This summer, PepsiCo resurrected Slice and shored up its fl agship. But will consumers bite? By Ravi Balakrishnan

Last summer PepsiCo, pushed the health agen-da with a single-minded focus. It launched Pepsi Black and Tropicana Essentials, a fortified

fruit-vegetable juice hybrid. Asked if there’s an overarching theme this year, Vipul Prakash, senior VP – beverages at PepsiCo, grows thoughtful. “We have to balance,”

he admits, adding, “We have to lead the consumer but we cannot lead from five km ahead. We have to be a footstep ahead. Our job is to give them a folio without taking aspira-tion away from CSD. But we should not shift the gears so much that we totally alienate the consumer.”

Prakash feelsPepsiCo has struck this balance quite well, but the cola major is entering this summer after a year in which its category, pegged at `24,000 crore, has been stagnant. Globally, PepsiCo’s food portfolio is outperforming beverage.

It’s against this backdrop that PepsiCo is embarking on a radical restaging of Slice, which was folded into Tropicana in 2014. And trying a new tech-powered version of an age-old strategy for its flagship.

Pepsi: The Hunger GamesThe idea of a drink pitched as a per-fect pairing for food is as old as wine and cheese. Colas were quick to pile on. All of us most likely recall post-ers in college canteens insisting that samosas go better with Coke or touting Pepsi as the best accompani-ment to pav bhaji.

And yet, Pepsi is revisiting this strategy and is remarkably commit-ted to it – Prakash assures us we won’t see anything else from the brand all year. The difference is coordination and technology. It is driven by Pepsi’s new tagline, 'Kyon Sookhe Sookhe Hi?', an original brand thought and not an adaptation. PepsiCo’s research revealed that connecting with friends over food was one of the key demand spaces for the cola brand.

>Continued on Page 4

Want a Slice of Pepsi?

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Launches a new 1VC featuring brand conscious att empt to steer the with our loved ones is equallybrand towards a more relatable important. With this new Dulux

ambassador FARHAN AKHTAR insight of the users ' desire to Velvet Touch NC, we hope toportray their achievements. The motivate our consumers to notbrand's journey thus far had just decorate their walls, but to

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ulux, the Decorative paints his house. The commercial helped it position itself strongly cherish their well-deservedbrand from AkzoNobel portrays what the super- on being stylish and creatively accomplishments and success. "India has unveiled a new premium emulsion , Dulux Velvet inspired; our att empt this time- Explaining the rationale

NC for its flagship brand, Dulux Touch stands for - A partner to around was to design a narrative behind the brand campaign,Velvet Touch . The campaign help you portray your that scored high on relatability. Titus Upputuru , National Creativetitled 'The Glow of Success' accomplishments through the Thus, the concept 'Glow of Director, Dentsu One said,featuring brand ambassador beauty of your walls. Success' was born , highlighting "There are many milestones onFarhan Akhtar, inspires According to Parth Udia, Head Dulux Velvet Touch's best-in- the path to success and Duluxconsumers to showcase their of Marketing, Decorative Paints, class sheen and effectively Velvet Touch celebrates theirachievements through the walls AkzoNobel India , "Our consumer becoming the chosen brand for arrival. The protagonist , playedof their homes. understanding has revealed that those who wish to make their by Farhan Akhtar bares the walls

The N commercial channels personal taste and its expression homes glow to match the of all the conventional successthe power of simplicity to cut in the beauty of one's home is success they have achieved. symbols, choosing instead tothrough the clutter with Farhan intrinsic to how today's Speaking on the occasion, portray it through the uniqueAkhtar 's compelling discourse consumers behave. Considering David Teng, Cluster General glow offered by the brand. Theon an individual' s jour ney the fact that Dulux Velvet Touch Manager , Decorative Paints , poetic expression of the voicetowards achieving success and has been closely linked with South Asia mentioned, We all over is something that wethen proudly displaying it fashion and aesthetics due to its work hard to achieve our thought would go well with thethrough the glow on the walls of distinctive positioning, it is a dreams and celebrating them celebrity 's surname."

MADE FOR INDIA 2“Makeup is not a mask that covers up your beauty; it’s a weapon that helps you express who you are

from the inside.” – Michelle Phan, entrepreneur

When Beauty Meets Business

1)@Vivo_IndiaThe title sponsors of the IPL, @Vivo_India continued to gener-ate massive buzz around the country’s biggest cricketing event through their ongoing #PerfectFan contest. Vivo also continued to promote their brand new smartphone, Vivo V9 and its various features. Gaining the most traction on Twitter was a tweet about the tournament that encourages fan interaction to tweet pictures about the match, score or players to win tickets to the game between Mumbai and Bangalore

2)@kingfisherworld@kingfisherworld, tweeted with #UnitedbyGoodTimes and #GoodTimes to celebrate the spirit of the game as well tweeted some cool animated GIFs that captured relatable fan and team reactions to drive engagement. The tweet that generated the most fan engagement was a poll where the handle asked people about their match day superstitions, achieving over 12,800 votes.

3) @HPIndia@HPIndia continued to promote the Royal Challengers Bangalore (@RCBtweets) team’s fan anthem #EeSalaCupNamde. The tweet with a GIF cheering on the team to buck up their game in the epic battle #RCBvDD, gained massive support.

4) @Nerolac_Paints@Nerolac_Paints, the spon-sors of the Delhi Daredevils (@DelhiDaredevils) and the Sunrisers Hyderabad (@SunRisers) teams, has been tweeting out match previews, contests to build up the excitement for the games with the #Nerolac12thMan. In order to rev up the enthusiasm for one of the most epic battles in this year’s IPL, #RCBvDD and to show support for the Delhi Daredevils team, Nerolac Paints tweeted out a video asking fans to brace themselves for the match with Royal Challengers Bangalore.

