Asia-Pacific Power List 2024: Sri Widowati, Danone

Sri Widowati 

Vice president of marketing
Danone
Indonesia
Member since 2023 

In the challenging year of 2024, Sri Widowati made a successful return to Campaign Asia-Pacific’s  Power List. Amid consumer pressures due to inflation on prices of food, she kept the Indonesian market loyal and engaged with Danone’s top brands like Aqua bottled water and infant nutrition brand SGM by way of outstanding campaigns. 

For Aqua, her team came up with an integrated campaign called ‘Not All Water is Aqua’, to differentiate the brand and reinforce that its water comes from nature, unadulterated and untouched by human hands. 

The campaign was launched in collaboration with Brewer in Singapore and FleishmanHillard in Indonesia, with a PR initiative to educate consumers about the qualities of Aqua water. It won the PRCA APAC consumer award. Consequently, Aqua saw a recovery of its market share in January and February 2024.

Later, in the wake of the negative impact of the war in Gaza, the Aqua campaign shifted its narrative. Despite being a foreign brand, it reminded people that Aqua is deeply rooted in Indonesia. With 17,000 Indonesian employees, it reminded people that it is an Indonesian enterprise founded by an Indonesian visionary who sees the importance of having safe drinking water in a country where the availability of safe drinking water is very low. 

For the infant nutrition category, ‘Wido’ as she’s known to colleagues, spearheaded a campaign emphasising the importance of drinking the right milk by leveraging the voices of mothers who have trusted SGM to convince other mothers to incorporate the brand’s infant milk formula in their children’s diet.

Armed with data, her team was able to link consumer information across various touchpoints in the whole ecosystem and provide mothers with personalised advice tailored to their children’s needs. By establishing a 24/7 careline centre dedicated to assisting mothers and babies, the brand created seamless consumer experience, providing advice well-tailored to consumer needs.

Furthermore, the brand built a community known as SGM Klub Generasi Maju and Mumbasador, consisting of consumers who have become advocates. These mums have generated reach through their own experiences and word-of-mouth via digital channels, playing a pivotal role in driving penetration to the category. Because of such efforts, SGM continues to expand its market share and enhance its brand power and market penetration.

Widowati worked for L'Oréal in Singapore and Unilever SEA in her early career. Moving back to Indonesia after being abroad for 12 years, she has held high-profile positions since 2016: country director for Facebook and chief growth and digital transformation at Unilever Indonesia. However, she finds her current role deeply satisfying as she sees herself fully responsible for shaping and driving the strategies for brands like Aqua and SGM, which affect the lives of more than 140 million Indonesians.