Flashback to 2000s, and a campaign from Perfetti Van Melle India took the country by storm. Set in the times before electricity became the norm, the advertisement saw agile and flexible performers, taking their place as various forms of electric fixtures. Come sunset, the bright and sparkling smile of the performers illuminated the car, streetlights and even the palace. This was of course, the ‘Sparkling Smiles’, campaign for Happydent. Fast forward to today and Perfetti Van Melle India (PVMI) is back with a new Campaign “Chamking Gum: Chamka Muskaan, Jagmag Jahaan”, that rekindles the brand’s storytelling with a fresh, cinematic lens—celebrating a radiant smile and its power to inspire imagination while drawing viewers into a visually rich narrative world. The campaign is crafted to resonate with a new generation of consumers who value authenticity, playfulness, and purpose.
Sharing the process of the latest campaign, Gunjan Khetan, Marketing Director – India, Perfetti Van Melle says that the journey began on a sunny and wintry morning in January 2022, when the Perfetti Van Melle team was in discussion with their creative agency McCann India on how energy could be sparked into brand Happydent. He says, “What we've come up with is a true reflection of what brand Happydent stands for. Our agency McCann India and the brand team cracked the right communication for the brand based on a deep understanding of consumers and what they are looking for. What they thought of the brand, what we are doing right and not doing right. When you go through this journey, you get clarity and this brings in consistency. We anchored ourselves on the fact that Sparkling Smile is a brand asset and can't be taken away as Happydent is a legacy brand. A legacy brand has to keep reinventing itself to be relevant to the latest consumer without letting go the core of the brand. At the same time, we need to change to be able to stay relevant to our consumers and have clarity, these two pieces was super important.”
Taking the brand asset of ‘Sparkling Smiles’ forward, the brand added a purpose in line with social responsibility to generate conversations and awareness and highlight the improper conduct of littering their surroundings. The focus is being imaginative yet insightful reminder that small acts of brightness can spark larger societal change. Purpose also emerged as a key consumer insight with GenZ searching for purpose, excitement, meaning and the best product. Khetan states, “Some categories are losing relevance while some categories are gaining relevance. As a category, chewing gums is stuck in the middle. The one objective of this campaign was to inspire interest, and excitement around chewing gums as a category. We felt that we needed to do something that Gen Z can understand and resonates with their values. That's why it was so important for us to take ‘Sparkling Smiles’ and add a social responsibility to excite core consumers, as this insight also across cohorts.”
Balancing Social Responsibility, Purpose & Business Growth
A question that comes up is that how do ensure that focus on social responsibility and purpose helps drive and align with business objectives and profitability. Khetan explains, “At PVMI, any purpose has to spring from the product truth. In the last eight to 10 months, we have done three campaigns based on purpose from the product.”
Taking Happydent as a product, this is a chewing gum that gives brighter and shinier teeth. Backed by a strong visual asset created 20 years ago, the brand has been consistent with the idea of teeth throwing light all around. In its latest campaign, “Chamking Gum: Chamka Muskaan, Jagmag Jahaan”, the light was used as a direction, wherein a chewing gum that gives you bright teeth throws light on problem of littering.
Similarly, for Alpenliebe, the brand articulated itself as, “Ghule Toh Dil Mile,” to represent richness and melt in the mouth sensation of the candy, that sparks warmth to the person eating it and also helps bring people closer.
Looking at the center-filled chewing gum, Center fresh the brand’s recent campaign, Aage Badh - featuring Varun Dhawan – spoke of the brand proposition of sparking freshness. Taking this proposition to the next level, the brand messaged conveyed that when your mouth is fresh, your brain also gets refreshed. This was tuned that now you get a fresh perspective on things and thus can “Aage Badh”, which is also rooted in the insight that Gen Z wants to move on forward.
Khetan states, “If you see the three examples of purpose coming from product, and we have a simple ladder between product and purpose, people will get it. The moment they get it, they'll buy the product for the meaning of the product, not for the form of the product and that will drive profitability for us.”
Commenting on the expected metrics he says, “There are two sets of metrics - the business metric, any campaign needs to perform and give an RoI, whether it's market share, distribution, we need to see an output in some of these metrics.” He continues, “The other metric is what does it do to for the brand, can it carry forward the legacy of the old campaign, what does it do to for brand imagery, KPIs, top-of-mind recall? These are the two buckets of KPIs that we look at whenever we do any campaign.”
Creating Memorable Campaigns & Brand Consistency
As a confectionary company, PVMI comes in the impulse category where the decision to buy a product is made on the spot. In this scenario, a key KPI is to continue to stay top-of-mind with continuous media presence and humourous clutter-breaking campaigns. Khetan says, “PVMI has mastered the art of memorable, clutter breaking campaigns where we have used humour as the tool. Humour is quite relevant and cuts across generations. Humour has worked for us in the past and we will continue to use it. All our brands are built on a humourous communication platform. The challenge is how do you continue to stay humorous? To be honest, that's a struggle and it's not very easy
Tackling decreasing attention is a challenge, particularly with the change in media landscape. In this scenario Khetan says, “We need to ensure that you can stay consistent with what your brand stands for and find new and different ways of telling the story of your brand. Also, use media and the platforms you are present on to your advantage. All of the above has to come together to navigate this challenge.
PVMI: Being Media Present Throughout The Year
Looking at distribution business mix, PVMI is a still general trade heavy business followed by modern trade with e-commerce still not a big contributor currently, primarily on account of selling small ticket price products. This also translates to the media spends with spends on performance marketing, quick commerce or marketplaces being significantly limited, with most of the spends going in brand building, irrespective of which channel that happens. Khetan says, “In a nutshell, our quick-commerce presence as well as spend is limited as part of the portfolio, but at the same time growing very fast.”
PVMI follows active portfolio management, i.e. figuring out where growth and profitability sit and then making strategic choices in the portfolio. A look at PVMI’s portfolio, some brands and categories stand out okay and are supported by investment. On some categories, spends are optimized. Khetan says, “Most of our brands fall in the bucket which is supported by investment or where spends are optimized. We started advertising on Mentos, after almost eight years and we are seeing returns since we started advertising. We continue to bet big on Center Fruit and Happydent. Looking at our indulgent products like Chupa Chups and Alpenliebe are critical for us to sustain and drive growth. It's a constant conversation on product profitability, product growth, external category implications and where do you put your money? This varies by brand and there's not one brand where we are always on. However, when you look at the portfolio, across all the brands, we are present throughout the year.”
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