Titan strengthens its focus in Kids segment

I recall having started the another story emphasising on how important kids have become to influence the market and alter the dynamics. And now there is another brand identifying these tots as potentially strong customers ' Titan. Even as a child, I was always fascinated with watches and that continues to date. Whenever my father used to go on international tours, I'd always ask him to get me a watch.

At one point of time, I had as many as seven watches of different kind. And I was just a small kid! I remember two of them clearly ' one was my first digital watch, that's why and the second one was unique in its way of appearance. You could dismantle every portion of the watch, except the main dial. The watch came with additional three different set of parts in three different colours. I'd wear white and blue, while I'd let my sister wear the pink colour scheme at times! It was amazing for a little boy, in that time!

According to me, this makes me one of the best qualified persons to understand what Titan is trying to do here. To come in and try to fill the gap that exists as a niche market for only toy-like watches. Titan announced its strategy to strengthen its kid's brand, Zoop. Piloted in 6 cities in 2008, Zoop will now be made available in 1200 outlets across 140 cities in India. Zoop offers as many as 70 styles for boys and girls and is priced from Rs. 350/- to Rs. 900/-.

Shyamala Ramanan, Sr, Marketing Manager, Titan Watches, while talking exclusively to Adgully about the reason and a survey behind launching this particular category explained saying, "One in a 15 who work with Titan asks for kids watches and in our survey we found there are 14 million kids in the age group of 5-12 years and there is no brand particularly catering to the kids." She further adds "Watches feature as the 4th to 5th in the priority list of the kids"

Titan claims that each watch from Zoop, caters to a desire and fits well with the brand proposition of "Be a star".

Talking about the evolution of the kids brand Zoop, Ramanan says, "We strongly believe that launching of Zoop has been a significant move for Titan. Brand Titan has already made its place in the heart of all adults and Zoop will help us create recall of our brand amongst kids below the age of 12 years. Every Zoop watch is designed keeping in mind the playfulness, vivid imagination and the cool attitude that today's children exhibit."

Maria Goretti, launched the new collection of watches and said on the occasion, "I am truly impressed to see the Zoop watches from Titan. As a responsible parent, I feel it is important to inculcate the concept of time telling and time keeping in a fun and exciting way. I would love to buy a Zoop watch for my kid."

This is not the first time Maria Goretti and Titan have joined hands. Goretti endorsed Titan watches earlier too, but now in her second stint, she comes aboard as a doting mother. "It feels great to be associated like this" she adds with excitement while launching the kids collection.

Discussing about the Marketing mix, Ramanan revelas, "this is an on going collection and we will be focusing extensively on the television because it has the highest reach specially kids channels and a few chosen ones on the GEC space."

There are other activities like an outdoor campaign, below the line activities, tie ups with kid's brands, summer camps, schools, kid's comic books and magazines and a whole lot more that's in the pipeline and will be executed soon. The account of the TVC is handled by Ogilvy.

Now to just give a teaser of the watch itself, if I may ' it's not really a simple, colourful plastic affair only here. Titan has gone full-monty on this one. The Zoop features dual time, countdown timer, 50-year calendar, compass, stopwatch alarm, and EL Backlight are present in the digital collection to attract gizmo loving kids. The analog collection portrays floral motifs, disc second hand, luminescent dials and other features.

Cool, isn't it?