Self-employed

Do get in touch with me (kart75@gmail.com) for these engagements.

1. Communications consulting:
As a communications consultant, I work with organizations to help plan their communications strategy in,
- identifying & building communication narratives
- digital/social media communication strategy
- marketing campaign strategy
- content marketing strategy
- crisis communications strategy
Clients include Google, Myntra, SunTec, The/Nudge Institute, Crio, Juniper, Himalaya, RedSeer, and Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives, among others.

2. Corporate workshops:
Communications team workshops: Meant for corporate PR teams, marketing teams, or internal communications teams to help expand their perspective, seek inspiration from relevant (category/industry-specific) campaigns and communications case studies, and start hands-on work on some of the immediate and pressing challenges at work. Clients include Cipla, Medtronic, Maersk, PWC, Omidyar Network India, Ashoka India, and Cleartrip, among others.

3. Personal branding for leaders:
Personal branding workshops for leaders in organizations where I help them understand the need for personal branding (as a subset of organizational branding), identify personal brand narratives, and hands-on efforts in managing their personal brands, using social media, with a clear plan and goal. Clients include Kotak Group, Carrier India, EXIM Bank, Citrix, Akamai, Omidyar Network India, Fullerton India, EY, MetrixLab, among others.

4. Personal branding for employees:
Employee advocacy workshops, to help an organization’s employees become its brand ambassadors. Key clients include Maruti Suzuki India Limited (trained 800+ employees across 200 departments), Radio Mirchi (training 100+ Radio Jockeys and 25+ Programming Heads), among others.

Communications Consultant

The Advertiser's Guide to the Galaxy

Subscribe to my weekly podcast on advertising: https://bit.ly/tagttghome

Podcaster

Ogilvy & Mather

National Lead, Social@Ogilvy

Flipkart.com

AVP - Corporate Communications

Edelman

Head of Digital Strategy

Text 100

Account Director

Pramod Shankar Associates

Chief Consultant

Subex Ltd

Manager - Corporate Communications

Birlasoft (India) Limited

Executive - Marketing Communications

Steria India Ltd (formerly IIS Infotech/Xansa India)

Assistant Executive - Corporate Communications

Summary: 

Communications professional with 2 decades’ experience in creating, building and managing perceptions of brands across agency and client environments.

Experience spanning corporate communications, public relations, marketing communications, investor relations, digital/social media marketing and employee communication for B2B (technology) and B2C brands.

Winner of gold at Socialathon India 2015, gold at Emvie 2015 (Best media innovation - social media) and bronze at DMA Asia Echo Award 2015 (Interactive - Creative use of data).

Guest lecturer at Tata Management Training Centre's Leadership Development Program for IAS Officers and Indian Institute of Management, Bengaluru – Advanced Digital Marketing and Digital Marketing for CMOs

Award-winning blogger, across 2 areas of interest - professional blog, since 2008 (communications/marketing - http://www.beastoftraal.com) and music blog, since 2005 (http://www.milliblog.com). 

Frequent columnist in leading publications, on the intersection of corporate communications, social media and advertising/marketing. Samples:
- How to build a socially relevant brand | ET BrandEquity http://bit.ly/2NuutnP 
- From 'Log kya kahenge?' to 'Log kya keh rahe hain' | ET BrandEquity 
- http://bit.ly/2u0jydn 
- Amazon-Swara Bhaskar Issue: An Analysis | afaqs! http://bit.ly/2qTF9ll 
- How to avoid social media self-destruction | The Economic Times http://bit.ly/2MuxvrD

Frequent speaker and panelist in leading events to talk on and discuss perspectives on communications, branding and social media.


Karthik Srinivasan

Oh my God! This is phenomenally effective communication! Fantastic narrative device with the right amount of exaggeration that lands the message with a bang, while also sending chills down the spine of the target audience (parents of young children)! Excellent work by the Irish agency Core Creative.

#advertising #creativity

Communications strategy consultant. Connect with me for corporate workshops on personal branding. Ex-Ogilvy, ex-Flipkart, ex-Edelman. No paid posts - my words are not for sale.

Read the room, IndiGo! If the ad is going to evoke, 'No, you aren't' or 'Yeah, right!', along with, 'You had 18 months to prepare for the implementation of the FTDL norms', then the ad is completely pointless.

