 Hi, sorry, well, I just figured out how the clicker operates. I'm Narsaman, and I work with RB, Hygiene Home. I'd like to say first of all, thank you very much to the organizers for having me over. It's an honor to be here to speak to Sachin Auguste Gathering. So my topic is building brands across cultures globally. And as I thought about this topic, a couple of thoughts came to mind. First one was that this is the slot after lunch. So I told myself, Narsaman, you have a responsibility, a responsibility to make sure those eyelids don't rupe, those heads don't drop, and there are no soft and gentle snores filling this room. So what I decided to do, therefore, is to pick up a case study rather than talk about theory too much. Pick up a case study of a brand. That was the first challenge. The second one is what should be the brand. So the obvious one that immediately hit me was Durex. And I said, if I want to keep a bunch of people awake after lunch, Durex would be the ideal case study. But then I thought that would be a cop out. Too easy, right? Pretty much anyone can figure out what's culturally different across geography with Durex. So I decided to pick a home care brand. And this is one of the brands that we manage here in India as well. But I've had the good fortune to work across many countries with this brand. I worked on this brand in the UK, in Spain, in Hong Kong, Thailand, and now in India as well. And the brand that I picked is Vanish, equally successful and equally sexy, as you will see, hopefully. So let me just introduce you to Vanish. It's not me, it's Vanish. Vanish is the number one stain remover in the world. The Vanish brand is present in about 70 countries globally. So it's truly a global brand. And it exists in different forms in different places, different consumer insights, which I'll walk you through. There are some things that are very, very common about Vanish globally. One of them is the fact that it's pink in color. That's its standout feature as you approach the supermarket shelf or as you approach an e-commerce shelf. Vanish is pink. And the second thing that's interesting about Vanish is that it actually has an ingredient which is active oxygen. And this active oxygen is what does the magic for Vanish. There's lots of other goodies in there, but it's the active oxygen which makes the brand work as it does to remove those stains and keep those clothes looking fantastic. And the other thing is that when you have such a powerful product and you use it on your clothes or you use it on fabrics, you'd think, is it safe? Could it kind of damage my clothes? Well, the good news is that this is why Vanish really works very well globally. It's very safe on your colors and it's very safe on your whites. This is, by the way, not a marketing spiel on Vanish. I have no intention of selling it to you, but I do hope you buy it. And the selling line of Vanish is Trust Pink for Get Stains. So for 20 years, this is the selling line we've used. Trust Pink for Get Stains. A very powerful selling line, if I may say so. And it's worked very well for Vanish. Now, this is the brand that's available in 70 countries across the world globally. And as you start thinking about how do I translate this across different countries, different cultures, when you say how do I move a brand globally across cultures, the key point really is what's the work? What's the work required in this? What's done globally and what's done locally? Always with the consumer as the bedrock of everything that you do. So in the next 20 minutes, I'm gonna walk you through what we do globally, what we do locally, how we do that, and how culture affects the work that we do. So if you look at global versus local, what do they do in RB globally? My colleagues in the global teams, what do they do? Every brand has a brand purpose, whether it knows it or not, and Vanish does as well. It just Vanish, without giving you the exact sentence, Vanish basically helps clothes live a longer life, right? Because it works very well trying to make the clothes fresh. The brand purpose has to be the same across all the markets. That's something that global has to ensure that happens. The brand positioning and the brand strategy is the same across all the markets. So for example, we've recently moved from just talking about stain removal and being safe for your colors and your whites to actually talking about adding on revival of your clothes, making your colors look brighter, your whites look whiter, removing odors, et cetera. So multi-benefit platform. That's something that is pretty standard globally. And the third set of things that are very standard globally are the brand identity, the way Vanish is written, that's obvious, the logo as was mentioned, the way the oxy action is depicted on the pack, it's always the same. The way the bubbles come through, it's always the same. And that's global and that's standardized and you can't play around with it. The brand personality. The brand personality is what we define as if you met the brand for the first time and you shook hands with it, what would you think of the brand? That's the brand personality. I'm not going to go to the details of what the words are. I think you will get a feel when you see the commercials. The brand values are what you basically come to know of the brand after you've known it for six months or a year when you've used it frequently, repeatedly. It's a friend that you've got to know a little bit better and you know, initial impressions versus what's your lasting impression is different. And I'm sure