 Thank you, Geetika, for joining us for this session, the last session before we get into the award ceremony. As you know, already Bhavna has done the introduction, Geetika heads the Hershey's business in India. She's spent a lifetime in the, you know, consumer FMCG space, she's been a lifer at Unilever. You know, before we just came in, I was, you know, narrating an anecdote to Geetika. This year in Diwali, I was in Delhi with family and I noticed something, though it's a small sample size, only me, but a lot of the sort of chocolate boxes that were coming in were Hershey's. You know, unlike what I've seen in the past, you know, so many other companies, people who use Cadbury's. So I noticed a lot of Hershey's and, you know, it still is kind of, you know, ingrained in my mind. I remember telling my wife that something has changed. Geetika, one, you know, congratulations on that and two, what have you guys done to change that in the last, you know, 12, 18 months? Thanks, Naval, for the opportunity first. And maybe just to quickly give a sense for people who have stayed back. I know it's the last session between now and awards. So I think Hershey's, as you may know globally, is a chocolate company, yeah? But in India, it actually started off with a JV, then we about 10 years ago kind of took over on our own. And it's a syrup's chocolate syrup company, frankly, in India. It's only in 2020 that we have gone national with our chocolates. And that's how nascent India's Hershey chocolate journey is. And from there to kind of make the progress that you're saying, and I can assure you, we're not the only sample size. We've had many people really talking about the kind of movement that, you know, Hershey chocolates has made. We see that in our shares. We are now the third largest chocolate brand in premium chocolates in India. And like I said, literally launched a few years ago. So what has changed for us? Frankly, I think one is priority. Yeah? So here is the prioritization and we've put execution as the top of our prioritization because you could have great strategy, but unless you really put it down, you know, and execute it till the last mile, it doesn't really come through. So that's the one that has resulted in us gaining chocolate share, gaining, you know. So for example, in gifting, gift boxes this time, we would have easily been the kind of growth rates we saw must be about 4x or 5x that the category saw. So you're really pushing the envelope there. And I think the other thing, and I'm referring now to the session and why we are here, is the content. Yeah, because that is really the heart of it and the session before us also kind of mentioned. You could have brilliant, you know, teams, you could have brilliant communication channels, but unless there is deep, real meaningful content for consumers, it will fall flat. So I think those two would be what I would say has been the differentiators. Fantastic. I think, you know, this entire day is about conversations around content and content is at the heart of, you know, what we consume on digital platforms these days. One of the things marketers have sort of discovered, realized in the last few years and that's the other thing we were talking about, that 20 years back companies used to do what was then known as, you know, advertiser funded programs on television. There was no other way. And then gradually the narrative started getting pushed into programming. There was a famous case when Maruti launched, you know, a car on a very, very popular television show. We've come a long way from then, and then today digital platforms allow such a wide sort of gamut of, you know, content seeding activities. Every brand is kind of trying to push their own narrative. In this journey of sort of content curation and content seeding, what is also happening is a lot of discovery is being made, right? You said you launched the chocolate business 2020, roughly two years back. I'm sure you've done a lot of experimentation, made a lot of mistakes, you know, done content, some of it has worked, others have not worked. So while we'll come to the, you know, content seeding part later, the first part is curation of the content itself. So what are your key learnings because you've not just worked in this current category, you are, and you worked across many categories in your journey at Unilever as well. So what have you been your key learnings when it comes to, you know, curating content to, you know, influencer, you know, customer habits? So I think for me the most important thing here would be consumer connectedness, yeah? And that's something at Hershey we take very seriously. Every person in Hershey has a minimum hours of consumer connects that they should do, literally in order to be, you know, kind of, to be able opening their mouth in a conference room. You know, you have that, that gut that you've built around what will resonate with consumers. And I think that's important because for me that's really where it all kind of summarizes. And like you said, experiments, frankly, there are no failures. I think there are great learning steps. We've had many things we tried, didn't work as well, but we've used them to kind of make it even better in the, you know, in the future. Just to give an example this year, Valentine's Day. So normally it's an occasion which is very well entrenched by our competitors and, you know, we said, but why should Valentine's Day be just for, you know, your beloved? It could be for yours forever, could be your mother, could be your brother, could be your sister. And therefore with that we did a very interesting tie-up with butterflies. We did, you know, with Geo Savan, a bit of a playlist that you could make for, you know, your, you know, forever. And therefore I think just different things so that we stand out, we resonate with what the pulse of the consumer is and then we kind of address that. So I think for me that would be the most important lesson I have learned in the past 20 years, which is stay close to consumers and they will reward you with kind of their purchase. Yeah, absolutely. It's such a fundamental, fundamental, you know, concept for, you know, any marketer in the room. You