Dhruv Chopra
Chief Marketing Officer
CarWale
What makes a good marketer?
A good marketer always starts with an uncompromising consumer experience. A great marketer not only delivers an uncompromising consumer experience but also exhibits strong business acumen and delivers the organisation’s revenue goals (and other business goals).
3 things you do to prepare for a meeting?
I enjoy meetings that are clearly outcome-focused – decisions instead of discussions. To make this happen, I try to do my thinking in advance so as to save everyone’s time and bring in supporting data as well. At the same time, it’s important to stay open-minded enough to change your mind during that meeting based on others’ view points and / or data.
3 things you look for when you hire a person?
- Ownership / Commitment
- Common sense
- Ability (I regularly overlook experience – or the lack thereof – in favour of ability)
Where do you think Marketing is headed?
It’s going to be more and more driven by technology and new media solutions. I think we’ve only just scratched the surface here. And as we develop highly personalised and custom-tailored messaging, it’s also going to be more permission-based than ever before. Eventually, “permissions” to communicate and use personal profile data might be the single most important marketing asset any organisation has.
What would you say to someone who aspires to be in marketing?
I would highly recommend that they invest their time in learning how technology drives marketing, and how the new-media / digital media can be leveraged to communicate and engage their target audiences.
It just takes a few minutes of observing younger people today to realise how oblivious they are to traditional mass media and advertising. Their day is spent glued to their personal devices, and this seems to be the only way to effectively reach them. Further, new content formats and new ways of story-telling are challenging widely held marketing ‘truths’ and conventions.
Tomorrow’s marketers (and indeed, todays) need to understand how this landscape has changed and how it might evolve further from here.
What are a few activities you do at your leisure?
Food, travel and the movies.
Do you love/hate data?
Learnt to love it very early on in life. Now won’t live without it.
Profile:
Dhruv Chopra started his affair with digital in 1996 when VSNL first rolled out internet access in India. Since then, he has worked as a video games programmer, run his own IT company, survived a sales role at a full-service digital agency, managed digital marketing for one of the world’s largest banks and today heads Marketing and Enterprise Solutions for CarWale – one of India’s leading digital publishers.And when digital allows him some leisure time, he is an avid foodie and incredibly passionate about travel and the movies.
