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Career, Storytelling, and Communication: An Interview with Galib Bin Mohammad, Head of Marketing, Arla Foods Bangladesh

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Galib Bin Mohammad is the Head of Marketing at Arla Foods Bangladesh. Prior to joining Arla, he worked at Nestle Bangladesh, Standard Chartered Bank, PRAN - RFL, and ACI, - of course in various brand and marketing positions. Mr. Galib is a passionate marketer, “I consider myself among the lucky people in our cultural context for being able to study the subject that I wanted to study and pursue a career in the field I’m passionate about.”

In this interview, Mr. Galib and I discuss a wide variety of issues including his journey to what he is doing today, his passion for marketing and communication, and lessons from his decade long career in marketing. We talk about his work as a Head of Marketing at Arla, how marketing works at Arla and the overall organizational culture of the company, the state of marketing and advertising in Bangladesh and the art of designing a marketing strategy that works. We cap our conversation with an exploration of the changing landscape of marketing and advertising in Bangladesh and the challenges it poses to the marketers, major trends in the space going forward, growing importance of storytelling in communication and why we should look for more meaningful metric like building lasting connection with people and touching lives over mere numbers. - Ruhul Kader

Future Startup

To start with, please tell us about your journey to what you are doing today. As well, have you always been passionate about marketing and communication?

Galib Bin Mohammad

When I was a kid, like many other regular kids, I wanted to be an engineer. To be specific, I wanted to be a computer engineer. After completing my HSC from Notre Dame College, I got enrolled in Computer Science at North South University. This was in 2001. The ambition was to study Computer Science and go abroad. In fact, one of my childhood friends, with whom I used to make these plans and code and program, left the country right after the HSC and has been successfully working at big name companies in Silicon Valley. I thought I would do my bachelor here and then go abroad.

After the first semester, I came to realize that computer science is not for me. I felt that I am more of a people-oriented person. I love meeting new people, sharing things with others, communicating, driving new ideas and learning from others. The prospect of spending rest of my life in front of a computer scared me.

At the end of my first semester, I went to the registrar and promptly changed my subject to BBA with an aim to study Marketing as major. It was a shock to my parents seeing their only son changing major, that to computer science to BBA, after growing up with the wish to be an engineer. But they did not restrict me and allowed me to listen to my heart and carry on what I felt interested into.

Now that I look back, I consider myself among the lucky people in our cultural context - where we seldom get the freedom to choose for ourselves at that age - for being able to study the subject that I wanted to study and pursue a career in the field I’m passionate about.

I started my career at Nestle Bangladesh Ltd. as a Marketing Officer where I was responsible for research, communication, and media. After working with MAGGI Brand Team for a while where I worked hard to prove myself, I became the Category Head of Beverage category on the 6th year of my career. As Beverage Category head, I worked with the world famous and Nestle’s most prestigious brand NESCAFE that I always wanted to handle. I also had NESTEA in my portfolio and later I launched a new powdered beverage NESFRUTA in Bangladesh market, for which I received ‘Best Innovation award’ in Nestle South Asia region.

After working at Nestle for almost eight years, I left Nestle and joined Standard Chartered Bank as Senior Manager - Brand & Marketing in 2012. I was responsible for starting digital marketing at StanChart Bangladesh. Digital marketing was not a thing yet in Dhaka. It was an intellectually challenging experience for me to work in a very nascent field. But I always loved learning new things and this gave me an opportunity not only to explore a new field but also a new industry – Banking, which is very different than FMCG.

I worked at Standard Chartered for two and a half years. Then I joined at PRAN - RFL Group for a brief period where I worked as General Manager - Operations looking after PRAN’s Biscuits and Cookies portfolio. I worked at PRAN for 8 months and then I joined ACI Limited as a Senior Marketing Manager in Consumer Brands Division. At ACI, I handled the ‘Home Care’ category and used to look after 7 brands of the category, including ACI’s flagship brand ACI Aerosol. Around that time a major part of my ACI portfolio was bought by SC Johnson - American multinational; hence a big part of my work was to collaborate with SC Johnson team in India and Bangladesh. It was a great learning experience for me. ACI has a great learning culture and some great people, which made my short-stint at ACI a memorable one. From ACI, I joined Arla Foods Bangladesh as the Head of Marketing in Q3 last year. Since then I have been working at Arla.

