 Hello and welcome to E4M Talk Show. Our guest today is Mayank Shah, category head, Parle Group. Welcome to the show, Mayank. Hi, thank you for having me on the show. Mayank Parle Group has been a regular advertiser on TV, especially during the IPL. How significant is the role of collective viewing for your brand? I think very important, primarily because if you consider sports, I think, you know, sports typically is consumed on the go when you are alone. You know, it's normally on the go, you will try and consume it alone. Typically what we have seen is sports is best enjoyed with friends, with family, and collective viewing takes it to a different level. Even with IPL, we have seen typically what happens is, you know, people get together either with friends or family and viewer, and it increases viewership. It also increases, you know, the enjoyment as in when you're watching it with everybody. So it makes a huge difference, you know, when you're talking about sports like IPL, where collective viewing plays a very important role. And it's not just about that. It's not just about enjoyment. It's not just about the fun question. It's also about, you know, the increased viewership that you get. So as we all know, IPL is not just restricted to male viewing anymore. You have, you know, family viewing happening and that probably, you know, adds to the entire thing. I think what more can an advertiser ask for when he's getting something like, you know, entire family or entire bunch of friends getting together and watching it. So how do you plan to leverage IPL marketing during key matches like semi-final and final? Well, we have a few plans in terms of, you know, running promotions and stuff like that internally. You need to associate with IPL, you know, if you're running a program, I'm sure you would be knowing about it. So you cannot leverage the brand name unless you are not part of IPL or directly associated. The sponsorship happens to be on TV. So you do not have rights to, you know, use IPL branding. But yeah, internally, you know, because we are sponsoring it on TV, we are going to run, you know, a bit of promos where probably we may send, you know, some of our contest winners and stuff like that internally. I'm talking about, you know, sales and those kind of things and certain business associates. You may send them for watching matches. So can you please share a marketing strategy as a as a broadcaster partner? Yeah, so ideally, you know, the primary motivation to advertise on IPL is because you get a viewership pan India. This is a unique event. I think cricket is, you know, one sport which gives you viewership and more so pan India viewership. So we all know there are two things which really excite, you know, Indians. One is cinema and another is cricket. Now, while cinema is, you know, pretty regional, now it's, you know, transcending the borders, you have South, you know, coming to West and North, you know, but it's still, you know, pretty regional. However, when you talk about sports, it transcends all the boundaries of, you know, language and regions and it gives you viewership pan India. That's one of the biggest motivations for any advertiser to advertise on a sports property, especially something as big as IPL. So that's one of the primary reasons that when you talk about strategy, when you're talking about impact, when you're looking at, you know, probably going all out all India at one go, I think IPL offers you a great platform to advertise. How successful your association has been, you know, so far in terms of ROI with related to IPL? I think, you know, it's just started so difficult to say. I think we need to wait and watch because what we've seen, you know, over the years is that there's good traction that happens in, you know, viewership or your good viewership in the beginning and towards the end. However, you know, we've seen, you know, better viewership at least in the beginning stage this year compared to last year. We're waiting and watching on how it pans out throughout the season. So you're hopeful that, you know, it would be good. So ideally, we would expect it to continue, you know, at the remaining at this levels. Overall, we would have to watch, you know, whether it surpasses, you know, last year, which it most likely should be, but, you know, probably the all-time highs of 2020, if it can, you know, do that. I think that would be great. So waiting and watching, you know, for the outcome of the entire season. I think it's a little too premature to talk about, you know, ROI at this stage. We have ratings just for the first week, which have come in waiting for the next week ratings, which should come in next two days. And can you please tell us about your creative and media agency? Yeah. So our media agency has been zero Zenith Optimedia through whom this entire deal has been done. And creative agencies whose creatives are running. We have quite a few creative agencies, but the ones whose creatives are running on this IPL are Rediffusion and ThoughtBlog. Actually, in general, Mayank, what is your media mix? Generally, I think, you know, TV remains one of the dominant mediums for advertising, given that we are into consumer products. Digital is catching up now. So probably a few years back when digital was about just 8 to 10 percent of the total spends today, it says high as almost about 20 to 25 percent. TV is about 60, 65 percent. And then Malins goes to other mediums like Press or even, you know, Radio and Outdoors. So when you say TV is, you know, very significant for you. So do you do you mean to say connected TV as well? Yeah, connected TV is part of it, but connected. We normally, you know, consider connected to be part of digital. Not really part of traditional TV households. Secondly, I think, you know, connected. If you look at the total universe, it's still a small number, although growing, but still, I think, you know, it's too small a number to really choose, especially when you're talking about a client like us who's into, you know, consumer products where typically the ticket size is not really very high. I think the numbers of CTV are not really significant, you know, given the numbers right now, they're not significant for us. That means you are not advertising on CTV at all? Not currently, not currently. I mean, you know, specifically targeting that separately does not make