Building trust and being authentic key to brand love in trying times: Deepak Iyer

The 12th edition of e4m Indian Digital Marketing Awards (IDMA) 2021 was marked by some momentous wins. A slew of brands managed to shine through the storms with clutter-breaking work in a rather difficult year. Despite the odds, brands and agencies display resilience and stole the show. Recognizing these champions, our ongoing series will feature chat with the big winners from IDMA 2021. Today we speak to Deepak Iyer, President – India, Mondelēz International, on the brand’s spectacular victory at the event, staying on the top of the digital game and more.

Edited excerpts below: 

What do you attribute the brand’s big win at IDMA to? What according to you made the work clutter-breaking as it managed to fetch the accolade contesting and cutting through reams of entries? 

At Mondelez India, our strategy has always pivoted around our consumers. In the last 18 months, there has been a dramatic shift in consumer behaviour. Lockdown restrictions due to Covid-19 has made people spend more time on digital platforms and with their families at home. Most consumer messaging during this period has been in the backdrop of the pandemic - and hence, there was a need for more positive and purposeful messaging. We created a set of campaigns that were inspiring and centred around our brand proposition of ‘generosity’. Empathy combined with data and technology helped us to better understand and connect with consumers. This would not have been possible without the continued support of our extended ecosystem of partners. I would like to thank them for their partnership on this journey. 

What according to you are the elements that make award-winning, clutter-breaking digital campaigns and what is the right approach to reach out to consumers during these trying times?  

Award-winning campaigns are built on the back of three things: Identification of an addressable human problem informed by data; the brand doing something to resolve this problem in an authentic way; and the scale impact through personalized messaging. Real-time data signals play a critical role to ensure that every message is served in a personalized way, making it much more resonant. Building trust and being authentic is key to brand love in these trying times. 

In such uncertain and turbulent times, how has the brand ensured that it stays ahead of the game when it comes to the digital marketing space? 

The digital landscape is evolving at a rapid pace with growth in digital penetration, which has been accelerated with tectonic changes in consumer behaviour due to the pandemic. Our success can be attributed to ‘Being Digital First’ and knowing how to personalize our consumer experience across digital channels at scale.

Our brand strategies involve communicating the right message, using the right platforms to connect with our consumers and evoking the feeling of positivity. Some examples of our winning campaigns are: “Generosity” on Cadbury Dairy Milk which has won multiple accolades at global and local forums. We also launched the limited-edition Cadbury Dairy Milk ‘Thank You’ bars at this time. Another great example is the ‘Not Just A Cadbury Ad’ campaign, where we harnessed the power of technology and data, mapping over 1800 pin codes across India to help small businesses during the festive season with a custom creative.

Some of the other key campaigns that leveraged digital media effectively include Cadbury 5Star’s #5StarDoNothingOutside, Perk’s ‘Take it Light’ campaign featuring Alia Bhatt and the #AthomewithOreo that encouraged people to look out for fun ways to stay connected during the lockdown. While all these campaigns addressed different themes and audience segments, what remained common was our quest to constantly innovate and find newer opportunities to engage with the audience. 

What are the trends in the digital marketing space that you see gaining momentum as we go forward? 

As we move ahead, newer platforms will emerge as ways of connecting with consumers. Voice technology, AI, and ML will also have a significant role to play in building personalized consumer experience and AR & VR will help brands exist in a multiverse. Consumers today are also more aware and seek interactive experiences that allow them to be more involved.

This will continue to push brands to roll out interactive experiences, right from polls to gamification, chatbots, voice-activated technology, live video, and augmented reality, to name a few. It is also important to revisit the ‘one-size fits all’ approach and focus on personalized campaigns that cater to smaller segments. This includes localization of content that will enable brands to reach a pan-India audience. 

Protecting individual privacy will become paramount for platforms in the future as we begin to move into a cookie-less world. Advertisers will need to build their own data capital with consumer consent, giving rise to more owned digital media assets and omnichannel strategies. Physical currency may become a thing of the past, as digital currencies become more accepted. 

Consumers will become more aware and will seek more meaningful, genuine, and interactive experiences from brands. Marketers will have to invest significantly in ensuring consumer loyalty with so much choice at a consumer’s disposal at the click of a button. 

As the competition in the digital space heats up for brands, what would be your advice to brands and agencies when approaching the digital space? 

It always helps to keep the consumer at the heart of everything. Once brands know what consumers want and are looking for, the choices for marketers become clearer. Social listening becomes critical to study and analyze content consumers are engaged with and the preferred formats and screens that are gaining prominence. With people being more engaged and spending an increased amount of time across digital platforms, it will be imperative for marketers to embrace digital and make it part of their media mix. In fact, digital can help brands beyond advertising too.

It is also important to stay connected with the industry and the agency ecosystem to know the emerging trends and technological advancements, especially when the digital space is evolving at a rapid pace around us.