 We move on to the next segment. Our next speaker is from a company that needs no introduction and a brand that was launched in 2003 and is among the top three biscuit brands in India right now. The number one in this case. The secret recipe to ITC success, constant innovation in line with all the consumer taste. Telling us more is this special address is Ali Harris, the head chief operating officer of biscuits and cakes category foods business division. ITC limited. We'll be talking about free engineering and some piece 2.2 with consumers and to speak relevance and purpose. I had to do Ali out here, Mr. Sherry, over to you. Thank you, Robin. And I'm really glad to be on the platform and share some of my experiences. Now, when I was thinking about, you know, what to speak on and what could interest you guys, I thought maybe I'll just tell a small story. And I put a few slides together to convey this story and tell you the thought behind what you possibly would have seen out in the market. So I'll just share a presentation and then I'll start talking about it. Okay, so basically I thought it's a marketing platform and let me talk about brands and, you know, brands that matter. So the question in my mind was that, what are those brands that actually matter? Gone are the days possibly where, you know, the preferred brands, the trusted brands actually are the brands that matter. We possibly need to question the relationship that a brand can build with its consumers. And we should question how deep that relation possibly can go. And therefore we don't possibly need to create only or look for creating only the trusted brands or the preferred brands, but we should, as marketers, wish to create love marks. And love marks will ensure that the relationship that the brands have with its consumers, they are really, really deep. And for that I thought I'll tell a story and the story that I wanted to tell you about is a brand that we have in Sanjay's portfolio. It's one of the largest brands that we have in our portfolio. It's called Mom's Magic. And it's a brand that was launched in 2014. And this brand operates just to give you a little bit of a context about the biscuits category. This brand operates, of course, the biscuits category is one of the largest snacking categories in India. It's in fact the largest snacking category. It's around 35,000 odd crores annually. And the largest subcategory within biscuits is cookies. And Mom's Magic is a cookie brand. And it operates in that 30% of the total 35 crores biscuit market. Now it's a challenger brand. It's a brand that was not the first brand to get launched. And but when it was launched, it met with a lot of love. It did reasonably well. It did in fact very well in the first four years. And then it began to stagnate a little a couple of years. And we see this happening. We see this happening in many categories, especially categories where products are not very differentiated. And biscuits, of course, is a category that is not where the products are not very differentiated. In fact, the core products that sell at scale are not very differentiated. A cookie generally is like a cookie. A camari is like a mari or a cracker is like a cracker. So it needed a reset. It needed a reset for the growth to come back. And that task was very clear. And when the team started to work around what could be the solution? What can revive the growth back? But what can really put that fuel for growth as far as Mom's Magic is concerned? There was one had to really do a little bit of soul searching. And I think that's something that is required before you get onto any large initiative or a project that has to be, that has a long term implications. And it's very important to ask these questions where are we, where do we want to go? What is the ambition? What is the end goal? And what will take us there? And these are the questions that we asked. And one thing that became very important and relevant for us was that we need to have an idea at the core of what we do on Mom's Magic going forward. And that idea becomes really critical. Also in cases where you are a smaller brand, you have limited resources, you might not be able to fight the leader's basis money. But if you get a great idea, if you get a strong idea, it can really compete with any kind of resources that the leaders might have. So the starting point is that you need to have an idea that has the potential to become big at the core of what you're looking at doing. And this idea also helps you get the thought leadership in a category. It's difficult to get market leadership for smaller brands very quickly. But if you get a good idea, it gets you to thought leadership. And thought leadership is the starting point to get to market leadership. And that idea needs to also have legs for your entry to become a symbol of revaluation for the consumer. The consumer should be able to pick you by your idea and reevaluate you versus others and choose you over others because your idea is superior and they connect with your idea. Now, it's an important point that I'm making on this slide, which is that if you are starting something up fresh, if you're creating something up fresh, which you do in marketing, because you do a lot of innovations, you launch a lot of new products and therefore you start from the scratch and you can create a vision with a clean sheet of paper and you can write what you ideally want to achieve at the end of it. But when you are doing something on a brand or a product that already exists and something has already been created, it's very important to look at fresh consistency, which means that there are a lot of things that have been built and you need to see which one of those things you want to take forward, which are the things that you want to sacrifice. The sacrifice is also important, you can't take everything forward. So consistency