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Anushka Chhikara (host): Hello and welcome to WiZR Voices, an insightful podcast for learners and career makers. I'm your host, Anushka Chhikara, and today we're diving into the world of marketing with our expert,
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Loveleen Sahrawat (guest): Hi Anushka, lovely to be here.
Anushka: Before we start picking Loveleen's brain and exploring her career in marketing, I want to give you an insight into what her career trajectory
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Anushka: has been like. She's worked as a branding and marketing expert across top global organizations like Ogilvy, McCann Worldwide Group, Aditya Birla Capital, and recently she's transitioned
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Anushka: into working in the startup space. I'm sure you're going to get a lot of insider insights into what the marketing space has been like, what's changed, what stayed the same,
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Anushka: career mistakes to avoid, opportunities in the field, and much more. So let's get started. Hi Loveleen, thanks a lot for giving us your time and joining us here today.
Loveleen: Hi Anushka, I'm super excited to have this conversation with you.
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Anushka: I've been looking forward to it for a few weeks now.
Anushka: Yeah. So we've understood what your milestone career journeys have been like, right? But let's take a step back. What did you study in college and how did you get into marketing?
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Loveleen: So honestly, I was a very distracted student till class 10. I was a boarding school student my entire school life. And I'd say till class 10, I wasn't really sure I was going to make a
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Loveleen: living. I was very poor at math. I pretty much could not balance an equation when it came to chemistry. Physics was always on top of my head.
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Loveleen: I think for me, what changed my confidence when I was in school, and I would attribute where I'm sitting here today, because a few things that happened actually in school, maybe
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Loveleen: because it was a boarding school, a lot of focus on extracurricular activities. So I was a very keen debater. I started writing plays, directing plays and acting in plays,
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Loveleen: like when I was 14, 15. So while I was like, not doing so well in my studies, I was like, that was very exciting in my life that I was actually a really good debater. I was very good
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Loveleen: in theatre. So I wasn't completely nalayak in my head. And that confidence, I think is really important when you're young, because you know that, okay, you're really good at something.
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Loveleen: You're not very sure what that is, what how your mental makeup is, and what are the things that you're good at, that can actually become a career for tomorrow, because I was very clear,
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Loveleen: I did not want theatre as a career. I wanted something that would make me financially, not just independent, but financially very well off. And I knew theatre would not do that for me.
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Loveleen: I chose history. That was a subject I was really good at. So I went to Jason Mary College. I did history honors from there. Because I was a boarding kid, I couldn't ask my parents for money.
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Loveleen: I was very shy. And so I started doing a lot of summer jobs. In one of those summer jobs at AT&T, I met Contract, the advertising agency. And I think then a lot of pennies dropped.
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Loveleen: A lot of things that I was really good at, which was the strategic side, the creative side, all of them came together. And I was like, okay, so this is something I can do. And I was really excited. My father wanted me to do IAS,
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Loveleen: because I was good at history, of course, over my dead body kind of a response. So I told my dad that okay, if I, Indian History of Mass Communication was the institute to go to for mass communication,
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Loveleen: if you wanted to kind of have a career in advertising. So I had this pact with my dad, if I get through IAMC, then pursuing a career in advertising, my dad had no idea what advertising was, but he's a very
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Loveleen: doting father. So he went with me. That's how I landed in advertising. I think once I started getting familiar with advertising, and then there were these amazing, like iconic copywriters,
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Loveleen: creative directors, like Freddie birdie. And I was like, gosh, I can't write like him. So the creative part, of course, went out of the window almost instantly when I started seeing
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Loveleen: their work. But the strategy part stayed with me because one of the things I discovered about him was myself was I was actually intuitively insightful. I loved observing people. And I think when I kind
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Loveleen: of look back in my school days, maybe that's why I was writing a lot of plays to begin with, because I loved how people thought and the characters that they were and multiple characters
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Loveleen: in the same person. And those are the things that you later on realize actually are core foundations to some careers. So advertising started like that. I was in advertising for
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Loveleen: about 17 years. And advertising was beginning to get. I mean, I knew it like the back of my hand.
