On Valentine’s Day, here is a brand encouraging you to break some (Little) Hearts

• On the eve of Valentine’s Day, Britannia’s Little Hearts is encouraging millennials to cut out the romance and break some hearts instead.
• From celebrating romance to break ups; we take a look at how Little Hearts’ communication has evolved with changing times.
• Vinay Subramanyam, Head-Marketing, Britannia Industries further walks us through Little Hearts’ latest campaign and shares why the brand has stayed away from advertising for a while.

Britannia’s Little Hearts is a brand that has a very special place in the hearts of 90’s kids. We have all grown up eating the heart-shaped biscuits and therefore, the brand has a sentimental value attached to it. It has been a part of the local pop-culture for many years.

With changing times, the millennials have evolved. They are free, bold, bright, ambitious, with a mind of their own and not shackled by conventional thinking, willing to break the social norms.

Latching onto the current trends and staying attuned to the youth’s vibes, Little Hearts is now celebrating break ups and self-love instead, in its latest campaign. The brand saw how there was too much mush-floating on Valentine’s Day and the world needed a saviour, standing with those who feel left out.

Little Hearts has launched a quirky song featuring the rapper, Kaam Bhaari along with social media influencer, Ahsaas Channa.

Valentine’s Day was once a day of reckoning in the lives of most teens. It was a day of some really happy and many more broken hearts. But now, more and more young people are taking days like Valentine’s day far less seriously and are enjoying it, irrespective of whether they are hooked up or single, accepted or rejected and this is what the song captures.

We spoke to Vinay Subramanyam, Head-Marketing, Britannia Industries to understand the evolution of the brand's communication from mushy to edgy and the transition to a digital-first approach.

Talking about its latest campaign, he said, “Britannia Little Hearts is a brand of the young, by the young and for the young. The brand follows youth trends keenly and knows that they ‘Love themselves’ more than anyone else. They don’t need a relationship to define themselves. They are happy when they are in a relationship and happier when they are not. They don’t get dejected when rejected, and they don’t think twice before saying no either. What better gift can a brand give them, than a contemporary take on #BreakingSomeHearts. This Valentine’s Day when the world zigs, Little Hearts shall proudly zag!”

Speaking about the change in its positioning strategy, Subramanyam said, “We haven’t created the brand’s identity. It is how the youth has evolved. Love was mushy when the brand was launched and it has really changed today. Look at today’s youth, they take Valentine’s Day far less seriously than what people did 25 years back. So our proposition is a reflection of that change.”

While Britannia’s Little Hearts has been missing from the public eye since 2017 in terms of advertising, after it launched its first phase of #Breaksomehearts, it is now planning to increase its ad spends on digital media.

“We were invisible till 2017. We never advertised, we just kept the brand out there and the brand generated a lot of interest on its own. There is a lot of content that Little Hearts does on digital, but this is our second big long-form content that we have worked on,” says Subramanyam.

“Little hearts is a small brand for us in the overall revenue of Britannia. However, it is a giant brand for us as far as social conversations go. Most of the organic love and conversations, and content that we see, which user’s generate on social media, are around Britannia’s Little Hearts. It has been a part of the local pop-culture for so many years and we got all this love without even doing anything about it. We realised this a few years ago, which is when we started communicating with the audience again. It is a bit of counter-culture for us as most of our brands are on TV, Little Hearts is our only brand that lives, breeds and dies on digital,” says Subramanyam.

Little Hearts latest campaign has been conceptualised by Wunderman Thompson and led by Senthil Kumar, CCO.