is important, but at the same time, it's also very important to bring freshness because you need to come through as something newer and therefore there is a chance that you will be noticed out with your consumers. So when we were looking for this idea, the answer was in front of us and the answer was in the brand, which was Mom's Magic and it's a very, very powerful idea because this category is mainly bought by the mothers and brought into the house and then the entire family consumes it. So mother was at the center of the brand and it's at the center of the category. So the idea of motherhood was very important to take forward, but there was another element which was there in the brand but was not fully exploited or fully used, which was the heart. If you notice, there's a heart in the Mom's Magic logo and the thought that came to the team was why don't we just take this thought of a heart which is the emotional angle of a mother and really explode it in every element of the mix and try and create that difference that possibly the brand was looking for and that's exactly what the team did. But when you look at this heart, if you really want to juice the heart out, you had to really ensure that it was on all elements of the mix. So the next thing that happened was that, the first thing that actually happened was that we said, we can't take this idea forward unless we are able to put it on all elements of our mix and we needed to convert this idea into a tangible thought and tangibility was very important. You have to give the consumer something that they can feel that they can hold, they can talk about, they can refer to and that becomes very easy then for, it becomes very easy for the brands then to have a conversation and communication with the consumers. And the second point that I was making was it's very important that we comprehensively use the idea that we have on any brand. So we took this challenge and we said we have to get the heart on the cookie. Now it's not easy. If you look at the cookies that exist, they all have these ridges and straight lines or possibly curved lines. And nobody had ever done a motif which was as complicated as a heart because the baking process doesn't allow you. So the team relentlessly worked on this thought, worked with all the vendors, worked on the technology, did multiple trials but we didn't give up. The team was over committed to deliver this difference because this difference we knew would make the biggest difference for the brand. And there was a lot of disruption that was done to get this larger difference. So the point I'm making is that if you have an idea, you have to ensure that it's brought into a tangible thought and that the tangible thought has to be applied to all elements comprehensively so that it can make a difference. And of course, it was a no-brainer that you had to really ensure that the heart really came through as far as the packaging is concerned. So if you look at the old packaging, it just wasn't the O of mom's magic but we really blew it up and brought it alive. Now, this was difficult. The biscuit making was very difficult but we said no, the idea is there, it has to go across. But there was a tangible element and we knew it was powerful and if you could get it on a product, it became further more powerful. But the whole idea then was that how do we really nourish that big idea? And how do we make that idea as the expression of mother's love? And that's something that exists. It's a very simple thought and I think the beauty is in simplicity. You don't have to do things that are very complex. You actually need to do very simple things but you need to give a handle to them and you need to connect back to your consumers. So what was the expression of mother's love? How do you define this mother became the second challenge because emotion was waiting to be exploited as far as this ban was concerned. And then we tried to understand the mother. Of course, I can't do justice to defining the mother but maybe a few lines. And moms are the most loved and the most loving beings on the planet and there is absolutely no doubt about that and I'm sure each one of you will resonate with the thought, they're warm and caring but firm when needed. And that's something that brings that dichotomy and polarization in the mother's personality. They're perceptive and they actually know when you actually need them. They always have the right words and they always have the right solutions if there are problems. Now they pick you up when you follow. They always inspire you to go forward and moms and therefore the moms weave in the magic every day and we all know this. So this is no rocket science. It was very simple. It was all there. We just had to put it to define our consumers. But then we said, okay, these insights are available. How do we really craft a brand idea that can be powerful, that can be edgy, that can really make a difference and that can really get us that thought leadership? And we define that idea internally as moms are the warmest superpower. There is warmth, there is love, there is care. There's absolutely no doubt about it but they also can and do make the difference because they don't give up. They ensure they win at the end of what they're trying to achieve. So this became our brand thought and a brand idea which is very important for any brand to have and that brand thought needs to really motivate and inspire the team internally for and the creative agencies, marketing agencies for them to take it to the next level. Now, this was the brand thought but we wanted to build a point of view about mothers and every mother needs to resonate with that point of view because everyone today has a point of view and they resonate with a brand that has a point of view. And the point of view that we came to for Mom's Magic was, there was emotion in it, there was