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Loveleen: Also, the world was pivoting towards digital. The traditional ad agencies were not in a hurry. I was in a hurry. And I was also quite burnt out, frankly, because doing 20 hours a day,
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Loveleen: seven days a week, in your late 30s can be very disturbing. I remember at the time, just before I exited advertising to join the corporate side,
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Loveleen: I could not even keep a plant alive. I mean, I was working that much. I was traveling that much. I didn't really have a personal life, so to speak. It was all very voluntary because I loved my job.
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Loveleen: But at some point, you have to kind of take a step back and say that, hey. And so I decided to kind of move to the corporate side, which was also interestingly pivoting much faster than
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Loveleen: advertising when it came to digital. And I did that for about 10 years. And after doing a big
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Loveleen: job in a very big conglomerate, again, I got really restless. And I wanted to know what was happening in the big bad world of startups. And now I'm part of startups. And it's super exciting.
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Loveleen: So that's what the last 25 years have been like. Yeah. And your career is so uniquely positioned in this digital boom, right? So I want to ask you, like, what has changed in marketing over
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Loveleen: the last few years? And what has stayed the same? So let's start with what stayed the same, right? What are some foundations that you think are non-negotiable?
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Loveleen: That's really interesting. So, yeah. And I think it's a very important conversation to have because we are really seeing three generations in the workplace today. We are seeing people like me
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Loveleen: who are Gen X. Then the last 10 years have been about the millennials. And now the millennials are being fast aged by Gen Z, right? So it just seems like in the last 10 years, probably the
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Loveleen: workplace has changed 10 times. But there are some fundamentals that remain. If you look at the market, if you want to be a successful marketing professional, the most important thing is to know
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Loveleen: your consumer, right? Know the target audience. Or in fact, I wouldn't even use the word consumer. You need to know people, right? What makes them tick, have very deep insights into people
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Loveleen: at a cultural level, at a human level, at a category level. So once you understand people, what kind of culture they come from, at a human level, things that don't change.
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Loveleen: Even if you go from one culture to the other, like a lot of multinationals across countries, but they have this very human insight into people. And therefore they can go
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Loveleen: across 10 countries with the same proposition, right? And then to really understand that space in the category that appeals to that insight, that cultural insight and that human insight. So
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Loveleen: really to always know people and through the lens of your category, know them as customers.
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Loveleen: I think fundamentally that should not change. The second thing I think from there is once you know people, you can really understand them. And that's the thing that I think is really important. Once you know people, once you know the culture they are from, you construct the brands, right?
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Loveleen: You're making the brands not for your organization, but for the people. And therefore brands that are customer centric or people centric, I think that's fundamentally always going to remain.
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Loveleen: The third thing from there is really the four Ps, right? So once you know the people, you know the product, the pricing, the placement and the promotion. I think a lot of younger
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Loveleen: marketers are kind of moving away from some of these fundamentals. The product is kind of given to them to market because you know the customer so well. It's not
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Loveleen: just your duty. You are actually really good at knowing how the product should be made for that customer, their lifestyle, the insights you have on them, the pricing. I would really encourage
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Loveleen: the younger marketers today to take keener interest in product, pricing, placement and then promotion. Otherwise, I think a lot of marketers today straight away go into how do I promote this product?
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Loveleen: So I think fundamentally, those things stay ROI, right? So the ability to measure return on investment. And that can be
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Loveleen: really, really tricky for marketing because there is a difference between marketing and sales. And it's far easier to kind of, you know, measure the ROI through sales. But to have those
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Loveleen: fundamentals in place, whether it's your brand tracks or it's your NPS. So continuously measuring the brand's health, how you're kind of marketing. And so whether it is your KPI,
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Loveleen: whether it's your digital KPIs on television or on digital. And we'll talk a little bit about digital because to measure digital KPIs is very easy. And everyone's doing it on a minute to
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Loveleen: minute basis. But I think we are also losing the focus on some of the bigger, larger equity, long term KPIs like brand, right? So I think these are fundamentals. These have not changed or should
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Loveleen: not change. Even for a marketer, whether you're a Gen Z or a millennial, right?