Instead, anticipate the reaction (aka 'read the room') and say something that at least starts to seem like you care. Here are some rough examples.

1. We didn’t meet the standards you expect, or the ones we claim. 
We can’t change the last few days, but we're working hard to fix the next ones.
We are sorry.

2. This is NOT the IndiGo experience you deserve.
We are doing our best to set things right.
We are sorry.

3. We let you down. 
We’re working urgently to fix the disruption.
We are sorry.

#advertising #indigo

What a fantastic idea for a collab! As someone who grew up in Coimbatore, I love the fact that another Coimbatore-based brand (Vilvah) thought of using the Annapoorna's legendary filter coffee, and in particular, Annapoorna's Rose Milk (I may have gulped down many, many liters of this divine drink through my school life in Coimbatore) as an inspiration for a co-branded range of products, starting with lip balm. 

Another Coimbatore icon, Krishna Sweets, is also known for its famous Mysurpa. How about a Mysurpa inspired lip balm, next?

In fact, this is an excellent template for famous eating joints (and their famous items) to consider a similar collab with local beauty/skin care brands of those respective cities. For instance, Madurai could do one for their famous Jigarthanda. 

What could be potential items for Bengaluru, I wonder!

#product #innovation #regional #branding

This is one of the most interesting positioning ideas I have seen in the wealth management category! Ionic Wealth's (Angel One’s wealth management brand) new ad campaign by the agency Manja pitches wealth as a start-up and wealth managers as co-founders! 

Most people today admire the entrepreneurial mindset, even if they’ve never started a company. So the positioning taps into that cultural aspiration and hence is attention-grabbing. It suggests that building wealth is an active, intentional, high-agency project, and not a passive 'buy a mutual fund and forget it' activity.

However, for someone who has actually founded or worked inside a startup, the analogy may seem to wobble. A startup isn’t just an idea you nurture - it’s months (or years) of ambiguity, risk, existential crises, broken sleep patterns, fundraising cycles, pivots, down rounds, team management, board management, self-doubt, and occasionally, spectacular failures. Your personal wealth, hopefully, is not that. So the metaphor works emotionally, but not literally (which it need not, of course).

The co-founder claim too is on similar lines. It is absolutely bold and eye-catchy because most wealth managers frame themselves as partners, guides, strategists, experts, planners, custodians or some variation of those themes. The 'co-founder' word signals themes of alignment, collaboration, co-ownership of the mission, a shared growth mindset, and an implication of skin in the game, all quite different from what wealth managers do.

A real co-founder takes existential/personal risk, puts in sweat equity, is operationally involved, shares ownership, sinks or swims with you, is accountable on a daily basis. A wealth manager does/need not do those things, nor should they. They advise, monitor, optimise, rebalance, recommend, coach. So the narrative works at a brand-philosophy level ('we’re equally *invested* in your success'), but it can unintentionally trivialise what real co-founders actually do.

But this campaign isn’t really speaking to real founders who don't wake up and say 'I’m building a startup so I can get personally rich' and for whom wealth is often a side effect, not the main objective. Instead, I believe the campaign targets first-generation wealth creators, startup employees with ESOP liquidity, young professionals with high income, aspirational millennials entering the wealth-building phase, people who identify with hustle culture, ambition, and 'build mode'. For them, this message grabs attention beautifully.

So, excellent idea and execution, Manja!

#advertising #marketing #positioning #creativity

Cheil India

Creative Supervisor

Senior Copywriter

Dentsu Aegis Network India

Interactive Avenues

Writing creative, credible & result-oriented copy for all digital platforms |  Creating online commercial content | Brainstorming with creative &  art director, researching & presenting various creative options | Determining the most suitable tone & voice for client, based on sales | Research competitors, market & user preferences | Aid other departments/ staff in developing graphics, social media strategies for campaigns.

Copywriter

Nuwait

Interviewer and commentator on entrepreneurs and startup ecosystem in Kuwait, as a contributing writer for Nuwait - a storytelling platform initiated by the National Fund for SMEs in Kuwait and Wamda.

Wamda is a platform of programs and networks that aims to accelerate entrepreneurship ecosystems across MENA. Its core competencies are in community development, media, research, and advisory services. Each of which is a core pillar to supporting entrepreneurship in the region. Collectively, these programs make Wamda into the leading grassroots content, community and knowledge platform for entrepreneurs and their supporting ecosystem.