if you do this exercise with your friends, you'd come up with some pretty interesting descriptions, which is really worth doing at some stage. Now, if I look at what does that mean for the global guys in terms of developing this brand across multiple markets. So when you first talk about superior stain removal and reviving clothes safely, multiple benefits come into account. So the multiple benefits, for example, could be around always making sure the stains are removed. That's always the case. And whatever be the condition, whether it's in cold water, in hot water, cold water as you know is more difficult than hot water. The second part is keeping the colors true, whether it's colors or whites. And thirdly, removing orders, right? So these are multi-benefits that we need to make sure work the same way across all parts of the world. And that is something the global team is responsible to make sure happens from an equity standpoint. The second is keeping your colors true, whether it's red, green, blue, yellow, or white, all those colors, if you use a vanished product and you're the global director, you better make sure that that product works in every market around the world to keep those colors safe, irrespective of what the conditions are in the market. And whites as well. And also, because our source of business can either be detergents, which is what people use to remove stains, or it could be bleachers in different parts of the world, what we call the source of business. So you've got to make sure that the gap between you and your source of business is always widening, which means you're always on the lookout for future technologies that can step change the game, either in removing stains, or in colors, or removing orders, and doing it in a safe way, all the time. So that's something that you need to keep doing, and as a global team, you need to keep driving that approach all the time. But that's not all. This must also work across the world. So just to give you a small example, there are various usage methods that people use in different parts of the world to get stains out and to revive the colors. For example, you'd be surprised, I was surprised, certainly, to know that in the US, pretreating is still done by a significant proportion of consumers. Pretreating is when you take a little bit of powder or detergent, and then you put it on the stain, and then you rub it before you wash the clothes, right? So that's still done in such an advanced market. Not only is it in the US, it's also done in Britain, sorry, not in Britain, in France, in Germany, and it's definitely not in Spain where I had the chance to work as well. Pretreating was about 25% of the market in Spain, which means there's a significant number of people who just do this stuff before they put it in the wash. Then you've got countries where soaking is a super important thing. For example, India is a big soaking market. We all soak our stuff in buckets, at least somebody does in the household, soak it in the buckets and then put it in the wash. But you'd be surprised to know that Australia is the same. Their buckets are different, but they still soak in the buckets, okay? And then you have these countries where people are much more like, I really don't want to spend time on this. I'm just chucking it in the wash, and that's what we call in wash. So the point I'm trying to make is, whatever the methodology, and you can imagine that when people do these different things, the impact can be different. So what a global marketer needs to do is look out always for figuring out the current, helping the countries do the current really well, but keep their eyes always on the future to say, what are those technologies that are gonna come that are gonna disrupt any of these spaces? And the last part on the global side that I wanna share, and then I'll move to the local stuff, which is more sexy, is the world is moving to shorter cycles. The world is moving to shorter cycles because we're all concerned about the environment. The world is moving to washing in low temperatures. So what technologies do they bring? So the global team is responsible to make sure you look at all of these parameters and then figure out how do you make your product work in any of these conditions, given all of these conditions, and what are the next breakthroughs? As you can imagine, that's quite a wide field. So if you look at this chart, it's probably quite fair to think, are the local guys doing anything at all? Are they just getting paid for doing nothing? Let's take a look. There are multiple things that local people are responsible for doing. While the benefits and the positioning is global, the relevancy of the benefits of which benefits you will really talk about while talking about reviving your clothes can be different by market. And I'm gonna show you some examples. Communication will be different based on the culture and based on different aspects of the market, the usage, the practices, the habits and the attitudes of people. Products are tailored to local markets because like I said, the product situation that the product is used in is completely different across global markets. And lastly, packaging of course is different. Let's take a look at each of these one by one. Relevant benefits addressing local unmet needs. This is two print commercials basically from Brazil and Mexico. The first one is Brazil and the second one is Mexico. So if you look at it, what's similar is that they both talk about removing stains, odors, and brightens colors. So unless you can read Spanish, you've