As the festival season kicks off, we caught up with Nitin Saini, vice president for marketing at Mondelez India,
to get a handle on the company’s new campaign highlighting ‘homeprenuers’, key consumer trends and how Indians are consuming chocolates and how the brand is set for premiumisation.
Edited excerpts
You have launched ‘Ghar ki Dukan’ that that brings ‘homepreneurs’ centre stage. Tell us more about the thought behind this campaign.
If you look at all our Diwali work in the last three years, they’ve all been around the theme of helping small businesses. If you look at 2020-21, it was helping small retailers coming on the back of a tough COVID situation. And then last year, it was helping those who don’t even have a shop. So this year, we are shining a spotlight on ‘homeprenuers’. These are small home businesses that do a lot of fantastic work. They are mostly owned by women who do it for their pride, to give an outlet to their passion and also to contribute to the household income. But they are very limited in their reach. So with that campaign, which is “This ad is My Store”, we are enabling these home pioneers to increase their reach and go beyond their own neighbourhood to the whole city. So that’s really the idea of our campaign this year.
And it was launched around Navratri time and from Navratri to Diwali is a crucial time for a company like Mondelez. And over the past couple of years we have seen a lot of action from Mondelez’s brand. What else is cooking around this festival?
We have two more campaigns right now on air, which is around the theme of the World Cup. We have a campaign on Dairy Milk, which is called ‘Sit Together’, and that is all about inspiring people to celebrate the spirit of cricket together by watching it together, irrespective of their background or the jobs they do. We also have a campaign from Oreo, which is called ‘Oreo Bola Mat Bol’, which is a playful twist to an old belief that, you know, we should not talk about India winning the World Cup just yet till India wins the World Cup.
From Rakhi, when you launched your first leg of the festive campaigns, to Diwali, can you tell us what are some of the key consumer trends you are noticing?
I would say that certainly we are seeing a lot of positive sentiment as far as consumers are concerned as we can see on our own performance. It is still early days to comment on Diwali. Some of the early indicators are positive, but we are hoping for a good Diwali. There’s certainly a strong consumer sentiment heading into the festive season. The other trend I would say is certainly around ‘premiumisation. There is this consumer cohort that is looking for more premium, more sophisticated experiences. And actually we had one leader well set up to tap into that premiumisation trend.
What are some of the things that you’ve already done and what are some of the things to expect from Mondelez when it comes to premiumisation?
We have a very strong portfolio when it comes to premium chocolates. We have Silk, we have Bournville, which is all about building relevance for dark chocolate in India. And actually Mondelez India has led the premiumisation agenda for chocolates in this country. So we are very well set up on the chocolate side. If I look at biscuits, optimising the categories…is the growth opportunity that we look at. And we again have a very strong portfolio there with Oreo, which is doing extremely well. And then we have a strong second pillar now as well in Choco Bakes. So I would say if I look at our portfolio, we are well set up to tap into the premiumisation trend.
As a market leader, if you can share with us, how is India eating chocolate today?
I would say that certainly the category is doing well. And, as market leader, driving category growth is definitely one of our key objectives. There are several things we look at when it comes to the driving category. There is definitely an opportunity to drive penetration, because there’s still a lot of households who do not consume chocolate, more so in rural areas. And that is where our low unit price portfolio really comes into play. So again, a very strong portfolio there. Packs of Rs 5 to Rs 10 play a role over there. When somebody starts consuming chocolate, we again have a very strong portfolio, for more occasions of consumption, whether that be in a home stocking or gifting, which is where our celebration brand comes into play. The third lever I would say is what I just spoke about, which is premiumisation… All of it goes into driving category growth, which I think is the big opportunity for us, because when one compares India with some of the other markets, we still have a huge headroom to grow when it comes to per capita consumption
Which consumer cohort is both exciting and challenging for the company?
It is the one that I just spoke about, which is people who are looking for a more premium, sophisticated experience, The “aspirant” consumer cohort, because there is certainly a huge opportunity to grow with that consumer cohort. But at the same time, they do look for a more indulgent, more premium, more sophisticated experience. So you got to make sure that what you are putting out in front of them is absolutely of gold standard quality. So I would say that that’s a consumer cohort and more exciting than challenging.
What are your expectations from the new year and what are some of the targets and goals you’ve set for yourself?
We are coming to the end of the year and also to the end of my first year at Mondelez in India. But when I look back, I feel very satisfied. I thank the team at Mondelez India. Marketing has done a fantastic job. A lot of good campaigns to talk about, we spoke about a few. The one that I really like is the birthday campaign we did in July, which was about building relevance of celebrations in the birthday occasion, and that people could make their own personalised birthday song and gift it. So that did fantastically well for us. More than 800,000 songs were created.
The business performance has been very good. So as we come to the end of 2023, I feel very satisfied and proud of what the team has done. And then 2024 obviously is a new challenge and we’ve got to make sure that we continue to raise the bar, do even better work, continue to grow the business, but also do work that cuts through with the consumers in India.