 Well, ladies and gentlemen, with that, it is time for us to kick start off the summit with a brand where, you know, whose mere mention is likely to bring a smile to consumers' faces because of the brand's multiple campaigns. I'm sure all of us remember the iconic 1990s, kuch baak hai, zindigi mein, kuch khahas hai, hum tum sabhi mein, campaign, which the brand successfully recreated in 2021. Also, don't forget the meethe mein kuch meetha hojai campaign, and the brand continues to strike the right chord with the consumers, or as they may remind us, ki asli swad zindigi kaha actually kya hai. Well, taking us down the nostalgia trip is our keynote speaker, Deepak Ayer, President India, Maudheli Spurz, who talks about the Cadbury Dairy Milk journey, building one of India's most trusted brands. Well, with this, it is time for me to call upon the iconic Mr. Deepak Ayer. Thank you so much for your valuable time, and it's great to have you and biggest smiles to welcome you over to you, and it's great to have you today. How are you doing today? Very well. Thank you so much, Varma. Great. And hello and good afternoon, friends. Thank you, Anurag and Pink for having me speak at the Pitch CMO Summit. It's my pleasure and honor to be speaking at this August gathering, and of course, I'll be speaking on the theme of the summit that's building brand trust. And of course, I will talk about the journey of Cadbury Dairy Milk, which Varma very fondly referred to, in building brand trust. And I will speak with, and whenever I say CDM, it means Cadbury Dairy Milk. We are so used to using this word CDM instead of using the full phrase. So I just thought I'd say that whenever we talk about the brand, we have so much passion around the brand and it's always referred to as CDM. So can I have the presentation, please? Sure. Could the team please roll out the presentation? Thank you. Over to you. Thank you so much, Varma. The next slide, please. Yeah, as most of you might know, CDM was voted the number one trusted brand in India by brand equity in 2020 in the most trusted brands survey. See, it was number one, not just among snacking brands or chocolate brands or FMCG brands. It was number one across all categories of brands and all brands in this country. And I will talk today on what it took for CDM to get there. Can I have the next slide, please? So talking about trust, without getting lost in a very convoluted or esoteric definition of trust, let me simply define trust in any relationship as a consistent and reliable connection, which is normally built over time. This is very much like how we build trust in our personal lives with our family, our colleagues, or our friends, right? The next slide, please. Now, this brings me on to say, how did CDM or Cadbury Daily Milk do it over the years? So at Monolees, we attributed to four sets of reasons. One, having a meaningful connection with the consumer. Two, being consistent over time. Three, always being there, always engaging. And four, not just telling stories, but doing something about it. We call that story doing versus storytelling. Now, I don't mean to say storytelling is not important. So don't get me wrong, it's important. But to take the brand trust to the next level, the brand needs to do something more. It needs to do something about the story it is telling. And in CDM's case, the story is always about generosity. So I'll talk about each of these four points, and that'll be the core of the content of my chat today. So the next slide, please. Thank you. So the starting point of building trust with consumers is to create a strong connection with them. Long ago in my childhood, and likely before many of the young folks in the audience today were even born, chocolates were something that your rich dad or your rich uncle bought for you as a gift from his last visit overseas. Now, if he had left CDM as such without localizing its appeal, you would never have made the connection with our consumers. You could never have built out CDM the way we have built it up today. CDM built a connection with all of us through kuch neetha ho jaya. Think of those four powerful words and what it means to us. It's in Hindi, our local language. It makes it Indian. It embodies Indian-ness. And most importantly, it resonates with any Indian who would say, what is the point of living in India if you can't say kuch neetha ho jaya? That's the part of the connection. This is how CDM made a connection with consumers in India. It firmly made a western category to be seen as a modern addition to the wonderful assortment of Mathai and sweets that be so much relished. And the important thing here is that CDM never chose to compete with Indian sweets, which is what we so much love. It rather chose to blend with them. Now, when I say blend with them, think about integrating with them. So think chocolate modak. Think chocolate sandesh, etc. Which are all chocolate-favorite sweets, which is so much relish. So once again, CDM made a connection with Indian consumers. I hope you're getting the point of connections that I'm talking about. Another very important point on making connections is how many consumers are you able to connect with? How many consumers are you talking to? And on how many occasions? So long ago, chocolates were for kids. But like Bhavana said, with the iconic 1994 commercial, the Shimona ad, as you properly call it, the lady dancing out of the cricket stadium into the cricket field, CDM made a connection with adults. So it enrolled adults. It made connections with not expanded