Earlier this week, Swiggy unveiled a festive brand makeover - rebranding itself as ‘Sweety’.

Across digital and physical assets, Swiggy's changes included adding 'Sweety delivery partners' in cities, carrying customised ‘Sweety’ delivery bags, bringing the rebranding directly to customers' attention. 

In addition to this, during this period, every delivery partner’s name on the app appears with a prefix ‘Sweety’. Swiggy’s social media handles also changed their profile picture to reflect the name change. On 7 November, a day before Diwali, Kareena Kapoor Khan entered the campaign with a post inspired by her character 'Poo' in the 2001 film Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.

We caught up with Mayur Hola, VP - brand, Swiggy, to learn more about the campaign.

Edited excerpts:

What was the idea behind this rebrand?

Every year during the festive period, orders for Indian sweets on Swiggy grow over fourfold. This year, we decided to take mithai as seriously as India does. A name that sounds a lot like Swiggy, only sweeter.

How is Swiggy communicating the change in name for the festive period?

Pretty much across all touchpoints. Our sweet delivery executives wearing Sweety T-shirts and bags were the first to hit the streets. Since then, we’ve been rolling it out across our app, social handles, press, OOH, restaurant branding, our corporate office and internal communications, plus BTL touchpoints.

Does it have anything to do with how some delivery partners pronounce Swiggy?

It has everything to do with how sweet this time of the year is or should be. Not really switty, or seety or anything else!

Among all the 'wack stuff' Swiggy has done, where does this rank?

This will actually be one of the more wholesome things the brand has done. It's simple, it's sweet. However, it's not Swiggy-level wacky.

How and why did Kareena Kapoor Khan come into this?

The campaign needed a closure, and Kareena is the ultimate sweety. So, we recreated Poo (from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham...) with Bebo (Kareena) and Kaju Katli.

Why didn't you go the film route for the festive campaign?

The idea didn’t demand it. For brands like Sweety the awareness and recall of colour and logo is high. As such, a tweak like this registers big time sans any band baja baraat. And travels more as a result of not having a film. In some ways, a film contains the thought and holds it back from taking life of its own. Whereas, as we saw here, the simplicity of thought and execution allows anyone to adopt it and take it to their world.