Premiumisation Works Most Effectively If It's An Outcome Of Resolving A Need: Mukta Maheshwari, P&G India

At P&G India's 5th annual #WeSeeEqual Equality and Inclusion Summit 2024, Mukta Maheshwari, Chief Marketing Officer, P&G India; and Vice President, Fabric Care, P&G India spoke to BW Marketing World exclusively, navigating the complexities of targeting diverse audiences with tailored media mixes, the inclusion of social issues in advertising campaigns and the transformative role of technology in enhancing consumer engagement. 

Excerpts:

With so many brands under the P&G umbrella, how do you strike a balance between traditional and digital channels to reach consumers effectively in today's time?

Each brand has a defined target audience where their benefit offering is most meaningful, and that for every brand, dictates what the media mix is going to be like. For example, a brand like Ariel will have a full media mix of television, digital, cinema, out-of-home, Instagram. If you take another brand, let's say Pampers, where the target audience is either moms or soon-to-be moms, the communication medium and channels will be a lot more curated to reach the right set of consumers most effectively. So it depends on what the brand objective is and the 

When you plan your marketing strategies, what does your media mix look like?

Usually, my preference is always - this is my target audience. What is the media mix that will help me reach this target audience most effectively and efficiently? Talking about Ariel, it is a superior laundry detergent product and the need is relevant to a very wide population. If that is your objective, then your media mix will include television, out-of-home, digital - it will include the whole. So it  depends on what benefit you're promising and who will it be relevant to, how most effective you will be.

The bifurcation of marketing spends truly depends on the campaign and what is the right audience for that.

P&G’s advertising campaigns address a lot of social issues. With Ariel's 'Share the Load,' we saw campaigns on gender equality. Can you elaborate on how you leverage ad campaigns to address social issues?

I start with why a cause and why gender equality is a cause. The brands pick a cause which closely resonates with the brand-defined purpose. Gender equality is extremely important for Ariel because it designs products which will give superior results, irrespective of who's doing the laundry. So for us, it is important that we drive that balance and equality so that anyone can get great results if they use a product like Ariel. 

Why? From a societal standpoint, it's important. Women are increasingly going into the workforce. And we know when there is a good, diverse mix of people creating the solution, the outcome is often better. And women will be able to contribute to their maximum potential outside the home if what today they are tied back with, are taken care of. What we're trying to do is - one chore at a time, the chore that at least Ariel can influence. This is now the 9th year in a row for us to be doing it. 

Why do you think diversity has become so important in marketing strategies today, and how does it contribute to the success of a brand's overall persona?

Let's take P&G today; it serves about 5 billion consumers across the world and these consumers are not a homogenous set of consumers. They are different consumers with different regional preferences, cultural preferences, food preferences and different notions they grew up in. Getting diversity helps bring those diverse perspectives. So the solutions that we're making are better suited for a much broader audience. For example, if I were to globally design a solution, I would want to have representatives from folks from all the countries so that they can put in what is important and what will work better. It makes great business sense to get diverse opinions as we're co-creating solutions for consumers.

How are you implementing and leveraging tech in your marketing campaigns?

In P&G, you always start with - what is a problem statement and tech or no tech, we become an enabler to solve the problem.

India is a country where migration is very big. Mumbai has people speaking 20 to 40 languages. When we used to serve advertising, let's say in Maharashtra, it would normally be served in the Marathi language. What tech has enabled us to do is, we're able to serve advertising in the native language of someone from Bengal who's migrated here. It just makes advertising more effective. That's one example of where tech is enabling us to deliver better messaging and connect better with consumers. 

Another example I can take is ChatGPT, the language model. We have an equivalent of that large language model in P&G called ChatPG, and something that traditionally would take us maybe three or four weeks to develop like you come up with a consumer claim and you go and verify it, brainstorm in a team, go and verify with consumers, refine it, go back and work with consumers again. What large language models allow you to do is build on that collective consumer feedback and help you create some of these things much faster. I can create some of these things within a few minutes. So that's technology coming and enabling, giving us better solutions that resonate with the consumers and being extremely efficient. 

Before the digital era, Pampers advertising was indiscriminate and it would talk to maybe 70 per cent of the people who didn't want to know about diapers, but we were talking to them. What digital and technology have enabled is you can actually talk meaningfully to people who are interested in these things, just a very mutually beneficial advertising conversation. I think it's a great place to be with tech, enabling us to be able to have much more meaningful connections with consumers, us being a lot more effective and efficient in how we go to our consumers.

How does P&G India leverage data and analytics into its marketing campaigns?

We have a very robust guideline on what data we can use and collect. Taking Pampers as an example, we collect data with the full consent of individuals, which helps us curate the solutions that these parents-to-be or parents want to share or see.

For meaningful and more insightful connections, we leverage data. We leverage data from consumer homes, where garments that folks have are stains that people are gathering. We can create better and better solutions as we serve these consumers. Media is another space where data comes in very handy. In digital advertising, there is language personalisation. That's only possible because we have the data on who's consuming what and would that be able to predict what communication will be more effective in this particular region.

Now, when we talk about P&G India as a whole, it is in itself a very global brand. How do you maintain that alignment between the global messaging and the localisation?

The mantra for P&G is 'consumer is the boss.' All our activity systems are designed to serve the consumer most effectively. The reality is, that a lot of needs are universal. How they manifest themselves is probably slightly nuanced and different in different ways.

Markets like stain removal are a need everywhere in the world. Now, that stain, for an American consumer could be different and for the Indian consumer, it could be a 'haldi' stain or it could be a rain muddy water stain - that's where the nuance comes in. While Ariel talks about stain removal everywhere in the world, how you talk about it is more cognisant of the cultural fabric of India, where you're advertising and showing more relevant garments, more relevant stains. So we still are addressing the needs of the local consumer while still coming across as a unified brand.

How do you cater to that price-sensitive market in India?

I think India has made amazing progress. I'm seeing more and more consumers being value-conscious, so they understand that price is for a benefit and if you give them meaningful benefits, they will be willing to pay money. 

I think it's the ability to understand the need well. I take the example of laundry detergents where you would have heard liquid detergents are becoming a good thing and it's growing massively. Is it growing because it's a premium form? No. It's because it has come at a time and a stage where fully automatic washing machines are growing rapidly.

10 per cent of the households in India have fully automatic machines. Liquid offers a much better outcome in fully automatic machines and hence is a preferred form. And because we're able to do that, consumers are willing to pay attention to that. To me, premiumisation works most effectively if it's an outcome of resolving a need that changed because of the landscape shift which led to consumers demanding it.

Reema Bhaduri

BW Reporters The author is the Editorial Lead at BW Businessworld. Majorly writes on marketing, advertising, experiential marketing and retail. She closely looks upon the vertical of BW Marketing World and BW Retail World.