I've had the unique opportunity to work with Pulak on one of his favorite marketing campaigns; one for Kotak Bank called the Kotak Jifi. This was 2014; and cut to 2021; we've managed to stay in touch and even travel together scouting for Ratnagiri Alphonso mangoes in 2018. While banking and financial services have typically been heavily regulated; it comes as a breath of fresh air to interact with a marketer who's made it so very appealing as a consumer!

About Pulak Sarmah

Our guest today has been conferred with the CMO SUPER 30 HONOR in 2019 by the Internet & Mobile Marketing Association of India and has won numerous awards at the IDMA, DMAi Echo & also the Brand Equity Shark Awards for his work. We have with us Pulak Sarmah who has been in the space of advertising, marketing for over 15 years.

Starting as a brand manager for Kotak Life Insurance, he moved to become a core member of the corporate brand team at Kotak Bank and was responsible for multiple high decibel brand campaigns including Kotak JIFI & KAYPAY. In 2014, he took a break from corporate life to give shape to his entrepreneurial dreams and started Not Just Momos. 2016 saw Pulak coming back to the corporate world, as the head of marketing and founding member at Kotak General Insurance. An alumnus of Xavier Institute of Communications (XIC), Mumbai, he is a speaker, panelist and jury member at prominent industry events.

Having always watched the automotive from the outside as a coordinator in the Royal Enfield community (2012 - 2017) and then as co-Founder of the Road Trips Co which was in partnership with an automotive major in 2018; there were a few marketers I had always longed to work with. Pallavi is one of those distinguished marketing leaders who has worked in making luxury cars even more aspirational to the difficult and discerning Indian buyer.

For someone who was inspired by a poster her mother gave her when she was a little girl, this podcast is about the journey to becoming a 'lioness' hearted soul on two wheels (and four!)

About Pallavi Singh

Pallavi is a passionate and pioneering senior business and marketing professional who has worked in leadership positions with iconic global brands such as BMW, MG Motor & Harley–Davidson. She has spent over 15 years in building bridges between art and science to create best–in–class digital first and marketing roadmaps for the premium market segment. While her areas of impact have been building brands, MarTech, digital & customer experience; she believes in an integrated, KPI and business led approach to marketing.

In her career thus far, Pallavi has won many awards and recognitions including the Corporate Business leader award by World Association of Women Warriors, Top 50 Indian women in marketing by Brand Illustrated magazine and Most powerful influencers by Adgully.

Pallavi has now shifted focus to driving impact projects and initiatives for brands start-ups & non-profits. She serves as an advisor to the Giri Foundation and her new abode online is Pallavi on a Break.

Episode Notes

• What makes Harley Davidson so Special for Pallavi and how customers became family
• What is marketing all about today - From 4Ps to 4Cs of 2000's and now the 4 Is
• The childhood poster which inspired Pallavi and How her mom shaped her into who she is now
• Starting her career with Yamaha, and how the Japanese make such great automobiles!
• Meeting her first mentor at Harley - Anoop Prakash
• Making something very intense, a lot of fun and living like your customer with Harley (and beyond!)
• The story of when Pallavi met Bill Davidson (for the 1st time!) - Exclusive on reltoK!
• Working with her 2nd mentor, Rajeev Chaba
• Learning the ropes of Digital Transformation with Udit Malhotra
• A hiring hack for anyone wanting to build a better organization (Bonus!)
• Challenges faced in getting Indian buyers to accept foreign brands, working with global teams to tweak marketing to suit Indian buyers
• Marketing as an art and science. Connecting emotionally but talking rationally
• MarTech as a business conversation, CRM being the heart of the marketing function
• Why the automotive industry needs more women
• Getting the seat at the board for the CMO; and then becoming a CEO
• Being Brave, as a way of life

For the complete episode notes and links to the marketing campaigns mentioned by Pallavi Singh, checkout the reltoK website

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David Fallarme was a recognized name in my inbox for some years; with newsletters that you used to popup once in a while from Hubspot. Eventually I also started getting emails from him about Marketing catchups and roundtables of APACMarketers.com. Having been a regular in the roundtables and a member of the community, it gave me a chance to understand the mind of a 'Good Marketer'; and I decided to reach out to David to come on the show.

About David Fallarme

David Fallarme currently leads marketing for HubSpot in Asia and based out of Singapore.

He's built and led marketing teams at companies of varying sizes, from public companies to nascent venture-backed startups. He's driven growth & acquisition for products with millions of users, and leading marketing functions at several SaaS businesses.

