The 5-second rule: Does it apply to ice-creams?

While the jury is out on that one, with solid resistance from kids and popsicle-lovers, one thing is for sureit surely applies to all the data around your ice-cream today. It cannot be dropped on the floors of ignorance or delays. IT and marketing teams have to eat it in real-time, before it melts. Arvind Ramachandran, Vice President — Marketing, Dairy Day Ice Creams, a leading ice cream brand across South & West India (that has grown to 80,000 outlets across 8 states) gives us a generous scoop on that, and more.

- Pratima H

ARVIND RAMACHANDRAN Vice President - Marketing, Dairy Day Ice Creams

Why and where is technology an important ingredient for the marketing teams in your company?

Our brand is a long-standing one with a strong presence in the Southern region. It has been nurtured on the essence of 'goodness'. Our latest campaigns have also endeavoured to tap that theme - we just celebrated May Day by encouraging people to pause for a moment and express gratitude to the people who make their lives easier every day by giving a Dairy Day ice cream to delivery partners for free. Doing small things right has been our mantra. It's important, then, that we understand what customers think, how they interpret and act on our brand image and how we engage them better. That's where technology plays a crucial role.

All that we heard about shortages of eggs and ketchup in foreign department stores raises new questions about the agility of data and forecasting for food companies. What's your take?

Physical distribution has always been a strong point for us. We are close to our planned geographies with inventory management done in a well-equipped way. That confidence holds us in good stead. We have a tight grip on distribution. The capabilities that our Quick Commerce partners bring have added to it, too. Technology helps to add a lot of visibility with on-ground monitoring and deployment at scale. Data helps as a crucial lever. The days of siloes between marketing and IT are over. It's now a time when multiple functions have to work together very closely and elevate each other instead of wasting time in isolation or conflicts.