got to take my word for it that they are similar. So remove your manchas, remove your malo solores, and revive your los colores. This is exactly what it means. Those are the three benefits and they're common in both markets. But if you tag along now to India, we talk about removing stains, whiter whites and brighter brights. Now both of these you can imagine are in revival of your clothes, but there is a difference. And the difference is that in India, whitening is a super important part of the market, but there are not enough products to deliver on that unmet need. So the Indian consumers frustration with whites is actually significantly higher because you don't have enough products that serve the needs. So we picked this as the focus and therefore the positioning, the brand benefits that you have, the benefit dimensionalizations are different between India and Latin America. If you then look at the commercials themselves, you can see now they're slightly different, right? It's the same brand, but they're slightly different. Let me explain to you what the differences are. In Brazil, the brand is a love mark. Everyone knows this brand. Vanish is integrated into the fabric of the country. And so this presenter is known to everyone in Brazil. So all you have to do in the case of Brazil, where everybody knows Vanish looks like this, Vanish is oxy-action, Vanish removes stains, Vanish revives colors, et cetera, all you've got to do is really highlight the three benefits of the brand. Because the rest of the stuff is reasonably in grade. Whereas when you go to Mexico, the brand is quite strong, but not yet at the level of Brazil. So what we do there is that we talk, if you see those bubbles that are coming around to remove and do those three actions, that's because we really want to keep driving oxy-action even further. Because it's not yet reached the level of Brazil. It's very good, but not yet reached the level of Brazil. If you look at the Indian example, you will see that the sizing of Vanish is much bigger in India than in the other two markets, right? As in the print. The reason is because Vanish is a much smaller brand in India than in those two markets. In those two markets, it's much, much bigger in terms of proportion of the total business. And therefore it's very important to give it the right amount of focus as a brand before you start getting, before you look at just looking the protagonist or anything of that sort. So the key really here is focus on the brand and focus on the three benefits that you have chosen for this market, okay? Let's go to the communication. I'm gonna show you four copies one after the other, four TV commercials one after the other. The first one is the Indian commercial. The second one is the Brazilian commercial. The third one is from the Middle East and the fourth one is from France. They're all for the same brand. But like I told you with different benefit dimensionalizations. So let's take a look. This may have millions of oxygen bubbles keep up. But what about whites? It's just it's too vanish. Gany whites, whiter. New vanish. The guy at right around white OIs. Nothing, Brazilian commercial. Guys we made it here to the challenge. Let's go. You're so funny. What are you doing? What do you use to wash your son's uniform? A soap and a cloth. Is there a uniform? Yes. Bring it to me. Only soap and cloth can not be enough. I'm thinking about it. Let's participate in the challenge, Venich? Let's do it. So, come with me. Venich Mutipower removes the stains, bad odors and real colors. Venich removes the stains and bad odor. How many bubbles? How much? Too much. And first of all, these shirts are strange, huh? Venich removes the impregnated dirt and changes the colors. Wow! Look at your son's uniform. It's very new. And you? Accept the challenge, Venich? It's a great sport. I want you to say a very beautiful surprise. My dear daughter, come with me. Come with me. Can I see the flip-flops? Oh my God! What a nice shirt! Let's see what can happen with it. Can I have chocolate? Can I have juice? Wow! And the flip-flops. Let's make it a bit harder. And now, to remove this flip-flop, do you think we can use the white one? No, no, no. This is a program. It's true. Even the tag is not for the white one. I'll show you now how Venich is better than the white one three times. Venich's women are directly affected by the disease. And it starts to be the most difficult to get rid of. Venich's complexion is very strong. It's safe to forget about the colors. Wow! Come back again. Venich is better than the white one three times. And then he gets the colors. Thank you, Riyadh. I'm going to show you how to get rid of these stains with Venich. Let's go. These billions of oxygen bubbles target and eliminate the stains much better than the single layer. Look how these dirt stains disappeared with Venich. While with the single layer, they remain stains. And you can also use it in pre-treatment. Apply a spoon of Venich Oxiac directly on the stain for an impeccable result. A stain? Nothing is impossible for Venich. The active oxygen will release its power in the contact of the hot water to eliminate the stain. Incredible! Let's try the impossible with ice water. Do you see this stain? It will disappear. Because even at low temperatures, Venich Oxiac does not leave any chance to the stain. Wow! Trust Venich and the stains will vanish. Okay, so I'm hoping after that a lot of you will buy Venich. But the point really is that I wanted to talk to you about what these commercials mean. And how they are different and