Food Consumption Patterns Part 2

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Another classic marketing story is the energy drink Toro.
The first and the most successful energy drink during the
early 2000s was Ciclon, an Austrian beverage distributed
through the Dominican company Altacopa S.A. In a
textbook case of destroying the competition, the Haitian
national bottling company BRANA came up with Toro.
Twice the size, with more of the active ingredient Taurine,
sold at less than half the price, bottled in a plastic container
that resisted damage on Haiti’s dilapidated roads, and
advertised in a way that appealed to the Haitian popular
conceptualization of energy drinks as enhancing male
vitality, Toro knocked Ciclon out of the market in a matter
/of months (Photo 47). Seven years later Ciclon is trying to
come back by mimicking Toro’s strategy (Photo 49). In the
meantime, other companies expanded the energy drink
niche with an array of strategies that neatly capture the
Haitian conceptualization and marketing predilections
of cost, quantity, sexual invigoration, and health. These
include Tropic S.A.’s Ragaman, which appealed to
progressive minded minority with its allusion to Rastaman
and inclusion of Ginseng as an ingredient, and
Tropic’s Robusto, a malt energy drink that capitalized
on the association of Malt drinks with nutrition (Photo
49).
In summary, what we can learn from Bongu, Puffed
Cereal products and Energy Drinks is that when it comes
to modern marketing of manufacturing items,
a) the proper order of priorities is indeed, price,
quantity, and then quality, but
b) it’s not only about getting calories, hence
energy drinks, and
c) there is a place in Haitian marketing
strategies for nutrition and identity, and
d) poor knowledge of ingredients and the fact
that Haitians do not read labels makes them
easy prey for suggestive advertising.
Photo 47: Tiny expensive Ciclon
& big, inexpensive Toro
Photo 48: Toro, Robusto, and
Ragaman covering the market with
price, quality and mystic power
Photo 49: Ciclon trying to make a comeback