In 2025, experiential marketing is making a powerful comeback, believes Tushar Malhotra, Director of Sales and Marketing at Bisleri International.
“Consumers are engaging across music, sports, gaming, and entertainment. With media landscapes becoming increasingly fragmented, marketing spends need to integrate TV, digital, experiential, and trade marketing holistically to convey the message across platforms,” he explains.
Reflecting on Bisleri’s journey through 2024, Malhotra emphasizes the brand’s focus on connecting with Gen Z by aligning itself with contemporary pop culture, sports marketing, sustainability, and technological innovation. He highlights how Bisleri has transferred its iconic legacy to the next generation while staying true to its core values of quality and trust.
Edited excerpts:
What were the key highlights for you and your teams in 2024?
We started with this mission of connecting with Gen Z’s. And there were four or five pillars that we were looking to build on, and it is the transference of an iconic legacy brand to the next generation that we are pushing for right now.
So, if I look at it, the first part was to be integrated into today’s pop culture, which is what the times identify with. And we began the year with a bang by announcing our celebrity endorsement by Deepika Padukone, who we signed on as a global brand ambassador for us with a Drink It Up campaign. She’s also part of our packaging. Deepika and our values also resonate a lot, and we’ve been able to add that international premium imagery, the sophistication, and style she brings along with her as well.
Secondly, what we’ve also done is that we’ve had so many limited edition packs with movies. In fact, we’ve had two international movies also from a limited edition pack perspective, which are Transformers One and Gladiator 2 right now. And we’ve done almost everything in Bollywood and in the South.
And the third bit is we’ve even started the integration in music videos right now. We’ve had a music video integration in Ayushmann and Darshan Raval’s new song. So we are very well ensconced in today’s pop culture, and we’ll continue to build on this.
If I talk about sports properties, we have had five IPL teams as hydration partners. We have seven ISL teams, and we have UTT. We do all the marathons in India and the Middle East as well, where we’ve done the Dubai Marathon, Ras Al Khaimah Marathon. We were part of the UAE ILT20 league also, where we were partnering with four or five of the teams over there. And everything that has to do with sports. We are partners for the Professional Golf Tour of India as well. We’ve done Taekwondo international championships in India and Ultimate Table Tennis. We are part of every genre of sports. We are seen as a brand which is championing sports in the country.
You mentioned sustainability. How have you made that a key lever in your marketing and brand strategies?
We are proudly a plastic and water-positive organization where our program Greener Promise has released multiple sustainability reports with TERI Institute, which sort of outlines this to our consumers as well.
We’ve got a consumer film also going on, where we are talking about plastic circularity. We have our initiative called Bottles for Change, where we have reached out to more than six lakh people this year, educating them about how to responsibly dispose of plastic.
Tie-ups with some of the largest educational institutes in the country, like Amity, Punjab University, Madras Christian College, Manipal, also is an important of our approach.
For recycling, we’ve launched a textbook with CEE, which is going to be part of the school curriculum right now. We’ve introduced a water credit approach, which we are fostering for the industry to work on because India is a water-scarce country. We have 4 or 5% of the world’s groundwater freshwater, but close to 15-20% of the population. So, we are championing that as well. We have rainwater harvesting initiatives called Nayi Umeed, where we built and repaired hundreds of check dams over a period of time. We’ve also built a reservoir in Ladakh. If you look at Ladakh, there is water scarcity for six months a year. So we’ve been taking that mantle as well, and we have rainwater harvesting practices in most of our factories.
And the last leg is tech?
Today’s consumers want everything at the hit of a button. We are extremely big on technology, where we have our own app, which is growing, almost doubling year on year. Predominantly, it is for our returnable 20-liter jar business, which is going to our consumers’ and our clients’ homes, and that app is working really well for us.
We’ve approached a dark store model where we’ve set up service agents in high-velocity pin codes, enabling us to manage our delivery promise and logistics in a very efficient manner. And to sum it all up, we’ve also launched in the UAE last year. This year, we’ve expanded that footprint to become a truly global brand moving into the future.
How has the rise of AI impacted the industry this year?
From a creativity lens, it has asked marketers how interactive and engaged they can keep their consumers. From a business perspective, it has helped us with data modeling, enabling insights into marketing, sales, and production and increasing efficiencies in the system.
What disruptive trends are you foreseeing for 2025?
Experiential marketing is coming back with a bang. Consumers are engaging across music, sports, gaming, and entertainment. Media landscapes are fragmented, and marketing spends need to integrate TV, digital, experiential, and trade marketing holistically to convey the message across platforms.
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