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Ep 2. Srinivas Adapa, Burger King
161 Plays2 years ago
In this episode of Marketing Connect, we make Srinivas Adapa of Burger King sell a diet-conscious host some burgers & fries for a meal! Oh, did we tell you that the host is on a no-carbs, no-oil diet?
Find out what did Srini do the selling?
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Transcript
Introduction to the Marketing Connect Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, this is the Marketing Connect Podcast. Hi, this is the Marketing Connect Podcast. Hi, this is the Marketing Connect Podcast, a show where we get up close and personal with some of the most celebrated marketeers in the country. We talk to them and discover nuances of marketing that we often miss. After all, we are a show for marketeers by marketeers. Listen in.
Srini's Professional Journey Overview
00:00:30
Speaker
Today, I am extremely, extremely excited to bring to you Srini from Burger King. He has about 15 years of experience with marketing and he's worked across categories, companies, and even businesses. Here is Srini for you. Hi, I'm Srini. I lead marketing for Burger King in India. I come from a typical middle class, very high academic values kind of a family. Largely raised in Hyderabad and post 12th pretty much have been on the road. Engineering, MBAs, obviously that's when I was a kid.
00:00:59
Speaker
Lucknow, you know, incidentally, May 17th, 2004 was my first day at work when I started my career,
Early Career Challenges and Pivot to FMCG
00:01:06
Speaker
right? So yeah, 16 years, I've been a blur. But, you know, if I go back to the journey, you know, I think one, after my Lucknow days, I think I, my first job, I landed at Wipro Technologies and it's been a crazy ride from there.
00:01:23
Speaker
In fact, 2004, if you recall, was the sunshine time for the whole IT and IT services sector, right? And job on campus that I landed was a marketing job. We proposed building a marketing strategic marketing team at that time. And interest support to be placed in the West Coast in the US, right? So like, you know, on campus, it's a big deal, right? If you land in international placement, it was a big deal. Marketing was my love.
00:01:51
Speaker
Sunrise economy and all of that. And I'm like, wow, you made it, right? I was 24. Life was looking great. And then I landed in Bangalore to get started. And I realized two things. One, you know, this was taking time. The whole US placement in itself was going to take some more time. Two, B2B marketing is very different from the conventional consumer brand led marketing that most of us resonate with.
00:02:21
Speaker
So I had to make changes and then one of the first and the tough choices in life that I had to make from a career perspective was to say, hey, I got to stop this and get back to FMCG. So I was six months down the line from the time I got placed and I was thinking as a superstar, I realized, oh God, this is not what I want to do. And it hasn't been easy, right? I had to now go back to all the FMCG companies, you know, go back with my resume and say, hey, I want to look at a marketing job. I'm looking at a job in FMCG, a career in FMCG.
00:02:51
Speaker
It took some while and luckily, one of the places where I've done summer internship was kind enough, pick me from there and put me into a training role, a quick fixed sales training, management training role before they groom me for a larger role. And in fact, one of the time of reconciliation, when it really hit me hard and as part of this, all of us do a sales office assistant in FMCG, right? Basically, you go counter to counter, store to store, you sell about 40, 45,
00:03:19
Speaker
outlets a day and all of that. And my first first day was when I ended up in this market called Nazargad. So there was me coming from Bangalore, IT, South Indian boy on a bike selling oil and Vanaspati in a wholesale market in Nazargad. So that was really baptism by far when I started that, right? I still remember, you know, the big, you know, the aggressive North Indian wholesale market, the Delhi market, you know, they would send embers like
00:03:49
Speaker
What is this? And my parents were like, what is it doing? I mean, you've done engineering. So I am like, what are you doing? So it was kind of reconcile to all of that. But I think what led me going is passion for marketing, because I was clear that that was the path.
00:04:11
Speaker
And when I look back really sort of on a day like this, absolutely no regrets. Every enjoyed a big bit of it.
Key Marketing Roles and Diverse Experience
00:04:28
Speaker
And it's been quite a crazy ride. From there on, if I were to give top 5, 6 crazy things, the stuff that I've done as part of my journey,
00:04:36
Speaker
I was one of the first guys to launch a peanut butter in India. I mean, who launches peanut butter in India? I did that in 2005. And whenever I go to a grocery store, I still look out and I'm like, it's still there. I'm very big, right? Not bad. So this is the thunder of peanut butter. It is still there. Then I moved on to Heinz, where I was working on Groupon D. I get a huge learning curve. Like a 150-year-old heritage brand. Used to work with All India Radio. Used to do rural marketing in Bihar.
