“The core is the heartbeat of your business. If the core is 85% of your business and it declines by 1%, you need your innovation to grow by an incremental 10-to-15% to make up for that.”

The core is the backbone of any brand’s success, but too often it is forgotten about in favour of new innovations or the latest trends. 

In this episode of the Persuasion Game podcast, Adam and Simon discuss the importance of the core and how innovation can actually support it, with Amit Singh, former Marketing Director at McCormick and Company.

Amit has been working in this space for years, having previously been at Mondelez, PepsiCo and Costa.
He talks about how to protect the core while exploring the edges, understanding that the core is not static, and how reframing your core can unlock new growth opportunities.

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Episode transcript:

Amit: The core is the heartbeat of your business. If the core is 85% of your business and it declines by 1%, you need your innovation to grow by an incremental 10 to 15% to make up for that.

Adam: Welcome to The Persuasion Game, a marketing podcast all about growing brands and persuading consumers in the modern age, by The Forge. It’s the unsexy stuff that drives 85% of your revenue. So why does the core sometimes get forgotten?

This week we are talking all about the backbone of brand success- your core, with someone who’s seen it from all angles. Amit Singh, with experience at Mondelez, PepsiCo, McCormick and Costa.

You’ve worked with Amit, haven’t you, Simon?

Simon: I have indeed. And what’s always struck me is that Amit has always had this focus on making sure that the core of his brands that he’s been working on is strong and solid before we try and do anything else.

Adam: Yeah and we are seeing it a lot more at The Forge, aren’t we?

So I think coming out of Covid, we saw a lot of clients coming to us, asking us about how consumer needs had changed, how occasions or consumption moments had changed, and we were getting a lot of demand spaces work as a result of it. Following that, you know, there was a wave of briefs, wasn’t there around innovation?

You know, I think as, as prices started to rise in categories, brands were looking to kind of justify those price rises by bringing new products out. And now we’re starting to see a wave of briefs around core, about how to revitalise the core. And so we thought today it’d be a really interesting discussion to bring Amit and talk to him all about how he’s done it at some of those big brands he’s worked at.

Simon: Absolutely can’t wait. Welcome, Amit. Welcome to The Persuasion Game.

Amit:  Thank you, Adam. I couldn’t say no to joining The Persuasion Game because I’ve been a big fan of your podcast

Adam: Well thank you very much

Simon: Very good to hear

Adam: And thank you for being our very first guest in our professional studio. It’s no longer a desktop recording.

Simon: Looking quite swanky, quite professional. I’m not gonna lie, Adam. I’m feeling the pressure now.

Amit: I’m feeling the pressure.

Adam: So, Amit, you’ve worked on some of the world’s, I guess say, biggest brands, biggest consumer brands, and we’re talking about the core today. Should we just start by defining what we mean by the core and whether that’s differed in the different brands that you’ve worked on.

Amit: The core is the heartbeat of your business. It’s basically the products that build your reputation and that still drive the bulk of your business today. When it comes to products that I’ve worked on, brands that I’ve worked on, it’s Lay’s classic, it’s Walker’s ready salted and cheese and onion. It’s Cadbury Dairy Milk in the iconic purple wrapper. Costa, with their everyday range of coffees that are espresso based. The core isn’t just about these products, though, I wanna clarify that. In my view, it’s about the moments that you own. So Lay’s in social gatherings, Walker’s crisps with sandwich lunches, the little gift of Cadbury dairy milk as a token of appreciation of generosity.

It’s a combination of the product with the moment, which is basically what defines the core, in my view.

Simon: That’s really interesting because I think a lot of people might sort of sit there and think core is skews, core is flavours, core is formats, but you are really thinking about it in a much broader sense.

Amit: Yes the way I see it is the core is not static.  Your core needs to evolve with time, with changing tastes, with shifts in culture which is why if you’re clear about what need you service you will also be always prepared to meet those needs as they change.

Adam: And there’s almost like an inherent strength of the business to continue to be able to service those needs. Regardless, almost all of the different kind of products that might be needed to do it; they’re already there to do that.