know, that reminds me, of course you, you know, the brand thrives so much on, you know, occasion-based marketing and, you know, I think the time has come to do, you know, self-gifting on Valentine's, we all remember the girl who announced a few months back, she's marrying herself. So I think Valentine's Day is also kind of headed in that direction. It increases usage and gives you another opportunity to kind of promote the product. Let me come back to, you know, slightly larger umbrella now, Githika. You've been a marketer all your life. You run a large business in India for Hershey's now. When you sit down with your marketing team and, you know, we've spoken about the digital journey, how it has evolved last 15 years, so many learnings within the digital sort of marketing, digital advertising space, consumer reach out, when you sit down with your marketing team and you look at, you know, money being spent on digital platforms, what are the key KPI metrics that, you know, you start with because, you know, I think digital is one platform where all sorts of KPI's have floated around in the last 20 years. Many have been junked, new ones are, you know, floated around every day. I was reading a piece a couple of days back on the Howard Business Review, which spoke about how many marketers, at least in the more evolved Western economies, are kind of, you know, moving money back to traditional media. I mean, though that's not happening in India yet, unlikely to happen anytime soon, but when you talk to your marketing team, what are the key metrics that you talk about? Yeah. So I think there is no exact answer to this, to be honest. And, you know, I realize a lot of people are experimenting with what is the right measure of success. What I can tell you is there is a digital-first approach that we employ. So what, you know, we earmark a certain amount of money, of course, behind digital, not just core. And we do see that there are a lot of consumers who we call cord cutters, you know, basically they don't have cable TV anymore, so they've cut the cord. And they are the ones who you want to reach through digital-first kind of campaigns, right? So, you know, we, of course, measure the engagement, the views, the, you know, the like, the usual ones. We also see what is our share of voice in the digital medium compared to who we would want to be kind of pegged again. So several, several measures that we see. I think the other thing we do differently is not just stick to more traditional, you know, moments of advertising around, you know, chocolate. So for example, chocolate, if some of you are familiar with the category, it's a Diwali, Raki, gifting kind of occasion that has been built. And we've said we will do something absolutely different. We'll find more moments to connect where our consumers are. So Women's Day, yeah? And we did this very interesting campaign this year called Hershey, you know, so our brand has, you know, an invisible her and she in the brand name of Hershey's. And therefore we said we will make the invisible and make it visible. So we've really celebrated heros, you know, from all walks of life who are not celebrated otherwise, you know, so they are great in their own field, could be philanthropy, could be sports, could be photography. And we've put them on our packs, yeah? And this is now the second year we have done it. We will do it again next year and hopefully forever, which is how do we make them really get the spotlight and make them visible and the work that they should speak for themselves. So we're not sticking only to Iraqi Diwali, yeah? Similarly, Halloween, yeah? And some of you, none of you actually look like you have kids, you look very young. But if you've seen it around, now that's a thing that is really gaining, you know, with a lot of these Gen Z, millennial crowds, you know, this trick and treating has really got a lot of traction. And therefore we don't want to be, you know, we want to be the leaders in that space. We almost had an 80% share of voice in terms of Halloween this year, yeah? So first time we said, you know, like make your Halloween Hershey-lishers and how do you really celebrate Halloween? So I think that's for me an important element of, you know, so it's not just going digital, but also digital at a place where the consumers are not even expecting it. It's out of the blue. Absolutely, finding the right fit, the time, the place and the messaging, of course, is as important. Let me come back to the content piece that we've been talking about and, you know, one of the very key aspects of curating and then pushing out content is also the use of, you know, known faces. You know, it could be celebrities, it could be influencers. Just last week we curated a, released a report on the influencer marketing ecosystem. And, you know, influencers now come in all shapes and sizes as opposed to a couple of decades back where, you know, there used to be Bollywood Listers. Now you have Bollywood A-Listers going down to, you know, what we have come to known as, to be known as micro and nano influencers, right? And most of the brands are working with the entire gamut of influencers from top to bottom. You're already working with, you know, some of the A-Listers and I'm sure you also work with a lot of influencers down the funnel. And influencer marketing has become a very, very critical piece in this entire sort of jigsaw. What have been your kind of challenges in terms of, or learnings if I can ask that? On the influencer marketing thing because that directly plugs into then how you are seeding the content and where. Yeah. So influencers indeed, for us, we have a full funnel. So, you know, macro, micro, nano, all of them. And we have very A-Listers, you know. So John Abraham has been on Sofit for so long. Shraddha Kapoor on Kissel, Tapsee on our exotic dark portfolio. So we do have very top-not celebrities who really get us the reach. And we have also influencers who, you know, so for Raki this time we got, you know, an interesting, you know, influencer for Valentine we got this couple. So, you know, we do different spaces. I think the learning or the challenges is, you know, when you take a celeb, you kind of