heart in it and there was superpower in it. The superpower is when it defeats. If you have the superpower is when you defeat everyone. So that became the point of view and then we took the point of view forward. Now, there's one more shift that we possibly did and that shift was that we took the idea of motherhood and we said we need to expand the appeal of that idea because if you have a strong idea and you keep it very narrow and don't connect with the larger audience you're possibly wasting an opportunity. It was very important for us to also expand the appeal of the brand through the expansion of the idea. And some of you would have seen some advertising of Sunfeest of the past. In the last four or five years we've become a small child and mother brand because the whole idea was that how this mother nourishes their children and we realized that it was restricting the brand a little bit, we needed to open it up for the appeal to go slightly wider. And we then decided to really look at the idea of motherhood and not necessarily the mother and the small child. And then I show you the ad, I hope it will stream and you'll be able to see you'll realize that if you've taken the small child out you're taking a grown up daughter and we've looked at so we've also while not intentionally so much but the whole idea also moved beyond the family. And because a mother is a mother to her own children and possibly also to some other people who are important in her life. So the idea of this idea was then expanded to get more people in so that the appeal of the brand can go up. So I'll try and play the video. I hope it does play and then I'll talk about it a little more. Yeah sure, sir. It'll take three to four hours, sir. Yeah, no problem. I also... There's a problem. It's Sunday today. And neither did you eat anything, nor did Anjali. Looks like you're going to have a scolding from your mother. Ma'am, well... Come on, come on. Hurry up, give me a cup of tea and cookies. If you don't want to eat, then how will you do the work? Whether it's five or five, who wins the heart of a mother? This is how the new SunFeast Mom's Magic is made with the heart. Everyone has a chance in front of this heart. Yeah, so this was the main communication that we played. And while this was the ad that we played, for any strategy or for any content, it becomes extremely critical how you execute it. In fact, sometimes some people say that execution is more important than the thought. But I would say there is a very good balance between strategy and execution. And therefore it became very important that if we had a big idea, we had a lot of emotion, we had a tangible element to communicate the idea. How do we really make it reach the wider audience? And we use some really big platforms. IPL was happening around that time last year. So we did IPL, we did a lot of surprise and intrigue-building initiatives, whether it was outdoor, tying up with a lot of retailers and a lot of other digital activations that we did around it. You know, it's also very important if you have a big idea, then build a cause around it and something that can meaningfully make a difference in the lives of the consumers. And we did an activation which was called as Stay Strong Mom's because, you know, COVID time moms were inside and they were really pressured on time, etc. And they had to be really encouraged, inspired to go on. And we needed to celebrate them for the role that they were playing for the last 18-odd months. So there was a lot of work that happened there. But and we realized that, you know, if you have a big idea, these ideas don't necessarily give you the kind of benefit overnight. You have to continue to build them so that you really build every nuance that you need to build over a period of time. And therefore, this journey is still on. You know, as a result, we saw a big shift in the growth strategy of the brand, where this category of keys was actually de-growing. Our brand almost grew by 20% after we did this whole rebranding, re-purposing, product change, packaging change. Of course, we also made our product better, which was superior to as far as the market was concerned. We saw a 30 to 40% increase in the brand health scores for Mom's Magic. You know, we ensured that the market share of Mom's Magic increased and that gave us a lot of confidence to put more resources behind this idea and behind this thought. So all in all, it was something that really worked for us. And I think the reason why it worked for us is because there was a strong idea. We made it tangible. We and that idea helped us get thought leadership. It helped us reposition, reimagine the category. It got nobody else had done in the category. We really put a lot of emotion behind that idea. We got the right articulation as far as the mother is concerned. We expanded the appeal of the brand by expanding the horizons of the motherhood as far as this idea is concerned and we really executed it with precision. So that's precisely the story of Mom's Magic. And you know, it's not about Mom's Magic. It's something that we are looking at doing. So I'll just unshare now so that you can see me and we can have a chat. So it's not about Mom's Magic alone. I mean, we are trying to do this for every single brand of ours. So defining each brand right, getting that idea right in each of the brands and then ensuring that you explore that idea is something really critical. Innovations play a very, very critical role in terms of connecting with that core thought. And innovations also get inspired by the thought that you have on the core brand. So innovations are making a lot of difference as far as Sunpeace is concerned. Defining these brands, each one of them, whether it's Mom's Magic, whether it's Dark Fantasy, whether it's Mari Light, whether it's Bounce, whether it's so any of these brands are important. We're doing