Ad land's Young Guns: Bhavya Khurana, Resultrix

In a bid to highlight the achievements of the young brigade of Indian advertising, Adgully is introducing a new feature – Ad land’s Young Guns. Bhavya Khurana, Associate Director, Resultrix, is the first such Young Gun to be featured, and with good reason.

This young man has in a short span of his career has bagged a Bronze Media Abby for ‘Best Use of Digital Display’ at the Media Abby Awards at Goafest 2015. He also won Direct Response Digital - Bronze Foxglove Award last year. Khurana was also the Brand Ambassador for ZenithOptimedia India for the ZOLiveMyLife Programme, where he represented the country at the 2014 Exchange Programme.

Here’s Bhavya Khurana in his own words…

What I do
“My past experience in affiliate marketing, brand planning, programmatic planning and buying and mobile planning have been key in shaping my current focus towards media & communication strategy. I am grateful to my management to allow me the luxury of personalising my own role to feel more purposeful towards my company’s vision.”

Skill sets I bring to the table
“I am a positive and enthusiastic adman. I commit myself to quality and do not like to settle for something lesser than my outmost best. My work across client verticals has helped me develop a keen understanding of media and audience planning, technology and analytics.”

The campaign that I am particularly proud of
“While I am proud of all the novel media solutions that help my clients win in the marketplace, one of the campaigns celebrated with an Abby last year was Mavshack. Mavshack is a subscription based online live movie streaming site for South Asian Content. The campaign’s focus markets are India, the US, the UK, Australia and Canada with the KPI of paid subscriptions.

Marketing Challenges:
• Rampant Piracy: Almost all old movies are available for free viewing on Torrent & Movie Streaming websites (Low Pull for Product)
• Blacklisted POS: POS for this product is the torrent & free movie-streaming websites which is full of explicit advertising & not the right place for our brand communication
• Identifying Vernacular Audiences in USA, UK, Canada & Australia: For ensuring ROI from the campaign, we needed to ensure reach and visibility among the Punjabi speaking audience online for our vernacular releases in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia in restricted budgets

Media Solution:
• Online Premieres: We planned and purchased rights for online premieres of recent releases like “Jal” & “Mr.  & Mrs. 420” to increase the “Pull” for Mavshack
• Surrogate Marketing: To overcome the “Right Time, Right Place” challenge we introduced an-anti piracy campaign to avoid running brand communication on P2P websites. By utilising Impression Retargeting in real time to the movie–watching audience with brand communication in sequence we could spur free trials & let the audience experience the platform
• Geo-Fencing / Pin-code Level Targeting: Targeting markets like US, UK, Canada & Australia with a performance benchmark was made possible by introducing a Pin-code level Geo-fencing campaign for Gurudwara as giving us access to Sikh Communities in the vicinity”

The ideation behind the creatives
“Message Association defines the success of a creative approach. When planning the organising idea for a product, I prepare a product utility vs audience association framework which provides a ready guide for mapping the key themes and white space opportunity. Once the themes are aligned basis the marketing tasks, I align with my content and creative team to deliver the final product.”

Icons in advertising I look up to
“I take my role models as a la carte. However, when it comes to my inspiration at work, all I have to do is to compare myself with the person from yesterday.”

5 most productive things that I do in my everyday routine
1. I read the editorial/ opinion boards about the most pressing news instead of regular news updates
2. Browse through the industry Google alerts of the clients at hand
3. Plan and prioritise the day’s To-Do list before starting with the work
4. Accept meetings which have a clear agenda to begin with
5. Socialise and invest time in relationships

In short, I strive to keep informed, organised and making the world a smaller place.

Advertising as a long-term career
“With more and more media companies cutting corners, the bias towards attracting young talent is evident. The industry today is dominated by 24-35 year olds, with a strong senior leader at the helm doing the less of ‘hands on’, but for their experience and ability to mentor the new generation. This depth of experience from a long term career becomes viable with a strategic position held towards a platform, product and agency side.”

My success mantra
“Commit yourself to constant improvement to keep up with the industry and technology, and being decisive even if it means you’ll sometimes be wrong. Timing is everything in advertising.”

Where I see myself in five years’ time
“I chase short term goals that paint the long term picture and am more focused on the skill-set I need to equip myself with than a position perspective. The story of digital disruption is going to continue with brands investing more towards creating stacked technology ecosystems to maximise their marketing returns by bringing in more efficiency. While I have developed a good understanding of the digital media, I am working on marketing effort quantification across platforms that shall help me strategise for business returns from across all media, product and communication point of view.”

Whom I would like to work with in the future
“I do believe that people do not leave companies but managers. Publicis has a strong leadership team that has provided me with good growth and exposure opportunities to press the snooze on that decision for the near future.”

My gyaan for the youngsters planning to enter this industry
“Find the right place to gain as much experience as possible in the shortest time. Don’t settle for less.”