5) @VodafoneIN Proclaiming themselves as the unofficial sponsor of fans, @VodafoneIN engaged with fans during the match ad breaks with their FANtastic Breaks Contest, and asked them to answer a simple question to stand a chance to win iPhones. They also congratulated the winners by tweeting their photos, as well as a short video featuring one of the winners, thereby encouraging more people to participate. Stating that Vodafone is #HappyToHelp and make the cricket season special for every fan, they also tweeted a quirky video and asked people to tag their friend who’s always thirsty.

PRESENTING THE BRAND ENGAGEMENT INDEX AS ON APRIL 25, 2018

The Twitter Cricket Index looks at the live list of all advertisers on the platform and measures the total number of user engagements with all

the tweets that they sent out that week - specifically this is a sum of all the replies, retweets and favourites across all tweets that week.

The index looks at the live list of all advertisers on the platform and measures the total number of user engagements with all the tweets that

they sent out that week - specifically this is a sum of all the replies, retweets and favourites across all tweets that week.

the twitter index

A legacy bank is betting on celeb power for a brand refresh. Is it enough at a time when customer expectations run a lot deeper? By Amit Bapna

It could have been a question from the much-missed Brand Equity Quiz: How old is the Indian con-nection with Standard Chartered Bank? It goes back 168 years, much before the formation of Standard

Chartered entity in 1969. It was an amalga-mation of two banks – the Standard bank of British South Africa and the Chartered bank of India, Australia and China.

But for the bulk of its existence, the bank focused on corporate banking and wealth management. Its retail footprint has been limited. The first campaign created exclu-sively for India broke as recently as 2013. Five years later, the bank is back in a fresh avatar with a new campaign. The tradition-ally celeb shy bank has gone in for Anushka Sharma as brand ambassador. The only other market where a celeb is on board is Ivory Coast, Africa, with Didier Drogba as digital bank ambassador. The aim in India: to display the bank’s newfound aggression in retail and digital.

This journey started in 2016 with Zarin Daruwala tak-ing charge as India CEO. Her previous stint at ICICI led to the realisation of the need to diversify the foreign bank’s loan book beyond corporate lending and build the retail base. Not an easy task in a market inundated with bank brands of various provenance. Gaurav Rajput, country head brand & marketing, Standard Chartered Bank says when he joined the bank in late 2017, his mandate was simply to re-vitalise the brand and make a convincing case for why retail transformation is going to revitalise this organisation. Towards that end, the bank decided to get Sharma on-board with a specific purpose — to talk to the emerging affluent customer who may not have experienced the brand so far, shares Rajput. The idea being to broaden the bank’s customer engagement

segments.Shares the bank’s chief executive

Daruwala, in an exclusive chat with Brand Equity, “we want to build on the image of being a digitally savvy bank and thus looked for somebody who is a youth icon.” Being over 160 years old has its pros and cons. While it has granted the bank recog-nition, it has also perpetuated an image of a not very tech savvy establishment, she ad-

mits. Something Standard Chartered is hoping to ad-dress with this refresh.

Being a foreign bank, bra nch ex pa nsion c a n never match that of local players like HDFC or ICICI. Standard Chartered has been compelled to look at more creative ways of cracking the problem even while wishing for a larger retail footprint. Currently the bank has about 100 branches across 40+ cities. Digitisation is taking away the challenges of geographi-cal footprint, and branch expansion. The bank has launched a new product around digital banking

which lets people open an account in real-time anywhere anyplace thanks to e-KYC and helps the bank take its product-suite to the young and emerging affluent customers. While the competition is fierce, at the same time there is scope for everyone to live and

strive, Rajput feels. You can’t compare me with PSU banks or large government banks, but we compete fairly well with banks our size, he says without naming names.

The just launched campaign concep-tualised by TBWA India stars Anushka Sharma in a first ever triple role – play-ing grandmother, mother and herself and depicts the various digital capabilities of the bank at the hands of three characters. The one-line brief to the agency, shares Subramanian Krishnan, chief strategy officer, TBWA India, was “to use digital capabilities suite of products to energize the brand among young Indian millennial audiences.” This was in the backdrop of Standard Chartered Bank vying with rela-tively young Indian private banks for this very segment, he adds.

From a marketing point of view, the Mumbai Marathon was possibly the sin-

gle largest brand building opportunity, as title sponsor for over a decade. Last year, rights were ceded to the Tata Group. It worked well and gave us a certain iden-tity, says Rajput. However, with all the investments made in digital, we felt that the property had served the brand and we needed to move on and talk to a broader audience, he adds.

Banking finds itself at a crossroads: On one end, foreign brands like HSBC, Citi and Standard Chartered perceived to be expensive and staid. On the other, domes-tic brands that are grappling with trust, scam and leadership issues, and often accused of a mercenary attitude towards ‘customer service’. Ajay Kelkar, co-found-er, Hansa Cequity observes, “It is interest-ing that many consumers today are much less loyal to existing banking relationships and existing private sector banks have not focused on building brands, thereby leav-ing gaps in the market.” Glaring gaps, we would add. Consumer expectations are now no longer within the category as consumers would expect banks to be as easy to use digi-tally as Amazon or Netflix. “No bank brand has tried to develop a differentiator around customer experience, largely because it is hard to deliver that on the ground”, adds Kelkar. That could be a pertinent space for Standard Chartered to gun for, beyond a celeb face or three.

amit.bapna@timesgroup.com

How Nykaa has changed the way beauty products are added to the cart in India

BY PRIYANKA NAIR | MUMBAI

Radhika Sharma, a media consultant, doesn’t recall the last time she picked up her favourite shade of lipstick from a retail store. For Sharma, the staff at stores are often overbearing, and the experience of buying beauty products often leads to disappointment.