00:05:04
Speaker
Some of the stuff that we've done with All India Radio is gold even now in these big content days. From there on, I obviously joined Kellogg. I joined Kellogg in 2011. I joined as a lead for innovations in India. Some really fantastic work. My entire almost close to seven years career with Kellogg.
00:05:24
Speaker
And the whole journey of Kellogg has been creating categories, right? Indians are not really naturally tuned to eating a breakfast like cereals, right? Look at our breakfast, right? Currently, our breakfast are hot, our breakfast are savory, our breakfast are soft.
00:05:42
Speaker
And our breakfast are super leaf filling. A breakfast cereal is anything but that. It's cold milk, technically. It's crunchy. And it energizes you, but not really super filling. So the whole seven year journey has been a dream from a marketing perspective because we were building categories against such consumer odds. And I really loved every bit. I learned a lot of marketing.
00:06:09
Speaker
I had fairly crazy stuff. At one point of time, I was heading market research for Kellogg's in Africa. I was on a one-week trip to Kenya where I landed in Nairobi and said, at the end of this one week, I had to come out with a whole marketing launch plan for Kellogg's in Kenya. So yeah, I was actually three years I was in South Africa as part of Kellogg. I came back to India in 2018 and then I quit
00:06:37
Speaker
in 2017 and when I quit Quilog a year and a few months later I was heading the category for breakfast. Currently as we talk I head marketing for Burger King in India. It's close to almost two years now in this role.
Working with a Challenger Brand: Burger King
00:06:49
Speaker
Another super exciting journey. A really cut through edgy brand that I love to work with.
00:06:56
Speaker
And like I said, 16 years, been a blur, quite a few crazy things and really enjoyed the journey. So I'm going to ask you the toughest question I think I can think of is that, you know, you work in a category with the player wherein you are a challenger at best, as in there is obviously a far larger competitor
00:07:17
Speaker
that does a very, very good job in terms of high visibility marketing in terms of the locations, in terms of the presence. So what are the, you know, how is it to work with the Challenger brand in such a way? Challenger brands are more fun simply because one, you are sort of an underdog and it is nice and liberating to be an underdog when you fight that battle.
00:07:44
Speaker
Number one, number two, in most challenger brands, there are no holy cows. When you look at marketing, when you look at the way brands go about, it really gives you a nice free canvas to kind of do what you think will be the right thing to do. And third, I think it's very enriching from a learning and a career perspective.
00:08:05
Speaker
I've also been, like I called out, I've also been on a few fairly established leader brands and where more often than not, I'm not saying it's everywhere, but more often than not, there's a set template, there's a way that needs
00:08:19
Speaker
There's a timing, you know, when the sales buckets are, you know, what works, what doesn't work. So it's a bit boring, if I might say. But I challenge a brand, there's nothing cast in stone, right? It's up to you what you do. I think it really pushes you on the entrepreneurial side of it. And I love it. So what is happening around us in the next in the last two or three years, consumers have started to become far more, you know, conscious about what they eat as in like, look at me, for
Market Trends and Opportunities in Packaged Foods
00:08:46
Speaker
example, right? So I have cut
00:08:47
Speaker
carb out of my diet completely. I am trying to do intermittent fasting as well. Kellogg's for example is pedaling, say, complex, right? I mean cereal, correct? So if I say that I don't have any breakfast at all because I'm doing IS and I don't want carbs, so no milk for me, no cereal for me, so I'm not going to have breakfast. So if you were to go back to Kellogg and you looked at this trend, what kind of things would you want to look at? I don't want a marketing campaign person, but what would be the first few insights that you will think of and then start executing on that?
00:09:17
Speaker
So you know what's our great question, if I take Kellogg's first, I think the big thing with the whole market and the whole segmentation like we say is,
00:09:27
Speaker
There is enough opportunity, especially with food, be it packaged or actual restaurant food in India. Food, the whole size of pie of food is very, very big in India. Like we all know, we're all foodies, like you say, and the numbers are there, etc. But the big opportunity is the penetration is very low. If you look at packaged food penetration in India, I wonder what the number is now. I haven't seen it in the last two years.