Amit: Oh, yes, absolutely. Invariably across brands and businesses, we know that the core constitutes a bulk of the revenue. And a disproportionate ratio of the profits as well. If the core is 85% of your business and it declines by 1%, you need your innovation to grow by an incremental 10 to 15% to make up for that.

Adam: Wow.

Amit: So it’s basically the backbone of your business.

Simon: I think that’s such a, a killer stat and such an important thing to do because as you rightly say, you know, if you are neglecting that engine, that fundamental part, the pressure you put on the rest of your business, the rest of your portfolio, to be able to kind of compensate that. I mean that’s huge.

Amit: You know, there’s one analogy, I’m infamous for my analogies so you’ll have to bear with me today, guys. But the way I like to think of the core is you look at your brand and think of it as an athlete’s body. So your core, which is your abs, and your lower back, is what keeps you stable and powerful.

You can build impressive biceps, but without a strong core, something will give someday. Your posture crumbles, your movement gets limited, and invariably, injury follows. The same holds true for brands. Strength Starts at the core. Always. I can’t state this enough. I’m sounding a bit like my personal trainer probably.

Adam:  He would be very proud that the message has landed Amit, this is excellent.

Amit: I try and fit that in everywhere.

Simon: I think that’s a really interesting point because one of the things that you can often see is almost sort of brands trying to sort of innovate their way out of a core strategic problem. That actually the core is not terribly healthy and so businesses jump to kind of thinking, oh, well we need to innovate, we need to move on. And I wonder if it’s a bit of a symptom of some other facets.

Amit: It’s rarely a conscious decision to ignore the core. No marketing team sits down, at least I’d like to believe they don’t, and says, “let’s ignore our biggest revenue driver”. But it happens gradually, almost accidentally in some cases. You know, the danger is when the core is seen as maintenance work, “oh, it’s 80% of our revenue, it’s going to continue the way it has been for the last 50 years”.

Adam: So, I mean, if you’re stepping into the role then on a new brand, how do you assess whether the core is strong enough?

Amit: First and foremost, it’s one of the things that my first marketing director used to hammer home into the heads of every new marketer; you need to be in bed with the consumer, not literally, obviously.

Simon: I think there’s some GDPR guidelines about that now, Amit I think. I’m not sure, but I think so.

Amit: 15 years ago it was a little more liberal.

Simon: Oh it was fine. Different times.

Amit: So you need to understand their habits, stay on top of trends and genuinely believe that you’re a part of their lives. This takes a lot of deep insight work to unlock growth drivers, identify opportunities by understanding their core needs.

As an example, there’s ethnography, you know, which is understanding how the category is serving their needs. What’s missing? What are the opportunities to drive further growth? Is the brand purpose sharp? Is it actually helping you answer a need that you’ve identified in the consumer work you’ve done? And is it solid enough? A combination of sharp, but also broad enough to actually last for the next 10 years? That’s the first thing I would look at.

Next, I would look at some basic metrics. Are you still driving category growth like you did? In your peak or purple patch, are you losing share? Is your brand healthy? Are your brand health metrics reflecting the strength of the brand, or are you actually seeing the gap between you and competition narrowing?

Simon: Lots of great questions in there about ways to diagnose the health of the core. But I’m wondering almost if there’s a question that sits before that? Which is something interestingly that we often get and find very interesting when we talk to people, which is just asking across a business what is your core? And seeing the different answers you get.

Amit: Yes, yes. And even if people are defining it consistently, let’s start with best case scenario here. Are you defining it through the lens of the consumer you do serve? Or are you describing a product feature? I think that’s the risk. Nike is a great example of a brand that basically looks at it’s raison d’être from the point of view of what role they play in people’s lives.

If you have a body, you’re an athlete. That’s where they start from. If they only thought about – we make shoes, in what other ways can we make shoes relevant or our shoes top of mind? They would play in a very, very narrow space. So they have a very tight definition of the role they play and therefore all the activation and innovation goes towards servicing that reason for existence.

Simon: Amit can I just ask another question just on the follow up of the definition of the core. So you’ve talked compellingly about the financial argument, right?  When, if you know, if it’s 85% of your sales, what’s your view on the role of brand equity to define the core?

