The discussion should shift from marketing to mattering: Deepak Subramanian, HUL

At the India Brand Conclave 2024, keynote speaker Deepak Subramanian, Executive Director - Home Care, Hindustan Unilever Limited shared the story of creating purposeful brands. “The good news is that there is a lot of material available. You just have to go online and google. There are lots of people who give you expert advice on how to build purposeful brands,” he said as he started his session.

The bad news, however, is that it is challenging to craft and build purposeful brands and one only learns it truly when they do it, Subramanian mentioned. Speaking of what brand purpose really means, he said that it is a single-minded and enduring expression of how the brand helps to make the world a better place.

He further mentioned that single-mindedness means one enduring thought, consistent over time and across touchpoints. “Sounds easy, but is very very hard to do,” Subramanian clarified. He shared the example of Surf Excel’s "Daag Acche Hain" campaign in this regard, which was born in 2004. “We’re now in 2024, yet the same thought still goes on.”

HUL follows a thought, Subramanian shared, of a ‘brand say’ and a ‘brand do’. “A brand which has an inspiring, enduring purpose should be able to activate its thought. And if you can’t do that as a simple but practical thought, that means your purpose is not probably sharp enough,” he added.

He explained the same using the example of Lifebuoy. “Its purpose is to save lives by providing superior hygiene solutions. What great purpose to have, I am sure many of us would love to work with brands that say ‘I save lives’,” Subramanian said.

He shared a story that stood out to him the most, during the pandemic days. “During the difficult times of Covid, this was a brand that actually did a great service globally, on mobilising hand sanitizers and hand washing solutions,” he said.

Subramanian also shared a public service message that Lifebuoy had rolled out at that time, which was an advertisement but had a larger purpose. It stressed on how it doesn’t matter which hand wash or sanitiser one uses, but the fact that they do use it. “It was really about driving awareness amongst the people,” he said.

Subramanian then delved into the aspect of making the world a better place and pointed out that every brand can offer a layer of benefits – functional, emotional and societal. “Most brands tend to operate in the zone of functional and emotional benefits. To stand out from the clutter and turn a normal brand into a purposeful brand, it needs to elevate the discussion and attach itself to big social themes or big environmental themes,” he explained.

Sharing the example of Dove, Subramanian mentioned that it is known that there comes a boost in confidence when one’s skin feels good. “What Dove has done beautifully in India and globally is that it gave a bigger meaning to that feeling of confidence by attacking stereotypes,” he said. The larger message here was that this is where brands tend to go wrong when they confuse the layer of benefits.

Subramanian says that a practical tip that has worked for him is to look at the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. “You look at the SDGs and look at your brand purpose, to see if it fits one of those 17,” he said.

He also cautioned brands to beware of falling into the trap of just operating around lofty social benefits, if they can’t link their brand purpose back to their product truth. “Even a brand as great as Dove got it wrong, when we started the ‘Real Beauty’ campaign because the original promise of the brand was ‘you are beautiful as you are and you don’t need to worry about stereotypes’. The problem with that was if you start to just focus on ‘you are beautiful as you are’, then why would you need Dove,” Subramanian explained to the audience.

This is when the brand had to re-think the strategy and come back to talk about skin that is well cared for.

Addressing why even is it important for brands to be purpose-driven, Subramanian highlighted three key points – better partnerships, better content and shaping culture.

He also shared how exactly is it done at Unilever. “We have a focused marketing capability program called Get On The Front Line, through which marketers across all levels in the organisation start to get into the reality of the market and get on the front line,” Subramanian said.

He pointed out that over time, marketers start to lose the sensitivity that is there, about what is really happening in the lives of the consumers. That gap, that disconnect reflected in the work that comes out. The three pillars of this program are called – Do Good, Get Real and Be Unmissable.

Getting real is basically about understanding the consumer’s life, and that includes the usage of data. Subramanian highlighted how there is a massive data lake. “There’s this saying now, data data everywhere, not a drop to drink. Stitching it together requires lots of processes, tools and experience,” he said. The other aspect of getting real is context immersion, he added.

Do Good comprises understanding people, product and planet philosophy, having meaningful partnerships and activating moments that matter, Subramanian further shared.

Cultural Immersion, The Brief, Distinctive Brand Assets and #Unstereotype constitute the BE Unmissable aspect of the program. Sharing a personal experience around cultural immersion, Subramanian said that back when he was managing Southeast Asia, Korean Drama was on the rise amongst consumers. “I personally hated Korean drama, but I still decided to spend 2 weeks watching it because it was super popular with my consumers. It gave me a sense of what kind of tone my advertising needs to have,” he shared.

He also highlighted how important it is to have distinctive brand assets. “Sound is an underutilised element of brand assets. Not enough brands are leveraging sound and it lies as an underleveraged asset,” Subramanian feels.

Lastly, he shared his call to action with the audience, which surrounds the theme of moving from ‘Marketing to Mattering’. “All of us call ourselves marketing managers or marketing directors, but it is easy to get stuck in the act of marketing and I think the whole discussion today is around elevating the discussion from marketing to mattering,” Subramanian concluded.