Social media campaigns, e-comm strategic levers of growth for Nutella: Zoher Kapuswala

Being the category creator for chocolate spread in India, Nutella is dominating the space with a good market share. The overall modern spreads category which includes chocolate, peanut butter and other sandwich spreads is growing rapidly. The reason is the modern lifestyle and evolving tastes and preferences from consumers to trying out different breakfast recipes with chocolate spread as one of their preferred choices. Nutella is one of the most loved brands and as theilies and individuals spend more time cooking at home with their favorite spread, brand witnesses an increase in demand.

In an interaction with Adgully, Zoher Kapuswala, Regional Marketing Manager, Nutella, Pralines, and Tic Tac at Ferrero India, speaks about Nutella’s collaborations with influencers, the growth in the Spreads category, festive season marketing strategy, changing consumer behaviour, campaign and marketing strategy to increase reach, and more.

Nutella recently collaborated with a lot of influencers. How has this association helped the brand, especially in its festive season campaigns?

Influencers have been a part of our activation earlier as well, however, this was the first time that Nutella in India collaborated with culinary experts for its seasonal Diwali and Christmas campaigns. The idea was to curate relevant festive and regional recipes focused on celebrating the occasion with Nutella at the core of it. To add further credibility, we wanted to associate with someone purely as a domain expert who resonates with innovative culinary creations, which was none other than Michelin Star Chef Vikas Khanna. His creativity and exuberance for combining traditions and new styles of cooking fit in well with Nutella’s claim to be a taste enhancer for innovative creations. Thus, our focus was on giving traditional sweets a twist of Nutella during the festive season with Chef Vikas Khanna’s innovation.

In addition, our collaboration with influencers from different regions of India helped us to create a regional connection as well with sweets from these regions being given a twist with Nutella.

The association with Chef Vikas Khanna and other influencers has helped build a stronger consumer connection with simple, delicious, and easy cooking that families can do at home and we saw encouraging engagement on our social platforms, where these activations were deployed.

What are the platforms that you are leveraging for the campaigns? What are your digital promotion strategies?

We are currently taking the digital route for all promotions. We have observed that our target audience is more active on social media, spending nearly 3 hours per day as compared to other media platforms. Through social media campaigns, we aim to establish a stronger connection with our audiences and build a deeper connection by creating meaningful engagement opportunities. E-commerce is another strategic lever of growth for us to strengthen our online presence to allow consumers an easy way to instantly purchase. In order to drive last-mile conversions, Nutella is active on a variety of social media platforms marketplaces and e-commerce sites. Further, quick commerce is also something we are focusing on to expand our business digitally.

What has been the overall performance of the campaign like?

We are happy with the results these associations have got us. Firstly, it has helped build credibility with Nutella consumers. This will also help us drive higher relevance for our consumers. The campaign delivered well on all KPIs and we realized good engagement across platforms with a lot of user content also getting generated. These campaigns were also activated on key e-commerce platforms where we have seen better traction during the festive season as compared to the previous year. All of this validates the fact that festivities and food around it hold a significant amount of relevance for us Indians. Hence, these campaigns with a multi-touch point activation including trade activations have delivered well for us.

What were the key festive season trends that you observed last year?

It is observed that during the festive seasons, due to an increased disposable income in hand, consumers tend to spend more on material goods. An increase in consumer expenses has resulted in purchases of clothing, durable goods, and standard as well as premium FMCG goods for the household. People lean towards spending a considerable amount on food, mainly sweets, and chocolates, in the interest of gifting throughout the festivities. Sweets have always been a part of the Indian culture signaling happy and joyous occasions and a sweet box is the most popular thing to gift. Here, we noticed a rise in sales throughout the holiday season, which lasts until Christmas and New Year.

As the festive season also means an increase in the consumption of sweets, it offers Nutella an opportunity to leverage this insight and become a preferred partner for adding a magical touch to recipes and desserts. Our marketing initiatives have also been on these same lines, as we collaborated with Chef Vikas Khanna and other influencers to curate sweet recipes for Diwali and Christmas with Nutella as a key ingredient. The main attractions among the recipes were the ones that were specially curated for Diwali ‘Nutella Karanji’, and ‘Nutella Barfi Paratha’. Some of the key regional recipes were ‘Nutella Coconut Ladoo’, ‘Nutella Sondesh’ & ‘Nutella Kaju Barfi’. For Christmas, it was Chef Vikas Khanna’s signature Nutella Banana Cake’, which garnered millions of views across platforms and received a lot of love from the audience.

How are you planning to expand the reach of your brands in the Indian market?

Since it entered India, over the years Ferrero has established its presence in the Indian premium chocolate market. In its two decades of operations in the country, it has been a huge hit with the population, having a distinctive taste and packaging design that can be easily recognizable. This has helped establish strong roots for the brand and allowed Nutella to become a category leader within cocoa-based spreads. Furthermore, we see a rise in acceptance and consumption of non-traditional breakfast options. In addition, non-traditional carriers such as bread also witness an increase in penetration. Apart from bread, Nutella with its versatility offers a great-tasting breakfast that can be coupled across a variety of carriers such as Paratha, Dosa, Chapati, etc.

To further drive salience for our brand, we recently launched a new TV communication in key markets that aims to build relevance through this system of carriers. Nutella offers a convenient breakfast option in addition to its great taste.

The Indian Chocolate Spreads category is growing at a fast pace due to the increase in consumption at home and is further expected to grow faster as families stay together more than ever. With a lot of new entrants in the category, we foresee that the category will witness steady growth and hope that Nutella one of the leading brands in the category, will continue to gain from this steady growth.

What kind of growth in sales are you expecting for Nutella in the next five years?

Since we see the Spreads category growing at a significant pace and this category is also witnessing new entrants, the future outlook is quite healthy. We aim to build a strong growth momentum for Nutella and gain a share from this growth. We intend to put strong levers of growth in driving salience with our consumers and expanding distribution. The intent is to double our sales in the next three years and become the top player in Sweet Spreads.