Brand Saga: Celebrating 75 years of Havmor Ice creams

Paying an ode to the 75-year-old ice cream brand, this week's Brand Saga revels the joy of eating ice creams with Havmor advertising journey.

I Scream, You Scream, We all scream for Ice Cream. Don't we? It wouldn’t be wrong to say that Ice creams have always been an integral part of our diet as that inevitable desert that refuses to budge from a food plate (Choco-chip being a personal favorite). Recently Havmor Ice Creams celebrated 75 years of its existence and what could be a better time to celebrate theHavmor advertising journey.

The Journey

It was in 1944 when a young engineer named Satish Chona decided to don the role of an entrepreneur and set up a pop-up ice cream shop named ‘Havmor’. Soon after putting up a shop in Dehradun, due to the cold climate, the business couldn’t take off. The next stop was Indore; yet again due to circumstances, he moved to Gujarat’s Ahmedabad in 1953. 

In 2018, Havmor Ice Cream Ltd was fully acquired by South Korean major LOTTE Confectionery for ₹1,020 crore.

In the last decade, Havmor established a strong brand presence with a wide and varied range of flavors in 15 markets with a network of 40,000 retail outlets and more than 250 flagship stores.

Havmor Advertising Journey

In the initial days, one of the biggest challenges that the company faced was to transform its image from a local, Gujarat-based one to what can be called a national brand. In 2008 when Havmor ventured in Mumbai to start a franchise.

Although the brand adapted different ways to market Havmor in Gujarati-dominated areas via posters and a bit of outdoor, later expanded itself to other major markets. Havmor’s core purpose was “to catalyze moments of delight every day” in its consumers' life.  

Stemming from its core values of acchai, sacchai and safai (goodness, truthfulness & purity) Havmor claims to have become a brand of goodness. From serving paan ice creams at Shilpa Shetty’s reception to mango ice cream that was served to Bill Clinton on his visit to India, Havmor focused on creating consumer experiences with its quality products.

For a brand with an as diverse history as Havmor's finding the first campaign is very difficult. However, intense research shows that in 2012, the brand launched its Zulu bar and went aggressive on Television.

In 2013 Havmor partnered with Hrithik Roshan and Priyanka Chopra starrer Krrish 3 to launch custom-packaged Krrish 3 Range of ice creams and promoted the association wit a 360-degree campaign.

Next, banking on the popularity of Dubsmash in 2015, on Friendship's Day, Havmor rolled out #HavmorFunnWithFriends across social media.

Havmor also tied with influencers to create buzz and increase curiosity around the campaign. The brand claims to have received about 300 total entries & over 500K social impressions.

Havmor latched onto the trend further leveraging occasions like Friendship and Valentine’s day to create campaigns like #HavmorFunSwapping in 2016.

Further introducing more variants like Rocket Candy, Almond Mocha, Choco Block, et al, the TVCs revolved around pegging the one against others.

Goodness the World Deserves

Moving beyond product promotions and product-specific marketing, Havmor revamped its brand identity, packaging, and retail structure to suit the rationale and emotional insights of its consumers.

In 2016, the company launched a new brand campaign joining hands with Publicis Ambience with the tag-line ‘Goodness the world deserves’ in a bid to go national.

With the help of its then digital agency, Prodigitz Media, various digital mediums like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram were used to reach out to ice cream lovers with #SpreadTheGoodness and  #CaptureTheGoodness.

Later the thought of Goodness was expanded to #GoodnessEveryMealDeserves in 2017.  

Its giphy campaign #RealDoodhDude  ‘Made With Real Doodh Dude’ too garnered huge response and won digital awards.

Also Read: Havmor’s #SpreadTheGoodness gives greeting cards a social twist

10 second charm

Further in 2017,  as part of its strategic brand repositioning exercise, Havmor rolled out a nine-second animated video titled #MadeOfMilk conceptualized by Creativeland Asia. It featured two animated cows fighting over the pronunciation of Havmor. The cows, which are called gaiz in Hindi, disagree about the brand name, while one pronounces it as Havmor, the other pronounces it as Havmoo.

The Cool Gaiz was revived in 2018 summer to further strengthen the brand’s #MadeOfMilk stance. The TVCs focused on how Havmor Ice Cream has more variants than the summer can handle. The 15-second film revived the two Cool Gaiz.

In 2019 too Cool Gaiz were looking for a new flavor. The TVC also conveys the message of Havmor being one of the brands who care about the diverse tastes and opinion of its customers.

Marking the Digitalverse

For the last couple of years, Havmor has utilized digital and social media to reach out to TG. One of the award-winning online campaigns it initiated in 2016 and yet continues is the Coolest Summer Job.

Havmor’s Coolest Summer Job is a consumer engagement program, where participants get a chance to work closely with the brand. The idea behind this campaign is to give the coolest job to the passionate Chef and ice-cream lover.

Also Read: Havmor’s #TheCoolestSummerJob raked over 1.7 million digital impressions

According to the company, the third season broke all the records as there were 115,378 entries and 2,700 video applications.  The campaign reach was 30 million through social media, on-pack advertising, and influencer marketing.

This year, over the three days of the campaign, 248 new flavors, 8 new ice-cream formats, and 19 benefit spaces were discovered and then chosen to be developed into products.

Coolest Summer Job has now become a calendar event for the brand, where the product idea is of the consumer, made by the consumer and eventually for the consumer.

Havmor also hosts a social media page ‘Ice Cream Tales – ICT’ with over 1.3 lakh fans, where it provides an online roof to all ice cream lovers. The online club was then taken offline by getting these ice cream connoisseurs physically under one roof in every metro city.

As digital gets more topical, the brand followed suit with punny and witty content.

Havmor's recent campaign was about Utsaav pack #GharAaoTohHavmorLao, which was endorsed by over 20 TV Celebrities, giving the message of togetherness.

Digital and social media play a big role in making new products reach the target consumers and Havmor, as a brand is making all the efforts to do so. In the last few months leading up to their 75th anniversary, Havmor has experienced a transformation, both in case of strategy and creativity.

Apart from this, Havmor offers value to the consumers through promotions; partnering with brands like Gaana.com, Amazon, Imagica and PayTm to give free subscriptions, cashback, and more.

Going the 'Making for India' way, Havmor has been proud of changing with times and trends. 75 years and counting, the Havmor advertising journey is indeed as rich as their flavours.