Mmmmm," mumbled Sudheer Sharma, looking at the ceiling, "just the thing." The sigh of relief from the other two executives in the sampling room was almost audible above the low drone of the baking machinery across the compound.

This was RJN Corp's foods division, and Sharma, the division head, had just signaled his approval of the mouthfeel of its latest innovation: bis-chips. Now, bischips was no ordinary product. It was a biscuit product alright, in the sense that it was essentially baked dough. By way of consumption, though, it was meant to be crunched and relished like potato wafers. That's why the mouthfeel was so important. It had to feel like chips.

Test-launched some months ago by RJN under the brand Aye-Aye Captain, this hybrid product had taken years and stacks of R&D time and money. Now, finally, it was time to storm the market with it. Storm the markets, rather, since it was to occupy the intersection space of two distinct markets (as defined by both product classification and purchase motivation), biscuits and potato wafers.

"I want to know what Preeti Mohan will say," said Raj Singh, Brand Manager, RJN Foods, referring to the chief of the snackfoods division of a large multinational that had turned cola-and-chips into a youth obsession, much to the dismay of biscuit marketers. Over the 1990s, biscuits had lost their appeal with the 'in' crowds, and was now something that boring old 'aunties' served with tea. Chips, however, were perceived to be funky and cool-the right stuff to be munched alongside gulps of cola, the right stuff to offer the babes, and the right stuff to be seen with.

"I'd like to see the look on Kamat's face when he tastes it," mused Teji Chatterjee, marketing director, RJN Foods, referring to the chief of Cool Bakes, the leader of the Indian biscuits market. Now, since Cool Bakes was the company most at threat from the chips phenomenon, it had already taken defensive action by flanking its core market with a new product. Some years earlier, it had launched Luv Bites, which were little baked biscuits created as a substitute for potato chips. Aimed squarely at the urban teenager, Luv Bites had succeeded to an extent in bringing youthful irreverence and vivacity to the consumption of biscuits (of course, Luv Bites was Luv Bites, packaged in fluff-packs as chips, not close-wrapped biscuits).

In terms of volumes, biscuits made up a much larger market in India, totaling a mammoth 1.1 million tonnes annually. In terms of value realisation per tonne, however, the Indian market for chips was far more attractive. As a result, chips marketers were making more money on a market of just 200,000 tonnes. This was not merely because baked products were cheaper to make, kilogramme to kilogramme, but because biscuits lacked the intangible value additions that chips had. People were paying not just for the calories going down their stomachs, but, as with colas, also the psychological value obtained through the act of chips consumption (by making a social statement, for example).

Now, given the way the Indian snackfoods market was evolving, Luv Bites had been a smart move from Cool Bakes. That's why RJN Foods had watched the brand's progress very carefully. While the concept had been a breakthrough of sorts, it was failing in its original objective: which was to eat into the sales of potato chips. The reason? It was far too much of a mini-biscuit-all sweet and crumbly, just dressed up differently.

Aye Aye Captain, in contrast, was a bigger breakthrough in terms of the crunch-factor and the mouthfeel. Despite being a baked product, RJN's bischips tended to shatter instead of crumble. "In a blind test," boasted Sharma, "the consumer would not be able to identify it either as 'biscuits' or 'chips', and that goes in our favour."

Moreover, with the physical properties taken care of, the rest was an issue of flavour additives. And here too, RJN Foods had achieved significant progress in mapping the classic chips consumer's taste-buds, and then developing unique new flavours that would actually attract a following on their own. All in all, RJN Foods' team of three was quite confident that Aye Aye Captain bischips would prove to be quite a cracker in the market once it went all-India.

The only major decision left was the stance the brand would take. Or, in the jargon, how the brand was to be 'positioned' in the target consumer's mind. "So what's the confusion?" asked Sharma, "We've created a new product and we have the luxury of selling it exactly how we want to. We could even make our brand generic to this category, and then keep it wrapped up forever. That's the pioneer's advantage."

Brand manager Singh, however, was not so excited by the freedom involved in creating a whole new category. "My worry," he said, "is that it's going to cost way too much trying to establish bischips as an independent concept with no reference points. I think the best thing to do is play up the deficiencies of either biscuits or chips, or maybe both."

"Deficiencies?" asked Sharma.

"I do not mean playing a negative game," elaborated Singh, "but biscuits are boring and chips are unhealthy. The trump card we are holding is that bischips are neither. There we have it. This should be our positioning."

"I think," said Chatterjee, sounding unconvinced, "we need to be clear about whether we are targeting the chips buyer with a healthier option, or the biscuits fellow with a more exciting snack. Luv Bites was launched to get the chips guy into the biscuits fold, but ended up appealing mainly to biscuit types who wanted something snazzier and savvier."

"We are lucky not to be under any pressure to defend the biscuits market from the chips onslaught," said Sharma, "so we have another degree of freedom on that count. But my point is-why must we have any reference categories at all? bischips are bischips, the name tells you something, and that too, without denigrating either category. Beyond that, we can easily sell the product's benefits, period. And cost, by the way, should not be a contraint at this stage of planning."

"The trouble is that people are moulded to think in terms of biscuits, chips and so on," said Singh, "and even if we do resort to plain benefit-speak, the best option would be to list the key desirables from both-health from biscuits and fun from chips. So we will end up with 'healthy fun' or something like that."

"Too corny," snorted Sharma.

"Aye aye, captain," said the other two, in unison. And laughed. Somewhere deep down, they all knew they had not created a new product wonder just to sell a snack with hyphenated benefits.

"I still think bischips can be more powerful than the sum of its parts," continued Sharma, "but for that, we must think independently of all other snackfoods in existence. We have a product breakthrough, now let us get a positioning breakthrough."

Question: does Sharma really have a point worth pursuing?

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