 Today we have with us, Pallami Roy, who is the Chief Marketing Officer of RHS Global. She spearheaded many campaigns revolving around transgender sex workers, acid attack survivors. Welcome to exchange for media, Pallami. It's a pleasure to have you. Hello, everybody. The pleasure is completely mine and lovely, lovely meeting you. How are you? I'm very well. So congratulations on this new campaign that you've just launched, Just Empower One, which is dedicated to spreading awareness about women, acid attack survivors, if I'm not wrong. And also your last campaign was about being equal. So I want to ask you, Pallami, what has led you to, you know, conceive this campaign and this idea and social causes bringing them into your campaign? What has driven you towards that? Thank you so much for acknowledging all the campaigns. I'm so glad that you have come across both our campaign. So we'll talk about Just Empower One first. To be very honest, Just Empower One happened to us two years back. We actually got into a phase of demonstrating what we believe our brand purpose is. So RHS Global, the purpose of RHS Global is to make a quality product that affordable price point because we are a mass brand. And while we have figured out the purpose for ourselves, we wanted to demonstrate the same and, you know, to the to the world. And instead of just making a campaign about it or like a video ad about it and talking about, we said, you know, we generally need to do something which which makes us believe that we what we say and what we believe is something we are here to do. And that's when we started searching for an avenue to demonstrate the same. And I remember walking up to our chair person and telling him that can we make products to support extremely sensitive skin at affordable price point because we are manufacturers. We are not only, you know, marketers and sellers. He said, yes, we can. But what's in your mind? I said, you know, while we were talking of skin types, you have realized that most skin care company talk about three to four skin types oily combination, dry, sensitive skin. What is the most sensitive skin that we can think of when we said it's sort of a burn back, burn victim or an asset victim survivor? And, you know, after they recover, the skin becomes very sensitive. And if we, as a brand, think of it and we start joining the dot, we say that we are a mass brand and we can make quality product at affordable price point. And we realize that most of the asset attacks survivors are from much economically weak background, right? They are more exposed to walking on the streets. And that's how this crime happens to them. And it's a gender based, it's a gender violence. So what happens to them after they survive? The skin becomes very sensitive. Obviously, there is another. There is a lot of psychological and physical needs that they have. I went to talk to him and said, you know, can we then claim or can we even try to make products for these women? From basic products like moisturization, sunscreen and face washes. Because they have very sensitive skin. We have to be very careful about what we do and can we price them at a point which is not very expensive because they come from economically weak background. I can't expect. Of course, in the market, there are products available, but they're mainly derma products and extremely expensive. That was the moment of truth for us that, you know, can we do this as a brand if you are able to make these products? And that will be the best way to showcase what we stand for, that we can make quality product at affordable price point. That was the germ of the seed and the campaign was called Skin of Courage. So we launched Joy Sensitive Fringe. We tied up with Chopac Movie. We started speaking about this entire concept of skin and how, you know, these products that we had been distributed through NGOs to 500 survivors. Took their feedback, they were tested, tried, no complaints. And that was the first phase. While I was working with on this campaign, I came across a couple of NGOs that we were working with. And one of the NGO is Ate Jeevan and it had it is headed by this woman called Pragyam. So since I was very deeply involved with her in this campaign, because there were a lot of parameters, the product that we made, whether it had to reach, tick mark all the boxes because we were talking about very, very hypersensitive skin of survivors. Nothing could go wrong there. So every single day we would be in touch with her, talking to her, understanding. One such conversation that I was having with her and I said, you know, now that I'm deeply working with her, what are the challenges she faces? And she said something, you know, probably there's something we could do. I said, what? She said, I'm dealing with these girls on a daily basis. I think after they survive the attack, there are surgeries that are needed for the physical well-being. And after that, we also counsel them. What can give them a dignified life is a financial independence because most of them come from extremely poor background. After this happens, they are never taken back by their families. Some of them support, some of them know. The entire need pyramid of a normal human being turns out for that. That was a moment I said, you know what? I being a corporate, I think this is an area where I could do something. And I came back and spoke to my management that why don't we do something like, you know, and why don't we do something to get financial independence to these girls? And that was the second phase where we did just hire one. While we did just hire one, there was some learning from that campaign as well. We did it with LinkedIn. We asked people to hire. We promised to hire a survivor ourselves. During that phase, I had a learning that, you know, most of these girls are not very well educated. So they wouldn't have completed the class 10, young girls. Some of them were housewives. How does a corporate then work towards it? Like how, you know, you would need certain basic requirements. So the third leg and was refining the campaign and the endeavor, marketing efforts into just empower one. I said, you know what? We