So I’m minded of my own experience many, many, many years ago working on Lucozade energy. And at the time, sort of early 2000s, for any of our listeners based in the UK you’ll no doubt, remember that cellophane wrapped bottle of sort of, you know, seven fifty a liter, which was synonymous with childhoods of the 70s and 80s of illness and things like that. And, carried so much emotional resonance, even though, and actually we did you know, the team brought it back as a sort of limited edition run and those kind of things.

Now, arguably that wasn’t necessarily the most positive aspect of the equity because it was sort of more rooted in illness and the brand wanted to kind of move away from it. But it’s just interesting thinking, I think about, you know, whether there are certain parts of your portfolio that may carry an outsized equity impact proportionate to the value sort of contribution they make.

Amit: Yes, absolutely. I think it’s, you know, there’s this famous saying, I can’t remember the other brand, but if all the Coca-Cola factories burn down overnight, you know, a bulk of the brand’s value would still be intact the next day.

Simon: Yeah.

Amit: And that just reinforces the strength of, I guess, the brand.

It’s very difficult to separate, coming back to the example of Walker’s cheese and onion and ready salted with the core equity of the brand.

I can’t imagine a world where you would see, you know, Gary Lineer holding one of the tail skews in, in the comms, or them activating it with one of the tail skews because it wouldn’t carry the same weight.

But over a period of time I think it blends with the equity of the brand, so they become synonymous with what the brand stands for. Rather than being one of the 20 skews that you have.

Simon: But interestingly I have seen it the other way. I have seen where an extension to the core almost becomes the brand itself. And actually that’s was one of the big challenges that Lucozade had, where Lucozade Sport sort of almost became the, you know, the defining version of Lucozade. And so done consciously and done well, that absolutely is your principle of keeping the core rejuvenated and keeping it relevant, et cetera.

But, potentially done badly or without due diligence and consciousness then what you can potentially do is undermine your core and sort of end up kind of eating yourself.

Amit: Your experience at Lucozade was also driven by the need to survive. So you know, if you had to be in the game for a longer period and win the right consumer group. Was it better being a, you know, medicinal, more nutrition based brand? Or was it better to be associated with sport? Which obviously came with a certain personality and tribe attached to it.

Look at the example of Pepsi Max. I mean, 20 years ago, Pepsi Max was an innovation. Was what? I don’t have the stats, but 5% of the portfolio maybe? Today Pepsi Max is huge and you don’t see any Pepsi now. It’s a conscious decision by the organisation to, you know, put the no sugar drink forward as the face of the brand.

Simon: If you define your core as a skew, that’s a very hard decision to make.

Amit: Exactly, yeah.

Simon: If you define your skew, sorry, your core as an occasion- about bringing people together, about celebration, about camaraderie, about connection.

It’s a logical thing, which, I guess goes back to just reinforcing how important that, that occasion based thinking is.

Amit: Absolutely, agreed.

Adam: Amit, where have you seen the biggest successes in your career for growing the core?

Amit: The biggest wins that I’ve seen don’t just come, you know, come from pushing the core harder. They come from reframing it in a fresh and culturally relevant context. So I can give you an example from a market that will not be familiar to the audience, at least in the UK where we are sitting at the moment. I started my career at Cadbury India. Now Mondelez, obviously, this is not an example of a campaign that I worked on. I just wanna clarify that. It’s one of the big regrets I have in my career. You know, it’s one of those campaigns where you wish you had been part of it. Anyway, we all have regrets, I’m sure.

For some context, the brand Cadbury had, 70% market share in India, as you would expect, with a brand with that level of market share. It was synonymous with the category, at least in urban India, where chocolates were reasonably big. And the team had to unlock new opportunities for growth which could not rely on growing share. You can’t go much higher than 70%, even though we did have pressure to grow it beyond that. The per caps was not as high as some other more established markets like the UK, so that was a blessing in disguise.

What the team did was, and the insights team played a big role in that, they did not change the product at all. They changed the role the product played in people’s lives. So from just chocolate, they basically reframed the product and the brand to sweet treats that belong in Indian celebrations as a credible substitute for Indian mithai. Mithai is a Hindi word for traditional sweets.

