From cookies to clicks: ITC Foods’ multi-speed marketing play

In 2010, when most biscuits in India looked and tasted the same, ITC Foods introduced a curveball—Dark Fantasy Choco Fills. A molten-centre cookie priced at INR 30—six times the cost of a typical biscuit pack—it was crafted to redefine indulgence and challenge incumbents on premium turf.

This was the conglomerate’s bold bet on premiumisation in a value-obsessed category.

Fifteen years on, that instinct to disrupt, adapt and scale has shaped how ITC Foods navigates India’s evolving consumer landscape—one that now spans everything from INR 10 snack packs to algorithm-curated visibility on quick commerce platforms.

For FY 2025, ITC saw resilient performance in FMCG with the full year revenue up 4.8% YoY and the Q4 segment revenue up 3.7% YoY. In a press release, the company stated that it witnessed severe inflationary pressures in prices of edible oil, wheat, refined flour, potato, cocoa, packaging inputs etc.

It partially mitigated this price stress through focused cost management initiatives, portfolio premiumisation and calibrated pricing actions. It also undertook sustained competitive levels of trade and marketing investments to support growth and market standing.

Rethinking ROI: More than a quarterly fix

Amid budget compressions and the shrinking half-life of media investments, ITC is shifting focus from short bursts of visibility to sustained brand equity.

“In a hyper fragmented media landscape, along with a sharper decay of advertising investments, the need is to ensure that the best impact can be achieved by showing relevant consumers the right content,” Shuvadip Banerjee, chief digital marketing officer at ITC Foods, told Campaign.

To do that, ITC leans on a custom-built Media Planning Toolkit—an internal framework that guides brand-market level allocations. “Short-term ROIs are only part of the return. Long-term plus short-term ROI is exactly double of just the short-term ROI,” he adds. It’s a clear signal that long-haul brand building remains a strategic imperative, even when transaction-driven platforms demand immediate results.

ITC’s analytics centre of excellence, Lighthouse, underpins many of these decisions. It crunches first-party data, combined with AI optimisers, to drive performance. Banerjee points out that even bottom-funnel efficiency—especially on quick commerce platforms—is correlated with off-platform brand investments.

Darshan Patel, who heads a market research agency, believes this approach is essential in a cluttered category like FMCG. “Marketers often oversimplify ROI. It’s not just sales—it’s also about brand equity and future market share,” he notes.

Rural versus premium: Why it’s not a binary

NielsenIQ’s FMCG Quarterly Snapshot for Q3 2024 revealed that the industry experienced a 5.7% growth in overall value, bolstered by a modest 1.5% rise in prices and a 4.1% increase in volume. Notably, rural value growth reached 6.7%, surpassing urban growth of 5.0%—a trend that has persisted for three consecutive quarters, highlighting the growing significance of rural demand in the FMCG sector.

And yet, the appetite for premium experiences is rising too. ITC has opted not to choose between these extremes, instead opting for a two-speed strategy.

Banerjee explains, “Rural India has historically been one of the core industry growth drivers and is expected to play a much larger role going forward.” ITC’s rural portfolio, once anchored by Sunfeast Glucose, Sunfeast Bounce and Bingo! Tedhe Medhe, has evolved to include higher-value offerings like Sunfeast Dark Fantasy, Fantastik Chocolate, and Sunfeast Yippee!

The INR 10 pack of Dark Fantasy is a case in point. It maintains affordability while nudging consumers towards more indulgent formats. Balancing aspiration with access, this strategy is driven by real-time insights from ITC’s data ecosystem and cultural mapping protocols.

Discoverability in a q-commerce world

As shopping habits shift, so does the nature of visibility. With quick commerce platforms growing in double digits, and multi-brand outlets emerging as new retail battlegrounds, ITC is adapting its strategy to stay top of mind—and top of shelf.

“Quick commerce has been the fastest growing channel for some time now. Winning in this new and growing channel becomes a key imperative,” Banerjee observes.

But this is not a spray-and-pray approach. ITC deploys a dual investment model: brand building outside the platform and visibility optimisation within. The outside investment helps boost branded search, top-of-mind recall, and even shelf-space decisions on digital platforms.

In such impulse-driven environments, the rules of ATL shift. What matters is not just whether a consumer sees the ad, but whether they act on it in the same scroll.

Patel echoes this sentiment. “In India’s impulse-driven FMCG jungle, real-time analytics is the new machete. Brands need sharper tools—not just instincts,” he says. The ability to decode demand, shift messaging, or test formats in near real time is what separates the frontrunners from the laggards.

Mapping micro-moments: Data beyond sales

While sales data shows what people buy, it rarely explains why they do. For ITC, uncovering whitespace and unmet needs requires looking beyond purchase patterns.

To this end, ITC has developed ‘Sixth Sense’, a new insight engine that augments traditional research with social listening and secondary data scanning. It replaces episodic consumer studies with a living, breathing understanding of what shapes demand—regional nuances, emerging value systems, cultural rituals and lifestyle shifts.

This lens has allowed ITC to find and fill product gaps in both legacy and emerging categories. “Over the last decade, traditional methods have now got augmented with social listening and scanning large amounts of information,” says Banerjee. This blend of instinct and intelligence informs not just communication but product innovation.

Brand before basket: Rethinking campaign metrics

With pressure mounting to deliver fast results, many marketers are abandoning long-term brand campaigns in favour of conversion metrics. ITC, however, has stayed its course on brand-first storytelling—especially when entering nascent or underdeveloped categories.

In February 2025, ITC acquired Prasuma, a player in the frozen, chilled and ready to cook foods space in India.

A recent example is the launch of ‘Right Shift’, a new brand by the company designed for consumers over the age of 40. With a focus on ‘pro-ageing’ rather than ‘anti-ageing’, the campaign targets a growing, often overlooked demographic.

“India’s demographic construct is such that in a few years from now, this segment will become 20% of the population—and more so in the South,” says Banerjee. The campaign wasn’t designed for immediate conversions. Instead, it prioritised salience, share of voice, and category education.

Banerjee believes this is emblematic of ITC’s long-term view. “It is a befitting example of how ITC looks at long-term opportunities and invests at the right appropriate time,” he adds.

A multi-speed, multi-format, multi-metric world

ITC’s strategy isn’t built on a single playbook. Instead, it combines micro-segmentation, data-driven experimentation and omnichannel flexibility—allowing the brand to thrive in a media and retail landscape where every rule is temporary.

From INR 10 snack packs to q-commerce banners, and from social listening to Sixth Sense, the company is stitching together a framework designed for impact at both ends of the funnel.

As Patel puts it, “With insights fuelling everything from R&D to retail, FMCG players can serve up what shoppers want, where and when they want it.”

For marketers and media planners navigating the same terrain, the takeaway is clear: it’s not about choosing between data and instinct, ATL or q-commerce, reach or relevance—it’s about designing a system that can do it all, without losing sight of the brand’s purpose.