Insights from Mr. Rishi Sharma, Chief Marketing Officer, for Marketing strategies, its relevance and how to make it more impactful

1)How has managing brands across various sectors influenced Rishi’s marketing strategy, ensuring relevance and effectiveness?

Managing different brands has given me access to insights, pain points and needs across categories. It’s the same individual who is being targeted by various categories, and trying to create a similar impact. There’s a war to get access and more share of the wallet and in this scenario, it becomes imperative for a brand to be smart in getting the relevant message, media strategy to expose the communication to him at the right time. Diversified outlook towards this audience helps me build stronger and more relevant propositions.

2) What are the examples of marketing strategies to diverse platforms and markets for impactful results?

I will talk about two brands that I have handled, first, Liva, it is a fashion fabric, made of natural ingredients. The brand stands for soft, subtle and perfect for summer. We wanted to communicate the same to the audience, but since women focus on aesthetics and not so much on material in fashion, we invested in influencers and content lead marketing and launched a campaign #FluidFashion which had an immediate acceptance among women TG. 

Another one, is at Bonito we wanted to be always on, a medium that can be a constant reminder, so we took FM which not only was economical but got us immediate very high TOMA and Bonito became one of the most recalled brand.

3)How to balance budget constraints with the need for innovative marketing approaches across different corporate backgrounds?

That’s a tough one, but optimisation is the only way. Having said that, I always believe that lesser budgets result in impactful creativity. Our FM campaigns with audio cuts for the films is one such unique initiative.

4) What are the insights from a challenging campaign led by him, detailing key strategies for achieving remarkable growth?

It begins by outlining the fundamentals: We know that a home is more than simply a place; it’s a story, a treasured anecdote that is dear to the hearts of all families.Every client that interacts with Bonito ought to feel proud of doing business with Bonito. He ought to believe that this is the finest choice he can make for his family.

Taking into account the above insight, we launched celebrity-designed interiors, allowing clients to proudly claim that Gauri Khan and Manish Malhotra were responsible for their interior design. An association that is not like any other celebrity endorsement. It is a collaboration where the celebrities are also well known for  their design principles.  And hence, with the same mindset, and a notch above the “World Design campaign” was created to cater to the needs of the well-travelled Indian consumer. A concept which is so unique that only well-travelled celebrities who understand design will be able to add credibility to a concept like world design.

“World Design” is a limited-edition theme collection for your home’s interior design that draws inspiration from pop cultures, contemporary trends, Indian sensibility and art, and traditions. Every Home designed by Bonito is not only thoughtfully tasteful but also gives you an impressive identity. 

We invested in rich media to bring the story to life, made a film that masterfully explained the idea, and produced stackable material that clarified the design philosophy.

In order to help the consumer picture his or her home, we took an additional creative approach and created a design gallery, a distinctive showcase and display of design concepts at our experience centre. We were able to increase spot conversions as a result. 

5) How to ensure alignment and synergy between planning, strategizing, and execution models for fruitful marketing results as a CMO?

CMO is equally responsible for business growth, the role is no longer only focusing on branding and awareness but, Budget, awareness, lead generation, retention, conversion and CAC, each of the above is linked to each other and hence CMO needs to follow this through on a daily basis.

My professional foundations were set in advertising, where I worked for ten years on numerous Indian and international award-winning brands, before moving to the corporate world. In contrast to today, the strategy was rather conventional; our goal was to get the unique consumer insight, the underlying truth, and develop a strong proposition for a stunning clutter breaking campaign. 

I have launched award-winning campaigns, designing new products, creating intellectual properties, and leveraging cutting-edge technologies. For example, At Samsung I was part of the restage strategy for the corporate brand and Air conditioners, At Aditya Birla Group, I launched India’s first disposable hygiene brand, Built a marketplace for manufacturers of viscose textiles, applied blockchain technology for tracking fibres in the textile industry, For India’s first fashion Ingredient brand Liva, I developed the top of the funnel strategy with awareness campaigns backed by rich- content & influencers, and also created E-com Site. At Zolo, I redesigned post covid strategy, revived the customer journey, and worked on new UI/UX for the website. 

At Bonito, I’m in charge of the entire client journey and funnel, even with the capital-intensive category challenges, as a member of the core team, I help find strategies and solutions that aids in the business growth. Our distinctive offering of celebrity-designed houses including Gauri Khan and Manish Malhotra has helped the brand reach number three in a very short span. Our most recent “World Design” campaign was well received by the well-travelled Indian customer who responded to the campaign warmly. Additionally, I have built a team that is business focused and have implemented a full-stack Mar-Tech infrastructure, which has started delivering lead flow, improved conversion rates, and lowered CAC. 

This experience has given me the ability to see the opportunity and develop strategies required for the business growth. I also see through the opportunity by ensuring focus on execution by aligning the ecosystem to execute it in a way that is swift, regularly monitored, and produces outstanding results.