Anushka: So three things, right? One is ROI,
[09:25 - 09:36]
Anushka: one is the four P's and the third is understanding people. A bit of a tangential question since you mentioned it, right? Would you say that to understand people, working with people,
[09:36 - 09:47]
Anushka: building for people, you have to be a sort of extrovert? Because that's the vibe I'm getting from you. So I'm just wondering, in your experience, right? What would you say is the balance between introverts and extroverts that work in marketing?
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Loveleen: So I'm going to tell you this, very few people will believe this. I'm actually an introvert. Okay, I hate socializing. Once I'm at home, I'm always lying about not meeting friends and going to a party.
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Loveleen: And we're so glad that you came to the interview. So when it comes to my workplace, I'm an absolute extrovert. It's not easy for me. Okay, you put me
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Loveleen: in a room of 20 people, it takes a lot for me to kind of go up and start talking to them. But it helps that I'm talking business with them because my business agendas are very clear. So if I'm
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Loveleen: actually approaching any network or a company, I'm not going to be an introvert. I'm going to be an introvert. I'm going to be an introvert. I'm going to be an introvert. I'm going to be an introvert. people through a very clear agenda of business. I know what my tone should be, how many times I
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Loveleen: should reach out to that person. There should be that personal aspect. I'm very good at making friends with, you know, partners, clients, colleagues because I know that's required.
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Loveleen: And to that extent, I think you have to be a really holistic personality to do your job well. You can't be in a shell and be in a department or function like marketing.
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Loveleen: Right. You have to be able to, and not just in terms of networking, but I love, for example, what comes naturally to me is I love talking to strangers. In fact, I'm far easier with strangers than with
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Loveleen: people I know. So whether I'm at an airport or I'm sitting alone in a restaurant dining or a lot
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Loveleen: of times I go watch a movie alone. I love talking to people I don't know. And I think because that comes naturally to me, my ability to kind of understand people, it comes from there.
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Loveleen: Not everyone has to be comfortable talking to strangers. But you should then be able to do kind of researches, which are more structured, but important to connect with people. So you have to be almost strategically extroverted. Yes.
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Loveleen: When it comes to your work. That's a really good term. Yeah, you have to be.
Anushka: Cool. So let's get back to these changes and what's changed, what's been the same, right? So with this digital shift, can you tell us now what are the major changes you've noticed in marketing during your career?
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Loveleen: Yeah, so obviously, a few of them are very obvious, right? So tools and channels have changed. So now marketing tools are completely automated. We
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Loveleen: have, you know, information on our fingertips, we have it every millisecond, the channels have changed. So earlier, we always had what now we call affiliate channels, but we've always had
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Loveleen: affiliate channels, whether they've been TV or OH, those have now taken the life they've taken is personalized, also intrusive, right? So now you have everyone's addicted to Facebook, and
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Loveleen: seamlessly, we are able to market to you. We know everything about you, we know your choices, we are able to retarget, we kind of follow you if you go to a website, and we are able to retarget you through the website. So our ability to
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Loveleen: understand your behavior, and your actions is really good. Okay. But let me go back and connect
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Loveleen: that to insight. I know what you do today, through what I study on digital platforms. But do I know why you do it? Right? So if you don't know why you're doing something, you'll always be able to
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Loveleen: always get somebody wrong in the mid term or the long term. So digital tells you what people are doing. But the traditional approach of marketing will also tell you why you're doing it. And that
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Loveleen: complete holistic understanding is important. So yeah, so tools and channels have changed. I think there's far more agility in today's marketers. Because just the plethora of
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Loveleen: information and the speed at which it's coming, you need to take very quick decisions with regard to your marketing campaigns, your marketing strategies. I feel today's teams are far more
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Loveleen: agile or need to be far more agile. But there is then the flip side to it. If you're so agile,
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Loveleen: are you consistent? Right? So I see the danger of not being consistent today, because, okay,
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Loveleen: you do need to write that meme trend. But is that meme core to your brand's language? And does this connect with building a strong brand identity? Because that's something you mentioned in the fundamentals.