the connections beyond the kids to be adults. Again, CDM made connections, not just with the number of cohorts, but also with various occasions. So let's say, it made connections with every part of the consumer's life. Now, let me recall some CDM ads. Let me recall some Cadbury Daily Milk ads. Think of Pehli Tariq ad and the connection it made with consumers then. Recall the Pappu Paas Hoge ad. Think of Khane Keva ad. Think of Shubharam. Think of the Rocky ads. Think of the Diwali ad. Think of the Valentine ads. Today, every occasion where we have sweets is accessible to CDM, whether it's daily snacking, or celebrations, or festivities, or gifting. And hence, CDM built category relevance for chocolates and made chocolates a part of the consumer's life. And that's what I want to talk about, how you make connections, how many cohorts do you connect with, and how many occasions. And there's one more part I would like to make connections. You might have noticed the CDM ads. They never made the brand the hero. It was always, kuch khas hai hum sabhi mein, not Cadbury mein. Kuch khas hai zindagi mein, not Cadbury mein. Kuch meetha hojaya, not kuch Cadbury hojaya. There's another very important way CDM connected, very, very humbly with consumers and customers. Now, CDM became the fabric of the nation. It represents the taste of chocolate. Today it stands for the modern progress of India. And that's a great story on how you make connections. Next slide, please. So the second chapter on brand trust is the notion of quality and consistency. Now, both the product and proposition. So at the core of this is how we have kept the CDM product quality and experience accent. The product recipe remains the same over the years. Despite living in an inflationary environment in India, which we have been living for the last 70 years that we have had the brand in India, 70 plus years, we have resisted all temptations to value engineer the recipe. Productivity is important for businesses, but we don't fiddle with the quality of the product. Like one of my colleagues mentioned it to me, we do quality and not productivity. It's a very nice way to frame the dual importance of quality and productivity. Now, let me talk about consistency. We call it fresh consistency. Our proposition, our message has evolved over time, but only within the bounds of kuch meetha. Our consumer work gave us deep insights on how we could leverage meetha to tell inspiring meetha stories over the years. Different manifestations, but around the core of kuch meetha. Despite getting to 20 years of the tagline, kuch meetha hojai is still fresh and it remains our sign-off till today. Very often we see new brand managers or new client servicing managers wanting to do something different and wanting to make a difference and wanting to leave a mark or leave a legacy. And in this zest, they begin thinkering with propositions and messages. Now we have ensured that this doesn't happen because we believe in being consistent and we believe in strengthening our brand's distinctive memory asset. As we all know, marketers get bored of their own work much faster than consumers get bored of their work. It's very tempting to go and change something there. So in summary, today, when any Indian consumer picks up a bar of CDN, she or he can be assured of the same great taste that they grew up on. When she or he sees a CDM ad, they can feel the same joy, the same warmth, the same spirit of giving, the same spirit of generosity, the same tagline that they are used to. And this is what we call consistency. Well, let me caveat this. It is not that we have not made any mistakes. We have, for example, a few years ago, we played Martian's ad. It is a nice ad, but it's not the genre of the brand. But however, we were sensible enough to realize a mistake and correct it. So I'm not saying we have played a perfect ad. It is just that we have tried to do it consistently. And whenever we have made mistakes, we say, okay, we have made a mistake. Let's correct it. Let's recoil and see how we can put the right thing out there. So that's what I have to say on consistency. Next slide, please. Now, having built strong connections and having remained quality obsessed and delivered consistent messaging, the other important role in building trust is to always be there for a consumer. Having a point of view on what is happening around us, being present in the new mediums and touch points of the consumers are of equal importance. Hence, being present on digital and social media, speaking the language of Gen Z consumers is just as important as it is to be aspirational and relevant to a rural household on the other side. So as context changes with time, staying relevant as a brand becomes challenging. Hence, brand need to evolve to stay relevant to the consumer's new context. Creating platforms like Valentine's Day, Friendship Day, having critical, as these occasions have become very important to consumers, and they didn't exist 20, 30 years ago. These are not typical media occasions, but we have created this and today we have become so important in our consuming lives. Now, having a point of view on matters like diversity has become very relevant today. And CTM's work on the retake of the iconic Shimona Act, celebrating the outstanding progress of our sports women, resonated very, very well with the consumers. Even other examples like the Unity Bar, the four different chocolates in one bar embodies the unity that we have amongst diversity in this country. The propaganda again