00:09:53
Speaker
at best it might be somewhere in the 10 percentage plus kind of a range right versus what look at it in more developed countries which would be of course the US or UK would be more 70 80 percent plus but even even a country like Philippines and some of the Southeast Asian countries also are hovering about 50 percent penetration so your answer a lot of potential for packaged food penetration number one
00:10:22
Speaker
Number two, it's also about being relevant to the consumers that you choose to work with. In the case of Kellogg, for example, a lot of people in India skip breakfast, not because they're following a diet, just because they do not have the time or access to a fairly nutritious breakfast option. And that in itself is a huge market. And that in itself is a huge challenge for the brand to leverage.
00:10:50
Speaker
So yes, there are upcoming trends to your point where people are picking up diets and stuff, which is perhaps more natural, more pretty. But as a brand, as a business, speak of my past experience, there is a whole market out there. There's a big penetration opportunity out there for the brand. That's fine. Somebody doesn't want to eat calories. I think fast food would be the last thing that I would pick as a marketeer.
00:11:18
Speaker
But you know what? There is always a cheat day, right? There is always a Saturday evening. There's always a thing. You know, gloomy Saturday afternoon. But that's the time you look me up on a Swiggy Zomado or just come to my restaurant, right? And I will make sure that cheat day is really worth the cheat day, right? I think I picked it right because the day I fight with my girlfriend or my partner is the way when I look up for a pizza or a burger to like, you know, get out of that.
00:11:45
Speaker
Yeah, to answer your question, yes, I think to put it put it sharply answer to your question would be yes, they are different segments, but just the potential in itself for both the brands is immense. Number one, number two, it's also about making your message relevant to both the audience and the occasion that you choose women. And then
00:12:05
Speaker
brands evolve with time. So we will see both the brands adapt and evolve as the consumer trends emerge.
Career Advice for Aspiring Marketers
00:12:12
Speaker
Let's find somebody who's got four to five years of experience in the marketing business. You know, I got out of B school in 2014, 2013, and I look up to somebody like you that, you know, in the next 10 years, I need to be a
00:12:24
Speaker
you know head of marketing function adder exciting brand so what could they be doing i mean listening to your day to day schedule what could they be doing to sort of get up to speed in terms of what could be they're doing to manage their business how would you advise your juniors to sort of manage their business see managing a day uh there are quite a few uh
00:12:47
Speaker
you know, published articles and good columns as well, where people talk about how have we taken the structured better was even how your hours in a day can be structured better. But I think if I were to leave with one or two nuggets from my own personal experience, right, is especially to your point, like you said, you know, 2014 2015 pass out currently would be, you know, mostly senior brand manager or just about ready to get into a category late end of the role in most companies.
00:13:17
Speaker
One, mostly, one should always have a game plan. And the game plan can be made into multiple cuts, right? Obviously, there's a career game plan, then there's a quarter plan, then there's a month or a week. What game plan does is basically helps you balance this whole stuff around reactive versus proactive stuff. And that's the biggest thing in corporate and offices in India currently, right? You always want to do a certain thing, but you end up the day thinking, hey, what did I do?
00:13:45
Speaker
or you go through the whole week and say, this was not what I planned to do. So having a game plan just keeps you conscious of what you want to achieve through the day or through the week, whichever is the time frame. You might not do it for sure, but at least you know, hey, this is what I wanted. I think that's one. The second thing again, something which I would call as
00:14:09
Speaker
You know, pick up those pockets of learning, right? The biggest thing that I picked in my career sort of is learning doesn't happen because you attend a conference or you read a book. It does, but perhaps less than 10%. About 70 to 80% of learning happens on the job, right? It happens when you're doing it. It happens when you're picking stuff from your seniors. Your direct boss is the guy whom you learn the most. And of course, you are other seniors in the company or even peers in some places.
00:14:37
Speaker
Be aware of those pockets of learning and grab them with both the hands and go deeper when you get that. If you are making a media plan for the first time and you're working with the media head of the company, you might not be your direct boss. Don't just tick the box and say, I need to get it done by five. Use that opportunity to learn because once you do that and the foundation is set, it's very handy as you move ahead.
00:15:00
Speaker
So yeah, broadly these two, just be proactive, have a game plan, cut into proactive and reactive sections of the day, at least have those two, three things that you want to do yourself. And be very aware of learning opportunities. Okay.
