You can’t do a good job if your job is what you do all the time – Gaurav Soni, Business Director, Starcom
1. Briefly tell us about your journey from an internship with The Nielsen Company to now a Business Director at Starcom?
The journey has been an exciting one. I still remember my first day at work when I was bestowed with umpteen data and was asked to interpret and analyze the data and put it in the presentation format. I was muddled looking at all of it and then a thought struck me have I chosen the wrong profession? However, over the course of time, I understood the nuances of the profession and started enjoying it.
Over the years I got to work in different companies with varied roles and every time the challenges were unique and as an individual, they helped me grow and evolve into a better professional. This is exactly what keeps me going “a new challenge every day which involves some learning and some unlearning“
I have worked with different agencies like Dentsu, Lodestar, GroupM & Starcom and worked on brands like Aircel, Tata Docomo, Virgin Mobiles, Horlicks, OPPO etc. I have also had the opportunity to work on the other side of the table i.e. with Jagran Prakashan in a Brand & Strategy role which helped me learn below-the-line marketing solutions and build successful alliances.
My every stint has propelled my career path. Overall, it has been a great learning and growth experience for me until now and hopes to continue with the same.
2. Did you have to unlearn and learn a lot when you shifted from an FMCG client (GSK) to a global mobile manufacturer (OPPO)?
Basics never change. However, the way business objectives change and hence the media strategy also has to be changed. Hence learning and unlearning is much needed and is part of the game. What has changed from my last stint to the current one is media execution, client expectation, and the core audience.
In my last stint where I handled Horlicks, a leading brand in its segment and now I am handling OPPO mobiles which is a challenger brand. For Horlicks our target audience was mothers but for OPPO we target Youth. So the way we use media becomes different. For Horlicks I had two tasks, the first one was to protect my market share and the second one was to create relevance for the category for those who were leaving the category.
With regular advertising basis FMCG principles and modeling we did a lot of contextual advertising. Right now my task is to gain market share and create awareness for OPPO. For which we have gone really aggressive and pushed boundaries in terms of how we have used different mediums (one of the example is blocking 1st spot on leading GEC across markets for the entire year to build high recall for a challenger brand like OPPO). None of the advertisers has done this before.
We have done lot of Impact buys in every market unlike any advertiser and have disrupted the market. This eventually helped us to gain the market share and Increase the top of mind awareness for the brand.
3. You must have a pretty big team to handle, how do you make sure that each of them is equally productive?
One thing which I look for in every team member is the right attitude. As a team leader, it is very important for me to understand the strength and weakness of every team member and give job/projects accordingly. To make use of the strength at its best and to work on the weaknesses. The key is to maintain balance in professional and personal life for everyone. That’s is why everyone is given separate tasks and KPIs which is measured every quarterly.
In this era of client pressure and steaming deadlines, everyone has to be motivated every day and I make sure to realize them that the work which they are doing will shape up a brands’ future and their future as well. Besides this, they get regular training and workshops to enhance their skills
4. What has been your biggest challenge at work recently and how did you and your team overcome it?
Let’s talk about the current challenge and how as a team we overcome this challenge.
So there were 3 challenges for us (OPPO) first being the mammoth competition within a cluttered category since OPPO was a late entrant in India, second was to create imagery for the brand since OPPO is a Chinese brands and unfortunately they do not have much credibility in India and last was positioning since everyone is talking about selfie how does OPPO become synonymous with Selfie.
Hence our strategy was ‘simple and focused’. We concentrated on connecting with our target audience i.e. youth, across all platforms where they are present. Thus, we used a 360-degree approach which includes TV, digital, social media, print, OOH, etc. Our associations with different properties such as Cricket, Big Boss, Top Model, Roadies , Nach Baliye to name a few helped us to build the connection with youth while content integrations in these shows focussed on outstanding camera quality and selfies and distinguished OPPO from others we were never subtle with our marketing strategies rather we believed in-your-face advertising.
Our strategy was and will have a focus on two platforms – entertainment and sports to reach out to young users and bring out the best of our technology for our audiences to experience it. We played consistent communication irrespective of the medium to establish OPPO as the “Selfie Expert & Leader”
We leveraged the partnership with the influencers from various walks of life like: Deepika Padukone, Sidharth Malhotra etc, on various platforms and we have gotten closer to the Indian customers and spread the love of taking selfies while at the same time dominating tech & travel sites to build credibility and relevance. It is the result of all these efforts that OPPO is today perceived as the best in Selfie camera phone.
5. What are your current and ideal work/life balance?
You can’t do a good job if your job is what you do all the time. So I make it a point to indulge in different activities like squash, gyming & swimming. And of course, socializing and spending time with my loved ones. The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities. So, thankfully my current work/life balance is the ideal one.