cyberbullying, a purple hat campaign. The same thank you to COVID workers, and I'll talk more about that a little later, when we changed the logo on our tanks and we called it the thank you bar. All these have assured our consumers that we do have a point of view on what is important for our culture and what's important for our society. So you're always being there and you're always being engaged. And that's the point I want to leave behind with you on this slide. The next slide please. Finally, trust is built when consumers realize that brands exist, not just for themselves and their profits, but for making a difference. Making a difference to the society is a very deeply rooted value in CDM's persona. For CDM, it is about generosity. It's a value that the Capri family espoused ever since they set up the company. And it now translates as the brand purpose across the globe. In India, we call it achchha vada. Over the past years, we have built on it and done work, which has really stood out in a way that the brand highlights challenges around us and how the brand and the consumer can come together to solve it. So we launched the thank you bar as a salute to our COVID workers in 2020 because we felt what the whole nation was feeling, which was being grateful to them for working selflessly to protect our health and well-being. We created not just a Cadbury Ang in Diwali 2020 and followed up with the second version last day, but because we realized that small retailers were losing out on business and needed all the help they could get. On other occasions, we stood for unity, like talk about the unity bar. We stood again cyberbullying and many such activations where the brand was focused on making an impact on people's lives. This is what we call story doing and not just story telling, which means working with the consumers to espouse simple acts of generosity versus just talking about it. Another important set of points that I would like to call out here are that CDM never provoked any controversy. It was not about the brand wanting the limelight. It was always about a real consumer or a social issue. CDM's acts of generosity were consistent to what the brand stood for and hence the brand was not seen to be exploiting the situation in its engagements. After all, if CDM doesn't stand up for puch achha ho jai, then who will, right? Now I will end with another point that I made at the start. Brand trust is built over time and very often we see marketing ecosystems of brand managers or agency partners wrongly aspire to achieve this in a single year or the single campaign. No creative is breakthrough enough. No celebrity is large enough to build this trust overnight. Our learning is that it takes time and hence it's important for generations of brand managers to pass the beton to the new generation to first hold the beton and not drop it. Think of one's role as, you know, think of one's role as getting and passing the beton of the brand from one generation to the brand team to the other generation while holding close the core of the brand. In the period that we wrote, that we hold our roles, we must focus on deeply understanding of brands and build on its legacy while writing our chapter in the book of the brand story. That's the way you create legacy and not by writing a new book. You know, so this entire thing about trying to do it overnight doesn't work. Think of it that for 70 years, so many brand managers have worked on this brand, right? Everybody handed over the beton to the other and the other person took that beton instead of dropping it and trying to run a different race, right? It is not a 100 meter sprint, right? This is a real race. It's done by different brand managers, different leaders over years but they need to write their own chapters but in the brand's book, they cannot write their own book on the brand. Now, friends, that's what I have to say on CDM's journey on building brand trust, a meaningful connection with consumers, consistent product and propositions over time, always there, always engaging consumers and not just storytelling but also storytelling. Now, a few minutes later, Anurag and the E4M team, thank you. Well, what a fabulous hearing this was, Mr. Ayer. I have to say that definitely brought the biggest of smile and as we always say that this brand definitely has the connect with the consumers. So a lot of questions have been coming in but of course, we would like to appreciate your time. So we are going to go and give ahead only 10 minutes to the Q&A looking at your schedule. Would that be okay, Mr. Ayer? Perfectly fine. Please go ahead. Okay, perfect. So first, one of the questions is from Jayan Bose who asked that your view on measurement techniques for measuring subconscious response leading to brand loyalty and how senses impact brand choice and loyalty. So what's your view on the measurement techniques for measuring subconscious response? So quite honestly, Bhama, so Jayan as well. So I'm not an expert on this domain, so I don't think I'm in the best position to answer this. What I still do know is that things are evolving. So today, the way used to measure, let's say people's feelings or responses or the subconscious was very different 10 years ago. And the way digital progress is happening today, there's a lot more that's happening. The way image processing is progressing with leaps and bounds, I think this is an evolving area. So I would like to summarize an answer. I really don't know exactly. That's not my area of expertise. But what I do know is that the