Mediacom's Divya Gururaj, unplugged and unleashed!
Adgully: If you could take us through your journey so far...
Divya Gururaj: I graduated from IIM Lucknow, and then I joined Blow Plast. I did two years of marketing and sales there. Post that I joined JWT as I was interested in advertising, I chose media there as at that point of time media was growing steadily. Moreover media had more numbers and it gave me an opportunity to meet different people from various walks of life. Since then I have not really changed jobs, I have been associated with the same WPP group and just moved companies. So when JWT became Mindshare I moved to Mindshare and when Group M took over Mediacom, I just moved from Group M to Medicom.
Ag: How did your sales and marketing background help you?
DG: I think sales is the toughest job in the world and specially being in sales on field is very difficult. So I always believe that people need to just go out there and experience it because then they truly appreciate sitting in an ivory tower. The pressure is so high in sales, if you do not sell you do not earn. So to me it was not only tough but it was a good way to start my career. In terms of otherwise shaping up my perspective on media planning and buying, my experience in sales made me realise that advertising is not the end of all things and sales is equally an important function. Dealers are as important as consumers, so the two are possibly a good mix. More importantly it gave me a sense of the entire value chain. Being in sales I also travelled across a lot of smaller towns because I was looking after markets like Western UP, Karnataka and Haryana. So I actually got a chance to travel to these smaller markets and see life there at a closer range, which I dont think I would have ever got a chance to if not for sales. Sales allows a person to meet the customers, how they view other products, what are the parameters on which they compare products and basically to study their buying patterns more closely. When working directly with consumers in small towns, it gives us an idea on how critical local media is and the importance of word-of-mouth. Besides the turn around time in sales is so low, so you just learn to cut-short and just get to the point. The other thing is about building relationships because in a sales job it is all about maintaining relationships, so this learning came handy when I moved to media.
Ag: Being one of the youngest leaders how have you seen the media space evolve over the years?
DG: The media explosion has been huge and that has been visibly repeated from having one TV channel to approxiamtely 530 now. Besides, I think the big difference that is happening is in the consumer space. The consumer today is so different from consumer 20 years ago and the way they consume media is so different. So it has become completely about "my media in my time and how I want to cosume it". So you no longer have to talk to consumers, you have to talk with consumers. It is not about placing just a thirty second commercial, today everything is about interaction and engagement. In that sense media has completely evolved, the other significant difference is the way the advertising business has evolved. When I started off advertising agencies were still handling media and creative together, a few years ago that was separated, today I am seeing a bit of cohesiveness setting in. It is not about media and creative agency coming together but it is all about who comes up with a better idea and who comes up with a more holistic solution.
Ag: Some of your solutions have been out-of-the-box, what inspired you and your team to come up with these solutions?
DG: I hate mundane and our simple approach in Mediacom is- What have you done different? So when you put that as your KRA (Key Result Area) then you get people to think a bit differently and because it is also my personal KRA I sort of look around to gauge what people are doing differently. Doing something unique is what excites me a lot and I champion that. Besides for me the journey has been very interesting because I had a chance to have a close view of the consumers and their buying pattern. So for me everything is about consumer interaction and understanding the consumer. Hence the ideas that we have created have performed a function of wanting to do something different but again stemming from a consumer insight.
Ag: Can you share with us some of your landmark campaigns?
DG: I think Gilette-Shave India Movement has been the most famous one and what I like particularly is that it is the only campaign which has run successfully into two seasons. The other great idea was for Dell (Take your own path campaign) and we are also working on its season two. The season one of the campaign worked well for the brand and was rolled out in eight other countries other than India. In season two we are looking at creating something new and which the client will again be rolling out in other markets too. Then of course are the campaigns for Volkswagen, which have been the most talked about campaigns. But personally what gives me pleasure is that our ideas are also working for all our smaller clients who are just starting off with their businesses or are in a competitive market situation. It gives us immense fulfillment to create ideas for them that gives them better business results. So it gives me a lot of pleasure when Aegon Reilgare is the number 18 advertiser in the country while launching in India in a very competitive market, or for working on campaigns for products like Streaxx and Vasmol to get them a stronger foothold.