check, you know, what they stand for. You know, you do a lot of due diligence. But the moment you go to influencers, there's so many and there is only so much that you can kind of curate their tone of voice beyond the point. So I think there is a certain level of putting it out there that you have to live with, saying, knowing that the influencer may interpret it in their own way and form and being comfortable with that. Knowing that you're kind of sharing your voice in different platforms in a way that could be different from how you would have intended it to be. So I think that's for me an interesting part of working with influencers. But that is also what makes it real and relatable because otherwise, you know, we've all done scripted films. It's a line that the celeb will speak and that's really scripted to the last pause. And I think with influencers, you make it real. You make it more tangible. You make it more closer to the consumers. And hopefully then you kind of pick the right kind of influencers who then carry forward your message in a very relatable, real way. Yeah, and I think one of the sort of risks that comes with the job is the kind of mistakes that are made. It is very tempting to hire a well-known influencer and start putting content out without kind of really paying enough attention to the fit with the brand, you know, whether the timing is right or whatever else is going on in the environment. Tell us, what are the kind of pitfalls or, you know, what are the mistakes that you think sometimes brand makes when it comes to use of influencers, per se? So yeah, so that's the one that I was referring to, saying, you know, you kind of lend, you give them the authority to talk on your brand's behalf somewhere. And the team does a lot of due diligence as much as they can. But this can go wrong. You know, sometimes these influencers in their personal life may be doing something which is maybe not in sync with what your brand messaging or thinking is. But I think that's an overarching thing for us. Thankfully, all our influencer bets have kind of paid off. They do have a very clear space that we would like for them to reach out, a kind of target group that they already speak with, which is resonant with the target that we want to reach. So I think for us, frankly, all our experiments have worked. I think maybe it's got discharged. Yeah, I think with the sort of space growing so fast and so many companies experimenting, naturally, a lot of learnings will come to the table in terms of how influencers are going to be used and what is the way forward. Let me step back a little bit and go back to the sort of digital journey. One of the things that has happened as digital has added so much complexity to a marketer's job. Philip Kotler famously spoke about the four P's of marketing. And today, those four P's have completely changed, meaning the P stand for performance, for privacy, for permission, and so many other things. Two things have become very critical on when you go online to push your narrative. One is how can you personalize, right? Now, that challenge is different for every category. For example, BFSI as a category needs to be far more personalized as compared to perhaps the category you are in. But having said that, because digital allows you that opportunity, there is want for every marketer to make the message personal as much as possible. But the flip side of that is intruding into privacy, right? And it's a fine line that every brand is walking every day. How do you kind of look at that challenge and sort of find the right path? So I think personalization, again, super critical. And I give the example of the Hershey campaign that we did. What we did was on our packs, we put the picture of the person we wanted to celebrate, but we also put a QR code. And if you were to put it, you could celebrate your own personal shero. So that's how you personalize it. So while we have these four, six, eight people that we could put on our packs, how can you celebrate the sheroes in your lives? And we had almost, I think more than 11,000 people who kind of sent them messages to their personal sheroes. So that's the personal touch that you can bring in. Again, a space that we continue experimenting in. We are now doing the Metaverse conversation earlier in the panel. We're now doing Hersheyverse. So it's not yet official, so maybe I shouldn't be telling you, but yeah, you'll hear about it next week. And again, we're trying to kind of merge together the physical and the digital world for the consumer and lots of discounts, lots of interaction, lots of interface with them to see how can we make it more personal. How do we bring it closer home for them? So yeah, it's something we continue on. As a category, chocolate naturally lends itself to a concept like Metaverse. Let me, again, you've been a marketer for a long time. Let me ask you, every brand, I saw a report GroupM release this week which said 48% of advertising money in India this year will go on digital. There are naturally categories which are doing even more than 48% that's how the average has been arrived at. In this entire din of digital somewhere, agencies as well as brand managers have lost sight of what's happening in the TV and the other legacy ecosystem. What is your view on how this debate is eventually going to be settled, say, two years out? What is the value that a medium like TV still has in the lives of FMCG marketers, right? While digital delivers the so many benefits we've all discovered, TV continues to have a role. What is that role you think it will sort of keep? So I think it's personally too early to write the obituary for TV, yeah? And the truth is our consumers are across the spectrum, across the LSM pyramid or socioeconomic classes and there are those who you would need to reach through more mass roots like TV. So at least at Hershey how we do it is we decide which brand needs to go on TV depending on its awareness reach tasks and how much, therefore, would be spent on TV, how much would be spent on digital and then there are brands which do only digital. More niche, more very segmented profile, so we create the look-alikes and we get to consumers through that. So