Marketing Matters: How Tata Salt used smart media planning to grab consumer attention

Time of India

6 days ago

Disruption in a commoditised category isn't a regular occurrence. Most often, breakthrough campaigns happen where there is a clear insight-driven idea.
Tata Salt
has been one such brand that has found success through deep consumer listening.
The brand was facing dual challenges: category stagnation and commoditisation. Its media agency,
Wavemaker India
(now part of WPP Media), used smart media planning to boost brand salience by increasing
Top-of-Mind Awareness
(TOMA) and consideration, and to strengthen
brand power
by rekindling emotional connections and differentiation with a younger demographic.
Ajay Gupte, President – Client Solutions, WPP Media, South Asia, takes ET Brand Equity through the making of the campaign. According to him, the biggest takeaway for modern brands from this piece is, 'own your distinct brand assets, and then reinvent them boldly.'
What was the business problem that "The Unforgettable Salt" campaign was designed to address? And, what were the specific, measurable objectives given to solve?
Tata Salt was facing dual challenges, category stagnation and commoditisation. While the brand remained synonymous with trust, it had begun to lose share to lower-priced, undifferentiated alternatives amidst inflationary pressure. The perception of "all salts being the same" made it difficult for consumers to justify a premium choice, eroding both engagement and market share.
The campaign set out to arrest the decline in market share and achieve volume growth despite a shrinking category; strengthen brand salience by increasing Top-of-Mind Awareness (TOMA) and consideration; and improve brand power by reigniting emotional affinity and differentiation among younger audiences.
What key consumer insights were considered while implementing the campaign?
We tapped into three critical insights.
Salt is a blind spot: It's only noticed when missing or overused, making it hard for any brand to stay top-of-mind.
Distracted butterflies: Our modern audience is constantly exposed to media noise, making attention a premium. A catchy jingle, deeply embedded in pop culture, had the potential to cut through this noise.
Emotional nostalgia meets modern relevance: While older consumers trusted Tata Salt from years of association, younger audiences needed fresh, culturally relevant reasons to connect.
These insights led us to rekindle the iconic '
Namak ho Tata ka
' jingle in a playful, omnipresent way, embedding it into everyday life, even beyond the kitchen.
What were the KPIs you were tracking to measure the success of this campaign? Could you share some key highlights in terms of results?
Our KPIs spanned across market performance and brand metrics:
Market share: Increased by 3.4% year-on-year (YoY) (AMJ '24 vs AMJ '23), reversing a downward trend even as the category declined by 3.2%.
Volume growth: Highest in brand history, +6.6% YoY.
TOMA and consideration: Top-of-Mind Awareness rose from 82 to 86, and consideration increased by 3 points.
Brand power score: Jumped 3.8 percentage points, from 59.9% to 63.7%.
Creative recall: 7 of the top 10 ads in the category during IPL belonged to Tata Salt.
UGC growth: +15% increase in user-generated content through jingle remixes and influencer activations.
What according to you makes the campaign disruptive?
In a category where functional parity is the norm, we chose to disrupt through emotional and sensory branding and not price. We turned a 40-year-old jingle into a cultural mnemonic by embedding it into slice-of-life situations, on trains, in retail stores, across IPL, through sign language for inclusivity, and with influencers who reimagined it creatively.
The campaign didn't just speak about salt, it made salt speak back, through music, humor, surprise, and cultural resonance. That's true disruption in a commoditised category.
What are the lessons that new-age brands can learn from a legacy brand like Tata Salt, and its campaigns like "The Unforgettable Salt"?
Legacy doesn't mean static. Tata Salt proves that timeless trust can coexist with fresh relevance. The biggest takeaway for modern brands is this: own your distinct brand assets, and then reinvent them boldly.
The campaign also reinforces that emotional storytelling, when powered by insight-driven media innovation, can make even the most overlooked category unforgettable. This campaign is a case study in modernising memory structures. We didn't introduce a new narrative, we refreshed an old one using the language of today: short videos, audio cues, creator culture, contextual nudges, and inclusive engagement.
It proves that with the right mix of data, creativity, and cultural fluency, legacy brands can thrive, even in low-involvement, price-sensitive categories.
Tata Consumer Products and Wavemaker India won 'Campaign of the Year' for 'The Unforgettable Salt' at ET Shark Awards 2025.