Wamda is run by a passionate team of entrepreneurs and experts and by a board of leading serial entrepreneurs and investors.

Nuwait, a Wamda initiative launched by the Kuwait National Fund to highlight stories of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Kuwait,  is a storytelling platform. It does so by identifying Kuwaiti entrepreneurs, featuring their stories, celebrating their work, creating a culture that embraces entrepreneurship and providing the community with necessary knowledge through experts pieces, tips and advice.


Through highlighted stories, tips pieces and overviews, the platform aims to provide the ecosystem with knowledge and education, and to create a network of collaborative individuals, mentors, experts, and supporting entities that entrepreneurs can leverage. It also aims to boost the entrepreneurship culture in Kuwait and inspire others to launch their own startups.

Freelance Journalist

J. Walter Thompson Worldwide

As a Freelance Copywriter with JWT, Kuwait,I worked in line with the workload and timeline of Creative team to meet the deadline of projects for clients, including Zain Kuwait, Boubyan Bank, Kuwait Foundation for Advancement of Sciences (KFAS), Al Hamra Business Tower and Luxury Center, Kuwait Airways, and Infiniti, Kuwait - AABC, while undertaking the below responsibilities:

- Working closely with Graphic Designers, Web Designers, Video Editors to create good concepts, ideas for all ad materials: Internal, Magazine, Business Brochures, Product Catalogs, Product Brochures, Event Leaflets,  ideas for TVCs, Introduction films, Print Ads, Advertorial, SM Posts, POSM, etc.

- Working independently to create copies including: Product Slogans, PR Article and all the content for Internal Magazine, Business Brochures, Product Catalogs, Product Brochures, Event Leaflets, TVCs and Introduction film's story lines and narration, Print Ads, Advertorials, SM posts, and PR Articles.

- Proofreading and checking for final artwork

- Working with Creative team to deliver concepts, ideas applied for Annual Reports, Company Brochures, Product Brochures, Leaflets, TVCs and Introduction film's story lines and narration, Print Ads, Advertorials, SM posts, and PR Articles.

Freelance Copywriter

The Times Kuwait

Reporting: 
•	Contributing articles, news pieces, local news and features; attending press conferences, and seminars; sourcing local, business and cultural events to cover and report on.

Interviewing: 
•	Special features on leading artists and performers performing in Kuwait.
•	Conducting insightful interviews with professionals within a variety of fields. 

Content writing:
•	Sourcing and compiling articles for food page, information for travel page, events for 'Kuwait Out & About' page and sourcing and contacting restaurants and compiling information for dining guide.

Creative:
•	Assisting in newspaper structure and design layout.

Online:
Content editing and SEO integration for website.
Launched Instagram and Twitter accounts for The Times Kuwait.
Social media account updation, maintenance and contact building.

Journalist

iResearch Services Pvt Ltd.

Reported and edited financial research reports for clients across the globe: 
•	Reports include investment research, business research, IP research, etc. 
•	Reviewing reports to ensure language and grammar accuracy, report flow, consistency of arguments, and adherence to client-specific guidelines 
Content writing: Contributed articles to company website and newsletter
Call and email correspondence with potential clients and candidates.

Research Analyst

Visual Plus Advertising and Desgining Pvt. Ltd.

Brand development, 
web site traffic growth, 
enhancing the presence of the Company by writing blogs on marketing and related topics for it's site,
copy writing,
SEO & SMO,
research,
campaigns and newsletters for clients, and
revision and edition of ads' content.

Online Marketing

Kuwait Oil Company

Under HRM; learnt Middle-Eastern work culture, 
browsed through hard and soft files of employee records; 
accessed employee records and updated status with the software; 
submitted stipulated employee evaluations each day to Evaluation Team;
 attended seminars and PR meetings; 
learnt salary structure; and
used the KOC web portal for data extraction and communication.

Intern (HR)

Organic but paid. 
Expert in digital and social media campaigns. Dabbled in mobile and website UX. Creative strategist. In love with long-form ad copy while cheating on it with short-form ad copy. Journalism is my long-lost history, a fond one though. All of this unfolded over eight years. Stories don't end, they evolve into new ones.

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Karthik Srinivasan

Ghazal Kotwani

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The Battle

Karthik Srinivasan

Ghazal Kotwani

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