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Loveleen: Exactly. So that takes me to the third point influencers, right? If you are so you have to write on influencers today, but will you lose your brand to it? Okay. So you have to continuously
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Loveleen: kind of strategically align influencer marketing campaign to your brand score ethos. It's not easy. But if you're a seasoned marketer, you know how to do that. Moment marketing,
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Loveleen: is another really important thing. Do you want to jump on every moment? Or do you want to jump onto the moments which are aligned to your brand's core, the category core. So I think
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Loveleen: these are some of the things that have changed in the last five to seven years. Frankly, they've made marketing far more exciting, very, very dynamic. At the same time, I think marketing
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Loveleen: is in the danger of losing the brand's soul. If you get onto this roller coaster, you have to be
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Loveleen: able to still hold back onto the brand. And kind of the other day, I was writing this piece on
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Loveleen: brands. And I was thinking that has the era of iconic brands gone? Will we have a just do it
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Loveleen: today? Will we have the real thing today? Right? So today, the brands that are coming in, often the new brands are challenging or the startups are challenging the old traditional brands. Because I think two very
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Loveleen: extremes. But I think the biggest challenge for a marketeer today will be to in this continuously
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Loveleen: dynamic and changing environment, how do you still create a brand that's going to last a lifetime? So I think when you kind of look at traditional marketing and digital marketing, so to speak,
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Loveleen: those are things some things to ponder upon for any mature marketeer, and for the young marketeers to continuously learn from. What was past and not just be future facing.
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Loveleen: Right. So right. So also, I'm wondering, right, like the most traditional form of marketing, which you can correct me if I'm wrong, would be word of mouth marketing. Yes. And now in this
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Loveleen: digital world that we live in, what is the relevance of word of mouth marketing with all these other tools?
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Loveleen: Word of mouth marketing continues to be the most important, the most impactful marketing even today. Okay.
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Loveleen: Now, the name is virality, or like, share, comment. Right. So, in fact, ratings, what are customer ratings, if they're not word of mouth?
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Loveleen: True. Right. So they've just taken a slightly different form. But word of mouth will always be a litmus
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Loveleen: test for any brand's performance. Any brand slash product when they come together to become an experience. If that experience is not a word of mouth, then it's not a word of mouth.
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Loveleen: If that experience is great, you will get positive word of mouth. If it's disappointing, you will get negative word of mouth. In the last 10 years, so Bain has this tool, which a lot of corporates
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Loveleen: have now taken on called NPS, Net Promoter Score. So that actually pretty much tests this, right. So we have promoters and we have detractors. Traditionally, those promoters and detractors
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Loveleen: could not be measured because it was just word of mouth. And very, very, I mean, if you go back 20 years ago, people would tell you the word of mouth would spread from places like barbershops.
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Loveleen: Today, it's spreading on Facebook. Facebook is the new barbershop, I guess. So it continues to be very, very important for any brand's existence. Yeah. And maybe even more important, because now we can track it in a certain way.
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Loveleen: We can track it. And thankfully, more and more, we can't fudge it. So I think till five, six years ago, there was great danger in how a lot of this was being manipulated with bots,
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Loveleen: etc, etc. But I think today, platforms have become very proactive. And also the way we kind of read these ratings today, and we kind of read,
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Loveleen: like, share, comment, we've also become a little more cautious in terms of to take that with a pinch of salt and look for authenticity. Yeah, but yeah, stays really important.
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Anushka: Okay. Now let's take a turn on the more human side, right? What is the work culture like as a marketeer? Maybe you can tell us on a high level and also on a day to day basis.
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Loveleen: Actually, work culture is very contextual. So to begin with, even though you're a marketeer, it's a marketing team, you're not really sitting in a silo. So work culture is defined by the
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Loveleen: larger organization. I've been in three very different kind of work cultures. When I was in advertising, it was very, very different to my next job, which was a huge Indian conglomerate.
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Loveleen: And now I'm with startups. So the three work cultures are so very different. But within advertising, for example, two agencies were so different, right? And the
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Loveleen: The culture gets defined by, I think, not just people at the top. Often, a lot of people say that, you know, it's the values you write on the wall, etc. I feel the work culture gets defined by
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Loveleen: your youngest people in the organization, the energy they bring in, right? And the freedom
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Loveleen: that organization kind of allows them in terms of their dress code, in terms of the engagement with each other, how much flexibility they have with regard to the work culture. So I think, I think that's a really important part of this.
