Frankly, I have limited planning my future because I think if you plan and achieve something, it will give you happiness but not Joy. To me! Experiencing joy is very important in life. I am not saying that planning should not be a part of life, it definitely is but planning makes achievement of goal obvious as sooner or later you will get it.
1. Tell us about your upbringing, and early career days.
Well this one is going to be a little longer, When someone asks you this question, ‘How was your upbringing like?’, your entire childhood flashes before your eyes and same just happened with me.
To begin with, my family’s amazing love and strength for my upbringing has been the strongest foundation of my life that has given me the confidence of doing anything that I can dream of, and needless to say my family was the one providing me with that boost and they started shaping me from the time I learnt to speak, read and write. I remember, once we had a faulty tape recorder which my father disassembled and somehow repaired it & by the way; he’s not a technical guy & like every other child, I was not fond of green vegetables so my mother used to experiment with them and I always ended up eating them..haha. As a child, this inspired me so much and eventually developed a strong interest towards solving problems creatively.
In my school days, I was an average student academically who was practically smart, I represented Delhi twice in the National Yoga Championship and won silver once. Also, I participated in Bharat Scouts & Guides Training that helped in improving my understanding of things.
I believe that the early days of every child’s life should be nurtured with love and affection with no pressure on achieving something or to become like someone; one should understand and find their own goals. Some can be good in academics and other can be good in sports or music. A child in his upbringing should never be compared with others as this will not only make them pessimist but will also influence their knowledge. I am thankful to the ’n’ number of things that I have learnt and still learning from my parents and I think the real upbringing compliment for my parents would be -One day when I will have kids, I am definitely going to use a lot of their ways that worked on me to become what I am today.
2. How did you rise to the highest echelons in your career and what advice do you have for our readers?
I think career should not be measured by echelons; the only thought that I had since I started working was to learn and understand whatever I’ll be doing in my career. When one starts newly in his/her career, some expect high salary and some expect a higher designation and in this confusion they forget the basic element of shaping their professional path which is the ‘curiosity’ to absorb knowledge from their work, this curiosity derived me so passionately that helped me to experience every level of work no matter what the designation is and eventually provided me the platform to become what I am today both professionally and personally.
I started as a Technical support officer in HCL for AT&T and British Telecom & now when I am the Head of Marketing in Wheebox, this curiosity to learn is still there. I handle a team in which on one side I have young people who are energetic & on the other, the elder ones are there to guide and my god! What ideas come when you do collaborate together and this is what the daily ingredient to my learning & growing path is, I enjoyed all my roles and responsibilities and trust me, I have never judged any level of work or designation rather, this gave me the opportunity to learn about different profiles and to respect people at all levels.
3. How do you analyse whether your marketing activities reached your intended TG and communicated the right messages?
I always analyse the reach with pre and post strategies. In pre strategy, the TG gets defined to engage with the brand helping the strategy to focus not only on great content but on the right content. Once the campaign has reached, the post strategy helps us to understand the customer’s persona about the product or service pitched.
Defining a TG for a campaign usually depends on many factors like interest, age, demographics, gender etc. The content in the campaign should communicate the ‘want’ of your TG that they really care about. An audience persona is the first step to visualizing your audience as you write. When you picture an individual, you can properly tailor your content to them.
4. How do you think marketing will evolve in the future and how are you preparing for that leap?
One factor that continues to shape the future of marketing is the customer, despite of the changes in marketing; the customer will remain in the centre of all strategies and efforts. However the consumer needs are changing every day and continuously becoming more sophisticated.
In order to bind the customer with the brand, the technology plays an important role over the complete customer’s life cycle informing the brand about their interest, like/dislikes or requirement but technological advancements like this are only a part of what we may expect for the future. Artificial Intelligence is already in play, however, it will get much stronger. Using AI, customer engagement and service will increasingly be automated to assist individual customers at any time.
5. What would be that one thing that you would do differently now than before?
I think that one thing for me is to become even more discipline. With discipline one can definitely define and attain their goals. This eventually makes you a stronger version of yourself that defines you as a character that is doing something. At a point in life or time everybody fails, I also fail! But that has never stopped me to try again and again till the time a task is completed. People usually drop in between because they are afraid of losing but the Idea is, you must fail a hundred times to succeed once. Fail and re-commit, fail & re-commit is what I can second as the pattern that I follow to pursue my challenges.
6. What are your future plans?
Frankly, I have limited planning my future because I think if you plan and achieve something, it will give you happiness but not Joy. To me! Experiencing joy is very important in life. I am not saying that planning should not be a part of life, it definitely is but planning makes achievement of goal obvious as sooner or later you will get it.
I believe, let the future run its course and one should sail naturally according to the discipline, & ethics required either in personal or professional front.
7. What are your thoughts for sponsoring ads during IPL? How do brands measure ROI?
I assume a brand should choose the right advertising platform for their TG strategy. IPL is not only one of the biggest annual Cricket event but a festival in India. In a country like India where Cricket is a religion, IPL is like a carnival of sports, entertainment, and endorsements.
Every year, billions of viewing minutes are recorded, and every brand wants to capitalize on this opportunity by having a presence on their social media eventually helping them to increase the ROI where the growth in users, app downloads or spike in revenue can be noted.
IPL is big, more so in today's times & such endorsements help the brands to multiply their reach, impressions, likes, views, share etc. to the TG, resulting in increasing the brand ‘s visibility like a magic which will happen slowly, but surely.
8. Which is your favourite book and why?
There are two actually, one is “Kasab: The Face of 26/11” by Rommel Rodrigues & “Lanka’s Princess” by Kavita Kane. Both books describe the character’s early childhood days and the upbringing which led to build their life’s cornerstone and portrays how different mind-sets think, the planning or the strategies & emotions of people justifying what was right for them during their course.
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