You can put my entire career as specialized in FMCG industry apart from my brief stint at Standard Chartered Bank. While working at SCB was an invaluable experience for me, it also taught me that FMCG is the best place for marketers. It offers relentless challenges that allow you to experiment and do things which is hard to come across in many other industries.

Marketing is one of the key activities in FMCG. It is super competitive and fast changing in nature and you need to do things on a daily basis that also offers an incredible learning experience. It is a demanding pursuit, if you do not love what you are doing, if you are not passionate about your work, then you will not be able to cope or handle the pressure of FMCG marketing.

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Now that I look back, I consider myself among the lucky people in our cultural context - where we seldom get the freedom to choose for ourselves at that age - for being able to study the subject that I wanted to study and pursue a career in the field I’m passionate about.

Future Startup

You have over a decade of experience in marketing and communications and building brands, what are the biggest lessons from all those years?

Galib Bin Mohammad

We have developed an unnecessary cultural obsession for big things and the huge successes. But in reality, you can’t control outcome that much. What you can control is what goes in, your effort and passion and work. And you can’t go big overnight. Every big thing is the culmination of small things. We often miss this reality.

One of the biggest lessons for me is that you should obsess over what you can control instead of worrying about things that you can’t. You can work hard regardless of the result. You should simply do that with dedication.

Small is beautiful. Small things matter. We often forget this. Everything that we do no matter how small or insignificant they are we learn new things and in the greater scheme of things our every effort makes a difference regardless of its scale. We should recognize that. You should not only feel proud of the biggest things that you have done because if you don’t do the small things, you can’t get to the big things. It is small things that lead us to the big things.

Sometimes you do things that are not a big achievement or credit worthy but still, they are your part as you have struggled with it and put your efforts into it. Doing something new requires a huge amount of courage and it does not matter whether you succeed or not as long as you try.

Throughout my career, I have taken many initiatives and I also failed countless times to meet the number requirement but from every failure, I learned something new and it made me a better person than before. Every experience taught me something important, made me a little more mature.

For example, when I started working at NESCAFE, it was not doing well. We were using all kinds of ATL activities but still, the outcome was not satisfactory. So, I knew that I had to do something completely different to change the situation. I dropped all kinds of ATL activities and invested heavily in BTL. I started going back to the field. We went to 64 districts and 160 colleges and universities for activation campaign within three and a half months which was unthinkable at that time. I even went to the remotest areas in the country where no one at that time thought of going. Even my activation team doubted that it would be impossible but we stood firmly acknowledging the possibilities of problems and wanted to see things through. This activity brought back the brand and gave it the push it needed to grow. In the end, I felt accomplished not for the growth number that we could achieve but for the completion of this hectic and courageous task, what the most thought impossible.

The similar thing happened with ‘NESCAFE Get Set Rock!’. It was the biggest ever musical reality show in the South Asian Region from this brand! We had to prepare for around 4 months before starting it. It was involved a huge budget, hence a huge business risk. The management was ambivalent about doing it. The regional head lets us decide what we wanted to do – go or drop the idea. I had meeting after meeting with my brand team, finance team, activation team, and sales team. Finally, my reporting manager, that time MD of Nestle Bangladesh Mr. Laurent Therond told me that “If we decide to do it, our chance of winning or failing is 50-50 and if we decide not to do it our chance of failure is 100%.” I said, “then I don’t surely want to take the 100% failure option.“ So, we decided to go for it. It did not produce the expected outcome, but we were all proud of the initiative. We learned a lot from the experience.

This is my second lesson; the upside of trying something is that you are already 50% ahead of everyone else. Even if you fail at the end of the day, you will end up ahead of everyone else who did not try.

I believe that numbers matter less when it comes to people. Numbers don’t last. Every time someone else will break your best sales record and then you will have to start over from scratch. In the greater scheme of things, it is the lives that you touch or the people that you interact with that matter because it is a metric that can’t be replaced.

In every organization I worked I met new people who later became my friends, who still remember me, call me, knock me on social media. I believe these human connections are no less an achievement than big business numbers. In fact, I’m more happy for the love and friendships that I have been able to cultivate over the years than many material gains. And you look closely, any great business is about people, both on the inside and on the outside. It touches lives.

Future Startup

Please tell us about the kind of work that you do and the scope of your work at Arla Foods Bangladesh.

Galib Bin Mohammad

Arla Foods Amba is a European Multinational with operations in over 130 countries. It is the mother of the brand DANO, which has been in Bangladesh for the past 57 years through distributors. In a way, Arla is new to Bangladesh. We started operation as an entity just 3 years ago.