really sense for me at this stage. Okay. Ajay Mayank, your marketing strategy during pandemic, it was amazing. You evolved quickly and I think you won the race as well. So I would like, you know, to understand how it has evolved now when the markets are completely open and, you know, and at the same time, there are a lot of restrictions, you know, in terms of budget, in terms of inflation and all. Yeah. So I think pandemic, we did a great job in terms of, you know, quickly turning around things. We were first to hit back the market. I think it was within days. Within four or five days, we were back in the market. We should also thank government for really, you know, understanding that the sector in which we are and the category in which you have biscuits happened to be, you know, food for almost everybody. In fact, I like to put it this way. Parle G is not a biscuit. It's more of a staple for most Indians and the kind of work that was done by brand during pandemic was phenomenal. We gave up with three-crore packets, you know, free of cost to people in need. Almost everybody walking back to their village to probably, you know, people were not able to venture out of their homes where literally surviving on the packs of biology, which we had distributed through government. So the kind of goodwill, the kind of brand love that we generated during that particular time was phenomenal and tremendous, which is even helping us today because, you know, people know, I mean, if you walk the talk, I mean, we always say Bharat, Kabna, Biscuit, Parle G, but when you really walk the talk, you may say so. But when, you know, nation needs you, if you really stand up, you rise to the occasion and do that is when people would really appreciate it. And that's what we saw. People really appreciated huge amount of brand love that we saw, you know, during pandemic and even after that. What has happened after, you know, pandemic and as things started, you know, putting back in place in terms of economy opening up and stuff like inflation was a big challenge. It was a challenge last year. And I think, you know, most companies struggled. There was a bit of struggle on our part as well. But I think, you know, we were able to do well relatively given the brand love. We relatively, you know, escaped unscathed. So that was not really, you know, so much of an issue. There although inflation did probably, you know, limit the quantum of growth that we were having in the last few years. However, I think things are looking, you know, up back again with inflation under control and rural economy now, you know, reviving. We are seeing demand coming back from rural India. We're very hopeful about the coming year. 23-24, hopefully should be, you know, really a great year for everybody. Can I ask, you know, emerging marketing trends? I think, you know, a lot of things change during pandemic and we are seeing, you know, acceptance of those things as a habit. So be it, you know, the channels through which we are selling. So Ecom, you know, got very well accepted. And we are seeing continuous growth happening. So probably, you know, the kind of contribution that we are expecting from Ecom, which was pegged at about 10% by Nielsen study in the next 10 years. We may see that happening in the next six or seven years. When that study was done, Ecom contribution was just about less than 1% to the total FMCT. Today it's upward about 3.5%, 4% kind of thing and only growing. So hopefully, you know, in next five years or so, we can see rather than 10 years, you know, we'll see probably 10% contribution of Ecom coming to the total FMCT. So that was a very, very important and significant trend that we saw. Second thing was about, you know, adoption to, you know, digital medium. So we saw a lot of people, you know, adapting to digital medium, a lot of growth in OTT and other platforms. So consumption of digital media group, registration on OTT platforms grew significantly given that people were at home. Also another important trend on product category or brand front was, you know, people becoming more and more health conscious and, you know, it sustains. I mean, even today as we speak, generally people prefer to buy things which are, you know, relatively healthier. Pandemic has taught us that lesson. So most consumers today are trying and gravitating towards, you know, products which are better for them, healthier for them. Mayank, now the last question. I think Parli is going to complete 100 years in 2029. So I would like to know about your expansion plan. And also do you have, do you plan to expand your product portfolio as well? We have been doing it since last few years. So if you look at, you know, from what we started, we started as a confectionary company in 1929 and 1939. We got into biscuits. The first biscuit that came up was biology and prior to that, from 1929 to 1939, we were largely selling confectionary orange candy was our brand then. And since then, you know, till almost about your 2000, we were into those two categories, confectionaries and biscuits. Close that we've gotten to many other categories. We got into bakery where we are present into husk and cakes. We've gotten to snacking in a big way. So we have Western snacks like chips and bridge category. Bridges typically extruded category with Indian seasoning. We are big there. We are into traditional Indian namkeens or snacks like, you know, namkeens and bhujiyas and mixtures and other things. That's been doing very well for us. Over and above that, we have got very recently into breakfast cereal and staples like Ata as well. Ata, always available in global market. We extended it to domestic market as well. So now we have Palaji Ata also being available. So I think if you look at very recent in very recent years, we've gotten to quite a few categories which are really big. When you talk about Ata, it's almost about 2.5 lakh crore category. Very big that way. So breakfast cereals is another big category and a growing one, although niche. We've got into those. So I think our hands are full with them. And at least in the next few years, we would be looking at establishing ourselves in those categories, making a mark for ourselves or having a significant share in those categories before we look at getting into other categories. Thank you so much, Mayank, for taking time out on time. Pleasure to be your concern.