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And Now For Noodle News…
BY ANDREW WOOD & DERRICK HO
Sex? Revolution? Added functional ingredients? Just what is going on with noodles? Find out what the trendsetters are doing—and how they’re advertising the fact.
1 June 2005
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Imagine seeing this on your TV: a man walks into a bar to meet his friends. He has an enormous sexually-suggestive bulge in his trousers. Apparently he’s got ‘the horn’. He removes it from his trousers. Luckily it’s a big brass horn, and not part of his body.
That’s an advert for Pot Noodle in the UK—a Unilever brand. Crude? Tasteless? Well, more than 600 people complained to British advertising watchdog about it. A series of Pot Noodle radio ads were banned from times when children might listen. The ad agency apparently based them on ‘dated soft pornography’.So lots of people dislike Pot Noodle. It was named ‘Britain’s most detested brand’ by a TV shopping channel that surveyed 11,000 consumers.
But does Unilever care? Probably not. It may be downmarket, but Pot Noodle apparently has a 95 per cent share of the UK instant noodle market. Shock advertising seems to be working.
Such tactics can certainly work in saturated markets. The Singaporebased firm Tat Hui Food wanted to ‘shake up the people’ with its recent advertising for its rice-based Koka Noodles, according to its marketing director, Lim Shiang.
Tat Hui is a long-established firm, and the Koka brand has been in Singapore for 20 years. But it’s relatively unknown, as the firm has concentrated on exports to countries including the UK and US, and regions such as the Middle East.
Singapore is a fairly conservative place. So Koka’s ‘Revolution’ ads, with their rebellious communist-like imagery, have provoked a lot of interest. They started appearing on TV and in print in February, backed by a website. They’ve made Koka cool.
But the firm wanted to get a lot of messages into their ads—other than the obvious one: ‘People don’t need to be reminded already that instant noodles are fast to cook and good to eat,’ says Ms Lim. It wanted to raise brand awareness in a memorable and unusual way; and it also wanted promote healthier eating. Market research showed that people thought instant noodles contained a lot of monosodium glutamate (MSG). Consumers believed this was unhealthy. The logical approach, Ms Lim says, was to take away ‘things that are intrinsically bad within the noodles.’
Pot Noodle was named ‘Britain’s most detested brand’. But does the owner Unilever care? Probably not. Pot Noodle apparently has a 95 per cent share of the UK instant-noodle market.
The Singapore authorities, like many governments, are promoting the idea of better health through a more sensible diet. But consumers seem to worry that those ‘healthy’ noodles might not be so tasty.
Tat Hui cut the amount of fat in Koka Noodles: the low-fat instant range is baked rather than deep-fried; the remaining three per cent fat comes from the seasoning. It removed MSG and used soy, yeast and herbs to get a better taste. The research and development took two years. Innovations included an Italian flavour—marinara— that spiced-up traditional Mediterranean tastes for the Singapore palate.
So how to convey all this to consumers? The ‘Revolution’ theme seemed natural, although the pseudo-communist imagery was almost accidental. Koka already used red for its logo. It added a fork to the clenched fist to make it less ‘Mao-like’, Ms Lim says.
Tat Hui seems pleased with the results of the ad campaign—although Ms Lim feels that the different elements, such as the website and the TV commercials, could have worked together better.
The firm is now looking elsewhere in Asia: Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia. There’s been a good response in Japan. ‘The Japanese love new products and flavours,’ Ms Lim says. Rice noodles such as Koka’s are unusual—wheat noodles are the norm.
Japan probably needs such innovation. It may be one of the largest noodle markets in the world, but the research company Datamonitor notes that noodle sales are falling in value. The market’s saturated. Noodle makers are also casualties of the country’s decade-long economic slowdown, that’s resulted in falling prices for many goods.
Japan’s largest noodle-maker, Nissin Foods, invented instant noodles in 1958. Competition for this category is fierce: there are lots of rival firms and product life cycles are short. Datamonitor says: ‘Price reductions are common in this market as manufacturers strive for market share.’
There are similar stories in the pillow-type and fresh noodle segments. Only frozen noodles seem to be growing in sales. Companies like Nissin are expanding abroad—Eastern Europe is one target—to make up for their poor prospects at home in Japan.
Elsewhere in Asia, prospects for noodles seem good, according to Datamonitor. In Thailand, the majority of noodles sold are deep-fried. But demand for instant cup-type noodles is growing. In Indonesia, the market leader Indofood dominates sales. But it’s losing ground.
Indofood had 90 per cent share in 2000—that’s now down to about 80 per cent. Rice is still Indonesians’ main food—but noodles soared in popularity as a result of the Asian financial crisis. Trendy noodle bars in Jakarta are helping too.
China is big in terms of volume overall—and there’s plenty of potential. ‘As consumption per head is significantly lower than other countries in this region,’ Datamonitor says, ‘the opportunity for growth in this market is substantial.’
Non-Asian firms are looking at noodles with interest. The Belgian functional-ingredients maker Orafti is capitalising on its experience with pasta—another staple food which has many similarities with noodles.
Veerle De Bondt senior applications manager told Asia Food Journal that Orafti had been experimenting with adding its prebiotics to sachets of seasoning for instant noodles.
‘We found it’s perfectly possible to use our ingredients and found there was no difference in taste or visual appearance,’ she said. Orafti expects a product using its ingredients to be launched in South-East Asia soon—but it is reluctant to give details at the moment. It’s promised to reveal more on its work with noodles in a coming edition of the magazine.
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