need to have a steep role strategy to do this. So with Atish Ivan, what we first did is that we will hire girls in our organization first, train them. So Pampa Das, who was working with us for the last one and a half, two years, she was a graduate. The good part of it was that. So we started getting CDs from her, you know, segregating CDs with girls who have completed their basic education and then give them vocational training and start teaching them how to go about it. So she was initially a beauty advisor. Then we got her into the e-commerce department. Then we said, OK, now we need to talk about the fact that their, you know, equality is not only about a man, woman, photographer. There are other small segments like this of people who deserve a chance. They may be smaller numbers when in India every year, the number of registered will be from 500, 200 to 500 cases. Even though it's small, that does not mean they do not get the chances that you and me get. So on the basis of that, we started doing just empower, we tapped into the pop culture by using filters, AI. We spoke to share chat and more because we wanted it in more number of regional languages so that it just does not become one, you know, just one like or one thing. We wanted to actually spread the word and talk about the fact that empowerment is a need of this hour and empowerment can bring equality and equality is the need of the hour. So for every support that we collected on this campaign, we said we'll donate rupee one from our aid. So that money now goes to the Foundation. She uses that money. Now, either there are girls who are very small, class eight, nine, wouldn't have completed, help them to complete their studies or maybe girls or women who will be of a certain age, start some kind of, you know, handicraft that she can do from home and sell. So the end result should be empowerment. So from the first step of skin of courage to just how a higher one and now just empower one. This has been the journey of just empower one. It also ties back to the other campaign being equal because joy when we conceived it and the brand space that we operate in is we say every woman is born beautiful. That is beautiful by nature. You were not born with chipped nails, dry hair, flaky skin. We all were born with normal skin. All you need to do is maintain yourself. And that's the product we make. We do not claim fairness, taller, darker, thinner, nothing. So as an organization, which is homegrown, we abstain from a huge category, like a 3000 or fairness category. We completely abstain from. We do not make products in that category at all. As a principle, we have not stepped into that category. So when we talk of when we talk of women and the stereotypes attached to it, I think there are three, four important pillars that you need to work on, which will build this entire thing. One is equality, one is empowerment, another is inclusivity. And there are all, you know, interlinked with each other. All of this put together, can you uplift a thing? And when I say it, of course, our entire our core is targeted to women consumers. Yes. But I think there are so many sub sub sections within women and men, with where I think there has to be more equality. It's just not the bigger subsection of human race as a man and a woman. So I think we talk of equality of a woman a lot more within that group. Also, there are so many other sections that is an LGBTQ community. There are, you know, there are disabled people who are smaller in number, but they deserve the similar. So I think equality, inclusivity, all of these have to come at a broader spectrum that it is for everybody and everyone. And you need to choose the ones that you want to support. So as a brand, while we respect all of it, we pick and choose certain subjects where we really feel we can contribute. Me being a skincare brand, I would prefer in this zone rather than nutrition because I have some expertise and some authenticity to speak to horses. So that's how we make our choices of picking up the campaigns and working towards a particular cause. That's so wonderful. It's been a very insightful journey for you and for me to listen to it. My next question to you is that so your last two campaigns had Bollywood actors, Preeti Sanand and Disha Patni for your sunscreen and your face wash. These days, a lot of dads are going the non-conventional way, which is the social media influencers, if I may say. So are you also going to go? Are you also going to take that route or are you already taking it if you can throw some light on that? So again, it is a good, fun thing that my my seniors keep. I keep reiterating this once and again. I think I don't know, as Indians and in the Indian subpoena, we will never be in a country of or we've already always been a country of and. So nothing is like an off and on. Things keep adding on. Of course, micro level influencers, macro level influencers matter. Endorsements with celebrity have a different agenda. You have to define the objective. Like why do you need, you know, a Bollywood celebrity to endorse? Why do you need an influencer? So and why is it that they can't coexist? They can't coexist for only one reason because of budgetary constraints, if you have that you have to choose either or. But if given a choice that you can have it, then the ideal situation is to understand that what agenda is it going to fulfill for your brand? And if you can have both the KPIs chocked out together, that what what is what is this doing to the brand journey on the therefore the business? You have both. Now, the emphasis on both. We, of course, have been into influencers activity as well, but we're not completely dependent. We don't it's not an all for us. It's an end. Having said that, being an FMCG brand and a mass brand, we thrive more on television with a celebrity are spent over. There are more as compared to this. So it's going to coexist. And there was going to be variation in terms of the money that I allocate. But there's we've got a lot like, for example, when I did the being equal campaign last year with IPL, we had a whole lot of good influences. We wanted that to happen. And we also had our celebrities