"Expectation from brands has gone beyond quality products"

In this episode of Mrigashira, Saheli Chatterjee talks about the responsibility that a brand plays in society. We also discuss changing communication models when it comes to highly commoditised items like soaps and other personal care products.

Charu Raizada speaks to Saheli Chatterjee, an experienced Marketing and Public Relations Manager, with a demonstrated history of working in the consumer goods industry.

Listen to the podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4OjqH307KI2iJmxfekQbRk?si=9M94R-CBRCijNiXjW40WKQ&dl_branch=1

Communication around personal care brands like soaps, deodorants was completely reliant on mass media, but there has been a sharp shift in the last few years. Why the need for bringing in this change?

What we have seen years back, you could pretty much call it a monologue, because it was mass media, and you were communicating to a large base. But with the radical shift in technology, visibility, and media, this has given individuals the power to stand up and express their opinions, express their beliefs, at a large scale. When you look at that kind of power for example, if you look at any of the social movements that have happened in the recent past, be it the entire uprising of #MeToo, or if you move to things liketaking a brand stand or communicating with a brand or calling out a brand, consumers, stakeholders, everybody is very vocal. The expectation from a brand is no longer that they give only quality products, the expectation has moved beyond as to how they impact society, and how do they impact think positive.

So, this entire aspect ofresponsible brands is not only how the businesses are shaping up to be, but it is also from an expectation of how the consumer understanding has changed, or what the consumers today are expecting brands to do for society, you know, build back better, reset the way they think and ultimately look at how society is improving. What is the sustainable future looking at? That’s a massive shift, which has enabled brands to look beyond even just a transactional communication that you would have with consumers. It is more to do withwhat the consumer’s reality is. Is there any way that our brand can help make that reality a little different, make it more positive, enable and empower in various ways as you go.

How difficult or easy is it for a personal care brand to have that two-way conversation and how has ITC personal care risen to the challenge?

If you look at the ecosystem that the brand thrives in, it is the company who has created the brand, but the stakeholders around it, be its employees, be it the investors, be it consumers, each of them play a role in this brand ecosystem, where they are continuously refining the brand journey, they are continuously knowingly or unknowingly, positioning the brand in a manner that shapes this brand. So, from a communication point of view, it’s not only the organisation or the brand to everybody else, but we are moving into a more participative kind of a dialogue, it is essential for any forward-lookingbusiness to routinely collaborate across the network to create these new solutions or innovative communication that bolsters theagility of any organisation.

Just a case in point from our own organisation’s aspects, the ITC is more than 100 years old, as an organisation, but the existence or the journey, if you see, it has always looked at what is next and how the ecosystem is evolving. Last year, the launch of Savlon surface disinfectants, created a category altogether. And it was one of the fastest products launched in the market, 24 days is when we launched a particular product. The genesis of why this product is needed came from a consumer interaction. Hand hygiene has been spoken about and hygiene overall is being routinely encouraged, but in a consumer interaction it came out that they did not know what to do about the surroundings or the surfaces. That little insight created a completely new category where Savlon today leads that entire category of surface disinfectants.

So, it is a two-way dialogue, but in multiple ways it is bolstering a new community behaviour. The second again, was how #AbSamjhautaNahi came around when we were thinking Vivel is a personal wash brand and what it caters to is body washes and soaps. Now soap is the most penetrated product in the Indian household. So, if you look at it, it’s an extremely low involvement category. And if you think through, when we began this journey, people questioned us on Twitter, on Facebook, and we heard this quite a lot of times that, you are soap brand what do you have to do with women empowerment.

ITC has always been a visionary company, but somewhere it has also been seen as a traditionalist. What were the major deterrents?

If you look at ITC, the DNA has always been to look at ground level. Today, ITC is water positive, carbon positive and a world exemplar in sustainability. It is one of the only companies that totally believed in green. So, when a brand enters into a space as we were when getting into #AbSamjhautaNahi, questions were asked around how do we see it translating on ground? Everything needs a certain level of approval, yes that is part of how a traditional company is. But I don’t think that’s a deterrent because that only helps you question your motives more seriously because it enables you to think through how you would take it forward.

Similarly, for Savlon Swasth India – the entire mission was of making hygiene champions out of children and we began on Children’s Day in 2016. And the first tool that we brought in was the Savlon Swasth India Chalk Sticks, so that they get interested in washing hands, and they believe that yeah, it’s a fun thing to do. We don’t believe in saying that you are supposed to do this in the regular rhetorical. So, it’s always been exciting and interesting to move and think about different things to excite people.

How do you see the shifts in communication going forward in the post COVID era?

Upskilling is an imperative to be future ready and of course, from a communication point of view, it is adaptability, flexibility and a commitment to continue to communicate through various platforms. So, it is no more only new space, but the focus is now shifting to digital channels, to entire aspect of collaborative PR and this shift actually, very interestingly also beckons a new era of safety requirements, or brands seeing fakes and counterfeits. So, safeguarding privacy and information security. There is a huge shift from what we were communicating, how we were communicating, to where we are moving next. And it’s a very, very exciting process because there is automation. However, there is also this entire aspect of building connections, and how do you go about building those connections in this entire virtual world? So, I think that’s a shift that we are in, right now.

*Edited for length and clarity

(Mirgashira is a podcast for Indian PR and Communication professionals anchored by RadhaRadhakrishnan and Charu Raizada. To listen to all episodes visit https://www.mrigashirapodcast.com/)