how they are similar. What does global do? What does local do? So globally, you'll see that all the copies have what you call as a challenge framework. So challenge is your preconceived notion of what is possible on these parameters. Whether it's stain removal, or brightening of colors, or whitening, etc. So they're all challenge commercials. In every piece of commercial, there are multiple demonstrations. In front of your eyes demonstrations that shows that the product works as it's supposed to work. And that's to establish superiority was the source of business and to drive credibility. The tonality is pretty consistent and I'm going to come to the differences in a second. In terms of the confidence, in terms of the absolute surety of how the product will work. And by the way, if you do these demonstrations, I can tell you right now I could do it here and it would work in front of your eyes. That's the confidence that we come with the commercial. And lastly, they're all longer length copies. So if you notice and I'm sure you did, they're all like 35 to 45 second commercials. They're not shorter length commercials because we have a job on education to do. So these are globally standardized. Now what is the difference? What do we do locally? First of all, you would have seen all four commercials are completely different formats. The Indian commercial, for example, is a talk show format. The format of the commercial is a talk show where we actually did our consumer work and found out that talk shows are seen as something that people see as credible in this country. It's not a very old format, so it's still upcoming. And that's one of the reasons why we picked the talk show format. If you look at the commercial that we had next, which was the Brazilian commercial, that's what we call a doorstep challenge commercial. Now Brazil, in Brazil, vanish culturally is an icon. And so this is a commercial in which you can actually go to a consumer's home. You don't need a bunch of people in a talk show format, where there's like 100 people who have to be convinced because they're already convinced vanish is a good product. You're going to this one consumer who hasn't yet used your brand, who's predisposed towards using your brand, and therefore the doorstep challenge works really well in this kind of a setup. If you then look at the Middle East, what we actually used in that was a shopping center. Now culturally, that's where Middle East really gathers together in the shopping centers. That is the way of life. And therefore we said doing that again in a place where you have people gathering together, where your brand is out there, where if you make a mistake, you will be caught out, shows the confidence of the brand. Whereas in Brazil, you already have that confidence amongst the people. Whereas in India and in the Middle East, you're trying to establish that confidence in the people. So these are the cultural differences on the campaign ideas. And in France, the brand has been there ever since it was launched. People know it very well. People know oxy action very well. So you actually had a commercial that there were no other people except this one guy who was giving a speech. So they are very, very different, but they all belong to the same positioning strategy, but very different in execution based on what is needed for the culture and what is needed from an evolution point of view of the brand in the country. The second thing is the relevant source of business. So you'll see in some of the commercials that we showed that our performance was better than detergents. In some of the commercials, we showed that the performance is better than bleach. And the reason is not because we're not better than detergents and bleach. We are. But what we do is identify what's the relevant biggest source of business in a country. So in India, it is premium detergents. In some of the parts of the world, it is bleach. So you then feature that based on what culturally people are used to using as the predominant form of stain removal or clothes revival. Thirdly, the local protagonists. So if you took a look, they all had some things in common in terms of the confidence, in terms of the belief in the product, in terms of a kind of a bubbly nature or an enthusiastic nature, let me put it that way, full of beans. But they were different people. So in India, for example, we picked a known face. And the reason is because we find that in India, all the work that we've done shows that it helps. It's not necessary, but it helps to have a known face talking about your product to start getting the introduction or the interaction. And then, of course, your product story has to take over. So if your product story is not good enough and the rest of your stuff is not good enough, the known face is not going to help you. So we started with Aparashikthi Khurana and that commercial. And he has the same kind of enthusiastic, but a cool kind of laid-back kind of approach to how he speaks. If you look at the Latin American one, it's a very different situation. That person is not a celebrity before vanish. That person became a celebrity after vanish. After doing the vanish commercials, the person became a celebrity. If you see that person is exemplifying a little bit more, a softer kind of tonality. That's in keeping with how Latin America behaves basically. If you look at the Middle Eastern commercials, what was interesting there, you see the other three commercials all had men explaining the product. And there is a reason for that. The chemistry of men talking to women