He also runs a marketing community called APACmarketers.com and blogs at The Marketing Student

Episode Notes

• Why David loves marketing and filling in the bingo card of his career
• Why the marketing function depends on the company you are working for and what to look for when joining a company to build a marketing career. The dilemma of the Golden Handcuffs
• Frameworks to figure if your career is going in the right direction
• Setting the Gold Standard to build a high performance marketing team and what makes a company become a boring place to work
• Inbound marketing and the blue ocean strategy
• Building a brand with Inbound marketing
• The north stars for sales and marketing teams, and setting a common metric to track for both teams. Having a whole view of the funnel and building one entire conversion process that both teams own that way
• The tyranny of best practices and how to deal with it and information out there!
• About growing APAC Marketers

For the complete episode notes and links to the marketing campaigns mentioned by David Fallarme, checkout the reltoK website

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After I finished recording this interview, I promptly ordered myself a double mutton whopper. The interesting part is, we did not talk about burgers at all. It was more of a tribute to a brand which has understood its audience so well - consistently delivering bulls eyes' each time. Srini took it many notches further in India by building an insight powered marketing engine that defined it's social and product relevance in the pandemic. And let's not forget a career spanning over 17 years working with iconic brands like Heinz, Kellogg's, ConAgra and Burger King!

About Srinivas Adapa

Srinivas has been helping build brands & business for the last 17 years. The former CMO of Burger King India has built a career which has been about building American Brands in India and other countries.

From running rural marketing programs for Glucon D for Heinz, to launching Pringles in India to consumer insighting with Kenyan teenagers in Africa, to leading breakfast category marketing for Kellogg's and finally leading Burger King through a pandemic - he's done it all!

An IIM Lucknow graduate, believes in leading by empathy, nurturing a team culture which puts the consumer first and creating curiosity at scale.

Breaking Down the Episode

Being a hopeless romantic when it comes to marketing, enjoying the yin & yang of marketing and being empathetic.

Keeping the consumer at the center of everything, building a culture around that and make it a way of life and being mentored by Prof Jha and Prof Avinash Mulky in IIM Lucknow.

How looking at big juicy marketing challenges on the table totally works for Srini. From running rural marketing programs for Glucon D for Heinz, to launching Pringles in India to consumer insighting with Kenyan teenagers in Africa, to leading breakfast category marketing for Kellogg's and finally leading Burger King through a pandemic.

Handling the marketing for Burger King during the pandemic and understanding how

• Every crisis presents an opportunity and how do you make it count? We had a clear vision
• They were fortunate to have the right team
• Staying close to the customer was the order of the day
• Agility first and perfection later was an important step

Understanding how moment marketing can be part of building a brand

Impact vs effort grid in choosing the best ideas and the perils of always sticking to a calendar

Building an idea engine with a strong team culture of encouragement, building rapport with the agency

Why its crucial to look at digital marketing as marketing within the digital platform why its refreshing to work with digital natives in the marketing workforce but a word of caution!

Building consumer insights with genuine interest in what is happening in the audience's life and culture built on curiosity and passion for understanding consumers at scale. In short, building an insight powered marketing engine

Why it is important to choose the right spot for your brand in the continuum scale and then live it across all touch points to be truly authentic.

The positives of the pandemic for marketing. (Yes, there are positives!)

The three fulcrums of Srini's career - parting words!

• Have a clearly articulated vision of the brand
• Have passionate people around you
• Marketing is a leadership function at all levels

For the complete episode notes and links to the marketing campaigns mentioned by Srini, checkout the reltoK website

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Rohan and I go a long way back. The first time I reached out to him was to sponsor a bike ride and from there on, its been an honor to see a journalist turned marketer carve a space for himself with iconic brands like Red Bull. This is one of those episodes; which can shake a lot of beliefs one might come with; so be ready to junk them out of the window. What stands out the most is that a lot of what Rohan does is rooted in the simplicity of caring deeply about people; reiterated quite a few times in the episode.

About Rohan Vyavaharkar

As a trained journalist and a marketing professional, Rohan has over two decades experience with consumer brands, sporting teams and events in both emerging and large businesses. A global marketer, he has worked in India, Singapore and the US in different roles with brands as diverse as Twitter, Red Bull India, NDTV and also startups.

In his current role as Director, Marketing & Communications at Omidyar Network India, an investment firm focused on social impact, Rohan works on marrying a consumer based marketing approach with the unique business needs of an investment firm to help carve a unique brand. We’re going to be talking about his attempts to bring out a more human side to the firm's stories of social impact through varying use of various mediums.

He is a husband to a fellow former journalist and current communications leader, and a father of two girls who push the boundaries of reality, sanity and creativity on a daily basis. He’s finally accepted that he’s aging by participating in an amateur but highly competitive ‘dad’s cricket league’, and spends the rest of his 'sports time' screaming at the TV screen in either joy or agony depending on the fortunes of his beloved football team, Manchester United FC. And he is determined, one day, to sing songs from the feature film La La Land in tune.

Rohan also contributes to several publications and is also a visiting faculty at a leading Indian communications school.