old is changing for new ways and data and digital is coming up in a very, very big way. So also machine learning, AI, PR, VR and all the technological advances that are happening. Right, absolutely. Also, the brand has multiple memorable iconic campaigns, of course, while introducing you, we mentioned a few. But we'd like to get a heads up from you as to what have been your favorites, something which is recalled in your entire journey. Could you give us a few tidbits on those as well? Of course, Haas has in the game, I mean, Shimona's ad was easily the most iconic ad. It went down as the campaign of the century of the last century. So I mean, it's iconic in that sense. So easily one of the best campaigns and head and shoulders about the best. It's not that I'm getting head and shoulders about the rest of the CDM ads, not an easy, easy ask in itself, right? Every one of those ads, I will look at Pappu Paso guy till today, people who have seen it, then we'll recall Amitabh Bachchan and his initial style, right? So, or you recall all the recent ads, or you will recall the Bharata, it was a wonderful ad between the mom and daughter and daughter. So how do you bring out these meta stories has been the hallmark of CDM. The one that stands out for me, of course, is 1994 Shimona or the retake in 2021. Right, that's great to know. Also, of course, because of COVID, a lot of companies have gone digital, a lot of business transformations have happened. So Pallavi Shah asked that, how has your business adapted to the digital change and e-commerce adoption? Is there anything you'd like to contribute to that? Absolutely, so I'm not really sure of the question, Pallavi, are talking digital and data in the holistic sense across businesses or in the sphere of marketing and e-commerce. I'm presuming you're saying overall business, right? Now, see, digital and tech and data was always there. COVID just gave it a huge flip, almost all of them exponentially raised the importance of these things. It's not dramatically today, it's touching every aspect of a field and let me give you a few very quick examples. So let's stop marketing. Technology today allows you to personalize at scale. Whereas television, you could just give one message to every audience, right? Digital allows you to make it a two-way interaction, right? And hence, how do you bring that out? So we had 96,000 versions of a digital iron fuse, because what a hunger meant at 4 p.m. to a girl traveling in the metro, college girl traveling back home to the metro was very different from what a hunger meant for, let's say, a person who was working in the fields and coming back from the fields at 6 p.m. in the rural market, right? You could do that personalizing at scale. The second big thing is, you know, the two-way communication. So once you start getting to know the consumers, right? It is not just about talking to them, but it's also about hearing them and seeing their responses, etc. So those are two big advances in marketing. You look at sales. Today, we use big data. We use artificial intelligence. We use machine learning. We use AR. We are for design of US materials. So it's actually touching every aspect of sales. In manufacturing as well, you know, the two examples I continuously give is that long time back, around four or five years back, we started putting sensors in all our machines in one of our factory cities. And what the sensors used to do, you get all the vital statistics of the line on a laptop screen. Now happened lockdown 1.0. All the operators were staying in the same district. They were on the floor in the factory, but the supervisor was in the next district and he couldn't travel. And he couldn't travel for three weeks. For three weeks, he ran the line from his home in his laptop. This could have been impossible without technology. So the smart factories, as we keep hearing industry 4.0, is not something for the books. It's actually real and it's happening all around us. Right. A great, great adoption right there. You know, there's a question coming from Deepi and we always talk about young marketeers. So, you know, she would like an advice to young marketeers such as her starting out. So Deepi would love to hear from you as a piece of advice to the young marketeers out there. I mean, the advice is pretty much similar to almost everybody. Right. So and surely for young marketeers, invest in learning. Today, the world is changing so rapidly. You can't say I learnt it all from college or learnt it all for my first job or my first assignment. Right. It's changing. Today, I'm now possibly 30 years in this industry. Right. So in the professional world, right, or in the corporate jungle, as you would call it. Right. But I'm still coming. I didn't know anything about AI or machine learning five years ago. I didn't know how, what would be the use cases of AR and VR. But today, unless and until I change myself, you know, it's impossible. I keep telling this very, very, very nice example to most of the people I talk about. Very often, we read these news clips, right? Technology, AI, machine learning is going to eat up jobs. And you always think it is a job of that plumber or the carpenter or, you know, somebody else. You know, their jobs will stay because there is physicality to those jobs. The names on that list whose jobs will go away or you are in mind. And unless and until we invest and learn and change, right, it won't. So my one simple advice, if I were to give you, of course, I could give you many more is to say invest in