These days Sharma browses video content, DIYs tips and newsletters from

online beauty portal Nykaa. Sharma, who is a Huda Beauty fan (a product line introduced by popular YouTuber Huda Kattan), earlier had to wait for friends to come from Dubai to get her favourite products. But Nykaa has giv-en enthusiasts like Sharma access to previously inaccessible international catalogs.

Innisfree, among the first Korean brands to enter India, associated with Nykaa exclusively since December 2016 to expand its reach to tier II and III markets. Mini Sood Banerjee, brand manager, Innisfree India, believes companies like Nykaa have changed how Indians buy beauty products on-line: “We never expected women will buy without testing. But now they want

ease, comfort, and everything fast.”.It was a trend investment banker

Falguni Nayar was betting on when set up Nykaa to sell everything in the cosmetic and wellness category. Today she has around 750 professionals across different divisions. Nayar invariably mentions her daughter, Adwaita when speaking of Nykaa’s journey. Another person that Nayar often credits is Hitesh Malhotra, the company’s CMO. Malhotra is the only male member in the team. He tells us, “Beauty is still a sunrise industry in India. I didn’t want to miss out.” A Yale graduate, Adwaita left her consulting job to join Nykaa. She manages the retail side of the busi-ness, and with the team at Nykaa, given the site an Instagram makeover.

Nykaa is driven by a hyperactive social media team. Team members from across functions double up as models and reviewers, and constant-ly monitor customer conversations to tweak content. Nayar’s plush cab-in is often the team’s studio’s space. Nayar initially tried working with a digital agency but wasn’t convinced: “Accountability and commitment is amiss in a few agencies. Considering we gener-ate our own content, the best way to get marketing right was to have an in-house team.”

With around 10% invest-ment on marketing this year, Nykaa is using its monies carefully to create strong impressions. The brand is also working on building influencer rela-tionships, considering a lot of beauty purchases are made after reading and watching reviews. Currently, Nykaa works with a bunch of influencers not only just for paid promotions but also to cre-ate a buzz during new launches.

Nykaa is betting big on private-labels. It’s portfolio includes personal care products, essential oils, liquid lip-sticks, perfumes, and a lot more. With two concept stores, one dedicated to trending products on Nykaa, and the other to luxury brands, Nayar hopes to have 180 stores in the next four years.

According to Global Data, the Cosmetics and Toiletries segment is expected it to be $13 billion in 2017 and

to grow at a CAGR of 5% to reach $16 bil-lion by 2021. The online sales would be well below 5%. Pinakiranjan Mishra, partner and national leader, consumer products and retail at EY India, be-lieves that while the trend of buying products online has picked up, these stores should consider working closely with brands to share insights and re-fine offerings.

On the other hand, Sunetro Lahiri, se-nior creative director - brand strategy, The Glitch, which handles a bunch of beauty brands, thinks on-line beauty shopping sites need to go deeper in terms of content. “Currently, the content touches upon topline problems and solutions. The trick is to balance playing to the gallery with increasing the gallery through educa-tion,” he suggests.

He compares today’s shopping expe-riences to a job interview. “Imagine a situation where the consumer is the one hiring and the products are the thousands of candidates. Brands need to do everything a candidate would do to stand out. Make a good first im-pression, reinforce your power with efficacy and information and bolster your presence with recommenda-tions,” he suggests.

priyanka.nair@timesinternet.in

SIDETAKETeens are obsessed with Gucci and it’s helping the brandGucci is back in vogue. Recently Gucci’s par-ent company Kering SA reported a 48.7% jump in same-store sales during the first quarter of 2018. This followed a 43% and 49% increase in the two quarters before. The luxury brand has exploded in popularity in recent months, especially amongst mil-lennial and teen shoppers. In the first three quarters of 2017, around 55% of its sales were made to consumers under 35, accord-ing to a report done by consultancy firm Bain & Company in October. This month, it was also featured prominently in a survey on teen spending done by Piper Jaffray. The company surveyed 6,000 teens across the US and found that they ranked Gucci as the 10th most popular apparel brand overall. In 2017, Gucci ranked in 15th place.

Gucci is benefiting from a resurgence in 90’s styles: after a decade in the darkness, the logo is back in fashion and younger

consumers are flocking to logo-heavy brands such as Gucci, Calvin Klein, Champion and Tommy Hilfiger to pick up branded T-shirts and jumpers. Some of these prod-ucts are exclusive to its online

store. During the first quarter, Gucci’s online sales were up by triple digits versus the previous year, another indication that its tech-savvy younger shoppers are helping to boost sales. Since 2015, the brand has fallen under the creative direction of Alessandro

Michele, who has re-freshed its look .

Source: Business Insider

Can Standard Chartered Bank on Anushka Sharma?

“We want to build on the image of being a digitally savvy bank and thus looked for somebody who is a youth icon.”Zarin Daruwala,CEO, Standard Chartered Bank, India

“The brand ambassador has been hired to talk to the emerging affluent customer who may not have experienced the brand so far.”Gaurav Rajput,

Country Head - Brand & Marketing, Standard Chartered Bank

NYKAA WORKS WITH A BUNCH OF INFLUENCERS NOT ONLY JUST FOR PAID PRO-MOTIONS BUT ALSO TO CREATE A BUZZ DURING NEW LAUNCHES

THE BANK HAS BEEN COMPELLED TO LOOK BEYOND BRANCH EXPANSION TO MORE CREATIVE WAYS OF ENSURING A LARGER RETAIL FOOTPRINT

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Team Nykaa with founder Falguni Nayar and CMO Hitesh Malhotra

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GLOCAL BUZZ 2

BY INVITATION FCB Ulka’s Swati Bhattacharya on how Horlicks became her belief system

If Horlicks were a man, ours would be the love story of our times.

