Interview: Digital content is now turning more topical: Vincent Noronha, Havmor Ice Creams

Vincent Noronha, Vice-President- Marketing speaks at length about the 75 years of Havmor Ice Creams and its advertising journey so far.

For Havmor Ice Creams, the last few months leading up to the 75th anniversary, the company has experienced a transformation, both in case of strategy and creativity. Noronha gives credit to the entire team for brand performance and its significant accomplishment.

In conversation with Social Samosa, Vincent Noronha sheds light on Havmor Ice Creams' advertising and marketing journey in India.

Excerpts:

How would you define Havmor India's advertising journey to date and your fondest memories with it?

Havmor recently celebrated its platinum jubilee marking an era of serving ice creams filled with goodness in India. The journey which started as a small shop is now one of India’s favorite ice cream brands. Havmor has always been known for its Quality & Choice of ice creams which has made India ‘Havmor’.

Brand ‘Havmor’ will continue to fulfill the consumer promise through its range of ice creams and adjacent products in the future.

Our advertising journey is focussed on delivering goodness through its range of products. With our last campaign, the brand positioned itself with the ‘Made of Milk’ promise. ‘The Cool Gaiz (cows)’ communicated the message in a playful yet effective way across media.

While Havmor’s communication is lead with product messaging, visually it is communicated in a fun and a young manner by using Havmor’s Mascot “The Cool Gaiz”.

How has Havmor leveraged digital to its core to build the required connect?

For the last couple of years, we have utilized the digital and social media to reach out to our target audience in unique ways. One of the award-winning online campaign we initiated in 2016 and yet continues the Coolest Summer Job, which now has several lakhs of participation each year. We have used the digital platforms actively which includes the creation of a special position of Chief Tasting Officers, for soon-to-be-launched flavors. It was a simple step to get all the ice cream lovers pan-India together through an online medium in order to showcase their passion for ice cream.

Similarly, we also host a social media page ‘Ice Cream Tales – ICT’ with over 1.3 lakh fans, where we provide an online roof to all ice cream lovers to come and share their memories. We have taken this initiative to the next level by getting this online club offline and getting these ice cream connoisseurs physically under one roof in every metro city. You need to subscribe to the ICT page to get invited to the on-ground event.

On the other hand, the digital content is now turning more topical, which is creating a buzz around the brand. For instance, the recent post #proudofisro dedicated to the Chandrayan 2 project got a remarkable response from the consumers.

The recent campaign was about Utsaav pack #GharAaoTohHavmorLao, which was endorsed by over 20 TV Celebrities, giving the message of togetherness and took us back to the old school days of having ice-cream in a market, one of the traditional ways to eat ice-creams.

Digital and social media are playing a big role in making the new products reach the target consumers and Havmor, as a brand is making all the efforts to do so.

Could you name some of the key and memorable campaigns?   

One of the most key campaigns for the brand is the Coolest Summer Job. Havmor’s Coolest Summer Job is a consumer engagement program, where the participants get a chance to work closely with the brand. The idea behind this campaign is to give the coolest job to the passionate Chef and ice-cream lover. The third season broke all the records as there were 115,378 entries and 2,700 video applications.  The campaign reach was a phenomenal 30 million through social media, on-pack advertising, and influencer marketing.

This year, over the three days of the campaign, 248 new flavors, 8 new ice-cream formats, and 19 benefit spaces were discovered and then chosen to be developed into products.

Coolest Summer Job has now become a calendar event in the ice cream category and comes across as true democratization of an activity, where the product idea is of the consumer, made by the consumer and eventually for the consumer.

What has been the key marketing strategy and the differentiator that keeps you apart from the competition? 

• More Memories
  with an Ice Cream –

Creating consistent and constant social media content to keep customers engage with the brands. Focussed approach on getting more User Generated Content. Democratizing our campaigns (Coolest Summer Job) to include consumers in the journey of manufacturing ice creams.

• More Choice –

Every quarter coming up with new quirky flavors which set the brand apart from the others

Festive Season Product launches – This year we launched 6 new products in October, set a new norm of introducing new products outside of summer.

Similarly, we set a new trend last year during Diwali by introducing ‘Utsav’, Havmor’s gift pack.

• More Value in
  every Purchase –

We believe in offering the best to our consumers and hence we never compromise on quality and choice of inputs.

Apart from this, we regularly offer more value to our consumers through promotions; partnering with brands like Gaana.com, Amazon, Imagica and PayTm to give free subscriptions, cashback, tickets, etc.