Most Creative Marketers: Arjoon Bose

Arjoon Bose describes his day job as “dabbling in luxury ice cream and protein bars” but the General Mills marketing head, culture & brand experience (Europe-Australasia), happens to belong to that breed of marketers that are the wiliest interpreters of consumers’ wishes.

A quality that must come handy when sitting at the helm of some of the best-known supermarket brands such Häagen-Dazs, Old El Paso, Nature Valley, Yoplait, and Betty Crocker.

Arjoon and his team recently celebrated the iconic baking brand Betty Crocker's 100th birthday, by reimagining the ‘No Blow Candle’, a new Covid-friendly candle design to save the birthday cake ritual - a sound-activated, interactive LED candle that reacts to the most universal expressions of joy in how we celebrate birthdays. Then there’s Häagen-Dazs, which did not pause marketing when the pandemic hit, but rather increased digital marketing tactics to build customer loyalty and gain success. The ice cream brand partnered with Secret Cinema for the popular 'Secret Sofa' campaign - aimed at creating an immersive experience at home, and bringing cheer and creating content that entertained.

The understanding of the virtues of marketing through difficult times was seen through amped-up marketing activities across most of General Mills brands.

Remarkable Marketing & Brand Experience

So has it been about writing a new future for brands that need to respond to new consumer needs, as pundits have been predicting?

“We're a company that is more than 90 years old, and we understand brand salience and maintaining brand value in a meaningful and purposeful way. Our purpose and vision as a company is to make food the world loves. Within that, the role of marketing is to solve problems - like the ‘No Blow Candle’ - and deliver joy. That’s been my rallying cry to help shape that vision.

"One that leads to remarkable marketing - marketing that drives a disproportionate share of cultural conversation.”

What that means, he explains, is creating genuine connections through food by continuously deepening the brands’ consumer empathy. For example, the Mexican meals brand Old El Paso teamed up with tennis stars Sir Andy Murray and Nick Kygrios while demonstrating their no-spills benefit, but also help donate meals to local food banks around the world. What began as a new product launch in Australia turned into a global match between leading tennis players and also act as a uniting force for good in their communities. The #MessFreeChallenge was an attempt to address hunger globally through support for food banks and other hunger relief programmes.

"This campaign was not about creating an isolated piece of content. It was about leaning into culture, where as an organisation we feel we have a sacred duty to help end hunger, and take stars willing to join us in our global philosophy of fighting food insecurity and supporting the vulnerable as a food company. And then, we let leaned into the world of tennis as the Grand Slam season re-opened in 2020 post the pandemic first wave and helped create a movement through the lens of sports and used the social influence of celebrities for good."

Also, on the subject of societal change, General Mills recently altered altered 20 million packs of its Betty Crocker brand, to be more inclusive, starting in the Middle East, so it was less female-centric, after a boy tweeted the baking brand to change its Arabic instructions to be more gender neutral, in a campaign from VMLY&R.

“We’re very focused on becoming an experience company and it’s really changing how we understand creativity as our lever for growth and innovation, and also how best to respond to culture but without shouting for attention,” says Arjoon.

Is that the reason why his role extends beyond marketing and includes culture and brand experience?

“Historically, as a marketer you either worked in the central business unit responsible for delivering the three-year strategy, the innovation pipeline, and the communications toolkit. Or you worked in the country business unit responsible for delivering excellent commercial execution, activation and leading the consumer agenda. What my role now adds to a very solidly engineered, project management-style marketing is creative bravery and cultural capital. Making sure we’re exploring and fully realising the creative potential of our brands and also their cultural relevance. And it started with a clear vision, and awareness of the fact that every interaction your consumer has with you is a brand experience,” he says.

Arjoon gives Ivan Pollard, the global chief marketing officer at General Mills, the credit for shaping this vision. A former adman, Pollard, has since left following a restructure.

Harnessing Capital Culture

It’s a vision that meets with Arjoon’s own view on how brands need to take that important step in realising their impact on their consumers and the communities they are part of. “Using the brand to further profit just benefits a few, but using the brand to really benefit the people and the planet benefits all,” he adds.

For the Indian-born Arjoon, who spent some formative years in America, it’s imperative that brands create cultural content that is not just advertising alone.

His favourite works include #MessFreeChallenge and also the Häagen-Dazs ‘Don’t Hold Back’ campaign from last year, created by Forsman & Bodenfors. The campaign, he says, which celebrates inclusiveness and embodies the encouraging and positive approach of "letting our authentic selves shine through”, went beyond being a tagline for the ice-cream brand. “It became a mantra, and so much of our bold brand building execution has come because of that licence to not hold back. It became about celebrating the unfiltered, and that will continue to guide a lot of great work that we do.”

Creative Pursuits

So where does Arjoon get his creative impulses from? As an only child, Arjoon grew up in one of the most illustrious media families in India. His great-grandfather, his grandfather and his journalist mother were all part of the Amrita Bazaar Patrika, the oldest Indian-owned English daily - made famous for its fearless investigative journalism in the country.

“I was surrounded by people who have impacted culture and politics from an early age and developed a natural curiosity,” he recalls, talking about how he would tag along with his mother to some of the most iconic moments in history such as the 1988 Seoul Olympics when he was only seven years old and the 1990 World Cup in Italy. “An only child listening and soaking in from a journalist mother and a father who was almost in his own relentless pursuit of figuring out his own journey. My father studied history, then went on to study law, started his career in radio, and then he did business management, went to Japan and also and also worked in oil and mining. For me it was always about being an apprentice for life and soaking in all of these various experiences that made me adaptable and versatile to circumstances.”

For Arjoon, these experiences have primed him to forever try and seek inspirations from those who show personal bravery, and apply them in what he does both in his personal and professional life. His creative heroes include David Ogilvy and also his dear friend and Indian tennis player, Leander Paes, regarded as one of the greatest tennis players in doubles. “I learned everything about reinvention from Leander, and I learned everything that it takes to pursue excellence and have longevity and be fearless.”

Lessons perhaps that allowed him to make his foray into marketing and advertising. A path that was no more logical than creativity itself. Arjoon studied commerce, making him a “boring accounting person” and went on to briefly intern at PricewaterhouseCoopers. But he knew early on that it did not suit his creative flair, so decided to study brand management. After failing to land a job in advertising - following several rejection letters - he applied to L’Oréal and became the first Indian to be part of the cosmetics giant’s global marketing team.

“I'd like to believe L’Oréal only really took me in because of its diversity inclusion drive. I remember the HR talking about how they’d hired a lot of women but that it’d be nice to get a few men. And also because I coloured my hair purple and walked into the interview, which might have been a little bold and creative for a man at that time in India.”

As a journalist, I've been following and interviewing Arjoon for a few years now. And I'm not convinced it was just the purple hair or the diversity drive that did it for him. His innate creative muscles that help him come up with transformative ideas for his brands - through what he calls "a culture-first lens" - have always shown that his instincts as a marketer remain sharp.

I'm keen to find out what has changed since our conversation last year and his hopes and fears for the industry. "We're never going to be who we were in 2020," he says.

"As someone who that loves studying behaviours and culture, I'm excited to see if we're all going to double down and put everything we know and apply it into accelerated mode. Like how after the last big pandemic in 1918, the roaring 20s came into being. What part of our normals do we embrace? What will we as people lose? How are we as brands and as organisations going to respond? I'm excited about the creative industry coming together and leaning into all of this.

"Brands and agencies will need to be a little bit more adventurous and go on the journey together."