Brands are not things. They are far too real and meaningful, like humans with DNA and RNA.

Some, you connect with and some you don’t… And Horlicks goes beyond being a connection.

So, this is the story of a brand that be-came my belief system.

Like most arranged marriages in the country, we had a start that had zero participation from me. Maggi had got realigned to Publicis in a far-away conference room in the west, and that changed things for me here in Gurgaon.

Later that year, I got married to someone who worked with Coca-Cola, which meant I had to end things with Pepsi pretty abruptly. And just like that, some chance events, destiny and my boss of the time, Niloy Sen led me to Horlicks!

The only people who were happy about this were my ma and her sis-ter, my mashi. “Tui Horlicks-ey kaaj korbi??? ” (“You’ll be working on Horlicks?”) they quipped with great excitement.

While my family was happy and proud, I was still licking my wounds about the sudden disappearance of Jaaved Jaffrey and Mr. Bachchan from my life. About not having any more opportunities of sitting in Saif Ali Khan’s make up van for clothes trials.

My first piece of work that year was ‘Epang Opang Jhopang’. It was also the first time I wrote a Bengali jingle. The task was to take Horlicks from being just a nourisher to a pleasurable nour-

isher. I had an amazing client in Sucheta and

Anindya and decided I am going to talk to

kids not like kids but like little people. The entire ad had the mom for just a second, so she could say “Jhopang”. We shot them without directing them, what you would call “docu style” today.

That one campaign taught me things that became my gospel over the years. Moments are more precious than budgets, intimacy can get you more market share than just chasing clever ideas. Before Horlicks, I was always hunting for one great double meaning or that one clever joke, that one glori-ous misdirection. And then suddenly one day, I found myself free. Free to tell the stories that I knew that I felt… and that’s how Horlicks and I started over-lapping and began an interdependent system. Sometimes I would say the bottle’s story and sometimes the bottle would say mine.

Like the time when we made a film for ‘Women’s Horlicks’ with Konkona Sen Sharma. That film was a reflec-tion of me as a new mom struggling to

hold it together as a mother, a wife and as a creative director. Writing a story of a woman who can do it all, would be a lie. So I decided to tell my story, for whom carpooling was a duty and all she ached for was for some time for beauty. The penny drop line said, “Apne hi list, apna naam nahin.” It was honest and pure, and this telling of the truth quietly and intimately be-came the Horlicks filter. Something I use even when I am writing my short films or documentaries. If I can put it in a Horlicks commercial, it’s true. If I can’t, then it’s a nice thought but not necessarily true.

Behind every great commercial is a client who believes in you more than you believe in yourself. In Subhajit Sen, I met a believer. We were work-ing on Horlicks lite, a nourisher for middle-aged men. And like Saffola, we knew the man can’t be bothered to look after his midriff and his arteries. It is the wife’s job and her duty. We have seen so many ads in which a woman is made to feel insecure about her grey-ing hair and her stretchmarks… but never a single ad in which a man fears his wife might stray?

So guess what we did? We showed 40

year old women (what I was then) and paired them with 20 year old boys… and we urged the women to get their old husbands back. We decided to be brave and true to ourselves. Because we don’t think about other men as much as the man we met when we first fell in love. Even now when people catch this ad on YouTube the first question is “did your client actually buy this?”

And then came a time when the in-ternet became the primary platform for sharing big ideas. Long format was in and I wanted to do a film about Horlicks mothers. The insight again came from my life. Only mothers can give what they do not have. How else can I explain why my mother dropped me to a French class every week with-out having any knowledge of the lan-guage. Why do shy moms have debater daughters? This is when I had worked with Jayant Singh, my first non-Ben-gali client, all the marketing heads before him were Bengali. So our rela-tionship started a little like a dub with a slag. I was used to writing in Bengali by then and found it lazy to write it first in Hindi and then translate. Over time I realized Jayant is a closet Bong. Because when it comes to logic vs emo-tion, he taught me how to sell emotion logically. And that helps reduce the bloodshed in the boardroom.

A little before this film released I left JWT. Soon after Jayant Singh left for Brazil. And life took a totally new turn. Horlicks became an ex I would stalk on social media, knowing the bottle was something I could never have back in my life again.

Long ago, somewhere in the 80’s I had a poster in my room “If you love some-thing, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours forever. If it doesn’t, it was never yours to begin with!” So here I am in a Horlicks shoot, writing this piece. We are back again, doing everything we always had fun doing. Telling stories. Doing stories. Walking into people’s lives like only we can.

The author is CCO, FCB Ulka. Views expressed are personal.

BEHIND EVERY GREAT COMMERCIAL IS A CLIENT WHO BELIEVES IN YOU MORE

THAN YOU BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

The newest Avengers: Infinity War is breaking records and barriers, across geography.By Delshad Irani & Amit Bapna

Notice how the number of people who walk out of cinema halls as soon as the credits start to roll at the end of Marvel films has sig-nificantly changed since

2008’s Iron Man? That’s because more and more people, and not just “nerds” bred on a steady diet of solitude and comic books, stick around to watch mid-credit scenes. These provide crucial clues about the fates of char-acters like Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Black Panther, Star Lord and Co.