and typically most parts of the world is something that consumers appreciate. Both women and men appreciate, especially women. They like to have that interaction. In the Middle East, what we found very interesting was that two things were very, very helpful in showing women talking to women in the Middle East. Firstly, culturally it's much more relevant and acceptable. And that's if you go to Jeddah or if you go to Riyadh, you will actually, if you go to do focus groups in consumers homes, you will know that you will, the ladies would be sitting together. You would be not sitting with them, you would be sitting on a sofa four feet away and listening to the conversation. And women interpreters basically talk to them and then you understand it yourself. That's the culture of the place. That was only the first part. What is also very interesting is very aspirational there, that you have a lady who is standing right there in front of a huge crowd and explaining to people, challenging people, doing a very difficult kind of demonstration where she is taking somebody's new gown, putting stains on it and ironing those stains. So if the product doesn't work, you've just destroyed somebody's gown, right, which they've just bought from the supermarket. And for that person to stand there and do that is seen as very, very aspirational in the Middle East. And lastly, the French one, I think he's French. So basically he speaks with a lot of enthusiasm and passion and very strident, a little bit different in tonality from the others. So each of these makes sense for the markets they are in. But switching them one across the other may not necessarily work because the cultures are different. Cultural nuances. So if you look at the cultural nuances, couple of small things. In the Saudi commercial, you saw very clearly that the lady was wearing an abaya. She actually was standing there and telling everybody what to do and doing some pretty remarkable stuff in terms of taking the risk of almost damaging the clothes with the stains, etc. And then reviving it. But she is wearing a traditional clothes. So this kind of thing appeals to the non-traditionalist because of the attitude, but to the traditionalist because you have chosen to give the right kind of cultural cues in terms of what they wear, etc. We've also seen this in other markets like Indonesia where we actually feature clothing that are worn locally and traditionally. The response is actually better because people do appreciate that you've taken the time to figure out what clothes matter to them. But if you look at the Indian one, for example, you see the audience reaction in that commercial. There is that challenging skepticism, not in a negative way, but in a positive way. Which is like, if you've said, why should I trust? Can you show me something? That we actually find in our research is what India is all about. India wants to progress, but also wants to know for sure that the stuff works. If you look at Brazil where the brand like I told you is very much more well established, there is a massive warmth in the commercial. Did you notice that when they actually met, they were hugging each other and laughing and they were actually behaving like friends even though they had met each other for the first time? That's much more the culture of Latin America. It would look a bit bizarre if I think Mr. Kurana were to go and hug someone here. I don't think it would really fit the cultural values that we have here, but it works for Latin America. So cultural nuances are something you put into the commercial and that comes from a deep understanding of working in the market and understanding the culture. And lastly, the stains can be different as well. So as you can imagine, when we make the commercial in France or in Spain, when I used to make the commercials, every second commercial that I used to make red wine used to be a stain. But you would never go and put a red wine stain in a Saudi Arabian commercial, for example. So those are the kind of things that you take into account. For example, in India, you would show curry stains coming in the commercial. Say four or five commercials for sure, curry stains are going to come in one of the commercials for sure. And that might make also sense for the UK where curry is very popular as a food and therefore curry stains are quite prevalent in the UK. However, it won't make sense for the US or for France or Germany. So actually picking what stains to highlight, depending on whether it's very prevalent or whether it's very tough to remove, both are important. And lastly, the garment type. We also take care to reflect the right garment types in different markets in the world. For example, if we do this in Egypt, it would be much more cotton based. So this is the kind of detail that you need to go into to figure the advertising part out. Just moving to the product part because culture doesn't affect only advertising. Culture also affects the product. So if you take a look in developed markets, developed markets typically have a very high washing machine penetration. Almost everyone uses a washing machine and almost all of them are front loading washing machines, which therefore have a much higher level of mechanical agitation and have a much higher heating aspect to them. However, what also happens in the developed markets is that people are starting to use a lot more cold water in their washing habits and they're using short cycles. And lastly, liquid detergents are very, very strong in developed markets, very strong and growing in developed markets. So