Sunil Narula on how Panasonic Life Solutions has been a savvy advertiser

In this exclusive interview with Adgully, Sunil Narula, Senior Vice President - Marketing and Alternative Channel Sales, Panasonic Life Solutions India (PEWIN), speaks about Panasonic’s growth strategies for 2025, the role of data-driven marketing, the impact of consumer preferences, outlook on the upcoming budget and its implications for the sector, integration of digital and traditional marketing, hyper-personalization, rise of Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets, and more.

With a wealth of experience in leading marketing strategies and driving innovative sales channels, Narula has played a pivotal role in Panasonic’s growth in the highly competitive electrical and home solutions sector.

What are the key marketing plans and forecast trends you anticipate for 2025?

ECM industry has seen a decent amount of traction over the last many years thanks to the overall infrastructure growth which has been there in the country, whether it is the commercial space or the residential space, thanks to the overall initiative which the government has taken to ensure that there is a steady growth which is seen here. We see a similar trend in 2025 and years ahead because of the large population of this country under penetration of a lot of infrastructure initiatives. So, for us what we say is that this year is going to look pretty decent and we are looking forward to a significant growth over the previous year.

How is Panasonic leveraging data-driven insights to personalize marketing efforts across both online and offline channels?

This is a very interesting aspect, which has come up over the last couple of years and hyper-personalization is something which we’ve been using very, very effectively at Panasonic, especially to drive our influencer program. So, just to give you a perspective, we have about 200,000 electricians onboarded on our loyalty platform called Smart Saver.

Similarly we have about 130,000 retailers who are a part of our loyalty program called Samridhi. And we have multiple lines of data in terms of interaction with these audiences on a daily basis, through the scanning of QR code which all these people do. And there’s a huge amount of interaction in terms of data which typically happens.

So, we use this data very, very effectively. And in order to communicate the benefits of our program, in order to ensure that our influencers engage with us more regularly, are loyal to our brand. Hyper-personalization role method in communicating with them is sharing information about their tier status for the loyalty program or giving them information about specific campaigns which we are running. Thus, we are able to very well slice and dice the data and use hyper localization or hyper personalization to ensure that it reaches the right kind of people.

How does Panasonic Life Solutions India integrate digital strategies with traditional marketing to create a seamless and unified consumer experience?

While the new age media of digital, and within digital hyper-personalization and localization are something which are obviously moving at a much faster pace in terms of growth. More and more organizations are looking at them, especially the ones which are evolved on the online space and using e-commerce and big commerce very effectively for the business.

However, at the same time we can’t neglect the role of the offline medium, which is typically our television out of home, print and radio. And for any organization our size or of our scale, which has a certain amount of balance between online and offline business, it is very important that both the styles of communication stay together and complement each other. So, on the one side, we’ve been effectively using an offline traditional medium and ensuring that we get brand visibility. We get top-of-mind awareness, which would drive consideration and people promoting our brand. On the other side, we use digital medium to ensure that we are able to communicate with our influencers more directly in a shorter period of time and more effectively so that there is a higher ROI for all the spends that we are making.

How have advertising spends evolved at Panasonic Life Solutions India over the past year, and what factors are driving these changes?

Panasonic has been a savvy advertiser over the last many years, especially in the ECM space. Typically, our spends have ranged between 2.5% and 3% of our overall sales revenue and we’ve been able to maintain a healthy mix of both the traditional medium as well as the digital medium. Over the last three to four years, the overall contribution of the new age advertising through digital has definitely increased in terms of the percentage of money which we allocate here.

What initiatives or programs have been launched to enhance the reach of your retail partners and strengthen the supply chain?

Anchor, which is a part of the Panasonic Group, is a 60-year old brand and has been entrenched in the retail market in the electrical space. We are leaders in multiple categories in the ECM space and we have been the pioneers in terms of driving retail presence over the last six odd decades. However, with the newer age brands coming in with renewed competition, with more and more focus on more organized ways of selling, we have actually started our initiative of creating a loyalty program for our retailers.

This loyalty program is called the Retail Samriddi program. And this is something which has been in operation for almost one and a half years now and is a very effective program to engage with our retailers on a day to day basis. It has really helped us in improving our interaction with them. It has helped us in communicating the benefits to our retailers directly. It has helped us in ensuring that the benefits which typically were earlier passed on through our distributors to the retailers. Now, as an organization we are able to pass on the benefits to the retailers directly.

Over the last one-and-a-half years we have gained a lot through this loyalty program and we are quite confident that over the next couple of years this program will also strengthen and will ensure that we have a much better connection with our retailers as compared to what we used to have a couple of years back.

Also Read: Panasonic's 'Load ka Sammaan' Campaign Boosts Distribution Channels