How a home-grown babycare brand revamped to compete with the global biggies

Brand Introduction

Me N Moms was conceived in 1994, at a time when Indian parents had to choose from a limited range of babycare products and a visiting relative from abroad was often the only source of well-designed wonders. The market was opened, and Naresh Khatar, spotting the gap, launched the retail brand with the intent of making quality products accessible to Indian parents. His astute understanding of the market helped him take it from a single store to a pan-India presence, with 100+ stores. In 2006, Naresh launched his own brand Mee Mee. It became a 200-crore brand on the back of the largest range of quality baby care products in India.

Brand Challenge

The brand had impressively reached many homes, but not made enough inroads into the hearts and minds of the Indian mothers. While the products, thanks to their quality and smart pricing, sold well, the band was finding it difficult to break into the core of the category – skincare, and feeding. It approached OPEN Strategy & Design – to help unlock for the brand the next phase of growth.

An in-depth look at how the brand was being bought and consumed, revealed the key challenge: the brand lacked emotional registration – necessary to become a legitimate player in the category.

Insight

Parenting is a cultural-context-heavy category. In a category of global majors, Mee Mee had an advantage as an Indian baby care brand. There was an opportunity to understand and build a brand for the new Indian mothers.

A view into the world of new mothers revealed an emergent truth. Early infancy is tough. Vanishing social support systems, conflicting parenting ideologies and social media noise all add up to create confusion and stress for first-time mothers.

The understanding allowed OPEN to reframe the audience – Mee Mee was not talking to evaluative mothers, but vulnerable mothers. And the unique value that it could add as a brand, was to become a reassuring voice that acknowledged their natural instincts.

Execution

With the opportunity in sight, OPEN worked to create to design a new identity. The first task was a re-design of the visual identity, to give it clean solidity. Giving it codes of warmth and trust, which would allow it to sit across many categories.

Packaging was the most important media for the brand. Realizing that baby care was a deep engagement category, they turned packaging into a communication medium. Each pack was designed as a little conversation, the kinda second time would have with a first-time mom. It allowed the brand to both demonstrate its understanding of parenting and highlight the key features of the product.

OPEN also created an intelligent, modular communication system for point of sale, that helped build a strong visual identity for the brand while allowing it talks about a wide range of products.

The e-commerce site was the other big touchpoint for the brand. Most e-commerce experiences are designed to deliver the clutter of choices. OPEN realized that tired and sleep-deprived mothers often log in at late hours. The new Mee Mee web experience was designed as the most stress-free buying experience available to her. A card-based UI, coupled with a soothing palette and a friendly, conversational message helped create an inviting experience for the mothers.

With this complete brand revamp, Mee Mee was able to create an experience designed on the back of a more insightful understanding of the new Indian mother.