Schneider Electric India revenue from operations rose 56.16%  to Rs 10,360.57 crore in FY22 from Rs 6,634.38 crore in FY21, as per the regulatory filings accessed by business intelligence platform, Tofler. Moreover, the company’s profit after tax (PAT) rose 943.56% to Rs 570.93 crore in FY22 from Rs 54.71 crore, during the same period in the preceding year. It also upped its advertising spends by 27.6% to Rs 59.81 crore in FY22, from Rs 32.15 crore in FY21. 

In a conversation with BrandWagon Online, Rajat Abbi, vice president, global marketing, chief marketing officer, Schneider Electric Greater India, shared his insights on the company’s efforts towards sustainable solutions and its advertising and marketing strategy. (Edited Excerpts)

How has the advertising and marketing tactics evolved for a brand like Schneider? How has your marketing budget changed compared to last fiscal?

Like any big brand, which is there in the Indian market, our marketing spends is also focussed largely on digital. A good chunk of our marketing spends, almost 60-70%, goes into digital because we believe that it enables you to connect with wider audiences than traditional mediums. 

Digital Marketing also is able to give you a better return-on-investment (RoI) because of its ability to allow you to track the spending, where you’re spending, how much you’re spending, and what return you’re getting. I think about 50% of our overall advertising spend last year was on digital marketing, this year it is around 60%. So, it will continue to grow in a positive growth trajectory. 

Additionally, we continue to invest in brand building as sustainability is in our DNA. We have been talking about sustainability for over the last two decades now, it is fundamentally how the company is structured. So, we have used platforms such as the Indian Premier League (IPL), to partner  with Rajasthan Royals to create an overall communication and a narrative around sustainability and how Indians can play an important role in creating a sense of urgency, in driving the sustainability narrative in the country. 

We are also looking for B2B (business-to-business) events to create overall awareness around digitisation and sustainability. Our aim is to differentiate ourselves as a company from some of the other companies which are there in the market through innovative and practical ideas.

How has the role of AI changed the marketing scenario? How have you implemented AI in your campaigns?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more and more critical. Some of the examples which I can give you are AI chatbots on our website that help in understanding what the consumer’s perspective is and what consumers are  interested in. Another example of AI is how we buy our media. So, when we roll-out  our campaigns, specifically the digital ones, it is extremely critical that we show the right content, right message to the right stakeholder and target audience. Now, that is something which we used to do manually earlier. 

With programmatic advertising, when you are going to buy a media inventory, there are AI tools which are available to tell where your target group (TG) is available. We also understand the challenges present in AI implementation, for example, AI tools are capable of creating creatives and you can create a complete campaign using AI tools. But in that process, you might end up creating a photograph or something more creative, on which you don’t have any Intellectual Properties (IP) or trademark, and it can be somebody else’s trademark. 

So, we are very selective when it comes to what kinds of tools of AI we want to use, and which are the tools we don’t want to use, we are not in a hurry to use every tool available as there are a lot of legal repercussions included. The journey has started, and the next one to two years are going to be exciting. There are internal projects going on where we are trying to see what are the newer AI tools which can be bought and used by marketers.

Since Schneider Electric’s brand Luminous Power Technologies is associated with Rajasthan Royals, what are the plans for the World Cup? Is the brand coming up with any campaign? How is this association important for the company?

Cricket is something which every Indian likes, when we launched our Green Yodha initiative, which is our sustainability initiative to bring individuals, corporate policymakers, and people on the ground on a common platform to discuss what are the actions needed to make India more sustainable, cricket is something which we picked as one of the core themes or strategies.

Our association with the IPL team Rajasthan Royals has been two years long, our group brand Luminous is their principal supporter. There could be more teams with whom we can announce associations. The World Cup is for us is one another opportunity where you would see Schneider Electric present in some or the other form. But we are looking for sports beyond cricket also, it could be athletic in the Asian Games, among others. Our aim is to choose those strategies and areas, which can help us connect with Indians in the fastest possible way. So, we started with cricket two years back, and now we might move to some other sports such as Badminton or Soccer.

When it comes to marketing during the on-going ICC Cricket World Cup, we have tactical trade marketing campaigns lined up wherein our distributors or partners are participating in a lot of internal initiatives, but we are not launching a full fledged 360 degree kind of an integrated campaign because the tourney is not very sustainable. If you do a carbon footprint of the entire cricket World Cup,  there is a massive carbon emission which the tournament will contribute to.

What are the channels employed to drive engagement?

We use a 360-degree kind of approach, 80% of our spends are on B2B and events are an extremely critical part of our marketing strategy. We do more than 200 events every year, these events could be in various scales and sizes. In digital, our investment is going towards performance marketing campaigns, because marketing is the growth engine of the company. Thus, every single Euro which I am investing in, I’m responsible for delivering a certain top line and bottom line impact on the company. So therefore, we invest in  performance marketing campaigns, which are generally lead generation campaigns. We are big on social media including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, among others. 

Then, we are also now using apps in a big way. For example, recently we launched WhatsApp for business and India is the only country for Schneider Electric where this tool has been piloted. In that first phase, we have launched this tool for retailers, distributors and electricians and the aim is to connect with stakeholders and target audience in the simplest way possible. Influencer marketing is another one area where we want to be very selective. 

What is your vision behind the campaign Yatra? Who is the target audience?

The vision behind this campaign was to make something which can go to people, because most of the time we try to bring people to us, but through this campaign, we wanted to go to the length and breadth of the country including educational institutions, shopping malls, media hubs, and so on. Therefore, over the next six months the ‘Yatra’ vehicle is going to travel to more than 60 cities. Our aim is to connect with at least 20 million customers, partners and  stakeholders. Moreover, through our initiative, we will be aiming to convert 10,000 citizens  into Green Yodha.

The campaign is not just about sustainability but telling people the strong commitment which Schneider Electric has to the economic and social growth of the country.

What initiatives are planned for the festive period for the brand?

B2B accounts for 75-80% of our business and the balance is B2C. So, we are a balanced company with the kind of product we sell in the market. Our products are not very seasonal. But we also have an e-commerce player, where we sell our products on platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart. So, when Amazon launches the Great Indian Festival or Flipkart launches the Big Billion Days, we also partner with these ecommerce companies and try to give offers and discounts to our consumers. They are likely to continue in the short to mid-term.

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