Interview: Kinder Brands' Juliana Saputera on judging Marketing Excellence Awards ID

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE is bringing its first-ever Marketing Excellence Awards in Indonesia. Designed to recognise outstanding work in Indonesia’s marketing industry, there are 35 enterable categories offered to reflect many diverse disciplines. The entries will be entirely judged by an independent panel of industry leaders and senior marketers.

Joining the judging panel is Juliana Saputera, who's the head of marketing for the Kinder brands, managing the Asia region. The Kinder brand has a portfolio of brands within the Ferrero company, which includes Kinder Joy/Surprise, Kinder Bueno, Kinder Happy Hippo and Kinder Chocolate. Saputera manages the A&P budget and is responsible for a team of marketers in Asia. A key part of her role is to ensure she creates and delivers brand strategies that will drive business growth and brand love - she does this by providing the team with clear goals and the right support, as they seek to realise their potential.

Saputera is a believer that marketing has always been about telling great stories, and brands must be authentic, real and connected those stories to resonate with people. That's whather team is constantly trying to achieve, Saputera told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE in an interview. In order to do this, they will need to find ways to connect and integrate the company's brands within the Indonesian consumers’ values and local cultural moments.

Saputera added that marketers must now truly understand the needs of the consumers and customers, while also speaking the language of the company, which is about growth – not just in brands, but also people. In order to do this, marketers need to have strong foundations in insight and data, great creative flair and to always be curious, restless and agile. This will ensure that one will be able to deliver the best work.

She also believes that winning in culture is about having a deep understanding of the local consumers’ values, needs, and behaviour - for example, what are they watching and talking about. Marketers need to always find ways to connect and integrate their brands within those cultural moments. In an increasingly global world, any brand, be it local or global, that is able to tap into these, will be the best placed to win the hearts and minds of the consumer; marketers need to understand the culture and local values.

With the media fragmentation and proliferation of content, competition has never been fiercer - this is also where creativity comes into play to make a difference. Great creativity will ensure a brand's content is able to cut-through and capture the attention of consumers. "If the ’90s and 2000s were the golden age of advertising, today is the golden age of creativity," Saputera added.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: What are some trends in marketing you are keeping a watch out for in 2023? 

The pandemic has been an accelerator of digital adoption and we are now facing a tsunami of new technologies. As marketers, our job will be to seek to understand what these technologies are, what they can do, and how we can leverage them to best serve the needs of our consumers. It will be critical to build a test-and-learn culture so that we can make the right marketing decisions that are anchored in data-driven insights.

The last couple of years has also reaffirmed one thing – that we will continue to face changes. From the global pandemic to rising inflation and shifting geopolitical landscape, all of this has resulted in evolving changes in consumers’ behaviour. As such, we will need to be agile, and be ready to pivot our brand and creatively flex when needed.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE:  What will you be looking out for in your judging? 

I will be looking for entries that can demonstrate the power of marketing in driving business results and brand love. I’d like to understand the full journey – i.e., what are the consumer insights that the campaign is tapping into, how did that influence the strategy and execution, and how was success measured. In a world where everything blends, I will be looking for work that stands out, with a human truth at its core.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: If you had to give an advice to our entrants for this year, what would it be?

Tell your story in a captivating way – Think about the judges reading through the many entries that they need to review – What’s going to stand out? And always substantiate your work with concrete business results.

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