We are now putting a lot of things together. There are so many things - processes, systems, and structures - that are not in place. We are building many things from the ground up. This allows us to experiment. We can explore and develop a marketing system that is good for us and relevant to our context. Personally, I feel so glad working at this stage at Arla Bangladesh, more so for the opportunities that I’m having here to build something completely new which is relatively rare in many big MNCs where you just become part of a big existing machine.

We are now shaping the DANO brand. Previously, I had worked in established brands with existing brand book and guidelines. Here, I am actually crafting that book from the scratch. It is a global initiative where people from 17 to 18 nationals are working together. While not having a map is challenging, I’m enjoying the freedom it offers and the learning opportunities it provides.

The canvas and scope of work are huge. We are going to customers and trying to develop understanding and insight from the market and deliver accordingly. It surely is a very challenging pursuit but then again that is what makes my life so exciting here at Arla.

This is my second lesson; the upside of trying something is that you are already 50% ahead of everyone else. Even if you fail at the end of the day, you will end up ahead of everyone else who did not try.

Future Startup

You started your career in 2005 as a marketing officer at NESTLE, over the past years, how much has marketing evolved in Bangladesh, both as an industry and as a profession?

Galib Bin Mohammad

The industry and the consumers both have become more mature. Today, consumers have a lot more options that 12 years ago. They can spend their time in many places and if you want to get their attention you have to do something that is worth paying attention to.

The market has become way more competitive as well with new players and a lot more clutters. This has compelled companies, to some extent, to align themselves with the new reality and be more competitive.

Watching old advertisements is one of my favorite pastime. I regularly watch old advertisements of different products and from different countries. I try to find out how the advertisement and communication have been changing over the years. One major distinction that I often come across is that in the past technology and product feature were the key focus of many advertisements and it worked. You claimed your product is the best in the market and customers went on to buy it. But things have changed in the past few years. It is hard to maintain the competitive advantage only through better features.

Customers are not interested in knowing features and other things in your product because they know the alternatives and it is not any hard to offer similar thing by others.

Today, customers want to feel that you care about them. You are not only better in product features but you are equally superior as a brand in terms of your humane priorities. Emotional attachment has become the winning point rather than the product features and other things. The customers need to feel something extra when they are buying my products out of the hundred of similar products of different brands. Today, building this emotional attachment is more important for brands through communication than communicating mere features.

Throughout my career as a marketer, I’ve learned from a lot of people and am indebted to may seniors. When I was in NESTLE, I was under Mr. Ashraf Bin Taj. He used to push me to go to the market, to go to random shops and observe the customers how they enter the shop, how they talk to the retailers and how they exit the shop.

Initially, it felt weird. I did not take much interest and reluctantly maintained the exercise. After some time I started to understand the significance of it. Among many other things, I observed the difference between shoppers attitude at different time of the day, week, month and even year.

The implication of this understanding is that you can not interact with your consumer the same way every day, every week or even every month. There has to be a time factor in interaction.

Understanding these kinds of nuances is critical when you are designing a communication strategy.

I must say that the local brands and products have increased a lot in number over the past years. The dynamics of market penetration has also changed a lot. If I compare the rural market now with 2005 then at least 4 to 5 times more products are available in the rural shops than before. This is because of consumer maturity, time and greater marketing effort by the companies.

For example - In my recent market visit to a remote area in Rajshahi, around 40 km deep from the main town, in a small village bazar besides a river, I came across posters of KINLEY water, a mineral water brand. It was really surprising for me to find posters of KINLEY there. 10 years back, none would have imagined that a village market like that would sell mineral water, that too KINLEY, which is a premium brand. I asked a few shopkeepers about mineral water sales and they responded positively. This was a huge revelation for me.

This I think is one of the major changes in the market. The work of marketers has become way more complex and equally pervasive. You now need to cater to needs of all these different segments of the market.

Future Startup

In terms of communication and advertising, how much has the market evolved?

Galib Bin Mohammad

This is one area where I don’t think we have made enough progress. Significant progress has taken place in terms of product features and technological changes but the communication has not changed accordingly.

Our communication is still equivalent to 2001 and 2002. Compared to India, Thailand and a few other neighboring countries, our communication has not evolved that much.

Technologies have changed. There is now better quality films but the content and stories have not changed much. It seems we have a genuine lack of good storytelling capability compared to other countries.

