by Irma Mutuc
Pamela Takai, Marketing Director Asia Pacific, Mondelēz International, talk about their company’s decisively gung-ho stance on their brand marketing
MANILA – It was quite surprising and refreshing to hear a marketing practitioner talk about how they’re cultivating a culture of fearlessness in their organization. Pamela Takai, Marketing Director Asia Pacific of Mondelēz International, showed the Tambuli audience how a global marketing organization like them is embracing change and challenging themselves to go beyond the tried and tested. Takai presented case studies showcasing three of their brands and how, in their effort to make their brand count and make a difference in the consumer’s lives, earned more than their expected share of respect and loyalty aside from shares.
Her first example was the Tang-Galing Club, advocacy campaign for their beverage brand Tang. It was designed to empower kids and allow them to get their hands into a real recycling activity by way of “Project Recyclass” where school kids collected foil packs which were then made into plastic school chairs. The chairs were then donated to a number of public schools nationwide. Takai said the campaign got a lot of citations and in fact, was lauded in last year’s Tambuli Awards, “The message was simple: kids have the power to make the world a better place.”
Her second case study was “Breathe the Change. It was for Halls candy mint, which was a five-decade old brand in India. The task was to reverse the brand’s signs of aging and to speak to the youth today. Halls adopted a village called Debramal, which has no access to electricity. They installed windmills there and using an online platform invited the people to “give their breath” and “breathe positivity” towards getting the windmills to run. The campaign successfully created a lot of buzz and made Halls popular with the young consumers.
The last example showed how the Mondelēz biscuit brand Honey Maid leveraged their brand DNA of wholesomeness and created a campaign called “This is Wholesome” which featured different kinds of American families (traditional, interracial, blended, same-sex). The message being no matter how different families may be, they remain wholesome because the connections remain the same. The campaign was powerful but it was also polarizing and thus, got some backlash online with some even calling the brand “sinful”. The brand collected all the negative online comments and asked two artists to use them to create an artwork to signify love. The brand stayed true to their inspiring brand DNA and before long the backlash was overpowered by a wave of support.
Takai was quick to point out that when brands and marketers commit to drive fearlessness, there is risk involved but there’s also much more to reap and she closed by enjoining everyone in the audience, “Be fearless!”
