 Well, next up is a brand that houses the most iconic FMCG brands in Indian households today. Taking the center stage next is Kapil Pillai, regional marketing director, South Asia, Hygiene Rekid joining us. While Pillai shares the stories from Rekid's brand portfolio such as Harpic and Vanish are navigating through the changing consumer behavior. He speaks on the topic finding constancy in variability and with this I'd now like to humbly invite on the stage and screen Kapil to join us. Thank you for your valuable time. Over to you. Thank you, Bhavna. Good afternoon, everybody. Today, we just talk about one topic which I think is there in everyone's mind. And there's so much variability. How do I find some amount of constancy to build my marketing platform? And in doing so, how do you build a sustained connect with consumers? So before we start, just a quick quiz. So three years ago, you find your consumers and you know, you can interchangeably say customers as well, less likely to switch to competition and promote or any pricing actions. Do you find them clearer about what your brand proposition is? Are they less likely to confuse your message with that of your competitors? Are they more likely to respond positively to increased ad spends? And do they have a higher likelihood to repeat purchase? Chances are, of course, there will be people who get a yes answer to everything. But chances are that for most brands, established brands, the chances are that the answers are mostly no. And that's the crux of what we want to talk about today. The fact remains that there's an increasing clutter. There are a whole lot of brands which say pretty much what you're saying, because well, imitation is the best form of flattery. And how do you ensure that your message cuts through stronger and more distinctly than your competition? So if you look, there's a lower trust in brands and in institutions versus a year ago. And you look at it, on the average, global companies have a negative endorsement on trust. Well, it's slightly better than government, but it's not wonderful at all. The other thing that's there is that consumers tend to reward companies who put on good behavior in their mind or who mirror the behavior that they have. Consumers tend to punish companies who do not mirror the behaviors that they have. So this behavior of the organization versus brand choice is something that's been going up steady. And now it's at a level where we cannot ignore it anymore. When you look at a brand journey, it has to move beyond a transactional relationship. The very definition of a brand is that there is some value that's been created. Simple definition of marketing is the value creation at both ends for the consumer in terms of enhanced propositions and in terms of the person selling, which is the entity in terms of higher realization for their product. That's essentially marketing. And therefore that value buildup has to move from product functional superiority to actually moving to a solution to creating stronger experience and then higher meaning. And these are the axis for value buildup for the consumer. And you want to do this. You consumers tell us that they prefer purpose led brands and are more loyal to them. An Accenture Group survey told us that 63% of people are buying and this is a global survey, are buying goods and services from companies that reflect their personal beliefs and values. 62% want companies to take a stand on social, cultural and environmental issues, which is close to their hearts. And this is just not simply saying that you are attuned with the consumers or the customers. Authenticity matters. Now, if they feel that you're just tagging on to a purpose which just from the eye point of view of creating distinctness, that doesn't work. And the people do believe that their actions can influence the company's stand. So this activism among consumers is what is actually driving the landscape today. And when you think of the consumer who looks at brands, they are four times more likely to buy a brand which is not a strong purpose. They're more likely to protect and not walk away in times of misstep or for public criticism. There are four more like far more likely to champion them. Now, this makes it sound that you know that purpose is a great thing to have for any brand, right? Because the data says that okay, consumers believe that this is what they would identify with, this is what they would pay more for, this is the belief and faith in the brand. But what exactly is purpose? And this is really fairly, you know, this has been fairly talked about. So is it simply just doing CSR? Is it doing social good campaigns? Is it just simply driving sustainability? Is this what brand purpose is about? Actually, no, those are action outcomes. So when you actually want to talk about brand purpose, it has to, it cannot be just something that, you know, the flavor of the year or flavor of the month. And this is what we're going to tag on to and this seems to be connected with the brand in some way. And let's kind of tag on to that. It's not that simple. Okay, it has to start with what you truly believe in, right? So whether it's belief in the organization that the organization has or whether the brand has, that has to be the first part of it. The second is what your brand is good at, right? And there's no point getting into a purpose like conversation if your brand does not deliver on those promises. And this is, I think the third is a really important time, what would really make a difference? Because again, what you believe in and what you're good at, if it does not make a difference to the consumers that you are addressing or the nation that you are selling in, then there's limited relevance that purpose has. And that's what purpose is. So that purpose leads to these outcomes, some of these outcomes, and there are many more as well. But there are also business outcomes. And I think the first is that there is much stronger brand cuts. So when you have a purpose lead brand, when you talk to the consumers, there's a much clearer consumer articulation for what you stand for. And essentially, that indirectly means that you could conceive of these kinds of communication and get the same results or spend the same amount of communication and get better results. There's also more loyalty because the understanding is there because you are seen as your brand, a brand with purpose, you're seen as a distinct brand away from the others. So that loyalty also comes in for those who identify with it. And most important is a higher willingness to pay, which allows you to charge a premium and therefore bring a creative to your open