MY EXPERIMENTS EXERIMENTS WITH MY WITH SOCIAL M EDIA SOCIAL MEDIA AKSHAT KUMAR AKSHAYT
To impress the inimitable Penguin which has been an integral part of all our lives.
Akshat Kumar is an integrity-driven business professional with a MBA from one of the leading business management institutes of India, IIM Bangalore and a specialisation in Marketing. He can offer more than 8 years of experience in planning and leading comprehensive digital marketing strategies in support of business goal and objectives. Akshat has interest and in-depth experience in digital marketing, social media and online business strategies. Akshat has diligent leadership skills; and is able to build, guide and mentor teams. Akshat lives in India and often writes at http://loudopinion.wordpress.com. Akshat is also a bibliophile and likes to hoard books. This is his first attempt at impressing a Penguin.
CONTENTS 1 Professional experience / 4 2 Indicative work projects / 7 3 Education / 9 4 Beyond work / 10 5 Epilogue / 11
Chapter 1 Professional Experience
Akshat has 8 years and 2 months of work experience. Over the years, he has worked in the technology sector and in evangelizing digital across industries as consultant, in a creative and a media agency and with a brand. He loves social media and has helped brands become agile and adapt new platforms and connect with the influential to spread the message. August 2011 – Present HDFC Standard Life Insurance Senior Manager, Digital Marketing
Lead digital and mobile marketing efforts of the consumer brand. Manage large-‐scale initiatives across marketing campaigns, online sales, social media and technology. As the medium expert, lead the digital marketing team, interface with strategic planning and corporate development and champion the needs of digital.
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Online & Mobile Marketing: Digital & Mobile Media marketing strategy, media planning & implementation, Communication Development, Campaign Management and Operations, Response Management, Co-‐ ordination with E-‐marketing Agency/s & relationship management, Achieve lead generation and business targets Online Buying: Manage & evolve the Online Buying for the organization, Organic and In-‐organic lead generation activities, Track business cases end-‐to-‐end and achieve set business targets Search Engine Marketing & Optimization: SEO strategy and management including managing the SEO agency, Achieve set targets – monthly/quarterly/annual rankings & volume Social Media Marketing: Develop & implement Social Media Marketing strategy, Manage the social media marketing/viral initiatives & drive engagement activities Website Management: Revamping the website, competitive tracking and benchmarking, Creation of new customer portal including content, functionalities & design, Building sales & service functionality into the portals, Lead Generation and Tracking and achieving set business targets, Co-‐ordination with internal depts. for managing content/functionalities, Usage of CMS tool for website/portal management
April 2010 – July 2011 Wunderman (A WPP Company) Digital Marketing Strategist
Worked on a portfolio of leading products and online services from Nokia and Microsoft, my role was responsible for developing and
implementing digital strategies, together with agency partners and the regional teams around the world. • Brand Management: Generate insights and develop strategic initiatives/thinking for brand building. • Multi-‐channel Marketing: Act as lead on cross-‐agency integrated marketing programs, contribute to overall planning process, represent the interactive opportunity, define interactive tactics within programs/campaigns, and develop campaign strategy across organic, paid, display, social media and mobile marketing. • Social Media Marketing: Consummately skilled in executing and measuring social media marketing campaigns and marketing using user-‐ generated content (UGC). Planned and gave strategic inputs for one of India’s biggest social games, Music Millionaire for Nokia. • Digital CRM: Plan and implement technologies to build channels e.g., SMS, mailers, community pages on social platforms, for consumers to engage with the brand. • Consumer Insights: Provide ongoing updates on industry trends, issues, site features and best practices. Support client requirements on internal/external business cases with strategic thinking, research and analysis efforts. • Marketing Measurements: Developing customer acquisition, retention and conversion strategies, for various geographies across the world. • Team Management: Supporting Account team members with business and marketing strategy initiatives including competitive analysis, audience analysis and prioritization exercises. Coordinating with media and analytics teams to make sure findings form basis for strategic planning. • Campaign Optimization: Interpret web analytics data, develop key insights and recommendations to improve cost of customer acquisition and improve ROI on campaigns.
