VIKRAM KARWAL
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR-SEA MARKETING, CHOCOLATE MONDELEZ INTERNATIONAL
On how social media has impacted or promoted your business brand.
In the era of Facebook and YouTube, where consumers are spending more time than ever on social media, it makes sense to amplify your brands’ voice and tap on new ways to interact with the people that love them. As one of the most loved chocolate brands in the world, we always must be at the forefront in understanding our consumers’ behaviours and mind-sets in order to respond to their every need and wants. Social media has provided us with an added avenue to support this aspect of our business.
On the company’s digitalisation efforts and how it has helped in branding.
Our consumers are on various channels and they consume information through a variety of mediums. Apart from our efforts on popular digital platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, we are also focused on e-commerce. We do this by collaborating with top online shopping platforms in the country. Leveraging our digitalisation efforts such as this, ultimately results in having our products available wherever our consumers may be and in accordance with their lifestyles.
Challenges faced by your company in a challenging economic environment.
We are certainly focused on achieving sustainable growth at the back of economic uncertainties, new competition and volatility in commodities. While we’re not immune to these challenges, we have built our business to withstand the volatility through strategic investments in our supply chain, our people and product innovation. More importantly, we stay close to our consumers and their changing preference, while ensuring that we continue to delight them with great products.
On strategies put in place to boost the company’s brand image.
We have a unique situation where one organisation is known through its brands. We also recognise the awareness of Mondelez International as a brand is relatively low and we are addressing this though our corporate communications programmes targeting at the relevant audiences.
The importance of a meaningful connection between a brand and a consumer in brand-building.
It is quintessential that a brand is meaningful for consumers. A successful brand has to cater to a specific consumer insight and meet the needs that the consumers are telling us. This will make the brand relevant to the consumers. It will further lead to continuous usage and stronger association with consumer’s lifestyles. Brand has to do it better than the competition. We recently launched our Cadbury Dairy Milk Oreo chocolate on a strong insight of how consumers are looking for multi-emotional experience – they need to be delighted and we delivered this with the product and better than the competitor by bringing together two powerful brands which are already close to the consumers.