Birkam Duggal, executive director and head - Studios and CMO, Disney India, spotted other changes over al-most a decade of hammering, smashing and bromances in times of world–ending events, which are the mainstay of Disney’s

Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). That’s 19 films over 10 years. Duggal recalls the time he saw Black Panther,dubbed in Hindi, at a theatre in a Mumbai suburb. Stan Lee’s cameo came up during a conversation with fellow movie-goers. One young man, unaware of Duggal’s cre-dentials, informed him that Lee makes an appearance in all these films because he’s the “film ka producer”.

While a majority of viewers are still unaware of Lee’s actual contribution and make a bee line for exits as soon as the credits begin to roll, which, in turn, prompt many eye-rolls from “real fans”; the fact that more people recognize Lee and wait for extra scenes are encourag-ing and heartwarming signs, according

to Duggal. Signs that indicate Marvel’s heroes have finally embedded them-selves in Indian pop-culture.

MCU’s growing influence in culture is evident in the frenzy surrounding the most recent film, Avengers: Infinity War.India’s meme machine went into over-drive these past few months. Among the more popular ones are “Marvel: Infinity War is the most ambitious crossover in history” and super-villain Thanos as the new face for fairness cream and wedding jewelry brands. A more recent desifica-tion attempt is a user-generated mash up of the Infinity War trailer with long-run-ning Hindi telly comedy Taarak Mehta Ka Oolta Chashma. Disney itself created a trailer with remixed Bollywood song

Aa Dekhe Zara Kis Mein Kitna Hai Dumand has tied up with the Indian Premier League and Kolkata Knight Riders.

Says Duggal, “There are many million fans who watch the films in English and at Imax. There’s also a market creation exercise every time we launch a movie. The universe becomes more accessible if you can immerse it in pop-culture that already exists.” In India that often means Bollywood and cricket.

Abhishek Maheshwari, country head, Disney India admits that over the years there’s been some debate about how far localization can go. “We’ve asked our-selves are we taking it too far. There’s a lot at stake as these are big brands. Not everything lands. But more than half of the audience is consuming these films in languages other than English. So there’s much more acceptance now.”

No longer satisfied with just the Hollywood-tag, audiences in tier-2 and 3 markets are lapping up the content; but they want it in their language of compre-hension and it must feel like their own,

says Duggal. Disney’s biggest strategic marketing exercise in the country is pro-viding its Marvel fare in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. The company brings on board local and relevant talent like the writer who wrote the Hindi adaptation of Baahubali for Black Panther. For Infinity War, Disney got Rana Daggubati to voice Thanos in Telugu. Now add to this a clutch of local social media stars or “influencers” for amplification.

Disney has two market-ing plans, one for Hindi-s p e a k i n g au d i e n c e s upNorth and one for the South, which functions quite differently. For in-stance, Southern audi-ences are more invested in people and the movie experience, which is a weekly affair. Sudiences in the north typically watch 5 to 8 movies in-cinema. Even characters find their hardcore fans down south. Since the first Avenger film,

the company has noticed anincrease in Tony Stark fan clubs in the south.

Maheshwari says, “With every Marvel film we are adding new audiences and they are now hooked. That’s what al-lows partners (from trade to brand) to come on board.” Infinity War has bro-

ken all box office records for a Hollywood release in India. In fact, it was bested by just Baahubali 2: The Conclusion in all time ad-vance sales bookings. Coca-Cola, Renault, Star and the IPL, One Plus are just a few of over 50 brand associa-tions.

10 million cans of Thums Up Charged with the faces of popular Avengers on them are in the market cur-

rently. Chinese phone maker OnePlus has announced the launch of a special Avengers OnePlus 6 edition specifically for India and China. Entertainment is a very big genre for the OnePlus communi-

ty. Says Vikas Agarwal, general manager, OnePlus India, “Seeing the overwhelming response to the Star Wars edition, we de-cided to take the association with Disney to the next level with Avengers, the larg-est movie franchise and an ever-growing fan base. It is a great fit since the Disney-Avengers audience has a huge overlap with our community.”

Earlier this year, Renault launched limited edition of Kwid cars inspired by Iron Man and Captain America. Renault’s VP and marketing head, Virat Khullar says, “Being international and French sounding, it is difficult for Renault to tie-up with a hardcore Indian movie (we are only six years old here).” Avengers: Infinity War on the other hand made for a good match. Interestingly, he tells us, the most enthusiastic response is coming not from tier-1 cities but tier-2 and 3 cities, and non-English markets.

Turns out Marvel’s super-heroes don’t just punch villains into oblivion, they also smash cultural barriers.

delshad.irani@timesgroup.com

“When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.”

– Eddard Stark (not related to Tony Stark)

TU MERASUPER-HERO

200 mn INDIANS ENGAGED WITH MARVEL IN THE LAST ONE YEAR

185 mn viewers of all Marvel films on TV channels700-800 screenings a year across

TV channels and languages

+ 35 mn Marvel themed products sold last year

DISNEY’S FASTEST GROWING FRANCHISE FROM A CONSUMER PRODUCT STAND POINT - ACCOUNTS FOR A THIRD OF OVERALL BUSINESS

+100 mn cinema footfalls

AT THE BOX OFFICE (Gross box office collection)

Black Panther(2018) – ̀ 69.87 cr

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)– ̀ 76.67 cr

Avengers (2012) - ̀ 70 cr

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)- ̀ 108 cr

Avengers Infinity War – playing in

2000 cinema screens across India

DISNEY’S BIGGEST STRATEGIC MAR-KETING EXERCISE IS PROVIDING ITS MARVEL FARE IN HINDI, TAMIL & TELUGU

Horlicks And Me

3THE ECONOMIC TIMES MAY 02-08, 2018

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-AftT H I 1 ' 1 M E S

G R O U P

ROSES ARE RED,VIOLETS ARE BLUE,

Presents

SHE HATESEATING HEALTHY, TA 1 , %k

WHAT CAN - 0 P P IYOUR AD DO?The Times Group and Nestle India are back with Powerof Print , an award instituted to celebrate creativity in print.