Breaking Down the Episode

• How Marketing is an opportunity to connect with people and know their aspirations and motivations and a journey of co-creation
• What journalism taught Rohan about marketing
• Getting people to understand the product, try the product, believe in the product and get people to become brand ambassadors and love the product
• How Rohan handled learning curves in different industries
• Team work and using the support system
• Adaptability and having the self belief
• The learning, unlearning and relearning thanks to sports
• What is real leadership? (A sport inspired version)
• Pushing the barrier on excellence
• Building a team vs being part of a team
• Learnings from entrepreneurship
• Keeping people central to everything as a framework
• Being honest about the quality you are delivering
• Never settle
• Branding in the social impact space
• Omidyar's Purpose and the dual cheque book approach
• Applying consumer marketing in B2B and this approach can be effective in any scenario and what it tells us about people
• The next half a billion and tech for good and responsible tech
• Closing the language barrier
• Closing the cultural barriers
• Closing the gender barriers
• Two ways to staying relevant as a marketer forever

For the complete episode notes and links to the marketing campaigns mentioned by Rohan, checkout the reltoK website

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Faber Castell is a brand I grew up with, as a kid. Few things mattered in those years for a kid like me; but the brand of crayons and pencils where a matter of snob value - especially when 99% of the class couldn't pronounce the words right, Faber-Castell. A walk down memory lane, recollecting how mom used to cut pencils in half for me because I always lost them by the dozens to talking about how marketing to kids requires nothing but creating trust with the customers. The challenge being - kids aren't the only customers!

About Sonali Shah

Sonali is an passionate marketer by accident! At the core - she is a brand strategist with deep understanding of consumers in the mothers and kids space.

Her experience, stretches over two decades with stints on both sides – agency and client. Starting her career at Money Control; she moved to strategy planning at Contract India for about four years and then entered the category of toys with Mattel and then Hamley's. During her time at Mattel, she has also won the Mattel CEO award three years in a row from 2006 to 2008.

She joined Faber-Castell in 2017 as business head - art and graphic and in May 2020 she was elevated as the Marketing Director. Sonali loves traveling and art.

Breaking Down the Episode

• Becoming a marketer by accident
• Her mentor Nanet D'sa at Mattel
• Being driven by passion and passion alone
• "I am an opportunist", and learned to say Yes!
• From being a one woman army to building a team
• Managing the art folio first to the becoming Director of Marketing at Faber Castell
• Why the reason to believe (RTB) has to be very strong when marketing to 3 year old's
• Evolving consumer needs in a pandemic era
• Trust in brand also a function of influencers driving it
• How marketing has become a very 'come and go' function
• Products being a very core function of marketing
• Apple, Amazon and Netlfix - and how they are far ahead in the game of marketing
• Taking the team with oneself, encouraging failure and being experimental
• Having fun at work!

For the complete episode notes and links to the marketing campaigns mentioned by Alok, checkout the reltoK website

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Join us for a very candid and no holds barred chat with Parul Sharma, previously with Mondelez who talks about all things marketing, how parenting can teach one management skills and taking breaks in life to reset your priorities. Parul has built her career at Mondelez and when you see her career it is nothing short of an inspiration. Starting off as a management trainee and then heading to the board room (also being the only woman in the room!) speaks volumes about Parul as a management professional. She was also Featured as the Top "Hot Young Marketing Minds" by Economic Times Brand Equity in 2018.

About Parul Sharma

Parul is an FMCG enthusiast with 15 years of Sales and Marketing with Mondelez earlier known as Cadbury India. She joined there as a summer trainee and ended up heading some of the sweetest brand portfolios in the country - Cadbury Dairy Milk, Gems, 5 Star, Celebrations, Fuse and many more. In her last role, was leading the Modern Trade sales organization for Mondelez.

She has won various accolades in her career, the most noteworthy one being the AMEA Globe Award. She was also in the list of ‘Hot Young Marketering Minds’ by Brand Equity recently. She is also an active member of AIESEC, an international not for profit organization.

Her passions include food, art and wildlife which she enjoys with her husband and 2 boys. Parul is a strong proponent of diversity at workplaces and that is also something we will be diving into - in this episode of reltoK!

Breaking down the episode

• Why Having a Point of View is a very important trait of a professional
• Why emotions matter and how she loves observing and listening to people
• Why sometimes its good not to try and fix everything
• Nurturing the ecosystem as a secret sauce
• Why one needs to slow down to go faster
• Marketers reframing the category to stay ahead
• Biggest shift in marketing as a function of people
• Personalization and efficiency - the challenge to address
• What parenting can teach one about managing teams
• Being the only woman in the room and gender being a obstacle and building a better workspace for women
• Resetting priorities with breaks the in career
• Marketing Propositions which inspire - Nike, Fevicol, Cadbury
• Being outrageous and a parasite like Burger King

For the complete episode notes and links to the marketing campaigns mentioned by Alok, checkout the reltoK website

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