“The King of Good Times” is India’s best-selling beer, and from Mumbai to Delhi, the locals guzzle through millions of bottles annually. But although the brand commands up to 25% of its domestic market, unless you’ve visited India or are a part-time connoisseur of curries, you may not have recognized Kingfisher’s qualities as the perfect accompaniment to a chicken Vindaloo.
However, all that could change in the future as Kingfisher’s owners, United Breweries, have delivered their premium brand to the web in an effort to increase global awareness of their coveted flagship product.
The Kingfisher homepage is everything you would expect from the Indian-based brand. It is colorful and noisy (although the score sounds more Caribbean than Indian) and there’s plenty of animation to enhance the viewing experience. Areas of the site that are well worth a visit include the Fun n Beer section, where you can send E-cards to your friends or have a chuckle at the Beer Jokes; the Food section, which is a must for lovers of Indian cuisine; and the World section, which contains information about the history of United Breweries and the Kingfisher brand itself. Unfortunately, the facility to order Kingfisher beer and apparel online only exists for residents of Bangalore at present, so from an E-tail perspective, the site is limited to a fraction of its own indigenous market.
This feeling of constraint is also extended to other site areas and there are several sections within Kingfisher.com that are weak in terms of content and will need substantial embellishment if United Breweries are to make full use of the web as a marketing tool. The Sports pages are a good example of this as they simply contain a handful of paragraphs on Kingfisher’s sponsorship of past sporting events, rather than evangelizing what associates the emotional aspects of the Kingfisher brand with its chosen recreational partners.
Ian Cocoran is an Operations Director with one of the world's largest chemical distributors. He has an MBA in Marketing from the Buckinghamshire Business School and lives in Glasgow, Scotland, with his wife Kate and daughter Lucy.
*Due to the constantly changing environment of websites, some reviews may no longer reflect the current website for this brand.