Brand Update : Cadbury rebrands Eclairs to Choclairs

Brand : Cholairs

Company : Cadbury India 

Brand Analysis : # 534

In an interesting move, Cadbury's has rebranded its eclair brand to Choclairs. The brand is now running a TVC communicating this rebranding. Cadbury have two brands in the Eclairs segment - Cadbury Dairy Milk Eclairs and Cadbury Eclairs Rich. 

According to Business Standard, echlair market in India is worth around Rs 1000 crore( 2011statistics) and is witnessing intense competition for share between the players like Nestle, Parle, Cadbury and Perfetti. It is estimated that Cadbury is leading the market with its CDM Eclairs.

What can be the possible logic behind the rebranding of a very well known brand ?

One reason can be to handle the issue of generic nature of the term Eclairs. As I understand, eclairs stands for the special type of candy and is used by all the players in  the market. So when a consumer ask for an eclairs, it is retailer that decides which brand to be given. So by changing the name of CDM Eclairs to Choclairs, Cadbury's expect that problem to subside and with the new TVC the brand is trying to teach the consumer to tell the new name Choclairs.

Watch the TVC here : Candbury Choclairs

Second reason can be to remove the endorsement of Dairy Milk from this category. In my earlier posts on this brand, it may be recalled that Cadbury's had earlier renamed its eclair to Cadbury's Dairy Milk Eclairs .In effect, the eclair was a Product line extension of Dairy Milk brand. Now the brand owners may want to restrict the use of Dairy Milk to the chocolate bar category. So since the endorsement is removed, the eclairs would need an identity and Choclairs has become a new independent brand. 

Third reason can be that Choclairs is the brand which is owned by Cadbury's and is a leading brand in UK and China. Choclairs was created in 1996. So this move can be seen as a global alignment of the brands by Cadbury.

The positioning of Choclairs in India is funny. The new brand's main message is that it will not stick on the teeth. The brand has  the tagline " jo dimag mein chipke, daaton mein nahi "  which translates to " It will stick to your mind and not on teeth ". I wonder why the brand has taken such an attribute in a rebranding exercise. 

It is true that eclairs have a tendency to stick to gum and teeth and may be the brand feels that it may be prompting many consumers away from the category. But as a tagline, I feel that the brand deserves a better treatment.

Related post

Eclairs : Brand Update