Performance Indicators in Marketing Campaigns
00:15:14
Speaker
So quick question, right? So tell me, specifically to Burger King, imagine, so at Burger King, what are the two, three key KPIs that you look at when you run a campaign? Like, for example, if you were to create a new campaign with
00:15:28
Speaker
you want to use as a platform making campaign. So question A is that, what kind of things are you looking at? What kind of input you're looking at to create the campaign? I think on the campaign, what are the KPIs that you look at? Does it drive more traffic? Does it compensate? Does it get more chat room to media? So what are the KPIs that you look at? Mostly campaign to campaign objectives do change. They only keep increasing.
00:15:57
Speaker
But if I were to say, there will be two to three parts which are really given and logged in as a campaign objective. I think the first and foremost is always a clear metric, clearly well-defined number, which is the sales output, especially if you look at a setup or a category like industry like QSR that I'm currently working in, which is Burger King.
00:16:23
Speaker
mostly have, you know, footfalls and number of people working into a restaurant as a key KPI, whatever your campaign, whatever you do, has to get people back into your restaurants. They should be preferring working as in terms and that's the best way of manifesting, seeing that manifest is in numbers in terms of walk-ins and overall sales, right? So any marketing campaign, and again, from all my years of working
00:16:49
Speaker
always and should have a sales-related clear KPI call out. If there is a campaign that says there is no sales KPI, then there's something wrong, honestly. Or perhaps it's not sustainable. That's one. The second thing, again, for every campaign, and increasingly in these times in the last few years where the clutter and the amount of content is only going up, consumers have lesser waking hours and lesser time compared to the amount of content that's up there in the air.
00:17:18
Speaker
Is the KPI on brand salience right the number of eyeballs and exposures that you've delivered on the campaign? Right and that's not really just a function of the amount of money you spend it's also about how much did your campaign travel, right? How is your campaign sticking? How much is your is the campaign really organically driving eyeballs that people are getting it as a forward on a whatsapp or Wanting to read it or wanting to see that video that I think
00:17:46
Speaker
gone are those days when we used to put loads of money on TV and just push it, push it. So that's the second KPI, which is on the whole failures part of it. These two, I think, are a given for any campaign to campaign. But the third one could be more subjective and topical to the stuff that you do. For example, we've done stuff on a launch of one of our new formats, which we call the loaded wraps.
00:18:16
Speaker
Right. So there was clearly about driving awareness of the launch. Right. We just needed an expert. So that's again very specific. So I would leave it with the first two are kind of universal to most of the campaigns that we do. The third one more specific to what you've done. It could be a launch of a new product. It could be about maximizing a Valentine's Day window from a business perspective or it could just be about
00:18:46
Speaker
something to do with a new launch like a shake or a breakfast session. Got it.
Adapting Global Brands to Local Markets
00:18:53
Speaker
You mentioned an interesting thing in the last answer. You said that gone the times when you will spend a boatload of money on buying media for TV and then hope that it travels far. So just want to understand what are the current, I mean, I don't want specifics, but if you can tell me what is the marketing mix in terms of channels right now, what the percentage goes on
00:19:15
Speaker
And how is that moved over the period? Yeah. So I think I'll give the top three and very typical for our kind of a business. The top three basically would be TV. TV still is our single biggest saliency driver. And not just for this category, but overall. In India, the cost of investment for the number of use that you get is unmatched by TV still.
00:19:45
Speaker
So if you have a big mass message where you need to talk to millions of people at a best possible rate, TV is the number one medium. And TV viewership and penetration is very high up there. As much as other modes are increasing in penetration, TV is still looking. So in terms of your mix to your question, TV is absolutely there in the top three. The second one is obviously digital.
00:20:13
Speaker
which is both social media but also stuff that you see as an ad placement in terms of YouTube or Insta that you go. So digital is number two and number three is really the point of purchase which has presence in malls or restaurants or drive-throughs or even restaurants in the area like Bandra or another. So that's really the third which is the point of purchase.
00:20:42
Speaker
So in terms of investment and top three mix platforms that we chose, these are the two. So next question is like, you know, Beverly happened to be a brand which is, you know, obviously a global brand with presence across the world, per se. So how easy or tough is it to, you know, work with these global mandates and then tweak them to regional sensitivity and cultural differences? So how do you navigate that entire discussion and debate?
00:21:11
Speaker
Yeah, and this is a conversation. A lot of MNCs, a lot of boardroom conversations happen on this point. And I think now there are enough and very good case studies of brands that have really cracked this. And I think it's not as tough as it might look from the outside. I'll try and make it simple. Firstly, there are two things which are very local in nature. And this changes from country to country.