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Loveleen: It's important to work-life balance. So all those things are really important in defining a work culture. However, marketing has always been the Helen in the room. I mean, it's always in any
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Loveleen: corporate, it's the most exciting team, right? They bring in the maximum amount of razzmatazz. So and that is a burden we carry on our shoulders. If a marketing team is boring,
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Loveleen: right, it does impact the work culture. So I think any organization looks towards a marketing team to keep them focused. So I think that's a really important part of this.
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Loveleen: To bring that excitement in an organization, to get the customer's voice in, to be customer empathetic, to be customer-centric. And that's really marketing's job in a sense to impact the culture.
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Anushka: Right, right. So in this mix of, you know, marketing fundamentals, and also work culture, I'm wondering, what are some common career mistakes that you see people falter in, right?
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Loveleen: Hmm. So, two, broadly. First is, I think, and I'm so happy it's happening lesser with the youngest generation, although they are, I think, also more sensitive. But I think we've, the younger generations become
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Loveleen: far more sensitive to burnouts. Gen X, that's my generation. We, we actually pivoted from
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Loveleen: public sector government economy to a private sector economy, the multinational economy in the 90s. So we really were doing 80% of the work that we were doing in the 90s.
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Loveleen: Right. I think that's very important because a healthier you means healthier outcomes and a healthier organization and a customer who's better treated. Right. You don't want a cranky person dealing with a customer on a call. It's not good for anybody. So I think watch out for burnouts. That's number one. Number two, I would say and really right on top with burnouts is upskill yourself. And I would say that much more to older people, more seasoned people, mature people like me, because the world is changing just so fast.
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Loveleen: That it's not fair that you have younger people reporting into you who know more than you. Right. After all, you are there to guide them. And you are also kind of overseeing the outcome. So I think upskilling has become so pivotal because the world is changing on a two-quarter basis. Every two quarters, we are kind of working in a new world. So if you continuously invest in yourself by upskilling, it will kind of make you more secure.
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Loveleen: If you are more secure, you do your job better, you're better with your one downs, you're better with your one ups, and you just have a far healthier career. And in fact, lesser burnouts. So yeah, those are the two things.
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Anushka: Yeah. And in this world that's like constantly shifting and constantly changing and all this chaos, right? What personally keeps you refreshed and inspired in your career journey?
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Loveleen: So I'd like to say my bosses, my mentors.
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Loveleen: Oh, give me that trophy. It's none of them. Honestly, what really keeps me inspired is my family, my partner, my dog, my parents. The corporate world will empty your cup all the time. Like, it really sucks everything out of you. And that's why they pay you a salary. That's fair. It's up to you to refill that cup.
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Loveleen: So whatever refills it for you. For me.
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Loveleen: Traveling with my partner. Even if I go home at 10 at night, I take my dog out. I play ball with her. I never leash her. I fight with the entire society to not leash her so that when she's free, I feel inspired.
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Anushka: Right.
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Loveleen: So that's very, very inspiring for me. To see my parents have a happy retirement, where they're traveling a lot, spending a lot of good time together, really inspires me because I know what I'm working towards that kind of a future.
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Anushka: Yeah.
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Loveleen: So my future inspires me. When I kind of think of what I want to do five years from now, 10 years from now, I want to come back to the office with that much more passion because I'm working towards my future. I'm working for my future. So those are the things that inspire me.
[24:55 - 25:10]
Anushka: Yeah. So, I mean, you know, from marketing principles to changes to career advice to avoiding burnout to life beyond your career, right? It's been such a great conversation to, you know, just get an insight into not only you as a marketing expert but also your career as well.
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Anushka: Yeah.
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Anushka: So, yeah, just to kind of wrap up the episode. Now, I wanted to go through this lightning round of questions where we can get just a little bit more out of you while we have your time. Sure.
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Anushka: So my first question is, if you could travel back in time to when you were just starting your career, what is one piece of advice you'd give your younger self?