I believe that ‘those who can tell a good story win the world’. But it is hard to come across great stories in our industry. We are poor storytellers. 99% of the advertisement just talks about the features and utilities rather than a story. I think that’s one area we need to pay attention to.

In the long run, only the brands who are truthful to their consumers will survive and do well. That’s what informs our marketing strategy.

Future Startup

How does marketing work at Arla?

Galib Bin Mohammad

Like many other FMCG organizations, Arla Foods have several departments looking after several functions of the organization. While our marketing function is almost similar to many other FMCG, there are some differences in Arla from other companies.

Arla is a Scandinavian company. Our culture is very distinct than any other organizations. We promote a culture of openness and cooperation. The way we work is largely collaborative. Everyone gives their inputs and we agree or disagree and at the end of the day, we make the decisions that are good for the company.

We encourage independent thinking in our people and encourage people to discuss, argue, challenge each other, irrespective of the designation at the company, in the decision making process.

We maintain a friendly relationship with our people. There is no bossing at Arla. We maintain an open door culture at the office. Every Thursday all of our people have breakfast together starting from our Managing Director to office boys to drivers. Every month we celebrate birthdays of our people with one big cake.

In accordance with the nordic culture, we equally value works of everyone at the company including our office boys because their works enable rest of us to do our work. If one of them does not come to work in one day, that would surely affect each of our work too. So, respect is at the center of how we operate.

Secondly, unlike many large MNCs, Arla is a cooperative owned by 12,500 farmers. Naturally, Arla is all about co-operation inside and outside of the organization. This is the driving force and bloodline of Arla Foods Amba in every stage of its operation.

Thirdly, as a young organization in Bangladesh, we are trying to learn from as many sources as possible.

Fourthly, we don’t sell any product, we sell ‘DANO’ which is a brand that has been in this country for 57 years, which brought the first ever powder milk to Bangladesh, which raised at least 2 generations over last 6 decades, which is very much an emotional brand for millions of people here. So, you gotta be very careful when you handle such a legendary brand.

Marketing is a key unit in FMCG. We are at the center of all other happenings.We have our brand team, activation team, and other teams, together we design strategy and go for it. We are expanding very fast. We have our 5 years plan and how we want to go there which informs our planning and strategy.

We are the 4th largest dairy company in the world. Over the years, we have gathered an enormous amount of knowledge about the dairy products and markets.

Our relentless ambition is not only to satisfy needs of our customers but also to enhance the experiences of our consumers. Our marketing activities start with developing a better understanding of our customers, understanding their needs, lifestyle and economic status and it ends with our customers as well - how they react when they buy our products, after using our products and do they buy it again etc. Everything we do, starting from pricing to communications, we think about how this will affect our customers and whether it will take us closer to our customers or not.

We meticulously think about everything related to ensuring a superior customer experience. When we have a product, we think about the process of putting this product in the hands of our consumers. We decide about the channels, advertising, contents and all other things that we can employ to educate customers and touch them for our products. We keep in mind the storytelling in the advertisements.

As I said, we have our 5 to 6 years plan and strategy of going there. It is broken into monthly and quarterly plans. Then again, there is always changes and uncertainty that we have to adjust with.

Our brand and marketing strategy covers all these activities and actions. That said, whatever we do, we try to do it keeping two things in mind.

We do not compromise with the quality of our products. Quality is our biggest strength. The parents and households trust DANO and its quality which has been built over the many years. If I do any degradation or negligence then it will not only affect our positioning in Bangladesh, it will affect all my 130 countries. I would rather sacrifice my business than compromising my quality. Hence, DANO always provides the best quality product than anyone else in this market.

In the long run, only the brands who are truthful to their consumers will survive and do well. That’s what informs our marketing strategy.

Future Startup

How do you design a marketing strategy that works?

Galib Bin Mohammad

If you are in FMCG and you are designing a strategy, the first and the biggest thing that you need to look at is your consumers. Whatever names or steps you follow, it should be focused on your consumers. You must understand your consumer better than anything and anyone else.

It is not about what you want to do - your marketing campaign, your technologies - rather it is the expectations of your consumers that should drive your product and communications strategy.

You have to know what your consumers want, problems your customers face. It requires a lot of time, efforts, and patience. You will get a lot of demand and need from the consumers that you have to assess, analyze and finally find the best demanding needs to satisfy.

To me, the key to designing a marketing strategy is that we have to start from understanding the needs of our consumers then see whether we can provide that solution and after providing the solution we still have to go back to the customers to see whether they have their need satisfied or not.

