Q] Could you paint a picture of your marketing mix and the mediums that you relied on for executing your campaign?
Mayank: For a big campaign like this one, we tend to follow a 360-degree approach. We use multiple mediums to execute our campaigns, but predominantly the lion’s share goes into– TV and Digital– which makes up around 80-85% of our total ad spends. The remaining chunk then goes to other mediums like Print and Outdoor advertising. We also rely on Below the Line activations and initiatives as part of our marketing efforts.
Q] What goals have you set for 2024?
Mayank: The last couple of years have been difficult for most companies. If we look at food companies that performed very well during COVID, they faced problems in continuing that growth. With COVID subsiding, people were out of their homes, and hence the consumption of foods reduced. People tend to eat more when indoors, and with the lockdown, they went on a buying spree. This made it difficult for brands to maintain those volumes post-COVID, and on top of that, last year’s unprecedented inflation contributed to significant price hikes, somewhere around 20-25%. Because of this, we observed that while the value of the brands grew, the volume still remained low. Moving forward, we expect to revive that growth. Earlier, urban areas were a concern because rural areas were on track. But over the last few years, this trend has taken a U-turn; urban growth is on a rise, while rural remains under stress. This year, if the monsoon permits, we expect to see robust demand coming from urban regions as well as some kind of revival happening in rural areas.
Q] This campaign tries to inculcate good values in children. What was the basic idea behind this initiative?
Mayank: The idea originated post-COVID. We saw that kids were at home during COVID, away from their friends and extended family members. This seclusion was becoming a hindrance in the development of their social skills, and was also making them self-centred. Kids were getting used to expecting things while having no consideration about giving back. Either they had forgotten or didn’t really value sharing joys and happiness with others. Since they were also not going to school those days, we felt that these universal values should be imparted. By the virtue of being a trusted brand that is loved by kids as well as adults, we felt that we can forward this message without being preachy. Therefore, the campaign was woven around the themes of sharing and caring.
Vinod: The ‘G Mane Genius’ campaign is now close to 15 years old, and it has had many iterations. Over the years, this campaign has beautifully demonstrated children showing genius behaviour. All Parle campaigns go through a long ideation and filtration process, taking six to eight months. In the course of the campaign, COVID struck us, and left us wondering about the future. As the lockdown got sterner and longer, we all started feeling this helplessness, this desire to interact with others. We humans are inherently empathetic, and as we grow old, the empathy erodes. The lockdown made us think about us and others. That’s how somewhere in our discussions with Mayank and team, we realised that this situation needs to be addressed.
Q] What does it take to build a brand legacy in today’s time, with attention spans getting shorter and more digital platforms growing?
Mayank: Attention spans are reducing and it’s increasingly getting difficult to grab and retain the attention of consumers. We are talking about the Insta generation that keeps swiping up and right. To keep them hooked and stay relevant is a task in itself. If you look at our latest commercials, they are just 10-15 seconds long. We wanted to go with short commercials considering the habits of people. The goal was to deliver our message in a very short time, which I think we did beautifully. That’s how we’ve stayed relevant to these consumers with very short or limited attention spans.
Vinod: We were aware that we were working on a legacy campaign for a legacy brand. It is important to create the campaign as per the hour of the need. We have worked on long formats with the same idea. If you want to earn the attention of audiences, you need to come up with something that evokes an interest or touches a chord. Like people used to skip channels earlier, today they can just scroll past the ad. The job is engaging but one needs to work harder, and know what interests the audiences.