00:21:41
Speaker
First and foremost, food is very local in nature, right? What we eat in India is very different from what we eat in China or even Sri Lanka, right? Which are like next neighboring countries, right? Or even, again, within Southeast Asia, again, as much as they're all together, geographically, it's very different.
00:22:03
Speaker
So food is very local in nature. So if you look at most of the brands in India, and I can give you a lot of food examples, that's been what I've been doing. A lot of the food brands have really adapted and brought in the Western formats, but in a way that Indians would appreciate, right? So for example, if you go back to Kellogg's, one of the fastest selling very in there is basically conflicts with almond honey, right?
00:22:32
Speaker
which is basically badam and honey. I mean, that's nothing. Badam and honey. And it just makes a difference to the consumer. It's very presented in a local format. And again, in terms of whole culture, which is again, that's the second point. Food is local and again, culture is very local. Cultural nuances, the insights at play. There's no other country which has a festival like Diwali. There is no country which has 14 big festivals in one year.
00:23:02
Speaker
There is no other country where our whole love and the equation, the camaraderie that families have with parents and siblings is very different in India compared to many other countries. So, for example, look at some of the stuff that Cadbury's has done, the way they positioned the chocolates, which is Kuch Meetha Ojai or celebration. Again, very local in nature. So, to answer your question really,
00:23:27
Speaker
The business continues to be what it is, which is a global business, Kellogg's continues to be a business of serious. The proposition continues to be what it is, which is global, which is in the sense of, you know, making mornings better or giving you the right energy in the mornings and you have to compromise on nutrition for mornings and so forth.
00:23:49
Speaker
or in the case of Burger King, a good enjoyable time while having your favorite food in one of the restaurants, right? The propositions, the business all remains the same. What is different? And this is where brands win or do not win is to make the food locally appealing and launch it and present it in a sense that there is local cultural nuance, right? Then it sticks better. Then your campaigns work better. Then you're talking in the right way to the consumer locally.
00:24:16
Speaker
A lot of brands which have tried to just copy paste what works in the US or UK, both the food and the cultural nuance really didn't fire so much. Yeah, we are aware of examples, right? Obviously, not different than that. So that to me, if I were to really distill it in a sharp simple way, these two I think brands which got it right really worked.
Burger King's COVID-19 Adaptation Strategies
00:24:40
Speaker
Okay, the next set of questions is around corona. I am going to start introduction and then we can ask a couple of questions around that.
00:24:48
Speaker
So Shini, what has happened over the last two, three months and nobody seems to be knowing when this would go away from our lives, how is Burger King going to adapt itself to the new realities of the world that will live in for at least the next six months? I think first and foremost, we are in the business of restaurants. So we are pretty much in the center of it as far as the whole disruption is concerned.
00:25:19
Speaker
And what we are doing at Burger King really is, one, as a global QSR, as a global QSR of being around for a few decades now, we have fairly evolved processes on health, safety, sanitization, and cleanliness. It's kind of protocols, and every crew member goes through training. Everybody is a regular training mechanism. Everybody once who joined the company goes through that.
00:25:47
Speaker
full training process, spends four, five days in a restaurant, learning all of these things. So it's fairly imbibed into our DNA, right? But what we've done is we've kind of taken this and turned them up a few notches higher, saying, hey, if at all this was ever relevant, this is the time, right? Once you answer your question as a QSR, as a global QSR with all these processes established and people train and having it at the core of our DNA, we feel
00:26:18
Speaker
good that we are prepared for something like this, right? In terms of serving food in a way which is absolutely sanitized, clean and hygiene, right? In fact, when this whole thing came up and we realized what we're dealing with, we said everything stops and the number one priority is the safety of our crews and consumers, right? Safety of crew and consumer is our number one priority. That's what we said. Number two, like I said, we just dialed up this whole piece on
00:26:46
Speaker
safety, sanitization, and health and hygiene. What we are really bringing in Saurabh and can't wait to show everybody once the restaurants open here, we're creating a whole new unique experience, right? So the restaurants when they open really are going to look much different, right? Imagine this, you walk into a Burger King restaurant, straight away you see floor markers, you know, just calling it out saying, hey, please, would you maintain this distance while you order your food, right?
