Failures are the stepping-stones of success and we learn the most when we fail – Priyanka Shah, Senior Director – Isobar
Being the Senior Director, how do you manage to bring out the best in you and your team?
It’s important to give freedom to your teams to experiment, make mistakes, learn and plow back and as a leader, I intend to foster the growth of future leaders.T he three things I provide my team with is an inspiration, direction and strong backing to push their limits.I am fortunate to have an amazing team who have tremendously grown as professionals, are immensely valued in the system and have won many distinguished awards that keep them motivated to achieve more.
In your 8 years of experience, what are three trends that stood out for you?
Digital is an extremely dynamic field where trends change every 6months, however, is in the Mobile Industry for more than 8 years now have seen major shifts in trends. When I started my career in Mobile Marketing it was so nascent that even an SMS was regarded as an innovation and the most common question was WHY MOBILE? 3 years hence in 2012 when I shifted to Ph.D. and managing HUL voice in the form of OBD and IVR were a trend as data was at its nascent state and extremely expensive and low penetrated. Executing campaigns powered by Celebrity Voice were an instant hit and delivered impactful results. However, mobile was still seen as a medium to reach the rural and the semi-urban.
In 2015 data started picking up and hence the dominance of WAP and APP economy in the mobile space.WAP and InApp advertising were the trends then and slowly paved a way for multiscreen planning. The question changed from WHY MOBILE to what do we do on Mobile? Mobile still was just a checkbox for most of the marketers but it did start gaining importance as consumers attention started shifting towards mobile.
In 2016-17 native advertising and content advertising gained momentum and advertisers started experimenting with various forms of native and content marketing. The question bothering the advertisers was how to measure the impact of content marketing? With some successful content integrations with players like Filter Copy, TVF, Popxo, LBB etc. to begin with the belief in content marketing grew. The video became the major form of entertainment that started dominating the mobile landscape.
With Launch of JIO in 2017 the game changed, data became affordable and video continued to dominate even more. With data penetration growing in semi-urban and rural Vernacular became a trend.
Voice is the next big trend that will dominate from 2019. By 2020 50%of the searches would be voice searches with the semantic search for better understanding the queries. The popularity of Voice over IP (VoIP) and video chatting in 2019 will introduce a major shift in spends in the coming year. The questions have now changed to HOW innovatively can we use Mobile to grab attention and deliver Impact.
From the time you started your journey, what areas of the industry you have seen growing faster?
I started my journey back in 2009, having completed my MBA in Telecom Management, I got placed in Mauj and was a Management Trainee in the domain of Mobile Marketing. Was a part of the Mobile Marketing Evolution in India and extremely proud to say that no other domain has grown in such leaps and bounds as Mobile in the last 10 years. The mobile spends have shifted from 3-5% in 2010 to 10-15% in 2013-15 to 25—30% on 2016-17 to now more than 60% on an average. The other domains that have seen a major shift are Social, Data and Mar tech.
How do you try to be creative and unique with every new pitch that you make?
As isobar, we always keep Consumer at the center and for every pitch mapping, the consumer journey for that particular brand is extremely critical. We create a channel mapping as per the unique consumer journeys by using in-house tools like DAN Explore etc. which make the proposition relevant and unique. We believe in crafting strategies with the creative use of digital and hence our planning is not just number crunching but delivering impacts through new formats and technology to lure the audience. For every pitch, we devise a good mix of reach and engagement strategy to deliver business impact and last mile conversions.
Any advice you would like to give to the people who are faced with failure and having trouble in balancing work in a corporate setup?
It’s important that you love what you do and you are extremely passionate about achieving your goals. This makes the journey exciting and works never seems like a task but something that gives you that adrenaline rush to excel each day.
It’s extremely important to build a support system at home as well as at work who would understand your nature of work and help you in every possible way to achieve that balance.
Failures are the stepping-stones of success and we learn the most when we fail hence it’s important to learn from your failures and always put your best foot forward to achieve more. As leaders, it’s important for us to back our team and support and motivate them to excel even if they fail as that would make them fearless to achieve greater heights.