Sunay Bhasin, Head, Marketing, Pizza Hut India
For Sunay Bhasin, the newly appointed Marketing Head of Pizza Hut, every day at the job is a new challenge. With a vast exposure across retail, healthcare and FMCG sectors, the IIM Calcutta alumni, interacts with Ruchika Kumar of Pitch, to discuss Pizza Hut’s plans of becoming a fine-dining experience for consumers. Excerpts:
As the new Marketing Head of Pizza Hut India, what is your business mandate?
Pizza Hut has been evolving from being a place known only for pizzas to now pizzas and much more. The business mandate is to strengthen this transition by offering a diversified menu as per growing consumer demand. Thus, our new tagline – Pizzas and Much More, captures the essence of our strategy. In terms of product we have brought variety in to our menu.
What has led you the brand transform into a fine-dining space for consumers?
We have always been a restaurant concept, since the launch of Pizza Hut in Kansas, USA in 1958. We were never a QSR, but a sit-down restaurant. True to that spirit, this is our evolution to strengthen the brand in the fine-dining space for consumers. Consumers in India today are seeking variety in terms of food; they are more open to experimentation and exposed to international cuisines. The acceptance of new things and idea of exploring new tastes is stronger than it used to be. Our new TV campaign is in tune with this and will help in communicating the large variety of choices we offer to consumers.
So how has the evolution been?
Three and a half years ago, we had only 30 products in our menu. Today, we have more than 100 products to offer. Very few people are aware of the large variety of choices like Skewers, Shakes, Mojitos, Pastas, Gelatos, Cheesecake over and above pizzas, that we offer for every palate. The new campaign conceptualised by JWT will help us in reaching out to consumers who are unaware of our new avatar.
Is this transition in sync with Pizza Hut’s global strategy?
People are seeking variety and this is definitely a global trend, so it is the same in India, although the difference will be in our approach and execution of services, which we believe should be localised.
In your previous roles, you have worked in FMCG and pharmaceutical sectors. How have you utilised the learning there to your role at Pizza Hut?
Learnings from my previous roles have created the base to understand the marketing culture. Teamwork being a critical aspect and managing your brand in terms of various facets of the brand is what I have learnt. However, the retail industry is far more detailed and as compared to the other two sectors, where one has to manage one or two companies, here we are talking about managing 120 outlets across 34 cities. Every restaurant is sort of a factory for me and so the scope on inconsistency is far more. The delivery of promises is more pronounced and hence every day is a new day! In other sectors you may wait over a month to test products, but here you will know the very next day that something isn’t working. This is far more challenging with more speed and action needed.
How have you devised your pricing strategy?
I do not see a strict demographic or psychographic segmentation of our target audience as we are a mass brand. Whether it is a group of college students, office colleagues or even families coming together to strengthen their bond over food, we want to be at their service. There is a very strong part in our strategy that is integral to the Pizza Hut concept, which is to become an affordable casual dining space. So if you take a look at our menu across categories, you will find that we start at affordable price points, for instance Weekday Special three-course meal comes at Rs 99 per head. Hence, we will continue to drive affordability as our key pricing strategy.
How are you utilising new media?
Ten per cent of our media budget is allocated to online media as we think more and more people are spending more time on social media. We have a Facebook page and have been ranked among the top 10 digital brands across categories and have 13 lakh fans in India alone. Overall our advertising is majorly on TV, and being a mass brand we advertise across all genres of TV channels.
How important is localisation of products for you?
We are a Western-Italian gourmet inspired concept and we will continue to innovate in appetisers, beverages, main-course and desserts. However, we are working in an Indian market, so if you really want to deliver the best in any market, you have to be somewhat localised. Along with Pizza Hut global specialties, we have a mix of options for the Indian palate. If we have exotic western beverages, we also have Masala Lemonade, which is the best selling item among beverages. If you look at pizzas, we have Kadhai-Paneer and Kadhai-Chicken and at the same time we have Veggie Supreme and Chicken Supreme, so we always create a balance of flavours for consumers. We have recently started serving beer and wine at two of our Delhi outlets and one in Bangalore, for Rs 99 per pint and Rs 159 for 125 ml respectively, and once we start getting licenses to serve alcohol, we will launch the same at all our outlets.
Do you take feedback forms seriously? What do you do with them?
Of course very very seriously! We collate all comment cards and feedback forms and see if there is an underlying issue. Comment cards are more about customer experiences and may or may not be around larger issues of consumer acceptance of the brand or products. But we have a full innovation process in place and talk to consumers through consumer panels to review products and make changes accordingly. For product innovation, we launch prototypes and conduct market tests and depending on consumer feedback we even pull out products from the market that do not work.
Imitation in the food industry is easy. How do you think you can tackle with that and yet stay differentiated?
Imitation is there in any industry, thus a lot depends on the brand’s basic ability to deliver on its core promise. Hence, our core promise of delivering pizzas and much more is differentiated in terms of quality that we provide at each and every consumer touch point. In fact imitation is a good indicator of the growing acceptance of our offerings. For me, it is pretty flattering to know that others are imitating us. However, given the capability of what we can deliver, I am sure that others will find it difficult to match up to that.
How many new outlets will we see in the next fiscal?
We cannot share numbers but we plan to add 50 per cent to our base by 2015.
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