Marketing: Not for the faint-hearted

As the Asia vice-president and chief marketing officer of a company whose turnover is in
excess of US$3 billion, with a regional footprint spanning more than 3000 restaurants, Vipul Chawla’s portfolio is enviable, yet daunting.

Chawla has led several regional and global businesses worth millions of dollars during his 19-year stint at Unilever across Asia and Europe. But with marketing evolving at the pace that it is, Chawla finds himself at the starting line all over again – every few years – despite his decades of industry experience.

“Though it may sound cliché, as a marketer I have reinvented myself every three years,” he says.

And the change in the role of a marketer is a result of many factors, not just digital.

To begin with, it’s the competitive landscape that has drastically evolved over the years. The competition brands face, generally, is no longer only local, but increasingly, regional or global in nature.

As a result, speed of thought, response and action has shot up. Chawla remembers a time marketers had a standard 18-month template for a brand relaunch. Now, marketing is risky because marketers don’t have time for that kind of robust testing.

“Marketers need to rely a lot more on instincts. Speed is more of a virtue than it ever was. And all associated benefits with being nimble are far more critical now.”

Relying on instincts, in the current economic atmosphere where marketers are under constant pressure to deliver incremental ROI, is perhaps the most uphill task.

“Your (marketing) spends have to work harder. Marketers have to take that risk and yet, be accountable for the company’s top line.

“It is not for the faint-hearted (he laughs). That’s the beauty of the job.”

There have also been other changes. Chawla shares how decades ago marketers built their entire career working in a single market for a brand. “Now the stage is much bigger,” he says, adding that marketers are dealing with a much more diverse set of people within the company as well as within their consumer base. Geographical boundaries from a marketing standpoint are not a barrier anymore.

“Therefore, the skills you need as a marketer are varied.”

So what’s the one thing that’s remained unchanged over the years? I ask. That it still is a people’s business, says Chawla. A firm believer in longevity of client-agency relationships, Chawla says changing the agency every 24 months is not the viewpoint he subscribes to.

“Great ideas can come from anywhere, but in my experience, when an agency and client have a great personal rapport, the work tends to be much better and the process a lot smoother,” he says.

Your (marketing) spends have to work harder. Marketers have to take that risk and yet, be accountable for the company’s top

Pride in fried

The quick-service restaurants industry has inherent challenges. While competition is the obvious one, both from local as well global brands, what is a looming threat is the discerning consumer who is seeking healthier options. Brands such as Coca-Cola and McDonald’s have all come under the wrath of consumers at some point. How are brands under the Yum Brands umbrella holding up?

KFC is about cravable taste, Chawla highlights, and “yes we take pride in fried. That said we are aware of the fact that consumers want more choice and more transparency.”

KFC’s standpoint is it has to offer consumers choice and
transparency, so all products come with a calorific count and so on.

“Do you have a non-fried option or salads or different dough as far as pizzas are (for Pizza Hut) concerned? Yes we do. While we have broadened our offering we are staying true to the core value proposition of cravable taste.”

As he completes two years this month at Yum Brands, I couldn’t help but ask what was the one big difference he felt when he moved from Unilever after almost two decades. While they are two very separate companies (Unilever being FMCG and Yum Brands retail), the culture of peer-to-peer sharing stands out.

“Since that culture (of sharing and recognising ideas) is very strong, you will see that execution of the brand is the same, globally, while adapting to the local needs in as far as the product is concerned.”

A believer in nurturing people, Chawla explains his current job in one line – to keep the teams aligned and motivated to share ideas.

Yum Brands has an internal yardstick to gauge the potential of an idea – BITE or ideas with “built-in talk-ability and engagement”.

Chawla has instituted two internal awards – an Asian Tiger’s BITE award to a marketing director in the group who comes up with a great idea that has inherent “shareability” and a Golden Rooster award for good performance.

“It also encourages healthy competition and builds a culture that recognises good ideas.”

While talking about ideas, Chawla shares his first digital campaign in 2005 for Sunsilk, “Sunsilk Gang of Girls”. “I don’t think anybody had an idea back then on what digital marketing was,” he says.

The idea of Sunsilk Gang of Girls came from the insight that women loved talking about a good or bad hair day. Chawla and his team then created a platform, in the form of a website, where girls could discuss topics related to hair as well as other common issues. Calling it “Gang of Girls” lent the campaign a youthful feel, an apt move for a long-established brand which had somewhat begun to age.

“It was almost a naive experiment, done largely in-house.”

But the team was in for a shock. The website garnered more than 500,000 members in a matter of weeks and the campaign soon became a national phenomenon among girls all over India. Buoyed by the success, Unilever later rolled out similar initiatives across multiple markets.

“It became a brand relaunch in itself. It was the first time I had relaunched a brand using the internet as a medium,” Chawla says.

And that was his first tryst with digital, more specifically, social media. Marketing has undergone a complete overhaul since then.

“I don’t have a discussion on any brand or activity of which digital is not a significant part. Now we have done numerous brand or variant launches using only digital marketing.”

KFC recently launched its Double Down sandwich, entirely through Facebook. It put out a message on a Sunday and more than a thousand people shared it on Facebook and even before the TV ad broke, which was about eight days later, both sales and awareness had shot through the roof.

“We ran out of stock by 6pm on the first day, without using television. That’s an example of BITE,” he says. In hindsight that was also the reason behind the success of Sunsilk Gang of Girls.

“It (BITE) was something we did not know back then, but now we understand that if something is newsworthy, it will travel.”

And determining whether an idea has BITE or not, is again a matter of instinct. Therefore marketers, Chawla says, have to take more risks.

Those who rely more on instincts and are ready to deal with the ambiguity of the outcome are more likely to succeed than those seeking time-tested ways.

“If curiosity is something that innately drives you, then this (marketing) is a great function to be part of,” he says.