Parle Agro, a Rs.600 crores food and beverage company, has introduced a fresh new packaging for Frooti – India’s largest selling mango drink. The new packaging includes an updated color palette and improved graphics.

Frooti has been one of my favorite drinks since school days. During that time, it used to come in this dark green and yellow, almost squarish type of package that made it stand out from all the other beverages on the shelf. It was small, highly desirable and tasted delicious. Its been a long journey for Frooti since, and the brand seems to be keeping up with the times.

The mango at the centre of the new package sports a headset, presumably as a sign of today’s iPod generation who are extremely mobile and connected. I don’t know why, but there seems to be a clever uncanny resemblance with the Apple brand – notice the mango curve on the right along with the positioning of the leaf. I can’t help but draw parallels with Apple iTunes for some strange reason.

Frooti is available in 65ml and 200ml TetraPaks. Also available in PET bottles of 250ml, 500ml, 1000ml and 1500ml.

Somehow the lighter yellow shade of the new packaging gives the impression of a citrus drink (lemonade) instead of mango. On the positive side, the Frooti typeface seems to have had a minor refinement giving it a more three dimensional feel with its subtle drop shadow.

In terms of taste, its been more or less the same for the past couple of years. I remember relishing the true taste of mango in Frooti more than a decade ago. Unfortunately, at times I get an artificial taste if not chilled properly. The price of the new Frooti has also increased by 20%. The new drink now retails at Rs.12. Its a clear sign to compete with the other mango drinks from Real and Tropicana which retail at about Rs.15. It would be interesting to see how Parle Agro can capitalize and gain marketshare with the new packaging of its most valuable beverage brand.

Having switched to a consumer products industry, its important for me to keep abreast of the trends in branding and product packaging. In addition to prolonging shelf life and making distribution easier, packaging also plays an important role in the final choice the consumer will make because it directly involves convenience, appeal, information and branding. To put it loosely, its the first impression the consumer gets about the product. One of the important things many companies take for granted is providing adequate instructional graphics. How much info is good info?

While shopping at a local convenient store the other day, I came across a biscuit packet which was quite unlike the others. This one in particular was Parle-G from the house of Parle – one of India’s oldest biscuits & confectioneries company. Although, not as impressive as the other brands on display, what caught my attention was the detail in the packaging. Here was a biscuit packet that guided the user on how to tear it open! Believe me when I did tear along the marked area, the packet opened in a breeze without breaking a single biscuit. I normally consume Britannia Milk Bikis and the occasional ‘Good Day’ for tea, but both of them dont have proper guidelines on how to open the packet. More often than not, I’d end-up breaking a biscuit or two (which also breaks my heart!) While I’m sure there may be other biscuits that have such instructions but, none of them have that as big, bold and one that communicates the message better than Parle-G. And at just Rs.3, its a killer!