00:27:14
Speaker
When you do that, walk to the counter, there you see the crew completely sanitized with their gloves, with their masks and with their goggles. And you know, they just look the whole way is going to be different. Then you get the whole package of food, which is completely packed and sealed so that only you can open it. And then you walk into the restaurant or the lobby area. There again, you see there are a few tables which are just marked for saying, hey, this is this is an anti-social table, so to say, right, because I need to maintain distance even when you're
00:27:46
Speaker
So, the whole look and feel is going to be much different. What we are trying to do is to blend this seamlessly without disrupting the good time that we offer in our restaurants. At the end of the day, a fast food experience is about four or five friends going in, having a good meal, spending time, joking around.
00:28:03
Speaker
sharing each other's fries. It's what it is, right? We all have done it. It's a communal experience, right? As a lot of people say, it's a communal experience. Yeah. So we want to blend as seamlessly as we can some of these social distancing norms into the whole thing. And last one is I think tech will play a very big role. So what we're doing in Burger King is we're going to launch a dining, a zero contact dining app, basically an app through which you can do all of this.
00:28:33
Speaker
You don't have to stand in the queue. You don't have to pay cash so that there is any contact possible. Everything happens. I'm sitting in a restaurant. I walk into a burger restaurant. I open the app. I place the order. I get a notification saying your food is ready. You can add whatever you want to your food. The choice thing and then you pay through your ATM or whichever wallet you are using and then you just have the food in your table and you can put it if you like it. Please post it back on mr.
00:29:01
Speaker
and come back soon. So, we're trying to get into that experience when we open. So, this is one of those cases where marketing is not just about the function of marketing, not just about communication per se, but also about getting into technology, getting new processes, getting into business operations. So, marketing sort of becomes a wider role for you.
00:29:24
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So I for one, I might be old school or I always thought marketing as a very integrated, anything, especially for a B2C kind of an industry where consumer is the heart of it. Marketing has to own the strategy. Marketing has to own the whole consumer journey experience. Comms and campaign development just happens to be one part of it, right?
00:29:50
Speaker
to eventually own the whole growth agenda of the company, you own the entire consumer journey of the consumer is in contact with the brand. So it's pretty end to end and digital or tech is only one part of it. The comms is only one part of it. Like everything, if I take an example of working, everything from the crew uniform, right? To the tissue, to the sticker or the poster on the bathroom
00:30:18
Speaker
hand version glass everything is a consumer journey right experience right so everything is something which we should in marketing and need in most cases because at the end of the day the consumer led growth is marketing deliverable so
Post-COVID Marketing Strategy Shifts
00:30:36
Speaker
Okay, so how do you think the business or communication will change in the post-COVID world? I mean, broadly as a business, will there be more digital, less TV? What will happen? So what will change? What will not change? It's a tough one and I don't think anybody has a specific answer. Nobody knows how it's going to evolve. But I can call out a few things that I am seeing from where I am. One of the first things that we are seeing overall is
00:31:05
Speaker
you know, the growth, the exponential increase in the whole digitization of businesses. We'll be seeing this all around. So for example, if you see as we talk, the whole education, the online education or digitization of education has grown up massively in the last two months, right? If you see, I was seeing some charts the other day on social media, the US retail e-commerce contribution.
00:31:31
Speaker
I think for almost a decade or two has been hovering around 10 to 15%, which has now gone to 25% in the last two months. What hasn't happened in two decades has happened basically in two months. The whole entertainment is getting digitized, as we see now. We're reading stuff around big budget movies releasing on some of the OTT platforms.
00:31:55
Speaker
So I think that's a trend that we're going to see. And I think my next bet as we talk, I think we're going to see more digitization of sports and gaming. I don't know what that means, but that's likely to be digitized. Food and food delivery, we spoke. That's been on the digitization curve for a couple of years now with the whole food tech platforms that are coming. So a lot.
00:32:21
Speaker
of other businesses and other categories, the whole ramp up of digitization is to go up. That's one key area or a trend that I think as I sit, that I can call it out. Number two, I think in terms of comms, I would put it more as a marketing journey, more than just comms. I think brands and marketeers need to think through how do you plan the consumer experience in an evolving situation like this.
00:32:48
Speaker
Like, for example, I can speak for my industry if the percentage of people venturing out to restaurants are only X percentage compared to what it was before. Now, how do I still deliver the brand experience to them? How do I still make them feel that they are in a bulking restaurant as much as I can? How do I still maintain brand salience? How do I still get my fair share of mind?