So that single reframe of positioning Cadbury chocolates and Cadbury Dairy Milk as very easy to access, longer shelf life- because Indian mithai has a one week shelf life. Invariably, it’s lying around in the house and gets thrown away. The kids don’t like it as much as they like chocolates, et cetera. You know, there’s a whole ecosystem around of reasons behind why chocolates could fit in that space. It allowed the team to actually unlock a plethora of occasions that were based around moments when Indian mithai used to be gifted or consumed.

So whenever somebody does well in an exam. Simon, you were talking about your daughter doing a mock exam. So next time she finishes her exam, give her a bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk.

Simon: Don’t give her, don’t give her ideas. She puts me under enough pressure as it is.

Amit: So it’s, you know, I’m trying to relate it to the everyday cultural context. Every time, you know, somebody gets promoted, right? Instead of traditional mithai get Canterbury chocolates for them, you know. It’s easier to share, you could take it home, the kids could have it, et cetera, et cetera. These are just two examples, but there are lots of occasions where we could credibly place the brand in that occasion. And growth just exploded after that.

Now, connecting the brand with a particular moment is easier said than done, but the reason I’m giving that example is to basically provoke how one should look at identifying opportunities for growth with your core. How you can look at reinventing and innovating the core.

Simon: And I love that ’cause again, it just keeps going back to that idea of rejuvenation. It’s still the same fundamental product, but maybe it’s wearing a new skin. It’s a new decoration. So there is change, but it’s a very similar version. It’s just tailored to something specific.

Amit: And it has to start, it has to come from the point of view of wanting to drive category growth and not just steal from competitors. I’ve mostly worked on brands that were more established in my career. So I just wanna put that out. So it’s easier for me to say that because the only option for us to grow is not stealing share but expanding the category.

But I firmly believe in the limited experience I have on challenger brands as well. If you approach it from the point of view of how you can disrupt the market, drive growth, which is incremental to the category, the more you’re setting yourself up for success, over a slightly longer period. You know, put yourself in the shoes of the retailer. We know how important the retailer and the buyer is. If you’re just talking about stealing share, which buyer would be interested in your product or in your plans to grow the brand? So it has to come from the place of wanting to grow the category and define the category as not necessarily how it exists today. But through the lens of what consumer needs you wanna service and therefore, what will it look like in the next five years?

Simon: And again, that goes back to your demand spaces, a really strong view of where is the value in the market today? Where is the future value in the market as well?

Amit: Absolutely. That’s your plug for the demand spaces Simon.

Simon: Oh, I mean, I’ve gotta get it in, I’m contractually obliged.

Adam: Do you know of any agencies that do demand spaces Simon?

Simon: Do you know what? Do you know what Adam, now you come to mention it. I have heard The Forge is quite good. I don’t know. I mean, I’m totally impartial on this.Well, well, well done Adam give Amit his fiver for the plug, so that’s good. Excellent.

Adam: So look, I mean, I love that example, and I think occasions keep coming up as a theme in this discussion. It’s all very well thinking, okay, it works in less mature markets, but some of our brand-owners, brand managers that might be listening to this might be thinking about, you know, what opportunities are there for unlocking occasions in the same kind of way in kinda more developed or more kind of competitive markets?

Have you got examples from, from stuff that you’ve done on locking occasions in, you know, I guess in a more challenging environment?

Amit: Occasions, and this principle holds true irrespective of, you know, the maturity of the market, at least in my opinion, or the maturity of the category within your market as well. So occasion-based thinking shifts you from selling products to owning moments in people’s lives. And that’s fundamental to setting your brand up for success in the long term. So you can sell chocolate or you can help people celebrate better. You can sell crisps or you can make lunchtime more enjoyable.

The latter I’d like to believe is infinitely, more powerful because it taps into established human behaviours and needs. Right? And this is, you know, what comes back to the demand spaces. So it’s not about fighting for a bigger slice of the same pie, but it’s about baking a bigger pie together, through that moment-based and occasion-based thinking.