Nestle knows that kids can learn healthy food habitsonly when parents are armed with the right knowledge.We're inviting creative minds to create a powerful campaignfor ##HelpParentsKnowGoodFood - an initiative to encourageparents in India to learn the necessary nutritional factsabout good food.

The winning entry will be released in the Times Grouppublications. The winning team will receive the Powerof Print award at the Kyoorius Creative Awards Night 2018and win a fully paid trip to Cannes Lions 2018.

The Jury: fJosy Paul / Raj Deepak Das / Keegan Pinto /Malvika Mehra / Zenobia Pithawalla /Amer Jaleel / Rashi Goel

Send in your entry by May 9th, 2018.For more details, visit www.timespowerofprint.com

Supported by Kyoorius

Follow us on 91 Response Solutions y ®TimesResponse

@ Times Response Solutions -°"'

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CLASSIC BE 4“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when

we created them.” – Albert Einstein

“I daresay there’s even fake news that does the rounds on nutrition”

In conversation with Suresh Narayanan, chairman and MD, Nestle on the year gone by at Nestle and the road ahead for Power of Print

What were some of the highlights from last year for Nestle?It was a landmark year. As a listed F&B company, we crossed `10,000 crore in terms of revenue. We are market leaders in 8 out of 9 cat-egories in which we operate. It’s a tribute to our over 7,000 employees – past and present, our distributors and suppliers. It cements the over 100 year old relationship we’ve de-veloped with the Indian consumer. It was very satisfying coming after the Maggi crisis.

We had a number of innovations around three themes. The first was launching new products, tastes and experiences: Milkybar, Kit-Kat Dessert Delight, the ready to drink Milo and new variants of our Grekyo yoghurt. The second theme was fortified food: we enriched the nutritional profile of some of our products given anaemia is quite common in the country. It result-ed in the iron enrichment of Maggi

Masala noodles, Masala Ae Magic, our taste enhancer with iron, vita-min A and iodine. And also in ac-cordance with FSSAI guidelines, Nestle A + milk.

The third theme has been our journey to reduce the levels of sugar and salt across our folio. We are one of the largest investors in R&D and almost a billion dollars goes behind facilities that help improve the nutritional profiles of our products.

Health and taste have traditionally been thought of as mutually exclu-sive. How do you intend negotiating this?It’s not always true that they are polar opposites. As a company, we believe there’s no good nutrition or bad nutrition. It’s all about bal-ance. Anything you take in excess is not good. That doesn’t mean you take bad all the time. That’s exactly where R&D, technology and insights on raw materials usage and substitutions become important. This is a journey that is self-driven. We have a mandate on levels of sugar, salt and sodium that we need to reduce, not just to valorise the nutritional value of our products but keeping in mind the consumer journey and to evolve with their changing life-style. Milo ready to drink had 25% to 30% lower sugar than compara-ble drinks. The salt in Maggi has been reduced by almost a third over the last decade.

Did the move around fortification help you zero in on this year’s theme for Power of Print, Help Parents Know Good Food? What made you choose this theme?There were three compelling rea-sons. Our purpose worldwide is ensuring we have healthier prod-ucts and are enabling a healthier generation. In India, we have the double burden of malnutrition and obesity. The status of under nutrition has been stagnant but obesity has doubled. Clearly the kind of nutrition consumed is a cause for concern. This won’t be an economic dividend but an eco-nomic burden if it’s not addressed. The third reason is the amount of information, misinforma-tion, half-baked informa-tion and I daresay even fake news that keeps do-ing the rounds on nutri-tion. There’s a genuine need for logical credible and authentic nutrition i n f o r m a t i o n t h a t consumers seek at different stages of life. As the world’s largest food, bever-age and nutrition company, webe -lieve this is an area we can address with our deep knowledge of nutrition across research centres and scientific platforms. And that’s why we chose it for POP this year. It will help parents know what good food is; not just what Nestle has to offer — this is not just a brand selling exercise.

What are your hopes from the con-test?POP can inspire individuals and families to lead heathier lives. We

THERE’S A GENUINE NEED FOR LOGICAL CREDIBLE AND AU-THENTIC NUTRITION INFORMA-TION THAT CONSUM-ERS SEEK AT DIFFER-ENT STAGES OF LIFE

