Innovation without marketing is like a car with no wheels – it can’t go to market. My passions are to build brands that realize and monetize their potential and deliver value to all their stakeholders.
I love organizations that celebrate diversity – particularly gender and neurodiversity.
For over a decade, as a consultant, I have guided organizations on the best marketing strategy for growth and transformation. I am an advisor to startups and scale-ups and coach CEOs and CMOs.
I am on the supervisory board of PB Fintech (parent of PolicyBazaar and PaisaBazaar), Bajaj Consumer Care, CreditAccess Grameen, Expleo Solutions, Royal Orchid Hotels and hold several advisory positions.
For Infosys, iGATE and Wipro I held leadership positions in brand and marketing and helped put Indian IT on the global map.
Since 2010, as CEO of Paul Writer a marketing consulting firm I’ve worked with over 60 organizations.
Books on Marketing
Board Positions
Brands Consulted
The surest way to build a successful brand is to gain mindshare, then create marketshare, and monetize that to achieve profitshare.
Many entrepreneurs focus on building a scaleable product, but do not invest enough in a scaleable marketing engine. It’s no good having a product that can be used by a million people if only 10 people know about it.
One of the biggest reasons companies fizzle out is the CEO’s belief that “A good product speaks for itself”. It does, but in today’s crowded marketplace its voice needs to be amplified.
This is a book to help maximise your marketing investment. It is also about how challengers - those that compete with brands much larger than themselves - have to think differently.
Because even a budget of millions may not be sufficient when your competitor has a billion to play with.
The key to being successful in these situations is to be as clear, concise and targeted as possible. You have to combine traditional positioning and branding principles with modern marketing techniques.
One of the principles of Marketing without Money is an obsessive focus on the heart and soul of the brand, paring down non-essentials in terms of value and targeting.
Sales success depends not just on whom you know but on how many people know you and like you.
One of the principles of Marketing without Money is an obsessive focus on the heart and soul of the brand, paring down non-essentials in terms of value and targeting.
Why and how you do things is more important than what things you do
There are two routes to making your services stand out: ‘core branding’ and ‘surround branding’.
The ultimate goal of any marketer is that the service or product should satisfy the customer need so well and with such consistency that the potential consumer automatically thinks of this product or service—and no other—when faced with a need.
In the digital world, modesty is a business handicap
Price can be a powerful differentiator but only if it is leveraged as a branding tool and not just as a sales lever.
A country’s reputation for quality or certain quirks infuses the services and products created there.
Brand purpose is a great lever to use to stand out if you are genuinely taking a stance.
You do not have to be the first, but you have to be the best.
If you are a small player and a challenger brand, you have to be controversial. If you say what everybody else is saying, that is not a media-worthy story.
It is not enough to be good; you have to be certified as being good!
Digital encompasses your customers, employees, vendors, investors and innocent bystanders too.
Being interesting. That is the key to survival in the flat world.
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I like to write. Have written articles & over 500 newsletters
I’ve been married for 26 years to my batchmate from IIM Calcutta, Aniruddha Paul. We are the proud parents of a daughter, and our dog has us all wrapped around its paw. I divide my time between homes in Amsterdam, Bangalore, and Coorg.
I run 30km a week, play Scrabble every day, hang out on social media for at least an hour and read a variety of fiction.