Oct 2008 – Mar 2010 Ozone Media Solutions Manager-‐ Campaign Management
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Digital Marketing Strategy & Planning: Understand and analyse user needs, and conduct research on markets and competitors. Execute well thought-‐out, comprehensive marketing campaigns that raise the bar for company’s presence amidst competitors. Building E-‐Businesses: Proactively and creatively identify and solve client problems by building strong relationships with customers and educating them on new product features, evangelize web as a channel for business. Forging Marketing Alliances: Work with external third parties to build alliances, licensing opportunities and syndication services and implement the product strategy to enhance the brand equity and leadership. Performance & Analytics: Responsible to monitor performance of campaigns on various websites and understand data in order to increase
profitability and ensure that the set service levels are met (Have experience across tools like Google Analytics, Web Trends, Omniture.) Oct 2007 – Sep 2008 Nettpositive Consulting Consultant
• Business Development: Identified and forged alliances with compelling sources of business development. • Market Research: Worked on a secondary market research report (using sources like Gartner, IDC, etc.) for a French enterprise software entity to identify competition and new opportunities for market development. • Business Strategy & Planning: Worked on developing the go-‐to-‐market strategy and market assessment for a leading American insurance company as it had planned to enter the credit cards industry in India. The business recommendations were accepted and successfully delivered. June 2004 – Sept 2007 Infosys Senior Product Engineer • Product Engineering: Product engineer with Finacle, Infosys’ banking product. Led customer responsiveness enhancement programmes, to improve Requirement Reviews from customers, which in turn, helped screen customer requests at a primary level and improve turnaround-‐time in providing solutions. Worked across all stages of Software Development Life Cycle. • Knowledge Management: Promoted Knowledge Management practices to champion knowledge sharing and building communities of best practices.
Chapter 2 Indicative Work Projects
Akshat has worked across multiple industries and has worked to strategies product launch as well as marketing sustenance messages. He believes social media is changing the way marketers have traditionally communicated to the consumers. The customer is now at the forefront assimilating, sharing and expressing opinion at each stage of the marketing process. Here Akshat has shared some of the details of the kind of work he has done in the digital medium over the years. Client: Building social media strategy and managing communities • Develop and manage strong, high-‐level, relationships with national and international social network organizations. • Took ownership of campaign performance and adjust tactics to meet objectives in terms of developing positive affinity for the brands, likes/followers, conversations and advocacy. • Executed social campaigns driving new customers in an attempt to generate incremental sales. • Evaluated and improved systems and methods of targeting, tracking, reporting, and evaluation of social media communities. • Partnered with Creative team to develop more effective means of leveraging social networking channels. • Developed scalable processes for social operations (campaigns, sweepstakes, apps, etc.) Client: Product launch for a leading telecom handset manufacturer of the world • Planned and strategized an online marketing campaign spanning display media and social media around the disappearance of a popular film celebrity. • Managed development and implementation and evaluation of Online marketing communications, strategy and plans. • Manage all aspects of the creative development process to deliver best in class communications as needed for execution of online marketing plans. • Developed and managed channels of customer acquisition optimizing the frequency while working closely with the media agency. • Worked closely with product and retail team to maximize campaign effects. • Initiated and worked closely with the media partners to ensure a live webcast of the product launch, a first-‐ever for the brand in India. http://www.india-‐cellular.com/Press-‐Releases-‐2/Nokia-‐12-‐10-‐10.htm http://video.in.msn.com/watch/video/exclusive-‐nokia-‐n8-‐launch/63fcsu29 http://twitter.com/PRIYANKACHOPRA
http://nokian8stars.com/ Client: Leading e-‐commerce player • Consulted the client advising on ways to integrate Internet best practices into overall strategy. • Plan the digital touch points across bought media, owned media and earned media spanning SEM, SEO, dotcom and social media. • Built strategies to improve traffic to the website by more than 60% • Conceptualized and implemented techniques using sites usability studies to improve cost of acquisition for the client. • Leveraged the social media to build user communities to extend the business vision.