my personal belief, TV and digital are here to stay. In fact, if anything it is becoming dual screens, more screens, so how do we build that interaction between TV and digital is how we should look at our thinking rather than saying it's TV or digital. It's going to be both. At least that's how I see it and we need to be able to just bring them together in a manner that is cohesive and continues to build for the... Yeah, I think TV plus digital is important. Very importantly, how you're using digital as well as TV both. It's just not about doing a mass pray of spending money on digital. On the objectives of the brand, it could be different for every brand. Even within, like I said, within Hershey, we don't have the same approach for all our brands. We have different approaches for what is right for that particular brand in that particular campaign. So sometimes one brand can be making a core TV advertisement and a digital, like Hershey kisses, for example, core TV, but the Hershey-Licious Halloween was only digital. Yeah, some of the tactical campaigns obviously will go on digital. You might not have the bandwidth time or the resources to mount them on a TV campaign. Let me come back to what we are discussing today, which is content and for every brand, it's become very tempting to curate your own narrative instead of going the traditional advertising way which is riding on a narrative that already exists. But in your 20 years of journey as a marketer, what have you discovered in terms of consumer taste or consumer pushback? Because if a consumer has dozens of narrative, content narratives thrown out at her every day, right? The ability to absorb them also goes down and there is a pushback. And that's again a very fine line because you don't want to overdo the content piece and sometimes you got caught in your own trap. You like the narrative and you keep pushing out without really understanding the kind of results that are coming out. So when it comes to creating your own content using celebrities or influencers to put it across various platforms, what is the right approach to follow in terms of the balance between curating your own content versus riding on existing content or doing it with other partners? Yeah. So I think firstly, indeed the human mind can only process so much, right? So beyond the point, it does, if you don't manage to say your message in a clean, easy to process manner, a consumer wouldn't get it. So with you on that, I think for us, it is really about what is the best way to partner and where do we come and kind of curate our own content? I'll give you the example of GeoSawan, you know, playlist for Valentine. So it's something that they are doing and how do we partner with them in that journey? We doing something similar, you know, well with Tinder as well. You know, it depends on the channel where you believe there is something that they can do, something that we need to curate specifically. And to be honest, we look at it in every space differently. And I mean, I don't know how to give a clearer answer than that on this one. Understood. Let me, I see the time is already up. Let me talk about a larger organizational issue. And you know, for most companies, people is a very important talent. And one of the key areas where companies in India as well as globally have been focusing about is diversity in the workspace. We know that Hershey's has been kind of at the forefront in pushing that narrative, making it a sort of equal workspace. What are the steps that the company has taken, for example, especially in your tenure in that direction? So I think diversity is super critical. In fact, if I look at our leadership team, it's 43% is women. And that's really what we aspire to be. We want to be an equal opportunities employer, right? So what we insist is every single opening that opens up is an equal slate. You have 50% women and 50% men, and then may the best talent win, you know? So there is no mandates on hiring, but there are mandates on ensuring that is equal opportunities being offered. The other things we do is really, how do we make it more easier for women to work, right? So sales especially is an area where women find it tough. I mean, I have done sales in Unilever and I can assure you I had troubles using, you know, there was no bathroom to use. Like literally, let's be honest, right? So we've tied up with Vulu. It's this app that tells you where is the cleanest, closest bathroom. And, you know, we've given it to all our sales, women in the sales force. So, you know, of course a daycare benefit. So a lot of these facilitating benefits, which a few years ago were not considered important or weren't even thought about, is something that we've recently done now. We've seen an increase in our diversity ratios nowhere close to the 50-50 you would like for it to be. But we continue making progress. Even in our factories, I mean, we have a factory in Bhopal and traditionally not as safe as we would like for it to be. And we are exploring how can we have, you know, buses with CCTV cameras to take them from the village. How do we kind of go to the village, speak with them to make it legit to come to a factory and work? So lots of work in the pipeline which has been done in the last year. Lots more to do. But I think we've made tremendous progress. And that's an area I think is important because, you know, at the end of the day, we are serving an equal population consumer. You know, there are 50-50 men and women. And therefore, we need the same kind of diversity in our teams at home so that we can kind of make them to the consumers out there. Absolutely. I think one of the key, while we talk about GDP numbers and, you know, growth figures in monetary terms, one of the key aspects for India as a country to look at is participation of women in the workforce, you know, and how that is shaping up, especially in corporate India at the top level because, you know, there are so many sectors where significant progress has been made in the last few years, but there's still a long, long way to go. You come from the unilever ecosystem, which is really a sort of, one can say a leader in this space with that. Thank you so much, Geetika.