Spirit W | Roaring to move ahead: Media Moments' Poonam Ganguly

As the founder and Director of Media Moments, Poonam Ganguly’s management prowess and creative genius, combined with a result oriented approach towards PR have propelled Media Moments into a successful venture in a very short span of time. An alumnus of National Institute of Fashion Technology, Poonam’s professional root is buried deep into the retail industry. Before turning an entrepreneur, she worked in some of the leading brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Levi’s and Reebok in various capacities. She was a part of the team that kick-started Tommy Hilfiger’s India operations which added invaluable experience to her kitty.

Prior to starting her own business venture – Media Moments in 2009, Poonam Ganguly held the position of a Brand Manager at Levi’s India. As a leader Poonam has built up a strong team which she considers to be the fulcrum of “Media Moments”. The company believes in strong ideation, great business understanding, global perspective and an in-depth local understanding of the market, in building a robust corporate communication strategy for its Brands. With a continuous eye on growth and opportunities, Media Moments would also spread its wings to newer domains, sectors and geographies.

Adgully caught up with her to understand her vision and mission in life and to know how she brought up her own company.

When asked, what are the two things about this space that made her pick up this field as her profession, Ganguly said that Public Relation and Media Communications is at a nascent stage in India compared to mature markets in the world. There is a huge potential for growth in this space. Also when delivered with unique ideation and strong implementation, PR can be a great means to establish a Brand’s positioning and communications objectives in the minds’ of its consumers. Not only it is one of the key priorities of the company’s Top Leaders, but also it can potentially be the Marketers’ highest ROI tool.

The biggest challenge according to her is to elevate the expectation of a lot of marketers from “PR”. She believes that like established markets across the world, PR will have to enhance its role in the development and sustenance of a brand. Changing perceptions is a key task of leaders in this field. Lot of people still sees PR playing media coordination and facilitation role. “The challenge is to get the PR objective integrated within the marketing plan of a company,” she adds.

Defining Media Moments’ journey so far, Ganguly says, “It has been 3 years since inception and we are roaring to move ahead. Every team member sees the vision I see and hence we have grown a lot in the last few years. The biggest pleasure is to see a young and dynamic team working with passion and delivering great results.” It has been a very memorable event, setting this up and now seeing it achieve its potential. It is heartening see the built up of robust portfolio of clients with whom we work as partners in their overall marketing efforts.”

Key clients: They are in the space of Consumer Lifestyle that ranges from Fashion, Hospitality to Consumer Technology. They handle national PR mandates for a few of India’s largest e-commerce sites – Myntra.com, Zivame.com, Zovi.com and more. They also handle the Aditya Birla, Madura F&L portfolio amongst many others. Women’s wear, ChangYou, The Tamara (Luxury Resort) - Coorg, Destiny Tablets, Pizza Corner, Cream & Fudge, Donut Baker, Coffee World, and Rocket Internet Venture- 21Diamonds are some of the recent additions.
Leaders like Indira Gandhi, Preetha Reddy, Kalpana Morparia, Zia Mody and Shobhana Bhartia inspire her a lot. She says, “Indira Gandhi is a great inspiration because of her charisma, leadership quality and the great work she has done for this country. She had set the foundation for the modern Indian woman and paved the way for women to rise to seats of power in this country.”

Do you feel women have an edge over men in the media space?

“I don’t think the world is anymore about women and men separately. It’s about the individual. Equality has been achieved in certain circles with a delicate bend towards the special needs of a woman. However, what sets anyone apart on the path of success is looking at themselves as individuals with unique strengths. When you do that, it’s your ability that has an edge over the rest and your gender doesn’t matter.”

Ganguly strongly believes that the women of today are shedding their secondary role status and have started believing in their own individual capability. That is why today there are so many companies in India which are headed by women. Look at the entrepreneur eco system as well; there are more and more women who are starting up their own ventures. It doesn’t matter what your gender is, excellence is a product of self belief and perseverance.

Having worked with established global brands like Levi’s, Tommy Hilfiger and Reebok, she is a firm believer of organization structure and processes. So on asking where media industry lacks (organizationally) she said that the media industry in India has immense opportunities to develop on these. Also there is more scope to make better use of digital solutions. She says, “I believe that the media industry will evolve and grow in strength. As this matures, more and more young talents would get attracted to it. Fundamentally this will elevate the status and structure of the industry.”

Her key strengths lie in disruptive campaigns and Ideation. She says, “Each of my partners at Media Moments wears a thinking hat every day. We don’t just believe in the interaction between the brand and the media but we also believe in building campaigns for our brands that will have a higher recall value in the minds of the audience. That is why we call ourselves Ideation Communications Company.”

Sharing some of her works that she is really proud of, Ganguly told us that they have done some very innovative campaigns for malls, e-commerce players, fashion brands and hospitality firms. Last IPL season, they did a campaign for Deccan Chargers- ‘Wear your heart out’, which was to highlight the Team’s CSR activities for the underprivileged children’s heart surgeries. Huge media attention was an automatic result of an innovative idea which was implemented very well.

Ganguly says, “Ideation, Innovation and Implementation being our starting mantra, I am confident that we will emerge as a key player in the Media, Communication and Brand Marketing space. With a mindset to change and evolve as per the new market condition, I am certain that we will build and deliver solutions which will be contemporary and relevant. Along with all that I mentioned, attracting and retaining key talent will be a key enabler to our business goals in the next 5 years.” | By Aanchal Kohli [aanchal(at)adgully.com] & Rabab Rupawala [rabab(at)adgully.com]