1 Netmeds: 100% cashbackA smart aleck app dependent husband is surprised when his equally app dependent wife scores a 100% cashback for ‘ma’s medicines.’ An offer at-tractive enough to push normal people into mild hypochondria, and hypochondriacs to start shor-ing up against long extinct or strictly imaginary diseases. A formulaic film but probably just what the doctor ordered. 2 Levi’s Circles I bhangraA riff on Levi’s film from a few months ago, suit-ably bhangrafied. Let’s Live How We Dance, the film suggests. Which has disturbing implications for those of us who dance badly. To say nothing of the people who don’t like dancing at all. 3 Pepsi: The Adventures of Hunny and ChoochaPepsi uses the relatable star power of the Fukrey gang in a commercial about the lengths some of us run for friendship. An entire train platform with a plate of piping hot samosas in tow, as it turns out, all to provide the departing Choocha with F&B. We wonder, couldn’t he have got it from vendors who ply our trains making strange sounds while ped-dling their wares? But why let logic get in the way of a good yarn?4 Lux:Fans of Each OtherFar from being the wasp’s nest of sniping, pet-tiness and hatred that we’ve assumed it to be, Bollywood is apparently a regular mutual admira-tion society. The only things these stars like more than each other is Lux. Which makes about as much sense as the physics in a Rohit Shetty film. 5 Dettol: Growing UpLifebuoy’s Little Gandhi set out to clean the streets, the country, the system and god knows what else. The tot from the Dettol ad has more realistic, self-ish ambitions and sets to work on his bike. Cue the jingle. If ain’t broke, why break it? 6. Mountain Dew: The Mountain WithinWe are not sure if having a swig from the Mountain Dew bottle can equip you for the adroit mountain-climbing as depicted in this brand film. Even if it is based on a true story as claimed in the film and even if it stars the athletic Hrithik Roshan scaling the peaks as if it was a cake-walk. Super-heroes surely get the views. 7 MuscleBlaze:Ziddi Hoon Main This almost 3-minuter branded content piece shows a bunch of men and women, maniacally pursuing their fitness goals while juggling their dai-ly lives and routines with back-breaking and often nerve-wracking fitness regimes. An office-goer, an old man, a mother, a lady wearing a burqa - they are all self-confessedly ‘ziddi’ about their goals. All of them are shown consuming the sports nutrition brand to attain their goals.8 Kellogg: MuesliThis film is all of 15 seconds and makes no pretence at story-telling. The message is put out loud and clear - the ingredients that go in making this break-fast cereal healthy and tasty. The thickly accented voice-over makes it sound like an adaptation of a global ad. Small carp – whoever makes such bliss-ful faces on gulping a bowlful of muesli we’d like to know?9 Maggi Masala-ae-Magic: Rishton ka SwaadIt is a nice little tale of the noodle brand renovating its tastemaker pack loading it with freshness of masalas with a parallel track that shows the chang-ing nuance of a mother-son relationship. A mother who is shown open to change, and the son who seems to be more old-world till his mother opens his eyes, via her new-age cooking as well as her liberal thinking.

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LEADER BOARDThe YouTube Ads Leader Board represents the leading ads on YouTube in India that resonated most with audiences over the past month and recognises the brands that performed best through a combination of popularity and promotion.

Which explains why #HelpParentsKnowGoodFood

is the theme for the second Power of Print contest. By Ravi Balakrishnan

“We realised the biggest thing friends get together over is food. And so the in-sight: life is incomplete without friend-ship, food is incomplete without Pepsi,” says PepsiCo’s Prakash. The line emerged from conversations with young consumers: “One of the 18 to 20-year olds said, ‘we don’t want it to be dry.’ Which is how ‘Kyon Sookhe Sookhe Hi’ was born,” he says. A commercial soon fol-lowed with Pepsi’s brand ambassadors — stars from slacker comedy Fukrey. The cast have also been deployed across over 100 five seconders which will show up as pre-rolls on YouTube, changing in synch with searches, seeding the Kyon Sookhe Sookhe Hi line. Not just that, Prakash says, “If you’ve ordered food and not Pepsi while checking out on Zomato, it will prompt you with the line.” PepsiCo is however not satisfied running TV commercials and going the ‘food is better with Pepsi’ route.

And so, it has tied up with 40,000 eateries across the country. The PET bottles have packaging full of groan inducing food related puns — ‘Scene Bun Gaya’ with a burger is one of these — but they also have a code which once SMSed, unlocks a list of eateries in a 2km radius where one can get a discounted meal. Pepsi has tied up with not just local eateries but also QSRs like Subway. The price-offs go all the way up to 50%.

Via this route, Pepsi intends activat-ing the otherwise irregular and passive

pairing of food with cola. It has even ap-proached restaurants currently aligned to rival beverages, with guaranteed traf-fic touted as an incentive to change. Cold drink consumption peaks through the summer while people go to restaurants all year round; via this route Pepsi hopes to beat the post-season slump.

The idea finds favour with marketing consultant Jagdeep Kapoor of Samsika: “It will work because it is localised, par-ticipative marketing: tied to friends, food and drink. The rational benefit is a dis-count.” He however cautions that the ex-ecution needs to be top notch, especially in terms of choice of outlets. The second challenge is to communicate not just Kyon Sookhe Sookhe Hi, but the yearlong promotion. Kapoor says, “Before avail-ability, they need awareness.” A senior marketer with a previous background in the CSD industry believes, given mar-keting structures, the promotion may be considered a sales expense and could get step-motherly treatment from market-ing, which is more focused on building

a brand: “Marketing guys could argue against this saying why should I pay money to build the restaurant’s brand? That’s why, though such offers are ubiq-uitous across banks, cards and loyalty programmes, few make a success of it be-yond 30% to 40%. They are not advertised enough.”

Another Slice, Anyone?A fter years slumbering within Tropicana, Slice, a brand built by racy ad-vertising — remember Aamsutra? — is back. This time as a fizzy drink with fruit juice in flavours like apple, jeera, cream soda, etc. Prakash admits there was a raging debate on whether to put these un-der Mirinda or Slice. But the latter won because of its Indian origins. Given the ambitions to get into highly localised fla-vours like khus, Mirinda may have been the wrong fit. Available in seven states, Prakash is keenly observing offtake. “If it’s a one-state strategy, it loses steam. This time we have an all-India strategy.”