multiple innovations. We're doing a lot of purpose led activations that are getting Sunpeace bringing back the talkability and its credibility because these are causes. Stay strong, Mom's. It's one cause that I spoke about. You know, we are doing Sunpeace India move as one as an initiative. And I think and I'm sure exchange for media is also a partner in that initiative. And we're inspiring everyone to move, move for good. And the proceeds of that initiative is going to go towards bringing smiles on the faces of the children. So it's initiatives, but at the heart of it, at the heart of it is actually. Brands trying to make these brands as love marks. Each of these brands have to have a strong idea that can make a meaningful difference in the lives of our consumers. So that's all that I thought I'll share. If there are any questions I'm happy to take. Right, Ali, thank you so much for that insightful talk. I have some questions here. The first one is, can you elaborate on how brands can bring up fresh angle and also maintain their consistency at the same time? So how is it? So I tried to explain how, which is that you have to introspect. You have to do soul searching. You have to go to the consumers and understand what is that element that is picking for the consumers. Currently, so when you are refreshing, you don't give up on that. In fact, you strengthen that element, whether it's something on your packaging, whether it's on your product, whether it's something in advertising, it could be it could be anything. And therefore, that consistency is extremely, extremely important. But while you stay with consistency, it's also very important to get freshness because the consumers are evolving, you know, they are looking for newer experiences. They are also getting exposed to newer, different brands, newer brands, modern outlook, a contemporary approach. And therefore, you have to move on and therefore you have to re and sometimes you also have to reinterpret the elements that you want to stay with. But you have to reinterpret them in today's context, in today's the lives of today's consumers, COVID and lockdown. And therefore, the implications of that. And if you see the mom's magic advertising, it has been done in the context of work from home, the doctor is working from home. You brought that relevance at the same time, you've got the consistency in the heart, but you brought freshness in the way it's articulated. Right, another thing that's really interesting, Mr. Sherry, is the trends that are happening right now. So it's a double edged word in the sense that, you know, they can give you instant recognition if you follow a trend as a brand. But also it kind of fizzles down, fizzles out just like, you know, the gas in a cold ray, gas such. So it's not a long term solution. So how do you find the balance as a brand between these two? And as a brand, it's very important for you to understand the long term enduring trends, you know, and there's a lot of debate that's happening. And, you know, those trends have happened and they've continued. There are multiple trends that are happening, you know. So, you know, I don't want to get into the trends while of course one could talk about that, but that's not the idea. And, you know, those trends will continue. However, there could be some shift for the time being. And you might want to, you might have to reset towards those trends that are shifting a little bit. And COVID is, but the pandemic is perhaps the perfect example. You know, there are a lot of apparent shifts that are happening. But as soon as things open up, consumers go back to to the earlier way of their attitudes and behavior. However, there's some trends that stay like e-commerce. For example, if that started to go up, that has sustained and possibly will sustain and this COVID has fueled that. So it's very important for marketers to understand what is an enduring trend that is going to stay and how do you want to participate in that trend and what is something that will present. Now, you can't put a long-term bet on a short-term trend. And that's where, you know, your own judgment and actual man will come into picture because it's really important also to recognize them and participate them to participate in knowing that they are short-term, leverage them, move out. But, you know, there's no science to saying which is an enduring trend and which is a short-term trend. I mean, it's something that, you know, you get with experience and wisdom. Right, absolutely. Another question that I have here early is, as a brand leader, your biggest learning in the last one year or precisely 17 months of the pandemic? Yeah, I'm one of the leaders in our category and I'm being honest about it. We are the challenger brand in the biscuits category. We are the brands who are the leaders. Now, I think the biggest learning is that that in times like these, which is, which is, say, a pandemic or a disruption, there is a sense of going back to familiar. Yeah, and therefore, smaller brands, local brands, challenger brands can lose out if you are not salient because you have not been top of mind of your consumers. There are larger brands that have been top of mind and in a scenario where you are not, you are not salient and you've not been communicating, connecting with your consumers, there's a possibility that you will drop out because the experimentation drops out during these disruptive times. So it's very important for you to stay connected, stay salient so that when consumers think of the category, they have you in their mind. Right, so that's all the time that we had for you, but it was an incredible session. Thank you so very much for dropping those gents of wisdom out there. I'm absolutely sure the audience enjoyed that. Thank you once again, Mr. Sherry, for being with us. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much.