I can give you an example of innovation that I launched across a few markets when I was on Walkers and Lay’s. So it was called strong. Under Walkers we launched it under the sub-brand called Max, Walkers Max. Strong was a bit of a mouthful.

Adam: Well, I remember Max was the paprika ones.

Amit: Absolutely.

Adam: And the Max Strong was the jalapeño

Amit: And cheese. Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s my favourite. I hope you had it with beer though.

Adam: Well, you have to have it with beer to get the spice out your mouth.

Amit: Excellent. That’s, that’s the example. So we engineered the product specifically for beer drinking occasions. So it was a thicker cut with ridges, we added bolder flavours to cut through the occasion that you were in with beer or with another cold drink in hand. It was still recognisably Lay’s, but designed to shine in that specific moment. It was slightly meatier, a bit more of a gut fill than just the regular crisps. When you do that, you know, where you allow the brand to still be inextricably what it is, which is what it was in that case, which is Walkers and Lay’s. It’s giving you a crisp texture. It is a potato crisp and it comes in an exciting bowl flavour. So it was very, very Walkers or Lay’s, but it was still extending into new moments without distracting from what the brand stands for.

So we saw incremental growth with a younger cohort, which was, you know, into these occasions. And it also actually ended up having a halo on the brand’s flavor credentials because flavour is the number one driver of choice in the category. I think it still is. It was. Definitely when I was in the category. So that’s another example of taking the brand, extending it into a new occasion with an innovation in this case, but surrounded by an activation as well, which gave us an excuse to play in that occasion.

When I look at these two examples that I just gave, which is – either Cadbury stepping into culturally relevant moments, or Lay’s stepping into beer moments – the common thread is really simple. It’s not just about selling more product, it’s about finding moments in people’s lives where the brand could genuinely belong. And that’s basically at the crux of how you stretch the brand into different moments by being more centred and obsessed about where you want to play, and then figuring out how you take your brand there.

Simon: I think that’s a really important word that you said in there, which is genuinely. I think that’s really key because I think a lot of the time you can see people kind of going, “could we?”. And you sit and sit there and think, well, I can understand why, why you as a brand would want to go there. It’s a big opportunity. It’s incremental. It’s all of those things. But why does a consumer want that? Why are you actually going to make this occasion better for me?

And again, back to your point about the rigour of really, maybe not sleeping with your consumer, getting into bed with your consumer, but really understanding them and sitting from their perspective to go, why are you gonna make this better for me? So that we’re actually kind of, again, stepping away perhaps from a little bit of the bubble that we can all fall into, right? When we’re so close to our brands thinking we’re suddenly gonna play this hero role. And actually just stepping back and going, really, what genuinely difference am I making here?

Amit: Absolutely. And I also want to add one thing I don’t know if it was clear what I was saying earlier, it’s not about occasions versus innovation. You know, the best core growth happens a lot of times when you combine and blend the two.

So, you know, you innovate in service of occasions always, not just for the sake of it, because hey, there’s a trend we’ve spotted in the market and we haven’t, you know, dabbled into it and somebody else is gonna take our market share away. It might help you in the first six months because of the novelty factor, but if it’s not relevant, then you’ll be hunting for the next innovation 12 months down the line.

Adam: Look, we, we talked a lot here about, you know, obviously the importance of the core, and the sort of tension that happens when you are trying to find new growth, trying to find new opportunities and, you know, can potentially kind of forget about the thing that’s kinda got you to where you are today. And we’ve talked a little bit about innovation, about, you know, the really good examples of where your innovation can support the core. And I think we see with some of our clients, sometimes we see with brands, sometimes that innovation can be really exciting and it can take you off in new directions but that can, you know, sometimes, cause some of these issues that we’ve discussed.

Do you see there being a right way to kind of have innovation support the core? And, if so, what is it? What is the right balance of getting those two, the new and the kind of heritage and combining the two together?

Amit: The best innovation orbits the core, you know, it modernises, it stretches, but it doesn’t detach the core. So I believe the right way is when innovation amplifies what you stand for and doesn’t distract from it.

