Brand loyalty is something you’ve got to fight for: Prashant Peres

At the e4m Screenage Mobile Marketing Conference 2025, Prashant Peres, MD, Kellanova South Asia, delivered a keynote titled “From Breakfast to Brand Love: Building Emotional Connections with Consumers,” where he unpacked the shifting dynamics of consumer behaviour and emotional brand relationship in a saturated choice-driven market. Peres began by challenging the conventional comfort around loyalty, noting the surprising reality that “96% of consumers said hey, I'm willing to try a new brand… but actually a staggering 60% of global consumers said that the next time they make their purchase, they actually shift brands.” However, rather than viewing this as brand fragility, he reframed it as growth potential, saying, “If you're somebody who looks at it with a glass half full… every time a consumer comes, I have 60% chance of getting a new consumer into my brand.” That reframing set the tone for a keynote steeped in market realism and brand resilience.

Peres then distilled Kellanova’s approach into one guiding philosophy, that enduring brand love is built through a balance of intellect and emotion. “I summarized what creates brand love in this one statement which says it's the power of head and heart,” he said, adding that brand building is not a simple transactional division of roles: “The combination of head and heart… is not the clients provide the head and then the agencies provide the creativity and the heart. It comes when you actually work as one team.” This idea of collective emotional intelligence, rather than departmental responsibility, was central to how Kellanova approaches communication craft and marketing decision-making.

Moving into India’s breakfast landscape, Peres highlighted the simultaneous abundance and contradiction of the market. “India has the largest S.E.C. population in the world… at the same time, you've got a huge number of people who are at the bottom of the pyramid,” he noted. This duality frames breakfast as both an emotional anchor and logistical challenge, especially for the Indian household CEO, the mother. Peres captured this morning rush universally and almost tenderly when he quipped, “A housewife or a mom needs to have 10 hands to actually get through the morning.” Across regions where “breakfast habits literally change every 100 kilometers,” Kellanova observed that rushed mornings create a consistent need-state, enabling nutritional cereal to present itself as both solution and morning companion.

Discussing Chocos, Peres explained how the brand evolved communication from a kid-centric fun snack to a family-aligned option that balances child delight with maternal satisfaction. As he put it, “We wanted to move from there to it being actually the win-win for both moms and kids.” Meanwhile in the muesli category, which Peres described as the fastest-growing segment in breakfast cereals, communication wasn’t merely emotional but educational. The shift to ingredient transparency was key: “Simply calling it the 12-in-one muesli and on-pack calling out each and every one of those 12 ingredients changed the game for us.” This made muesli legible in a market where, as he admitted, “muesli is still a very, very new term in India,” and subsequently enabled a communications pivot that positioned the product as multigenerational, “our latest piece of communication actually brings generations together.”

Peres also detailed Kellanova’s authenticity-driven influencer approach, in which brand messaging wasn’t outsourced to celebrities alone but rooted internally. “We realized how well personal care companies were even leveraging their own employees… and we said, why can't we do the same?” This led to over 40 employees, including Peres himself, posting candid product experiences. “I spoke about me starting my day with muesli… consumers want to hear about the brand authentically, sometimes from people who work for the brand as well,” he said. In another experiment with personalization at scale, the company used AI-driven messaging, producing over 5,000 customised store-specific video messages featuring Kajol, demonstrating how technology can meet geography and local retail with specificity.

Closing on a philosophical note, Peres emphasised humility and adaptability as core virtues in modern marketing. “Brand loyalty is not something any brand can rest on. It's something that you've got to fight for every day,” he said, underscoring the need for ongoing innovation informed by consumer intelligence and market signals. He urged marketers to “allow the magic to happen. Be collaborative, be open to new ideas… constantly have a growth mindset,” admitting with notable candour that “we are novices in that space and there is a lot to learn.” With that beginner’s mindset, Peres concluded with hope for how consumers choose in the modern marketplace: “hopefully, yes, the consumer will be right swiping on your brand more than any other.”