00:33:14
Speaker
because they're not coming to a physical setting in a burger in restaurant. I can do much more than if somebody were not really coming there, very clearly. So I think that will be the big challenge in terms of delivering a marketing experience with the new reality. And number two, how do we continue to drive brand salience in a situation like this? And three, as much as we know, we were very clear to one of your earlier questions, what are the typical
00:33:42
Speaker
What's the typical media mix when you put a marketing plan, right? Like TV, outdoor and blah, blah, blah. That would be, I think, kind of challenged and kind of put a question mark. So for example, you know, one of our teams globally has already done this. What they've done is they've taken all the Burger King outdoors and made them as backgrounds in Zoom. So we really need to think through as to how will you be relevant as a brand and in terms of the journey and in terms of the salience and what media choices would you make?
00:34:08
Speaker
Apart from what you do for Burger King and that Zoom example that you gave me about your global team, is there any other branded message or initiative from a different player, could be your category, your industry, that you really like as a marketer in these times, like this time of the crisis? Anything else that has caught your eye? I got a few favorite brands of mine and it's no surprise that they continue to be very relevant and very
00:34:35
Speaker
cut through in terms of messaging, even in these times. I think my all-time favorite brands is Nike. And very completely with no personal value, just from a strict marketing lens, the kind of work they do, the kind of advertising they do, and the kind of revenues that they do. It's not just a brand which is very good to see stuff. If you look at their market share and their business, it's literally double the next guy.
00:35:04
Speaker
and they do it consistently across country. So Nike continues to be my favorite brand and look at the stuff that they've done with the whole lockdown where they said you might be playing in your own home gym or you might be playing on your yoga mat. You might be thinking nobody's watching you but you're actually playing for 4.4 billion or 7 billion people all across the world because they're staying home. Just beautiful and they do it consistently well.
00:35:33
Speaker
I have my friend online who is also a part-time stand-up comedian and is a great fan of Burger King and has been ordering Burger King even during the lockdown. And he has this question to ask you, so over to him.
00:35:56
Speaker
Hi, this is this is great being being on a you know podcast with you and thanks. Thanks for the introduction. And yes, thanks for the burgers too.
00:36:09
Speaker
I have a very tactical question around this whole situation where we are forced to not have one-on-one interactions physically. We are forced to adopt the digital way of doing things. I've been a marketeer myself for about 13, 14 years. And they always say, in fact, this is ancient wisdom, that the brief is the key to any campaign.
00:36:39
Speaker
So I wanted to understand from you how easy or difficult has it been for you and your team to get the briefing right on big campaigns without even meeting the teams and the agencies physically. And if it has been simplified to an extent where it is definitely seen as very much feasible, will it be the way going forward also? The whole digital, you know, even the briefs happening digitally, entirely remotely.
00:37:08
Speaker
Great question. I think firstly let me say thanks for the love on Burger King. We spend a lot of time to ensure our single, every single order is kind of got with love and taken well. And to your question specifically, I think firstly let me tell you physical separation or working in distant teams is perhaps the least of the issues to actually screw up a brief.
00:37:35
Speaker
There are a lot of other reasons, and I've done it myself so many times. Very brief is truly screwed, and you should talk to a few agency guys, the kind of jokes that they would have, I'm sure, in terms of walk briefs with 30 asks in one brief kind of thing. So I think what I'm missing really in the current digitally operational model in terms of briefing the agencies, et cetera, is the quality time that
00:38:04
Speaker
in co-creating stuff. A lot of stuff actually gets co-created when I sit with my creative guy, with my digital guy, with a whiteboard. You know, that whole brainstorming session where you kind of feed off each other, where you kind of leverage, where you put in long hours and you just come out of it feeling good. I'm missing that. For some reason, you know, the whole digital environment, the whole thing makes it a bit of a transaction. A says something, B reacts, C comes in,
00:38:33
Speaker
I'm missing that magic of, you know, 5-6 office getting locked in a room and coming out with kick-ass creative stuff. So it's more the second part of it. Briefing is still easy because briefing the way it works normally is a lot of time has to be spent by the brand teams and the marketing teams to come out with a very, very sharp and clear brief that can inspire the creators. That is still an integral team, let's say. Magic after that.
00:38:59
Speaker
Once they come up to round 1, round 2 and then we end up co-creating, then we say wow this is a thing. And I think that's part of it. You must heard the latest episode of the marketing connect podcast. A show for marketeers by marketeers. The show was brought to you by C4E and the podium.