life. So when we look at purpose and from a record's perspective, the first we start with purpose at the core. There's no point in actually looking at a brand without understanding, without identifying first the organization purpose. Why do we exist? That's the first question that you should seek to answer with purpose. Then would come the vision and the fight, which is what is it that we aim to achieve and how do we plan to achieve the vision? Only after that comes the values, which is what we stand for and what governs our behavior. And at the very end is what we have traditionally followed as marketing. How are our products different from others? From a record's perspective, our purpose is really here to protect, heal and nurture in the pursuit of a cleaner, healthier world. And when you define this as your purpose, your vision also kind of falls into place. A vision is a world where people are healthier and they live better. And our fight is also very, very clear from a, because this is what we do on a daily basis to ensure that we are living our purpose, which is making the high, making access to the highest quality, hygiene, wellness and nourishment, not a privilege but a right. And when you put it this way, you realize that there are so many parameters to this, which is a firstly access, secondly, quality, and thirdly, making sure that it's not something that you have, that only a few people can afford. So there's no point having access if only a few people, it's a privilege for people to access it, right? And that is what defines our records. When you define your products with this lens, you find that consumers identify much more strongly with it. This purpose and this fight also defines our values, putting consumers first, seeking out new opportunities, striving for excellence, and building the shared success, right? Taking an example, now, how does this come out? And I think I want to take an example of Vanish to explain this. For those of you who don't know, Vanish is a brand which operates in the laundry space. It's an detergent booster in its core form, and it ensures that the power of the detergent is unlocked and you get a fantastic portion. Now, for a product like this, it's not core to laundry, it is a booster, how do you unlock purpose? So we said, what is the problem? And you know, this has to be in a way which is relevant to us. Mass clothing today is impacting the planet in many different ways, right? There is, as a result of production of clothes, there is massive greenhouse emissions. There is water pollution, not just from the production of clothes, but also from the repeater washing of new clothes and so on and so forth. The water, apparel industry consumes 93 billion cubic meters of water every year. I mean, you think about the, when you think about how many names will be solved if this was repurposed, it becomes really clear. 350,000 tons of clothing are sent to the landfill every year in just the United Kingdom. When you look at other countries and add it up, that's a massive amount, right? So what was the problem? In a world where clothes are facing unnecessarily short lines, most of the frequency of laundry is gone on. People are washing much more often, more than six times a week. And not only that, they're washing at higher temperatures because clothes get dirty, they don't get washed properly. That washing at increased temperatures helps mitigate that, but it also reduces the life of the clothes, leaves them all leaching and creates an impact on the quality in not just the texture of the fabric, but also the fading of the clothes and so forth. Now, the other thing is that people believe as a result of this, that clothes quality has declined and therefore, there's also this thing of spending less money on clothes. When you look at the reasons to discard a garment, there are two popular reasons that the material has worn out and could remove stains. The reducing clutter to wardrobe and no longer wearing are secondary issues. So that helped us define our purpose. We are on a mission to help clothes live many lives. Two parts to this, the first part is that you wear your clothes more often and then find, the second part is, find reuse of clothes that you choose what to use. This is why, and you know, the most important thing of our purpose is it has to link up to your product. We have amazing products with superior sites that extends the life of clothes. So vanish through all these products can double the life of your clothes. Me, Daisy, the teenager who loves hand-me-downs, jacket from our older sister, those jeans from our auntie, and that play suit, it was our cousins, then it was our sisters and now us. A scoop of vantage powder in every wash of the one-stop solution that gets rid of stains, odours, and keeps colours bright. Even clothes looking great, making those hand-me-downs easy to love. I was in long gone with that. So, we started the purpose journey. When you start a purpose journey, you typically will start it in one country and then when you find the resonance, then you can see how it's relevant for other countries. So we started it in the UK. And the first part was explaining what the problem is. And this is how we did it from a communication. Vanish has always been there to make little problems vanish. But now, they're taking on a big one. Too many of our clothes are worn just 10 times before it's run away. But by taking care of the clothes, we love the look, look at the stains, and protect the colours. We can always last and we wear more. See, Vanish is still helping problems just 10 times. Just bigger. Not all months. And then we went to London Fashion Week. And at a place where people are talking about clothes, and new clothes, and latest, this is what we did. To be asked to do anything for London Fashion Week is hugely exciting and a bit of honour. Fashion is known for setting trends and sustainability is something that fashion needs to get behind. I think people have no idea that this amount of clothing gets thrown away. But this just becomes like a pile of rubbish. It's only a great thing that we can wear again and again. It can still have a second life. The design process, it really does make you appreciate your clothes. Sometimes you think something's had its life, but there are ways to remove stains, wash clothing, steam it out, and it's going to look like brand new. I definitely wouldn't think this just came out a pile of what people think is rubbish. New thing, new working, new styling. It's so important to get attention. It can look just as good. OK, 300,000 tons of clothing goes around the world. I think, you know, you can see what, how Vanish approached