It began with an interview question of what my favourite Britannia brand was and my startling response of - Marie. I went on to elucidate why Marie works best in East India, my home ground. It ended with me questioning the MD’s strategy I read of. A questioning mind will lead you to answers and this time it led me to a life altering internship experience at one of India’s oldest FMCG.
(Imagine the pride of an intern when your Salesman says “Humne India ka pehla bread becha”. Britannia pioneered the sliced bread industry in 1954)
Let me map my journey through an analogy. Think of all 25 interns as warriors, their 10 b-schools as mighty kingdoms and the final presentation the battleground. This is the fervor we worked with. Before the warriors left for their training ground, i.e. week long induction at its Bangalore headquarters, our mission statements, i.e. project titles were handed out. It was time for research, some asking around, creating some base on how to tackle the project. One pertinent thing that Britannia taught us is that “Being lost is a rather good place to start”. All 25 warriors, in their arsenal had the Kotlers and the Druckers of the world with built up notions of consumer behavior or the importance of going Digital, bulky advertising budgets or models of distribution. Apply one of those case study tricks, lo and behold! - Best Intern. The castle that we had built with bookish blocks quickly dissipated when Britannia told us “Unlearn!”.
At the induction, all warriors were made battle ready, we shared space with the Heads of Sales, Marketing, HR, Dairy, etc. We heard the gospel from the horse’s mouth, sat in awe as master magicians weaved magic in their domains. Gruelling sessions were fueled by plate after plate of yum cookies. At the day’s end, the beautiful Bangalore helped the Warriors unwind. We were ready for war and transported to our battle stations.
Delving deeper into my mission statement, I was commissioned to scope the market for Britannia’s fresh products division and propose a GTM for a product I think is launch-ready. It is always best to develop a project charter, a time-sheet regularly updating accomplished tasks and To-Dos.
Do not approach any project head-on or with preconceived notions, detect the barriers and develop levers. After 20 days of a structured market visit to retailers, I was drowned with data. Now it was time to create music from the noise of data (Excel is your best friend!). A list of products was subjected to a Product funnelling process where unfeasible products were eliminated at each step based on certain filters to judge their potential and salience. Applying the
Concentric (new products that are synergistic to current product lines) and
Horizontal strategy (new products that are adjacencies but appeal to current consumers) I divided the products into- Immediate launch, Potential brand builders and Back-burner projects. Now that I had heard the retailer’s voice, I also had to hear what the consumers had to say. A consumer survey steered me towards their choice of products in the category, apprehensions against them, needs and demands. This is crucial to GTM. Now for war-time strategy, I touched base with the 7 P’s of marketing - Positioning, Product format, Pricing, Promotion, Packaging, Place and People.
An FMCG internship may mandate 12hrs of your day, 6 days of the week, in a nondescript village but what an experience! You take your learning from a 600-page marketing book to a 200-population village. You get to hear the good and the bad, and what an amazing change-maker does is pays more attention to the brick-bats.
When I signed up for this project it was a Sales internship, little did I know I would get a taste of Supply chain, Marketing, Business Research, Operations, People Skills, Finance, etc. It truly was an
industry deep dive. It taught me, advertisements might not be the key to greater sales, my views as a consumer might not reflect in the survey data and data is gospel truth, a distribution model when applied might increase sales but also operating costs. My admiration for
India’s most admired food company just increased by tonnes.
The day of ultimate showdown arrived, 25 warriors fought valiantly for their spot in the top 8 who would be presenting to the MD, Varun Berry. It was an immense delight to even witness the superiority of projects and the sheer amount of work put in. To put a stunning end to an equally exhilarating journey, the
Ting Ting Ti-Ting Twenty-Five dined together one last time bidding adieu to a lifetime of memories, learning, friendships. As we sign off as interns, we fold and keep away not just a black Britannia t-shirt but the team jersey.
Once a Britannian, always a Britannian.
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The extensive market research[/caption]