“About 40% of our sales comes from towns which have less than 1 lakh population,” says Nikhil Sharma, Director-Marketing, Perfetti Van Melle India. He explains the nuances of communicating to a target group of kids, the gap between marketers and agencies in relation to the digital medium, using communication for longer durations to build brand equity with rural consumers and more…
Q] Perfetti uses television as the prime medium for its communication. How effective is it? What role does the Digital medium play in your media mix?
We don’t do too much by way of Digital for children, honestly. Whatever Digital spends we have are for brands like Mentos and Centrefresh, which are targeted at young adults between 15- 25 years and that segment is pretty much on the Internet. In the kids’ space, we pretty much limit ourselves to TV spending through kids’ channels. It is easy to reach our target audience.
Q] What are your spends on this space? What are the challenges you face with the usage of this medium?
Our spends have increased every year on Digital, I am happy to say that this year Digital is almost 5% of our marketing budget, which is substantial, because we spend close to Rs 100 crores on TV. For me, TV remains and will remain for the next 10 years a key medium for us. The key challenge in Digital is content. For Digital, we need to find ideas that are not expensive to execute but look good in this space. This is where there is a mismatch between expectation and what we intend to do. We did something called the Mentos Helpline, which we are very proud of. It was inhouse content, and generated a lot of buzz for the brand. It was tailor-made for Digital.
Q] So is there somewhere a gap between marketers and digital agencies?
Yes. Ad agencies come up with more ideas on Radio, Print and TV. They are also not attuned to Digital. Then you have the Digital hotshops, who think in terms of what is possible on Digital. Therefore, the Digital guys don’t think so much brand and the brand and agency guys think brand and not so much Digital. So there is a gap. Most ad agencies have a Digital spin-off. Most people who work there are Digital specialists, with no brand background. So the ideas that come will be great digitally, but may not fit the creative and brand brief so much.
Q] Perfetti has done some interesting associations with ‘Love ka the End’ and ‘Ice Age 4’. Is the brand going to explore this medium further?
Converse to what people think, we don’t do too many films. We are in fact averse to films. Our typical associations with a film would be snippets of the film used to make a brand story. These can work very well for big spending brands like Coke because they do so much of their own advertising that this becomes an add-on. We don’t do so much of advertising, so a film association has to work better than our own advertising; our brand needs to be at the centre. The TVC was specifically shot for us for ‘Ice Age 4’ and ‘Love ka the End’. In fact, we were working on ‘Student of the Year’ but it didn’t work out because the brand wasn’t at the centre. We do a film association only if it is better than our advertising, which is a tough task, because we pride ourselves on our advertising. We are extremely choosy about these associations.
Q] The brand has both Kajol and Kareena as brand ambassadors. How much have you benefited from these associations?
You usually sign on a brand ambassador for a brand need; Kajol and Kareena serve very different brand needs. Kajol comes at a time when Alpenliebe is all prevalent, she comes in to jolt the brand because it was stagnating. We were creating warm and fuzzy advertising for the brand, and there was only marginal growth. Kareena came in because we were entering a category which was Cadbury’s stronghold. After all, product differentiation is not much in this category, so you had to be known as an éclair which stands out.
As marketers, we are fallible; we don’t know whether one brand ambassador does well versus another, whether they really take sales up or not. Obviously, the plan is for ambassadors to impact brand sales.
Q] Your communication does not necessarily talk to kids directly, though they are the target audience. What is the strategy behind this?
We are firm believers that you don’t portray a target group just because you are catering to it. If you look at our advertising, it has dada-dadis in it, obviously not eating our Alpenliebe, however much we would like them to. Unlike competitors, our communication cuts across the board because it is not slapstick; our humour is evolved, warm and fuzzy and even on the edge where required.
Q] How has your target group of kids evolved over the years?
The starkest example of this evolution is the evolution of promotion to kids. In the late 90’s, it was ‘write in and send in your entries for contests’. Then came the tattoo phase - all brands from atta to mosquito coil were using this tool to get sold. I am not saying the same eight-year-old has turned 14. The new eight-year-olds are no longer interested in all this. They don’t want to be to spoken to as kids but on an equal footing as young adults. You cannot sound condescending in the least when you communicate with children at any point.
Q] Given the price points of your products, what is the penetration in Tier II and Tier III cities?
About 40% of our sales come from towns which have less than 1 lakh population. That is how well-penetrated we are. A Bijnor, a Bagpath close to Delhi, a Kannur down south - these are important towns for us. We are appointing more and more sub-stockists and employing more rural coverage methods. There is huge untapped potential for our products and we haven’t reached it yet.
Q] How different is the communication for urban and rural audiences?
Our communication is visual and nonverbose. It is not mental communication, so people across strata get it. We don’t customize our communication for rural consumers; instead we air ads for a longer duration for the rural segment as the brand affinity is more important than freshness in this segment. In urban markets, we have to break new TVCs more often to break the clutter due to high cable and satellite penetration. In the rural sector it is advantageous to keep the audiences in familiar territory for a longer time period.
Q] The brand had an interesting activity for Stop-not using the mobile medium. What are the other initiatives you are undertaking in this medium?
We will be coming out with games and apps. It is all work in progress at the moment.
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