it. There are two parts to it. One part is setting up the problem. The second is creating a context for the clothes that we choose to discard and how that can become sustainable fashion as well. But I think that worked really well for us in the last year. What Vanish has done in this year has gone one step further in partnering with the British Fashion Council to explore how to make the fashion industry more circular in the future. To explore how to make the fashion industry more circular and more socially equitable. As a result, you know, the clear target outcomes have been aligned on the first, reduce volume of new physical clothing, maximize utilization to product locality, which is the entire pre-use. And a lot of material gets wasted in finding out ways of producing that research. How does this link back to Vanish? No matter what you send out to the market, it will stay longer and live longer because of Vanish. So that's how Vanish built up a purpose message in the UK. And now we are taking it all over the world. On her pick, the mission is far larger and far more problematic. In fact, it remains that one in three people don't have access to a salient-free toilet environment. That's almost 3 billion people. And that's where our mission is. A world where everyone has a toilet together with the dignity and safety products. And this is completely in sync with the UN SDG-6, which is clean water and sanitation. So how did we go about this? For us, India was a key market because India is a place where sanitation has been a back step. So we have spent over the last many years. We have been talking about sanitation. We had school outreach programs. We had communication. We helped redefine what a clean toilet means and made the entire act simpler, more democratic, introduced the concept of dignity of labor and bathroom where anyone can clean a bathroom without feeling minimized. But that was just one part of it. In 2014, after the Swachh Bharat campaign was launched, we were really part of that along with TETOL. And we helped drive the concept of an ODF-free India, open defecation-free India. So we partnered with the government of India to create the awareness for sanitation and defecation in toilets. In 2019, we launched Mission Planning. The first year in line with SDG, the focus was almost 90% on water and 10% on sanitation. The point being that water is required for sanitation. However, the pandemic allowed us to pivot a little bit more. And we started talking about a hygiene as the key enabler and how water is a key enabler for hygiene in the first line of defense. This year, we are focusing towards a more omnibus approach, which is water conservation, sanitation, and indigenous and tech-based way to catch, hold, and store water for better health. Now, how has this come across? How has this come across? What we did? So there are many angles to what we did from a purpose. The first was we launched a World Toilet College in Aurangabad. In two years, we trained 7,000 sanitation workers. In this year, in 2021, we launched an additional five World Toilet Colleges. And as a consequence of this, in 2022 by 2022, we'll have trained 2,000,000 sanitation workers. And when you realize this, a trained sanitation worker will ensure that the very critical aspect of ensuring that the toilets that have been set up through the Swift-Switch pilot mission are clearly maintained and are sustainable is going to be enabled by this. One of the biggest issues with our ODA program has been that toilets fell into disuse because there were not enough sanitation workers to drive that, or people didn't know how to clean those toilets and refresh them. So that's one of the big things that we've done. We've talked about in this year, we've got to focus back on the sanitation. And we are now supporting the government on SPM-2. And we are focusing on the use and the managed part of the BUNP. Government helps to drive the building of sanitation enablement, which is toilets. We help to manage the use and the management of this. Last mile, which is treatment, is something we are also looking at partnering with others. We've also renewed partnership with Fiki and ISC, India Sanitation Coalition, to ensure that this message goes further. We are focusing on indigenous technologies and using water conservation to support the resignation of World Heritage Sites. So it's not just about sanitation, but water conservation, the way water can be repurposed. We are looking at ensuring that this comes together in a compelling way. Over the next one year, you will also see new communication, driving home, why sanitation is important, and how HARPIC can help partner in this. So coming to the end, if you look at purpose, it has to be run right. It's like the fifth P. You cannot just do purpose if your product, your pricing, are not correct. It's not a one-stop fix for a product problem or a brand problem, which is not really clear. The most important thing is to not expect it to work like a promotion. So you say, oh, I started purpose in the next year. I will start getting a high willingness to pay. The first part of purpose is A, it has to be coherent and consistent. It has to be authentic. Brand purpose doesn't refresh regularly. They evolve. So build the entire brand around the purpose. If your brand exists already and you want to identify a purpose, make sure that the purpose can be at the core of that. Context is everything. There's no point in defining purpose in a way which is not relevant to your consumers. Open defecation is a problem in India and therefore something that needs to be addressed from the Indian context. In Europe or in the United States, this would not be such a problem. And the purpose in terms of sanitation would focus on other things like public toilet use and cleanliness over there. So that context is really important. The value has to be tangible. It has to be solving real problems for real people. If it's something which is arcane in a different country and a different set of consumers who they don't identify with, there's really not. It's not really going to help driving a purpose agenda. When you choose a purpose, you have to be choiceful between distinctiveness and polarization. Now, the quest for distinctiveness often leads to making choices which cause rejection with a certain set of consumers. Now, this polarization needs to be choiceful. If you're not ever going to be selling to those consumers, you don't hope to be selling to them, you could potentially take it. But doing polarization for the sake of distinctiveness is not a great idea. With that, I'll wind out. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.