Exclusive | 1 year, 17 awards and counting: Pulp Strategy's Ambika Sharma

Pulp Strategy has proved it’s mettle once again. With already a string of awards to their credit since December 2011 their latest achievement was visible at the 27th MAA Worldwide Globe Awards which was held on 15th October 2012 at the Park Hyatt in Chicago, Illinois. The awards recognizes the very best of the best in marketing campaigns executed globally with its association partners - CAMPRO from Argentina, the APMA Stars from Australia & New Zealand, AMPRO from Brazil, CAPMA PROMO Awards from Canada, the JPM Awards from Japan, the PMAA Dragons of Asia, the Silver Mercury's from Russia and Ukraine, the IPM Awards from the UK and the PMA REGGIE Awards from the USA.  Over 130 judges from 15 countries, representing agencies, clients, academia, media and industry associations reviewed over 300 campaigns from 25 countries in July and August this year. At this prestigious awards function Pulp Strategy won a bronze award in the category of Best Telecom, Utilities and Technology for its campaign, Learn with Yahoo - New to Net campaign.

Learn with Yahoo internet café campaign helps people discover Internet in 60 Minutes, an e-learning module was developed in association with NIIT, leading India computer training institute and was installed on the partnered café terminals. This self explanatory module helped millions to learn internet and rewarded the café owners who provided their loyalty and efforts and made the program successful. The program created a benchmark for others to look up to it and has helped India in its journey towards internet literacy. The premise of the campaign was to create real value for the consumer.

Their latest win has taken Pulp Strategy’s awards tally for the year to 17! On their stupendous success Ambika Sharma said, "With leading brands in the country focused steadily on innovation and the value for both the consumer and the brand which a structured brand experiential campaign powered by technology can create, campaigns which combine scale, creativity and effective outreach will continue to gain precedence.”

This win not only speaks of their work which has shone with 17 awards this year but also sets the pace for them to do better with each campaign in the future. Behind this win silently glows their constant endeavour to deliver innovation and results. Pulp has strongly emerged as a credible 'young team of veterans' in digital and experiential marketing, and is fully equipped to lead the interactive digital communications and brand activation industry in India, powered with its effective strategies and innovative campaigns.

Adgully spoke to Ambika Sharma ,Strategist - Managing Director & CEO of Pulp Strategy Communications to know more about their achievements since the past one year and their dedicated efforts and strategies which have contributed towards the same.

Pulp Strategy has been consistently winning awards in the year 2012. Ambika Sharma attributes this success to the fact that they are a carefully constructed team which is well aligned to the needs of the brands they work with. “We invested our time and energy in developing and consolidating assets and resources to ensure we are uniquely placed to deliver better. We are thankful to our clients who recognized our abilities and asked more of the team in quality. The awards are recognition of the work we have done in the last fiscal,” she said.

As far as being innovative and clutter breaking where strategic brand activation solutions are concerned she went on to explain saying, “We strongly believe that innovation is more about what we deliver from our campaigns and how it reflects in the results. We have built the advantage of being able to provide a strong digital media integration to our campaigns, adding seamless value integration to our strength as a youth marketing agency. We are response centric and that is integrated in the process of campaign development, we encourage a consumer conversation led approach as opposed a location led approach. At times these small deviations from the conservative approach make a big difference to our work and  then there are times when we consolidated a channel to develop a new medium of engagement because we were convinced that it would deliver better in the long run for our client.”

Pulp Strategy is known for introducing new dimensions to experiential marketing campaigns. Elaborating further on this she said, “We constantly bring in new opportunities, avenues of engagement Technology and more to our campaigns. Last year we consolidated the I-café media channel, which despite the initial skepticism has delivered exceedingly well for our clients and has won us a few prestigious awards including the very recent MAA Globes. This year we developed an AR based application for mobile. The App is an excellent way to add digital content to printed media. With the increased penetration of smart devices in the youth the app allows the static creative and collateral's traditionally used in on ground activations to be infused with interactive digital experiences. The possibilities are amazing, consumers can be prompted to quick check-ins on Social media at the press of a Button, Drive Likes or follows, go to the brand site or order a product or stream the brand video straight to the users hand held device. The ability to weave in reach media experiences to activation campaigns adds value and drives WOM. In a recent use of this for a campaign we saw hundreds of check-ins and video views with this integration.” Ambika says it is amazing to see how small innovations inspire audiences.   

With the MAA Globe Award won in October 2012 Pulp Strategy have won a record breaking 17 awards this year which is very commendable.  Is this setting a pace for the company to do better with each of their campaigns in the future? Sharing her views on this she said “We are a challenger agency quality and innovation is a need it is a must to stand out from amongst the giants. We made a conscious decision that we will not walk with the crowd if we are to be of any significance for our clients in particular and the industry in general. We set up an innovation team and built proactive integration a part of our culture. The approach has delivered and we plan to strengthen this approach widening it in times to come. Pulp strategy has an innovation fund, which selectively invests in bringing interesting opportunities to life we also nurture team members who bring on board disruptive ideation.” 

With regard to their strategists being on the jury of the largest global awards in Activation (PMAA & The Globe) for 4+ years now Ambika said that the reason for this is that their team is well recognized in the industry and being on jury panel of reputed award programs not only reinforces the human capital of the team but also more importantly gives exposure to quality work around the world. As a norm the jury member receives campaigns from outside of his / her country of residence which adds great perspective to work and approach in other developing nations.

Given the fact that the last year has been tough for most companies when asked what strategies they are using to maintain the company’s growth she said the passion to deliver good work and add value to their brand relationships has given them body of work they are proud of. She further added, “Moving ahead we believe that quality, disruptive ideas and the ability to bring excellence in execution will continue to be our biggest pathfinders. These are challenging times and bear similarity to the down turn in 2009 – 10, the market did not stop and business did not end but yes the growth drivers for those who grew were result orientation and value.”

It is evident that strategist turned entrepreneur Ambika Sharma  has dreams and visions for the agency. With regard to any particular category of clients they are presently looking at to further the progress of Pulp Strategy, on an end note she said, “We are focused on great work, and brands or clients who provide that opportunity are what our dreams are made of.”

Ambika Sharma is a thorough bred marketing professional with an experience of 15+years, in new age marketing, in the Brand Activation Industry. Her expertise includes medium identification, ROI Maximization, facilitation, planning, and implementation of consumer experience based business solutions for brand marketing dilemmas with an in-depth understanding on traditional and new media in the context of the Indian consumer subsets. Her skills include strategic planning and communication, new / alternate media, and creative communication, she also specializes in integrated planning and activations for brands.