Nestle Day at JBIMS explores marketing challenges in FMCG business

A brainchild of the JBIMS Placement Committee and Nestle, this event took the relationship of JBIMS with Nestle to a new high. Students got an opportunity to showcase their talent and Nestle got a glimpse of its future managers and leaders.

Nestle Day gave the students a chance to step into the shoes of Nestle brand managers by putting to test their theoretical knowledge. The challenge was to design a communication campaign for Nestls brand Kit Kat. Titled Kit Kat Kampus this event urged participants to let loose their creativity and prepare a campaign to make Kit Kat an iconic brand for the Indian youth. It all started with a brief issued by Nestle which set the objective of the exercise. Teams were required to submit their entries and ideas to the Nestle team. Five out of the many entries were chosen to present their campaign in front of dignitaries from Nestle, JWT and Zenith.

Before the event started, one of the senior brand managers of Nestle presented the audience with expert perspectives which ranged from the objective of the competition to how it is done in the industry and 360 degree campaigns. She enumerated the process involved in creating a successful campaign and ended by congratulating all the participants and appreciating their commitment, level of work and creativity.

The finalists then presented their ideas one by one to a great response from the audience and panel alike. After the final, this part of Nestle Day came to and end.

The next section involved a guest lecture from Mr. S N Narayanan, MD, Nestle Singapore. As he himself put it, it focused on the non glamourous but extremely important aspect of distribution systems in marketing and was titled Managing the Cutting Edge The Last Mile to the Consumer. Starting with Porters model, Mr. S N Narayanan introduced the audience to the Red ocean and Blue ocean approach.

Being a practicing sales manager himself for many years, Mr. Narayanan provided the audience with the cutting edge about sales and distribution and gave them new perspectives. He talked about the evolution of distribution systems and how to efficiently structure a distribution system. Talking of challenges in sales, he stressed that it is the domain which helps any person develop immense leadership qualities among its other benefits. Explaining with the aid of practical examples of HLL and Nestle itself made it much easier for the audience to understand the presentation. Especially the Hub and Spoke Model adopted by Nestle for its Chilled Dairy business illustrated the importance of innovation wherever applicable. Finally he touched upon the challenge that modern retail presents to distribution and ended the insightful presentation with the essence of managing the cutting edge.

The final section Nestle Day was the presentation ceremony. The top two teams received Nestle gift hampers and cash prizes worth Rs.30000. However the icing on the cake came when Nestle announced PPI (Pre Placement Interviews) to two senior batch students.