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Loveleen: Don't be so cocky. I was a really cocky person.
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Loveleen: I was quite mis-know-it-all because I was just working 18-20 hours a day. I would spend a lot of time getting to know my business thoroughly and my clients' business and everything, right? The category. And that made me very, very cocky.
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Loveleen: It also kind of, okay, made me brave because I had this screw you attitude. But yeah, I think experience makes you wiser. And when I look back, often, I think I was so foolish.
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Loveleen: Okay. Yeah, so I would, if I could go back, I'd say, okay, lovely and be less cocky.
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Anushka: Okay, okay. And we've touched upon this a little bit, but just because it is important to us, right? What is one career mistake that you would recommend modern-day marketeers to completely avoid in their careers?
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Loveleen: I'd say if you're feeling stuck, okay, don't keep going. Take that pause. Understand why you're feeling stuck. Okay.
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Loveleen: Because we have this traditional education that kind of puts us in arts, commerce, and science. And unfortunately, we kind of pick up our career based on how well we did in school and college. And five years down the line, seven years down the line, eight years down the line, we feel so uninspired. We feel stuck. I've had people in accounting come and tell me that, hey, I want to be in marketing. I've had people in marketing say, I wish I had chosen HR. So what's stopping you?
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Loveleen: So if you're feeling stuck, don't keep going on. Right. Take that pause, take a sabbatical, figure out what you really want to do. It's never too late. At 48, I decided to leave a corporate and come on to a startup side. I mean, I joined a startup, I gave up my corner, glass, huge cabin to sit on the floor and a small desk with everyone else. And I'm just completely loving it.
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Loveleen: Yeah. It's in your hands to change it.
[27:40 - 27:48]
Anushka: Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And the last question is, what is one book, video, or piece of media that you would highly recommend to whoever's watching this podcast?
[27:49 - 28:07]
Loveleen: So I made this transition a year ago, from the corporate world to the startup world. So I read a lot of startup books, I was feeling sort of placed the first two months. And one of the books that I would recommend to everyone, this side or that side, whether you're in the startup world or you're in the corporate world, or even if you're kind of a learner today,
[28:08 - 28:34]
Loveleen: is the Innovator's Dilemma. Why I love that book so much is because it really talks about this one fundamental thing that if you are so successful at doing that one thing, how hesitant you are to change, because you're like, okay, if I change, am I going to lose my place of number one, simply because I'm going to change. If you won't change, you will certainly lose that number one.
[28:34 - 28:46]
Loveleen: Right. Right. So it doesn't matter if you're big or you're small. You have to continuously change and take that risk. Right. You are never too big to fail. Yeah. Okay. You're never too big to fail in today's world.
[28:46 - 28:55]
Loveleen: So I love that book. If I can give you a second name as well. The Rise of Technosocialism. I think everyone should read it.
[28:56 - 29:08]
Loveleen: Because, you know, we are in this amazing world where technology and especially now in the last 24 months, the way AI is changing our world. The impact it has on society. And don't forget.
[29:08 - 29:21]
Loveleen: You are the I in society. The impact it's going to have on you as you kind of raise a family, as you kind of plan your retirement. Technology, AI is going to have a huge impact on you.
[29:21 - 29:29]
Loveleen: So if you are the kind of person that I am, if you plan your future well in advance, you should read that book. Okay. Awesome.
[29:29 - 29:37]
Anushka: It's great to just have your time here, have all your recommendations, you know, understand your career trajectory and just, of course, all the marketing insights as well.
[29:37 - 29:50]
Anushka: So I just want to thank you again for taking out the time to, you know, share all of this with us. It was an absolute pleasure.
Loveleen: Thank you so much. What a wonderful host you've been. Thank you.
[29:40 - 30:03]
Anushka: And thank you for watching this episode of WiZR Voices. We'll catch you in the next episode so you can grow WiZR every day. This podcast is a production of WiZR. I'm your host, Anushka Chhikara. Achyutanand Dwivedi is the head of audio and video production.
[30:03 - 30:11]
Anushka: And our executive producer is Loveleen Sahrawat. For more information on how you can grow your career with WiZR, visit WiZR.in. The link is in the show notes.
