 |
| Jhumka Saha, Country Head, Mindshare Sri Lanka |
“It is all about understanding people’s minds,” explained Jhumka
Saha on building and sustaining productive business relationships. “When you understand expectations, you are
able to eliminate disappointment which essentially is the gap between
expectation and delivery.” Jhumka Saha
is Mindshare Sri Lanka’s new Country Head.
After her Postgraduate education in Philosophy with a special focus on
Psychology, she describes her entry into advertising as inevitable, coming from
a family of advertising professionals in India.
Saha heads the Sri Lankan arm of the GroupM agency, Mindshare,
after nine years at various roles within the agency’s India operation. She joined Mindshare in 2005 as Business
Director, Planning, with several years’ experience in media management. She
subsequently led a Unilever planning team to bring back “innovative thinking”
to the category in 2006. She drove the
creation of Media Innovation practice by considering and engaging all
communication channels for brand building and developed breakthrough media
innovations which were nominated for GroupM and EMVIES Awards. Saha was also recognised for her contribution
in re-designing an Implementation Channel Planning process for Hindustan
Unilever.
Having successfully managed a major part of Unilever media spends
across categories, in May 2010 she took on the role of Partner, Client
Leadership for Mindshare, which handles the media mandate of some of the most prestigious
advertisers in India. With this
appointment responsibilities encompassed overlooking a new client base
including clients such as Kellogg’s, ICICI Group, Holiday Inn Group and MIRC
Electronics. As a principal business partner
of these clients, she acted as a client visionary, bringing a highly valued
perspective to clients based on a deep understanding of their business, issues
and opportunities. The role entailed
leading the relationship of all key stakeholders including Client, Mindshare,
creative agency and other marketing partners to ensure alignment of media
objectives and strategies across brands.
A strategic and innovative thinker, Saha has spent her
preliminary period in Sri Lanka understanding the market and media
behavior. She draws many parallels
between the Indian and Sri Lankan advertising markets. “Clients and brands in every market are ever
evolving” Saha comments.
“Consumers too are changing rapidly. Media habits and purchase patterns have
evolved. With digital media coming into
play, consumer behavior and media consumption patterns have been transformed. Digital media is of immense importance to
drive business growth now which is why adaptive marketing is at the core of
Mindshare today. Our Original Thinking
Framework (OTF) is the evolving operating system for how Mindshare works from
start to end across all disciplines. It is not just a strategic planning piece,
it is our framework for delivering Adaptive Marketing and has adapting to
consumer behavior at its core.”
“My plans involve devoting a great deal of time to develop our
people and demonstrating the excellence of Mindshare product offerings to our
existing and prospective clients. Clients and brands do have
marketing
challenges and they trust Mindshare to craft a solution through Media for them. We need to tackle challenges together with our
clients, and the Mindshare system, processes and tools are geared to help
clients overcome these challenges and achieve business goals effectively.
“We really have a world class process here, one that is
unmatched in the industry. It can
compete with any other country at this time and this is the agency which is
‘Future Ready’ as well” she enthused.
“We have a highly talented team who stand to benefit from exposure to our global network strength. A robust plan is in place for every team member for training on planning processes. This includes analysing the entire consumer journey when designing a solution for a brand. Training is a big agenda I will be driving here.
“Mindshare certainly helps you grow in a holistic way. Every aspect, from the network, your peers, the training programme and the research tools have helped accelerate my career. It is the type of environment that rewards result based work,” Saha concluded.
About GroupM
GroupM
is the leading global media investment management operation. It serves as the
parent company to WPP media agencies including Mindshare, Maxus, MEC, MediaCom,
and Motivator in Sri Lanka. Our primary
purpose is to maximize the performance of WPP’s media communications agencies
on behalf of our clients, our stakeholders and our people by operating as a
parent and collaborator in performance-enhancing activities such as trading,
content creation, sports, digital, finance, proprietary tool development and
other business-critical capabilities.
The agencies that comprise GroupM are all
global operations in their own right with leading market positions. The focus
of GroupM is the intelligent application of physical and intellectual scale to
benefit trading, innovation, and new communication services, to bring
competitive advantage to our clients and our companies.
www.groupm.com
Tags
Sri Lanka Business