Classmate: Brand Launch and Brand Promotion

Brand Launch:

Classmate is an Indian brand of student stationery products. ITC Limited (formerly Indian Tobacco Company) launched its Classmate brand in 2003 with the notebooks category. Subsequently, Classmate added pens, pencils, mechanical pencils and geometry boxes to its portfolio.

ITC made its entry to the education and stationery business with its Paperkraft brand in the premium segment in 2002; and later expanded into the popular segment with its Classmate brand in 2003. By 2007, Classmate became the largest Notebook brand in the country. Together, Classmate and Paperkraft offer a range of products in the Education & Stationery space to the discerning consumer, providing unrivalled value in terms of product & price.

Classmate and Paperkraft have become a natural extension of the consumer. Meticulous understanding of consumer needs helped creating a relevant and comprehensive portfolio satisfying the needs of different sets of consumers.

 

ITC is the manufacturer of India's first Ozone treated environment friendly Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF) pulp, paper and paperboard. It blends its knowledge of image processing, printing and conversion garnered from Packaging & Printing Business with its brand building and trade marketing & distribution strengths resident in its FMCG business to offer superior value products to consumers.

Classmate over years has transformed itself from being a notebook brand to a provider of the complete stationery portfolio with the product range including high quality writing instruments (ball, gel & roller pens & mechanical pencils), mathematical instruments (geometry boxes), scholastic products (erasers, sharpeners and rulers) and art stationery products (wax crayons, plastic crayons, sketch pens and oil pastels) The brand encourages each user to nurture the skills and interests that make them special, with confidence, to make their dreams, reality.

Classmate stands for identifying and celebrating the uniqueness of every child. Classmate is Number One in Notebooks with annualized consumer spend of 1400 Crores.

Brand Promotion:

Launched in 2003, with an array of student notebooks, ITC Classmate currently offers a comprehensive stationery portfolio that has now become a popular brand name across India with school kids and college-goers. Let's have a look at some of it's brilliant promotion strategies:

1. As part of ITC’s centenary initiative, Classmate launched the largest student contact program- Ideas for India challenge. It provided a platform for Indian youth to brainstorm and address the issues and challenges which our nation faces and help in developing the nation. ITC also launches a lot of digital campaigns to ensure maximum participation.

2. Classmate Pulse was one such notebook brand from ITC Classmate that was being launched all across India with focused BTL activation efforts on various consumer touch points. The new brand needed strong recall value and wanted to run an aggressive consumer promotion across top metro cities. Ascertaining Classmate Pulse’s youthful, energetic audience, they came up with targeted promotional activities that were extremely popular with a young, lively audience. On the purchase of notebooks worth Rs. 150 and above, customers got assured prizes ranging across:

• free movie tickets, 
• pizza parties, 
• coffee vouchers, 
• bowling passes 
• go-karting experiences, 

redeemable across 500 venues.

3. ITC Classmate released an ad film for its origami notebooks, the first in a series of engagement-based notebooks under its Classmate "Interaktiv" series. Aimed at encouraging students to learn through ‘Do It Yourself’ activities, the origami notebooks will enhance their creativity and imagination through experiential learning. The ad campaign focuses on consumer engagement through videos, contests and collaborations in the near future. The campaign film showcases the origami notebooks which include DIY sheets.

4. To leverage and position the Classmate as a media savvy brand with a heart. As a notebook brand, children comprise a large chunk of their target audience, and they grabbed their attention by having a Facebook contest that lets them celebrate their unique talent, the contest was an apt way of celebrating Children's Day. By letting people celebrate their uniqueness, Classmate has added the necessary personal touch to this digital campaign. The prize, which is in the form of a personalized doodle, is far better than a cash prize simple because it’s more about people and not about money. The core message that each one of us is unique comes across very well in this endeavor.

5. Classmate have an agency for digital marketing and annual plans and dedicated content and budgets and milestones to achieve. Their spend on digital media would have been anywhere between 30-40% in 2019, and have grown progressively. They wanted to build a strong foundation on social media.

6. The 45-day long Classmate Man of the Match campaign merged multiple consumer engagement platforms to leverage the brand promotion. The campaign used digital marketing and activations (including the use of social media), with traditional on-ground platforms like roadshows, and tie-ups with Café Coffee Day (CCD) outlets, thus allowing the brand to be present in the consumer's physical and virtual environments.