Deepika Padukone fits the bill to cut through cohorts: Tushar Malhotra, Bisleri

Bisleri has announced Deepika Padukone as its first global brand ambassador. The announcement was done with a campaign - #DrinkItUp where is Padukone can be seen, grooving to the 80s hit - Jhoom Jhoom Jhoom Baba. The campaign is focused on the messaging of hydration becoming mainstream. 

e4m spoke to Tushar Malhotra, Head of Marketing at Bisleri to know more about the campaign and the associations. 

Edited excerpts:

Why Deepika Padukone?

There are three objectives as to why we are doing this campaign,  the first objective is to lead the narrative on hydration, that hydration is fun. The second objective is to look into the evolution of our communication journey, we are looking to contemporize the brand and build more youth connections, with GenZs and Millenials. And the third is who better can make hydration fun than Deepika Padukone. She is a global icon, she has a great youth following and her value system and the work that she is doing resonates with the brand. 

Talk to us about the campaign and its various nuances.

We had multiple conversations with our consumers on the role of water, and what they connect with when it comes to Bisleri, and eventually what we came across is that everyone is worried about health in the post-pandemic world. Everyone wants to be fit and the top things they do is to exercise and drink water so hydration is an important part of everyday life and we have been hydrating India for the last 50 years. It was a simple consumer insight but now we are building a large-scale communication on that.

Speak to us about the creative process behind the campaign. Old songs being remixed and used in ad campaigns have become a trend, how did you go about it?

For us, it was about the feeling of being refreshed, we wanted a happy song. It is a song that is there but still not out there, it’s not being overdone, it was fresh when we heard the remix. 

How important it is for brands that have become a synonym for the products they offer, to keep on marketing? (Packaged water bottle - Bisleri)

You need to keep talking to the consumers, every brand needs to talk to the consumers every day, and that’s how you build brand love.

Are you going to partner with sports properties like you do, especially for this campaign?

As far as sports are concerned, #carryyourgame continues to be our sports marketing campaign, which is about performance fitness and being active. We’ve got four IPL teams, 6 ISL teams and the national games. So that journey will continue with #carryyourgame, #DrinkItUp is your household, have water, have fun, it’s about celebrating drinking water in daily lives. 

What is the media strategy of the campaign?

This is going to be everywhere, 60-65% on TV, Digital is also a major part so another 30-35%, and then OOH is going to have around 10-15% of the budget. Padukone will also be part of all Bisleri product packaging. We are also going to do an influencer outreach for this campaign and we have onboarded multiple influencers for that. Through these diverse touchpoints, we aim to offer consumers an immersive and engaging experience.

Bisleri has been doing a lot of film associations, how is it working out for you?

I think the brand association journey started in the South when we were looking to build local connections and brand love. We know movies play a big part in South Indian culture, all the movie stars are icons. We started our journey with RRR and that went ahead to at least 10 associations that have happened in the south. These are limited-edition products we launch around the release time of the movies. We saw consumers liking it and retailers welcoming it, so people started looking forward to what we were doing next. So we went national with Jawan and Tiger 3, it helped us build brand love. 

How is your ecommerce business growing?

We are seeing a 60-70% YoY growth, we have many consumers being enrolled. Quick commerce is also doing exceptionally well. Digital buying of water is really taking off. They are still at a nascent stage, I would say 5% of our overall business comes from these channels. Our digital spending has gone up, we have got campaigns specifically made for that, today if you look at the media consumption habits of youth, they're mostly on their phones and mostly on connected TV. So digital plays a big part in the kind of conversations we are also having with our consumers.