Archies Scores Big With Partnerships, Mascots For V-day Win
In its 45th year, Archies recently forged a partnership with Mondelez India to redefine the gifting experience, timed for the Valentine's season.
The collaboration seeks to enrich and broaden the celebration of sweet occasions in countless households by presenting an enticing array of personalised gift hampers from Mondelez India.
While speaking to BW Marketing World, Varun Moolchandani, Executive Director, Archies describes the tie-up as a confidence-building boost for both brands.
The Sweet Affair of Archies & Mondelez
"It is a win-win partnership because our customers in Archies always wanted chocolates. Who better than Cadbury's coming in with us, also during Valentine's Day? The whole idea here is the impact of sales going to be amazing because we have only tied up with Mondelez as far as their Cadbury sub brand and then Silk and other variants coming into with exclusive gift packs, he explains.
The collaboration includes Cadbury products in Archies stores, creating an ideal combo for Valentine's Day shoppers.
The brand also unveiled its digital campaign, #ArchiesHaiToValentineHai, unfolding a narrative that emphasises the power of thoughtful gestures to mend relationships and heal hearts. The story revolves around a young man caught up in the chaos of life, inadvertently forgetting Valentine's Day and leaving his better hald disheartened. However, a twist occurs when the father steps in to rescue, advising his son to visit Archies and mend the momentarily broken heart, encapsulating the essence of the campaign with the tagline, “Archies Hai To Valentine Hai” with their newly introduced mascot, AMA - the giraffe.
The Mascot Experience
Talking about Archies' mascot, AMA, Moolchandani shares that the mascot is targeted at children aged four to eleven. The goal is to make children familiar with the brand through merchandise and ground promotions involving AMA.
He asserts, "We are promoting AMA, the giraffe, in our offline stores, in terms of all promotion activities are around AMA. We have AMA as a mascot going to various stores of ours physically". Adding to it, he shares, "The other part is for the kids to experience AMA. We want to enhance the customer experience by promoting AMA in offline stores along with the launch of a variety of merchandise from keychains to mugs to toys to soft toys to notebooks to diaries. Our second phase with AMA will be more game oriented AMA."
With AMA, Archies aims to foster a deeper connection between the brand and its youngest customers.
The brand is geared up for the occasion, extending its presence to offline stores, franchisee retailers and digital platforms including popular quick commerce services like BlinkIt, Swiggy Instamart and Zepto.
The Year Ahead
Looking at the year ahead, Moolchandani states, "We're going to focus primarily on social media. We are seeing social media as a big boom coming this year. We have got another milestone to come by August 2024 where we plan to convert our social media into social."
He explains that the brand plans to establish an Archies Instagram and Facebook membership, eventually transforming social media into a social platform for enhancing the customer experience and business.
"Marketing through AI will be another big milestone which should happen in this fiscal", informs Moolchandani. Presently the team is actively working on cracking the AI marketing strategy with expectations of implementation in the first half of 2024.
Moolchandani hints at multiple developments for the brand in the year ahead. While details remain undisclosed, he assures, "There are three more collaborations in the pipeline that should happen before Rakhi. We are in the initial stages of discussions with the other super brands as well."
