TV remains dominant medium of advertising for us with about 65% share: Mayank Shah, Parle

“An in-depth understanding of the Indian consumer psyche has helped us develop a marketing philosophy that reflects the needs of the Indian masses,” Parle Products proudly declares on its website. 

Perhaps that’s why the makers of the world's largest selling biscuit Parle-G and a host of other very popular brands, became the country’s first packaged food company to cross $2 billion in annual revenues during FY22. 

The company’s marketing strategy shot to limelight during the pandemic when they quickly tapped into recipe-related content using their social media platforms to stay in touch with their consumers. 

In an exclusive interaction with exchange4media, Mayank Shah, Senior Category Head at Parle Products, discusses the brands’ evolving marketing strategies, their association with the Indian Premier League, expansion plan, media mix and much more. 

Excerpts: 

Parle group has been a regular advertiser on TV, especially during the IPL. How significant is the role of collective viewing for your brand? 

TV is important because Sports is best enjoyed with friends and family. In the IPL as well, collective viewing of TV brings people together with their family and friends. Collective viewing means more fun and increased viewership. Increased viewership makes a huge difference. When you're talking about sports like IPL where Collective viewing plays a very important role and it's not just about enjoyment or fun. It is also about the increased viewership. IPL is not just restricted to male viewing anymore. A lot of family viewing happens. What more can an advertiser ask for when he's getting something like the entire family or into a bunch of friends getting together and watching the IPL.  

How do you plan to leverage IPL during key matches like Semi final and final? 

Well we have a few plans in terms of running promotions and stuff like that internally. You need to be associated with IPL you if you're running a promo. So you cannot leverage the brand name unless you are part of IPL or directly associated with it. Our sponsorship happens to be on TV so we do not have rights to use IPS brand name but yeah internally we are going to run a bit of promos, contests, winners and stuff. With certain business associations, we may send some winners for watching matches. 

Cricket is one sport which gives you viewership and more so pan India viewership. Two things which really excite Indians are Cinema and Cricket. Cinema is pretty regional although it is now transcending the borders but sports transcends all the boundaries of languages and regions and it gives you viewership pan India that's one of the biggest motivations for any advertiser to advertise on a sports property, especially something as big as IPL. 

How successful has your association with IPL been so far, in terms of ROI?

The tournament has just started so it's difficult to say. We need to wait and watch because we've seen good traction over the years in the beginning and towards the end. We are waiting and watching how it pans out throughout the season. It is yet to be seen whether it surpasses last year which it most likely should be. It is a little too premature to talk about the ROI at this stage when we have ratings just for the first week. 

Who is your creative and media agency for the IPL?

Our media agency has been-Zenith Optimedia-through whom this entire deal has been done. We have quite a few creative agencies but the ones whose creatives are running during this IPL are Rediffusion. 

What is your media mix?

Being a consumer product company, TV remains the dominant medium of advertising for us with 60-65 percent share. This is followed by digital which gets 20-25 percent of the budget. The rest goes to the print, radio and outdoor. Digital is catching up now. A few years back our digital ad spend was about just eight to ten percent of the total ad spend. Today it is almost 20-25 per cent. 

When you say TV is a significant medium for you, do you mean Connected TV as well? 

Connected TV we normally include in digital advertising. If you look at the total universe, it is still a small number although growing. Still it is too small a number to really achieve anything, especially when you are talking about a company like us who is into consumer products where typically the ticket size is not really high. 

Does that mean you don’t advertise on CTV at all?

We don't advertise on Connected TV currently. Targeting the medium doesn't really make any sense at this stage. 

Your marketing strategy during the pandemic evolved quickly and was appreciated. What is your strategy now especially when businesses are open but inflation and other constraints are there?

Inflation was a big challenge last year and I think most companies struggle. There was a bit of struggle on our part as we could do well relatively given the brand love we had. Inflation did limit the quantum of growth that we had in the last few years, however, demands have picked up with inflation under control and the rural economy reviving. We're very hopeful that the current financial year 2023-24 would be really a great year unlike foreign marketing trends. 

I think you know a lot of things change during the pandemic and we are seeing acceptance of those things as habits. Ecommerce sales got very well accepted and we are seeing continuous growth happening there. So, Ecom growth which was pegged by Nielsen study in next 10 years we may see that happening in next six or seven years. When that study was done, our ecom contribution was just about less than one percent to the total FMCG. Today it's about 3.5-4.0 percent and growing. A lot of people adapted to digital medium, a lot of growth was seen in OTT and other platforms so consumption of digital media grew. Generally people prefer to buy things which are relatively healthier. The pandemic has taught us that lesson. Most consumers today are gravitating towards products which are better for them, healthwise. 

Parle group is going to complete 100 years in 2029. How do you plan to expand your business and product portfolio further? 

Well, we have been doing it for the last few years. We started as a confectionary company in 1929 and till 1939 we got into biscuits the first biscuit that came up was parle-G. Prior to that from 1929 to 1939, we were largely selling confectionery- orange candy as a brand. Post that, we got into many other categories such as bakeries where we have rusk and cakes. Then we got into snacking in a big way, traditional Indian namkins, bhujias and mixtures and other things that's been doing very well for us. Very recently, we got into breakfast cereal and staples like Atta as well. Atta was always available in global market, we extended it to domestic market as well now. Atta is almost about two and a half lakh crore category. Breakfast cereals is another big category which is growing, though its niche. Now, we would be looking at establishing ourselves in those categories, making a mark for ourselves and having a significant share in those categories before we look at getting into other categories.