Adam: We’ve talked a lot about, you know, focusing on the core, focusing on your strength and focusing on the thing that, you know, got you to where you are today. But obviously, a lot of the disruption that happens in a category happens at the edges. You know, if you’re looking after a big brand, at some point you’re gonna need to start moving in some of these different or disruptive spaces. So how do you decide when the right place to to jump is and the right place to move into those?

Amit: The edges, as you call it, show you where the next strong branch might be. You know, I always say that your job as a marketer is to protect the core, but watch the edges for the incremental opportunities? Track what’s bubbling up, so small brands, niche needs, emerging occasions, et cetera. But filter everything through the lens of is it relevant to my reason to exist? Does it threaten my brand’s future? Will playing in that help make my core stronger or weaker?

The edges actually show you opportunities to identify where your core could evolve. So for big brands, it’s crucial to identify the right moment to jump onto a trend that you could then scale. I fundamentally believe, and this might be controversial, it’s not the first to market that wins, but it’s

Simon: Couldn’t agree with you more on that.

Amit:  Yeah. It’s the one that does the best job and sticks at it while still meeting consumer needs. Occasions, I can’t state this enough. I’m sitting in the company of amazing team from Forge, so I must say it again- Occasions are your compass. So you know, I would recommend tracking emerging occasions and not just emerging products. Stay rooted to your brand’s core truth. That’s really important.

And finally, you know, we live in a very data heavy world. Too much data in my view, but still data is very, very useful. So use tools like social listening, retail data, and more than just looking at which segments are growing, then dive deeper into why they’re growing. Is there a macro or micro trend that’s basically leading to that? So when your core is strong, you’re not threatened by what’s emerging, you know, it just absorbs it, evolves and helps you identify opportunities to grow new branches, to be still culturally relevant and alive.

Simon: Amit, thank you. That has been an absolutely fascinating discussion with you. Incredible insight that you’ve provided from your experience across so many brands, and fantastic to see your enthusiasm and passion for the call.

Your personal trainer will be delighted. Your brands will be delighted, and thank you for joining us on The Persuasion Game.

Adam: Yeah

Amit: Thank you for having me.

Adam: That’s been brilliant. Thank you so much, Amit.

Amit: Thank you guys.

Adam:  Well, I don’t know about you, Simon, but I found that really interesting what a generous guest we’ve had today sharing all of that with us.

Simon: Fascinating. Really, really interesting. So much to take out. One of the things I’m left reflecting on is how this is not a zero sum game and somehow the narrative has almost become a bit of a binary one, you either do the core or you do innovation. And it has become a sort of slightly adversarial dynamic and I don’t really know why, because as Amit told us this is just common sense. This is about doing both. I had a little bit of a sort of language reflection and I wonder if there’s something in just the fact that, that some of this language, by using the word re, the letters re at the beginning of it, it almost implies like you are redoing something, that it’s going backwards, that it’s revisiting, it’s not new.

And by contrast, innovation is new by definition. It’s new, it’s exciting. I wonder how much we’ve let the language kind of cloud our judgment? Because you listen to the examples that Amit’s talking about. These are hugely exciting campaigns that any marketer yeah, would just be unbelievably excited and delighted to have under their, you know, those successes on their CV.

Adam: I think human nature is written all over this, right? You know, you’ve got the human nature to want to go after the new. You’ve also got the human nature to, once you’ve done a job, you want to want it to be done. You don’t want to have to go back and continually do the same job. So there’s, there’s something like, “oh, we’ve done the call, we’ve done, we, we’ve thought about our growth plans for the call for the next two or three years”. But the idea that you’ve gotta go back and continually refresh those, I think there’s a sort of like slight aversion to that, isn’t there?

Simon: There is. So here we go. Answers on a postcard from our listeners ,come up with some new language for us. We’re not gonna rejuvenate the core. We’re not gonna refresh the call. We’re not gonna renovate the core. What should we do? What is the new language that we can do to change that? Because as you’ve said, there’s so much to be excited about with the core, it is just common sense and great marketing.

Adam: Absolutely. Well, I hope you enjoyed that, we certainly did being in the new studio. We are into phase two of The Persuasion Game podcast, and we would love it if you could help us grow it with family, friends, colleagues, anyone that you think might enjoy what we’re doing here.