Paul Writer launches Innovative Marketer Dialogue, 
Video interview series with CMOs highlights marketing best practices
Anuradha Narasimhan
Director – Marketing
Britannia Industries Ltd
On Challenges that Marketers face today …
I think the three most critical challenges marketers face include: premiumization, increased density of competitiveness, as well as cost of reach. I’ll take a minute and talk you through what I mean by each of them.
I work with Britannia and it is one of the most staple everyday consumed categories. For us to move consumers up the value chain is one of our largest challenges, they are in the practice of paying us Rs 2, Rs 3 or Rs 5 and our concern is how do we shift that higher and higher in favor of brands and products? So premiumisation is something that we face as a challenge and we would not like to do it only at the top of the pyramid. We would like this to be done across the pyramid, so premiumisation across the pyramid is probably the single largest challenge that we are facing.
“At Britannia, for us to move consumers up the value chain is one of our largest challenges, they are in the practice of paying us Rs 2, Rs 3 or Rs 5”
The second is comparative intensity and that does not need any detailing, every marketer and sales person and pretty much everybody who works in corporate India fraternity today knows the extent of competitiveness that extends in every category. For us, it’s a combination of multinationals as well as local players, we like to think that we know Indian Palettes a little better than perhaps the multinationals but the intensity of competition is here and increasing everyday and is here to stay.
The third one that we worry about and spend time over is actually the cost of reach and by this I mean both distribution as well as communication reach. The cost of reach has been growing every year and the rupee or the dollar gets us littler and littler with every passing day so it takes more money to reach our products, it takes more money to reach our advertisers and those are the three challenges that we spend our waking hours and our sleeping hours thinking about.
I do agree that in FMCG getting the consumers to move up the value chain is really tough.
I enjoy the interviews.
Moving consumers up the value chain is not just tough, it is impossible. The most important challenge for marketers in my mind is how you are perceived by your consumers. You just can’t change it easily. Instead, focus on strengthening your positioning at the Rs. 2, Rs. 3 or Rs. 5 brackets and create new categories for your premium brands. Think Toyota and Lexus for the success and there are innumerable examples of failures.
If you are going to focus on doing this within your existing marketing mix, it just is going to kill what you are doing well currently.