Slice also marks one of PepsiCo’s fastest launches: conceived of in July 2017 and on the shelves in March 2018. Prakash al-lows himself a little self-congratulation considering launches usually take 18 to 24 months with back-and-forth between India and the global HQ.

These are low sugar drinks — he is clear PepsiCo won’t launch another full sugar product — something that could only have been managed in a range where peo-ple had no expectations. It’s how PepsiCo intends beating the poor performance of sugar-free variants so far; given low per capita consumption, it’s been theorised that when Indians do go in for a cola, they mostly want a fully loaded product.

Speaking of consumer feedback, Prakash says, “One of our consumers gave it 8 on 10. If this had been a Pepsi variant it would have to be a 10. But in this case, we said let’s launch, learn, get feedback and refine. That’s how entrepre-neurs work.”

Samsika’s Kapoor believes Slice could succeed considering “the juice market is galloping, the second fastest growing after water.” Less sugar is likely to be a sell in a country with a large diabetic population. What PepsiCo needs to watch out for is not sacrificing taste at the altar of health. The ex-cola marketing veteran fully supports the comeback consider-ing he estimates PepsiCo spent over ̀ 600 crores building Slice. The important thing now is to stay the course and pro-tect it from the vicissitudes of global and local management. “All of this has hap-pened after a new CEO came in and these are CEO-level decisions,” he says, add-ing, “It’s important to move past orange and mango since India is not a one juice country.” He also sees this as a fallout of Paperboat, making marketers aware of India’s acceptance of local flavours. He concludes, “It depends on the commit-ment to being local. If they believe in it, it could be massive. But if the need of the hour is making bosses happy, then your guess is as good as mine on how long it will last .”

ravi.balakrishnan@timesgroup.com

For the full interview with PepsiCo’s Vipul Prakash please visit

etbrandequity.com.

Continued from Page 1 >>

Sting: A newly launched energy drink aimed at what Vipul Prakash calls “day time recharge.” Unlike the category leader Red Bull which costs nearly `100, Sting is priced at a modest ̀ 30 and is low on sugar. Prakash believes, “At BPOs, hostels etc there’s a need for such a drink but its unaffordable. The initial response is mind blowing. It tells us India is a nation of strivers.” He expects the drink, an import from South East Asian markets suitably modified to meet local tastes, to fuel young Indians through their 12 hour work days. But PepsiCo’s ambitions for the brand are for it to be ubiquitous not just with the hard partying crowd that wishes to party harder yet. It will count the brand a success when it’s a standby for a truck driver pulling an allnighter. PepsiCo intends a sampling exercise along highways later this year, and given the demand for energy is all year round, it could help solve for seasonality.

Mountain Dew: The brand is dou-bling down on its strategy of celebrating ‘real’ heroes and risk takers. This year, its putting its money behind Arjun Vajpai, a young mountaineer attempt-ing the eight-thousander’s: conquering 14 peaks that are over 8000 feet — he’s

already scaled five of these. Mountain Dew will track his attempt to scale the Kanchenjunga, in a documentary made by Vice Media, which will, quite naturally, be low on product plugs. Surprisingly enough, Hrithik Roshan, Mountain Dew’s brand ambassador plays Vajpai in the TV commercial. Prakash says “That’s what gives it scale. The commercial is for mass reach to activate the platform. In the documentary, it’s all Arjun.” The associa-tion with Vajpai began when PepsiCo got

him to a sales conference to motivate its team. PepsiCo will be buying real estate on YouTube to make sure the films are not lost in the glut of content on the platform.

7Up: Back To Cool, a 100% global campaign being run in India, celebrat-ing the history of the brand with limited edition packaging from the de-cades past, a brief return of the iconic Fido Dido character and free 7Up swag like t-shirts, bluetooth speakers and headphones up for grabs.

Fizzical Attractions

Want a Slice of Pepsi?

There’s just a week left to submit entries for the second round of The Power of Print, a Times group initiative in partnership with Nestle. The winning team will get a trophy at the Kyoorius Creative Awards and a chance to attend the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. For more details visit www.timespowerofprint.com

hope the ideas and cam-paigns POP generates will help us disseminate these ideas at a later date in terms of nutrition plat-forms and information.

The pioneering partner-ship last year gave us

very good results. The creative was of a quality that I’m told was very dif-ficult to judge; the winner was a close

call. We showcased the Top 20 in our of-

fice premises and they continue to be very inspir-

ing. The participation, creativity and coalescing we saw gave us very good results and insights, compel-ling us to willingly participate in the second year too. I hope as a consequence of the partnership, we can generate powerful ideas on helping parents know good food.

ravi.balakrishnan@timesgroup.com

Please read the full story online at etbrandequity.com

Regn.No.MAHENG/2002/6711Volume 17 Issue No. 18Published for the Proprietors, Bennett Coleman & Company Ltd. by R. Krishnamurthyat The Times Of India Building, Dr. D.N.Road, Mumbai 400 001Tel. No. (022) 6635 3535, 2273 3535, Fax- (022)-2273 1144 and printed by him at (1) The Times of India Suburban Press, Akurli Road, Western Express Highway, Kandivili (E), Mumbai 400 101. Tel. No. (022) 28872324, 28872930,Fax- (022) 28874230 (2) The Times of India Print City, Plot No. 4, T.T.C. Industrial Area, Thane Belapur Road, Airoli, Navi Mumbai-400708 and (3) TIMES PRESS, Plot No. 5A, Road No. 1, IDA Nacharam Ranga Reddy District, Hyderabad-500076. Editor: Ravi Balakrishnan(Responsible for selection of news under PRB Act). © All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written permission of the Publisher is prohibited.

4THE ECONOMIC TIMES MAY 02-08, 2018

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