talking about the same because it was a larger context discussion that we had. OK, so in that space, also, you have to be like very you have to understand that there are content creators and there are influences, influences in the sense of some people like, OK, I use products. I show using this product and this is how I look and all that. But then the good part is, of late, there are such great content creators that are available and if you use them rightly. So we did use Kusha Kapila. We did use Malika Dua when we were talking of the equality game. You know, and they all came across talking about the you know, the being equal campaign in their own versions in the way they could express. Some of them spoke about who we did something called who equals the game for you. You know, they spoke about that. They spoke about their experience. We went to content creator again on a daily basis. We do have some micro influences who talk about products and their efficacies and application and all that. So I don't think it's an odd situation for me over here on my brand. It is an odd situation, but definitely the percentage of the budgets that I allocate to promoting with a celebrity or television is definitely more than what I do on social media with influencers and content creators. Great. I'm talking about advertising budgets. Would you like to share with us? What budget did you set aside? And you know, what would be the media mix? And if you can tell us about your agency as an approximation of some budget. Yes, our media makes definitely we have TV, social media, digital, which includes search and all of that. We do a lot of activations. We're not much heavy into print outdoor or print and outdoor. We're not much. It's mainly a combination of television, social, digital. We do a lot of spends on e-commerce platforms. We do a lot of spends on retail branding, branding and the retail space and a lot of detail. That's the mix broadly that we have. And budgets have been more or less constant for us for the last couple of years. It is I have got some we do around one fifties to two hundred years here, kind of for spends over the years. Give me a present. Anything about your creative agency who's coming up with the campaigns? Who's your creative advertising agency? We have done something very nice years back. I think I would like to use this as an opportunity to say that we have a lot of creative partners and collaborators at an individual level. More so conceptually, it does happen in-house. Like I have a team and my team, we come up with concepts and we don't have a creative agency on a dinner basis with us. OK, we do have great partners for executing writers who write with us. Conceptualization happens mostly in-house. And of course, there are people who help us execute it, which is a production house and stuff like that. Collaboration happens across at all level with different people. But as of now, if you had to ask me if there is a creative agency on board on a retention basis with us, no, not that. We do it in-house and then get it. That's amazing. My last question before I let you go. So Arichis has three brands under its umbrella. If I'm not wrong, this Joy, this Karrison X-Men. Yeah, I want to know, is Arichis planning to expand within the country or globally? Are there any more products in the pipeline? What can you expect? So I tell you what, Arichis is the mother company. We do have other brands, but predominantly we are known in the market for Joy. And that takes more than 85 percent of our business. Joy as a brand is available across India, as well as other 40 different countries. Right. And Karris works beyond the South countries. The name Karris happened beyond the South countries. And categories, yes, we have a bouquet of products that we have already launched last year. So we we launched a couple of good stuff like serum. We had launched our, you know, creams, the night cream and the day cream and other treatment cream. We we have launched new versions of a couple of our existing creams. We have four in two with three, four new beautiful offerings in sunscreen as well. Face washers are coming up with new ingredients and new offerings. So our focus, if I have to give you three categories in which we really, really want to keep our dominance one, we've been known for cream and moisturization. So that category lotion and cream, we want to sustain our market share for sure. Face wash, we've been very aggressive and we've seen great results. We have created some of new products that also that we have launched. It is we had initially four, you know, four offerings. Now, the offerings in the face wash space has increased a lot. We're going to get very aggressive with face wash and sunscreen is another category where we were existing, but we never wanted to. We didn't spend too much on the space or too much of marketing efforts were not given, which we started this year and we have also launched a couple of beautiful products like a mineral sunscreen or something like an invisible sunscreen, a tinted sunscreen, an SPF 40 sunscreen. The products are amazing and we really feel that it is a game changing opportunity for us in the sunscreen category. These are the three focus category. Other than that, there are products like serums, three to two to three types of serums that are available, various types of body lotions are available. But they're not at really promoted, promoted on ATL. They're available on every commerce website. So as of now, we have our hands full when it comes to the number of products that we have, we know up for product, focus products and the geographies that we need to focus on. We've been working on two geographies, which is West Bengal and Maharashtra very aggressively. We're going to continue the same movie here. And of course, North India is our priority market because we hold good food there. So that's more or less the mix that we have right now and the work that we have in hand. Thank you so much, Pallavi. Thank you for talking to me for it was a pleasure having you and you wish you all the best with your journey ahead. Thank you so much. The pleasure was all mine. Thank you so much, guys. Thank you.