learning. Invest in learning. Absolutely. You know, Amo Gagurwal asked that celebrity endorsement. So let's let's indulge into that arena. You know, celebrity endorsements varies from brand to brand. And you know, one brand ambassador does multiple brand campaigns. So do you feel that this would impact the brand dilution in some sense, you know, when you are looking at it, how does you and your entire team decide? So that's what Amo was trying to ask to you, Mr. Yurt. It's contextual, right? So there's a brand who has a persona and there is a celebrity who has a persona. The best way is the brand persona and the celebrity persona have a fit, a fitment of what they stand for, the values, the way the consumers see it, right? And that's when you get a multiplier effect. Because what the persona brings, let's say what the celebrity brings to you is taking the clutter. So when you're looking at a television with so many ads, you stand up when you have a big celebrity there doing an ad, because you like to see a celebrity and you like the ad and many of them work very well, right? And they help break the clutter. But if the genre of the message that that celebrity is giving is very different from what the brand persona stands for, it's not really going to resonate very well with the consumers. So a lot of it is about the brand, the persona of the celebrity, what message you're giving and in what context you're talking to the consumers. So all of that needs to come together. Right, absolutely. You know, firstly, I have to say, Mr. Ayur, of course, we respect your time because there are a lot of questions coming. We've got another three minutes only to go. So we'll go ahead with one of the other questions. Rohit Singh asks that truly appreciate your personalized Diwali ad with Shah Rukh Khan. How does a brand ensure to maintain trust and legacy while they adapt newer ways of marketing and technology like AR, AI, AR, etc. What would your take be on that? See, actually, it's an enabler AI and technology. Look at this ad of Shah Rukh Khan. What is it made of? It's made out of the good use of deepfakes. So what we use is artificial intelligence. So who is able to recreate how a Shah Rukh Khan would emote or talk or sound in different contexts, right? And so technology can be very, very big enabler. I don't think they are in conflict or dissonance. It's just that we need to understand how to use that and in the right way. Right. Go ahead. And I have to say, I was a big fan of the ad because we saw so many adaptions to it. And you know, the small businesses, of course, benefiting with it, that really helped. Just one final question in a new of time, we're going to be going ahead. Sumit asked that, are you also looking to explore CTV medium? Has there been a major shift from linear channel to hot and hot cutting activity? A lot of technical questions also. I didn't get this at all. Tell me, what are the words? Are you looking to explore CTV medium? Apologetic if I'm also not aware on certain terminologies from my side. If you want, maybe there could be a typo error. Would you like to skip that question and move towards a personalization one? Okay, or maybe I don't know this word. So what of them could be true? I'm apologetic even I wasn't really aware on that. But just your final closing thought, Mr Aiyar, because I know there are a lot of questions coming in and we cannot take them on directly to you right now in new of time. Just your closing part before we wrap up your wonderful session today, Mr Aiyar. Yeah, so I think Brand Trust today, especially after what's happened over the last two years for all of us in pandemic, it's actually been elevated to a level which it was never before. And that kind of levels, we have never seen a brand required to sort of perform at. And hence, it's become super challenging for many brands. But equally, it has been a blessing in the skies for other brands who always stood for some purpose. And today, what are the consumers doing? They're gravitating to brands of the purpose. They're gravitating to brands of the trust. They're gravitating to brands have been consistent and have always been there for them. Those are the messages I gave today. So I would say building brand trust has become even more important today than ever before. Yeah, I think you have to invest in it. A brand, you have a brand and you want that brand to live for long and you want it to be around and actually become stronger and stronger. The one area which you must invest, you can't run away from this brand trust. I talked to you about our stories on brand trust and how we're going to see them. There are many of the stories to be very different. Yeah, so I wouldn't say just rely on the stories that are the themes that I gave you. Look around, there'll be even better ways and even more complementary ways to build it, depending on the genre of your brand. If you have a very tongue in cheek kind of a brand, which has cutting edge humor, wit and reparty, you don't build it the way we have built this, but the fundamentals are still the same. You need to engage, you need to be there, you need to be consistent, you need to use some story the way those won't go away. Right, absolutely. Thank you so much, Mr. Arya. There's so much we've learned from your session. They say that experience counts a lot and whatever you spoke and the nuggets of wisdom you brought about on the screen have been truly invaluable. Thank you so much. That is mine. Thank you so much, Rama. Thank you so much, Pitch Summit. Thank you.