone even said ‘their ex’. This led to understanding how controversially negative this name could be without a more positive tonality or graphic representation to aid.
For our secondary research, we looked into mischievous characters we’ve all loved over the years: Garfield, Dennis the Menace, Johnny Bravo, Kevin McCallister, and more. The kinds who have stolen hearts, gotten laughs, and never pushed things too far.
We also looked at existing market players (within India and globally) to establish what kinds of storylines already exist and who they catered to. This was followed by understanding the drinking habits of the newer generations, and what they’d actually gravitate towards.
INSIGHT
Nobody likes being hungover. Not everybody wants to be sober. Seltzers can have a ‘meh’ reputation. There is a middle ground opportunity that exists here for feel-good drinking moments.
Strategy & Solutions
Rascal already occupied a niche: fuss-free drinking. We further enhanced this stance with a positioning statement that indicated exactly what made the product special and how.
The brand on a page came next, which really connected all the dots.
Consumer profiles, variant mapping, and possible social usage resulted in a clarification of not only who Rascal was, but also who it was for.
Next, we focused on the key differentiating attributes for this internal strategy guide. We broke this down into four primary pillars with product/brand attributes to back them up.