when you think of how you make products for that, to win against that, you've got to make sure that you cater for that. In developing markets, slightly different. You've got more hand washing, a lot of other compensatory tactics like pretreat and soaking. And you also have more of top loading washing machines, which therefore have less, relatively speaking, power. And none of these actually have any oxygen, which is the active ingredient that we have. So how do we adjust? What do we keep global and what do we keep local in this? So very simply, everywhere in the world, we have oxygen in our vanished product, active oxygen. We also have surfactants, enzymes and stuff that takes care of your color. Surfactants are used to clean your clothes. Enzymes are used to remove enzymatic stains, which is quite technical. And color care is used to keep your colors brighter and your whites whiter. But where we differentiate, just to give you an example of the UK and India, in the UK for example, when we formulate the oxygen part of it, the percentages that we put in the oxygen, or the type of chemicals that we put in, the stain removal performance has to be measured against liquid detergents. Whereas when we look at India, the stain removal performance is measured against powders and then liquid detergents because powders are still the dominant form of cleaning in India. If you look at surfactants, these surfactants blends basically. The blends of surfactants are optimized for the washing machine in developed markets. In India for example, the surfactants are optimized for hand wash, which leads to a very different result. And lastly, if you look at what we put in as additional ingredients or goods to make the performance outstanding, in the UK we've got to put in activators that make the oxygen work incredibly fast as soon as it's released, it starts working immediately because the cycles are shorter. Whereas when we make these products in India, we put more money and effort on putting in brightening and whitening agents because we want the colors to be brighter and the whites to be whiter in a tougher environment, pollution, dirt, etc. So that's how we differentiate on products. And lastly, on packaging. Very simply, we launched Vanish globally with this tubs format. These tubs were very prominent in the store. This is modern trade markets where you basically have rows and rows of shelves and you would see Vanish, the pink tub. You could see it from probably 25, 30 feet as you're walking into the store, which really drives good business results. And also consumers are very comfortable with using a tub in these developed markets. But as you look into developing markets, it makes a lot more sense to sell your powders in doipacks, or what we call doipacks, which are like thinner plastic bags, which are not tubs, thick plastic. Why? Because our markets are not yet fully in the modern trade kind of setup. There is a lot of traditional trade where the products are sitting at the back. So if they're slightly bigger, which is what the footprint of always of a doipack is slightly bigger than the tub because it doesn't have that spherical area. There's much more of front facing, just structurally. It makes a lot of sense to be in doipacks because you get that extra visibility plus of course they are cheaper to make and do, which is very important in countries like India, Indonesia, etc. So that's just a summary of what I wanted to share in terms of Vanish. I'm just going to close by saying three things. As you look across, and I don't want to make it too jugonistic to keep it very, very simple, when you're thinking about building brands across cultures globally, the first thing that you've got to do is define your strategic areas of rigidity and flexibility. Where are you going to be like, I will not make a change in this, come what may? And where are you going to say, yep, I'm open to looking at changes, even substantial ones in these. That has to be defined clearly upfront so that you're clear on what you will change and what you will never change. The second one is within the areas of flexibility, I would still urge you to think global and act local. Now this is a very famous sentence, but what does it mean, a phrase? What does it mean? Well, even a small change done by a country can have a massive impact on the organization because for every little change that we do, whether it's in packaging, whether it's in formulation, whether it's in advertising, there's a huge number of people and hours and effort that goes into it, whether it be regulatory or legal or R&D or the factory, the supply chain, huge amount of work happens. So only change if you really feel there is a substantial need for change. That's what is the meaning of think global act global, just because you have the freedom to change, don't change. Change it if it makes a material difference. How do you decide whether it's worth changing or not? There's only one formula, always go back to the consumer. If to the consumer it makes a major difference, the change that you're proposing, absolutely go ahead and change what you need to change. If to the consumer it does not make a material difference in respect of how you feel or how your gut says, try not to do that unless you have Steve Jobs or something. Most of us lesser models, it would be better to focus on consumer learning, consumer understanding, consumer anticipation where you look to forward trends and then decide whether to change it or not. So that's all I wanted to share. Thank you very much for the opportunity again.