Client: Leading online travel portal • Managed brand web site optimization strategy for the client. Improved cost of acquisition for the by more than 20% using web metrics analysis. • Gathered strategic insights to guide the redesign of the campaigns to improve brand’s credibility and reputation among the customers. • Formulated and established campaign metrics and optimization strategies for various online consumer campaigns. • Drove the revenue growth of the client through analysis and optimization of various internet advertising channels.
Chapter 3 Education Akshat has done a post-‐graduation in business administration and is also an engineer. This combination gives him a unique advantage to straddle between technology and marketing and he has leveraged this to the maximum.
2007-‐2009 Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore Post-‐graduation in Software Enterprise Management (MBA) 3.04 CGPA Executed a project for Google to plan the India launch for their product, Google AdWords for Print. The project involved studying and analysing the print media industry and media planning industry in India, product launch and product marketing plan, monetisation plan and additional recommendations for other media planning products. Product Manager at Google mentored the project. Key projects: Building a branding framework to enhance user experience for Open Source OS Personality and Consumer Behaviour relevance to non-‐traditional communication channels Analysis of internet marketing strategies for a leading Indian portal Analysis of the leader v/s follower advertising trends across telecom brands
2000–2004 Uttar Pradesh Technical University Bachelor of Technology (Computer Sc & Engineering) 71% Aggregate 2000 St. Joseph’s College, Allahabad Indian School Certificate Examination 91% Aggregate (School Rank 3) 1998 St. Joseph’s College, Allahabad All India Senior Secondary Examination 87.3% Aggregate
Chapter 4 Beyond Work Akshat loves to write on digital media and the changing technology ecosystem. Some of his work has been published in First Post and Pluggd. On Anonymous -‐ http://www.firstpost.com/blogs/are-you-supporting-anonymous-this-saturday336319.html On Facebook http://www.firstpost.com/blogs/will-facebooks-emphasis-on-advertising-turnoff-users-323485.html On new Windows 8 http://www.pluggd.in/no-start-button-in-windows-8-297/ Akshat has also been a guest speaker in Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and digital industry forums. Does your brand connect? http://www.slideshare.net/inkgenie/does-‐your-‐brand-‐connect Consumer Decision Making in the digital realm http://www.slideshare.net/inkgenie/consumer-‐decision-‐making-‐on-‐digital Akshat has had a very active interest in reading and has helmed book review sections as a contributing writer and editor for Lonely Planet India and Time Out. Besides this Akshat is quite active in various extra-‐curricular activities. • Student Secretary, PGSEM Student Affairs’ Council and Member, PGSEM Academic Council at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. • Conceptualised and edited, Tejas@IIMB, first ever knowledge portal by an Indian b-‐school mirrored on Knowledge@Wharton. • Student Editor, Thoughtedge, the PGSEM Newsletter at IIM, Bangalore, Member of the Editorial Board of the newsletter, “Finacle One” at Infosys, and the magazine at college, “Impressions” and, at school, “Expressions”. • An avid quizzer; Represented Infosys in many corporate quizzes like the ASHA Quiz at ISB; Conducted quizzes in ISB, IIMB, Infosys, Bangalore & Hyderabad. • Secretary of the Literary Council in college and President of Literary Association in school. • Active contributor to Caferati, an online writers’ collaborative forum. Caferati has been associated with the Kalaghoda Literary & Arts Festival, Bombay among other events.
Chapter 5 Epilogue Akshat believes this is not the end, just the beginning of a wonderful dialogue. Akshat can be reached at Akshat_kumar@yahoo.com or imadreamer@gmail.com or +91-‐9930034224. He tweets at www.twitter.com/akshatk and has a profile on www.about.me/akshatk Akshat really loves the Penguin.
r e a d m o r e www.penguin.com