Ag: What defines the work culture at Mediacom?
DG: There are two things that define Mediacom's work culture. One being that Mediacom as a company is very committed to people and for us it is always- "people first". We function around this philosophy and so attrition levels are very low in our agency and I would like to believe that people feel that Mediacom is more like a family and that it is a home away from home. Work culture in Mediacom is something about the organisation's philosophy plus my own belief.
Ag: What are some of the key strengths of your team?
DG: I think Mediacom is one of the youngest teams, the average age is very young here. So which means people are more passionate and the one word that I constantly come across in our client testimonials is- passion. I think passion is largely a function of youth. Secondly the team here has a desire to do things differently or uniquely. They look at finding their own and better ways of reaching out to the consumers. So it is all about having a passionate team who wants to make a difference. I keep thinking that it is fantastic to have a team that is so closely knit and so collaborative as ours.
Ag: What are some of the challenges in the industry and in Mediacom today?
DG: Talent is obviously the greatest challenge. We are a very talent scarce industry and with media becoming a really specialised function we need people who can understand the client side of the business and also understand the new emerging media. In Mediacom, one of our biggest challenge is that we are not visible in the media and that again is possibly my personality and which then becomes a challenge for the agency. I am saying this because we do great work but we are not out and out publicising it or talking about it. The other challenge is once we have come up with an unique thought for our client and implemented it successfully, the client asks "what next?". So the challenge is that we have raised the bar and we are competing with ourselves now.
Ag: How important is media integration for you within the agency?
DG: It is important because today it is not about a television idea or a press idea, today it is about a communication plan. The way we look at media today is not about television, print or digital, it is about a communication and that becomes more holistic. Also I feel that people think better when they come from diversified backgrounds and when you have the advantage of having specialist for each medium and when they think in a team, they come up with far better ideas. I am all for integration, so we have media specialists in our agency but when we sit and brainstorm then everything is integrated.
Ag: What have been the highpoints of Mediacom in 2010?
DG: Highpoints for us have been winning the gold at Spikes Asia and being the only agency from India to win that, winning at Festival of Media Awards in Valencia and winning at M&M awards. The other heartening fact is that with the economy opening up, we have not lost people. Being a small agency it is important to retain the team. So it is heartening that we have only added new members to the team and not lost many people.
Ag: Can you point out some key media trends that you foresee?
DG: In India, 3G is going to open up a new space.So far online or the way we have been using mobile has been very repressed and the question we are always asked is when India has more than 500 million handsets why nothing seems to be happening in that space? So to my mind with 3G coming in we will see that the mobile medium will finally come of age. The second thing which is happening is in all the retail formats, it is a hugely untapped opportunity area just because there is no measurement. Since the reatil shop is the last 7 seconds where the consumer actually makes a buying decision it is very important for a client's understanding, but we have no way of measuring this in-store consumer behaviour. It is something we have to keep our eye on because modern retail will soon become bigger even in smaller towns. Third trend that I would like to point out is about new advertisers, traditional advertisers are going to make way for the new advertisers who are willing to invest the same amount of money as traditional advertisers. I think the Indian Adex is going to keep evolving and changing.
Ag: Do you think the media space lacks adequate measurement today?
DG: Research is hugely not there in India. We have TAM for Television but the fact is that there is not much rural representation there. In print the data comes out four times a year which is great but a lot many publications are still not covered. So if I look at my luxury clients none of the luxury publications are covered in the study. We do not have enough measurements for new media like OOH, mobile and internet. Moreover,we also need to look at systems that could provide us integrated ratings and a single source panel which will be able to tell us media consumption pattern of a consumer.
Ag: Any message to young talent...
DG: I honestly do not know why they do not look at media because it is a great field to be in. It offers you the best of everything which is the chance to actually work with numbers, the chance to work with real consumers and the chance to work with different brands. Media space is never boring, there is always something interesting happening and always a chance to innovate. For me the newness has never died. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]