Palms, beaches, blue skies, tea gardens and an exotic holiday experience – the first thoughts of being a summer intern in Sri Lanka were nothing short of mesmerizing. More so, the thought of being a part of
Godrej Consumer Products Limited, the
best FMCG company to work for (Economic Times survey, 2016) added a flavor to an eagerly awaited learning experience in Marketing.
After an overwhelming orientation, where we interacted with top business leaders, I landed in Colombo airport to the warm aroma of fresh tea. To my delight, I was accommodated in a sea-facing bungalow with a Sri Lankan family and it took absolutely no time for me to feel at home. Congenial, friendly and welcoming, the Sri Lankan people were already having an impact. Having got a
brand management project for a newly launched mosquito repellent, it was obligatory to get right into the lives of the people, into their homes, and out with a bunch of dead mosquitoes. The beauty of my project lay in the amount of
freedom I got to chart my course. With ‘Product’ in place, I set out to
prioritize the other P’s in formulating
short and long term marketing strategy as the key deliverables for my project.
General Trade visits with local reps communicating more with smiles than words in a comprehensible language, to
Modern Trade visits in the 4 ultra-powerful key accounts that dominate a supermarket-heavy buying pattern, every single cue was important as I had to get into the
mind of the consumer. With close to
500 visits in place, I had
identified the
opportunities in wholesale, trade promotions and BTL communication.
The second leg was to
read the consumer’s minds. Health conscious, luxury-loving, peaceful yet value-sensitive, topped with a high affinity for quality, meant that product positioning had to be spot on.
Discounts and margins play a humongous role in purchases in Sri Lanka, yet, if a product is inexpensive it is assumed to be inferior. Celebrities are not ‘celebrated’ as much as in India and
digital presence is limited primarily to Facebook. Add to that, myriad
Government regulations on promotions that made life tougher than ever for marketers. With communication priorities, regulations and brand objectives in place, I went on to set forth strategies for a revamped communication plan. The most challenging consumers were those who actually preferred getting bitten rather than suffering from the harms of a repellent!
I also got the opportunity to
work closely with 3 top media and creative agencies, spending hours in comic-book themed ‘thinking rooms’ and ‘design studios’ where being crazy and
out-of-the-box was the very Job Description!
However, on a personal level, there was a lot of
adjustment required. With shops closing down at 8 pm, ‘compensatory holidays’ when Government holidays fall on weekends, every mid-week holiday translating to a week of inaction and an uber-strong affinity for rice in every meal, it was challenging to prevent procrastination. It really is challenging to devise path-breaking business level strategies in a beach-facing bungalow with beautiful sunsets and the aroma of fresh sea food tingling your senses.
With a new distribution strategy, a
nation-wide BTL activation campaign backed by PoSM and digital media, and a detailed short-term and long-term marketing strategy, my project came to a conclusive end by winning the Best Project award among 44 interns nation-wide.
Brand management, a great mentor, great peers, a great company and of course exotic weekend getaways in Sri Lanka, that is all I could have asked for, and got, from my summer internship.
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This article has been authored by Abhirup Lahiri, student of MBA (IB) 2015-17 batch at Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (I.I.F.T.) Delhi.