Walk The Talk With Ferrero: Zoher Kapuswala, Ferrero

With a wide portfolio of brands such as Ferrero Rocher, Nutella, and Kinder, Ferrero has captivated consumers worldwide with its unique marketing approach. Ferrero uses a variety of strategies for marketing to efficiently promote its products and communicate with customers.

In an exclusive conversation with BW Marketing World, Zoher Kapuswala, India Marketing Head, Ferrero sheds light on the marketing mix, leveraging digitisation for the brands, the health-conscious audience for the brand, their campaigns, and more.

Ferrero has a wide range of brands under its umbrella, including Ferrero Rocher, Nutella, Tic Tac, Kinder, and others. While talking about the approach to the marketing mix for Ferrero brands, Kapuswala said, “We are a very consumer-centric company, we have a strong ethos and a strong commitment towards the consumer. Product is predominantly one of the key forte for the marketing mix for us. The second part of the marketing mix is the entire distribution & availability part that is there. So Ferrero is committed in India & is striving rapidly in distribution. On the promotion part, we do a lot of consumer connects. We try and customise our content to appeal to that particular consumer. For example, we use influencer content rather than people giving an advertisement which is an interference for a person to see the content. With this, you are more receptive to the consumer and more integrated with the story which eventually leads to an organic reach plus you get some amount of star power which in India is valued a lot and it helps in building brands with a limited budget. We are also going for dynamic content optimisation which is mass customisation, hyper-customisation of content for different locations, different languages, different psychographics, all being merged together to create content which is more receptive to the consumer.” He further added, “On the pricing part, we are in an inflationary economy so pricing is a very hard part of the decision of a marketer to take. As a marketer, we constantly say that the entire inflation should not be passed on to the consumer. We ensure that the last part is given as price hats to the consumer. That is how we work on the entire marketing mix in Ferrero in India.”

On the note of the changing consumer demands and digitalisation in the present scenario, leveraging technology and data analytics is crucial to stay ahead in the market, and providing personalised experiences for customers has become essential to which Kapuswala expressed, “We, as an organisation has embraced technology well. We are all connected, we all have a good work-from-home culture in our company. We further try and agglomerate data. We use cross-data and try to analyse trends to understand that are we leveraging markets specifically or not. We have started our leg of customisation. We majorly customise during the festive season which is widely celebrated by citizens of our country.”

While speaking about their campaigns and promotional activities of the brand to capture consumer attention and drive sales, he mentioned, “Ferrero Rocher and Ferrero Rocher Moments, both are presenting one of the most exquisite chocolates that are being sold in India and as a marketer we had presented recently on the chocolate day as well which was on July 7th. We are present in the place where these festivals are being dramatised. For example, ecommerce as a channel was celebrating the chocolate day and a lot of content had been created and the entire activation was around the celebrations. So ecom and quick commerce, were both places we played on this particular subject on the channels. We were and are also playing on a social and a digital place, we were playing on the delight of the product sublimation part which is the entire dramatisation of the chocolate. In our social campaigns, we are active with product sublimation content on our digital & social so that consumers are being made aware of the entire delight and the indulgence of the product.” 

Talking more about the launches, he also stated that, “Ferrero Rocher Moments is an Indian-centric innovation. It is a product that has been launched for India, it is a tropical innovation. Ferrero Rocher Moments is mass distributed, it is tapping into the space of sharing & everyday gifting. 

Since there is a growing emphasis on health and wellness, Kapuswala also talked about its health-conscious consumers, stating, “This is one of the key factors of Ferrero. One of the values of Ferrero is integrity and moderation. Integrity is saying that I need to be vigilant and this is, for me as an employer, I will show whatever to the consumer, I will not promote overconsumption. I will ensure that consumer health is always taken care of and this has been there for the company.” Taking us through the ‘walk the talk’ for this particular value, he explained, “If you see any product that we have, we have something called, portion control which is ingrained in the product. If you see KinderJoy, it is 19 grams and that is one particular portion that is apt for the consumer, which is 110-120 calories and you cannot consume more than that. When you talk about Rocher or Moments or Kinder Creamy, it is all supposed to be one particular prelim, so you can always portion control that.”

Kapuswala also spoke about how deeply Ferrero as a brand is invested in R&D for innovating products to the market along with effectively communicating their unique selling propositions. He goes on to tell us that, “We invest a lot on R&D and we take good time to develop great products and that is the entire philosophy of Ferrero. Alongside, we have multiple new products coming this year which we will soon launch.”