Mondelez India was among the first few companies that had begun taking extensive efforts towards Covid relief. In the time that followed, the company also used its packaging to celebrate Covid’s unsung heroes. It continued with portfolio expansion across its product line, most notable being the foray into the cake’s category. A big highlight for the company was when it supported local stores in its Diwali ad campaign, making timely and relevant use of technology. For all of this, Mondelez India is awarded BW PuRe Award 2020.
Also, for the work done through Cadbury’s ‘Not Just a Cadbury Ad’, that set the direction of forward-thinking for brands in India per se, Mondelez India’s Cadbury was also conferred with additional special recognition of BW PuRe Best in Show Award 2020.
During the pandemic, it was a first in the company’s 70 plus years in the country, that the brand’s logo on the pack was changed. The ‘Thank You Bar’ campaign by Mondelez was an effort to help people who have selflessly contributed during the pandemic. A part of the proceeds of the 10 million bars that were sold under the changed logo went to secure insurance for domestic workers through their NGO called ‘Nirman’.
Addressing audiences at the BW PuRe Awards 2020, Mondelez India’s Managing Director, Deepak Iyer said, “The year 2020 has been a different and difficult year. In the midst of it all, if we would have just come across as yet another company selling chocolates, we might as well have not shown up at all. Purpose and resilience have been the two cornerstones of why we have made a difference.”
Highlighting the differentiated campaigns that Mondelez did in 2020, Iyer said “The recent commercials of Cadbury Dairy Milk talking about small acts of kindness that bring back generosity. The challenge is how do we move our consumers from just storytelling to do. ‘The Wish Pack’ campaign we did with Jio was aimed to enable consumers to donate 1 GB of extra data to the not so fortunate schools and kids in the country. The number of people who participated was so high that it encouraged us and showed us that generosity can be a small act but can mean a lot for the person receiving it.”
All these initiatives were consistent around our brand purpose, which is generosity and that is what resonated with our consumers.
Elaborating on how resilient businesses are made, Iyer said, “Resilience in businesses is built by anticipating trouble, imagining scenarios of deep decline and planning for those scenarios in advance. Building early warning systems, disaster recoveries, business continuity planning or contingency planning will lead to building resilience in the system.”
The biggest learning for Iyer in the past eight months has been to strike a work-life balance and manage the business in what he calls “extremely crazy times”. “Do not expect 2021 to be any different from what it is today. It is going to be either an extremely bullish or an extremely disastrous year,” concluded Iyer.