This is the cycle and there are different names or steps, and many other things but this core cycle stays the same for all the organizations, who are successful all over the world.

Future Startup

The marketing and advertising industry is going through a major shift globally. We are seeing, for the first time in decades, the great unbundling of TV, thanks to Netflix, relentless pursuit of TV ad dollars by major social media networks, slow death of advertising as we know it, a handful of alternatives to banner ads and more. In the context of Bangladesh, what changes do you see down the line of 5 to 10 years in marketing? On another thought, communication has also become a perennially challenging job. How do you tackle with this from your organization? What does distribution of your marketing budget in different channels and mediums look like?

Galib Bin Mohammad

In general, for communication, we have ATL, BTL, and Digital channels. Many people think about the channels and medium before their marketing plan. I prefer not to think about channels or mediums at first. I think about my customers, what they do, how they spend their days, their content consumption habits and the touch points that I can use to reach them.

For me, it is not about ATL, BTL, and Digital and it is more about touch points and getting involved with my consumers as they go through their days in a more natural way.

When I plan my marketing budget, I do not allocate the budget according to the mediums. Every communication starts with some objectives, I keep those objectives at the top and then decide which touch points and which channels I can use to achieve those goals. Currently, we are seeing a growing budget allocation for digital channels.

Previously, our routine was simple. In the morning we come to work and in the evening we go back and spend time in front of TV with our family members. But now this is no more the case. We now have these handheld devices that we use all the day. We have social media that we browse and use for more than one purpose. We are constantly doing something and we are constantly busy. We are also constantly exposed to advertisements and communications.

The market has become a lot more cluttered. Attention has become a scarce resource. We are busy. We are engaged. We are distracted. All the time.

That said, I don’t think the challenge is about channels and mediums. I think the key challenge of communication is about ‘A Great Story’. For me, communication has always been about storytelling. No one will pay attention to your communication unless it is a good story or something people can connect with. I think a bad story would not garner any better reaction today than it could 20 years ago. But yes, it is hard to break the clutter in today’s world but it is also easier to spread a great story because now everyone can share and express their emotion and opinion.

In the past, most commercials were about product features and all that but today you have to build an emotional connection with your customers. Emotional intelligence is the key to brand success.

Now you can tell a story in so many different ways and in so many different channels starting from social media platforms to TV channels. Then comes the question of audience and how they consume your content. Moreover, you have to consider timing, audience and the platforms. You also need to come up with the distribution strategy for the story depending on the mediums. Things have become a lot complex but still, the solution begins with a great story.

Future Startup

Digital marketing has become synonymous with Facebook marketing in our context whereas a lot more can be done in the digital space. Content is there, the native ad is there and there are are other trends as well? What is your opinion about this?

Galib Bin mohammad

There are many people to whom digital marketing is mostly Facebook marketing. Likes and shares have been the key metrics for a long time. There are also a lot of misconceptions, which I think is natural given the nascent nature of the medium. What we need to understand is that in digital it is all about engagement and you can measure engagement in many different ways.

Another common discord I come across is a lack of alignment in brand personality across platforms: offline and online. Digital platform is just another channel to reach out to your customers. And consistency is critical across platforms.

My perspective about digital is that it is just another touch point to reach out to your consumers. It is natural that you have to think about it differently than other mediums such as TV. But there needs to be consistency in your communication across platforms. Your digital content must be aligned with your offline contents. In a nutshell, you have to be ‘you’ no matter where you are.

A lot of decision in marketing is made based on the gut feeling which I don’t consider as the right approach every time. Data is something that can help you to develop a better understanding. At the same time, data is not always sufficient. You also need to go out in the field to see things in action.

Future Startup

Data is also gaining increasing importance in marketing. How do you use and manage data in your marketing?

Galib Bin Mohammad

We regularly collect data from different research, survey, focus Group discussions and syndicated studies. We also have our CRM that helps us with gathering data about sales and other aspects.

While I believe that data is critical for your growth, data has its limitation as well. What we are looking for in data and other areas is the insight to develop a better understanding about the market and our customers. While data helps to gather insight, you also need to go to your consumers physically and talk to the consumers directly to gather insight that data sometimes would not be able to give and forecast.

A marketer needs to go to the field and understand consumers by seeing them in action. No marketing decisions can be made by just sitting in the office or looking at data. I go to my consumers and the market directly when I need to understand them. I regularly visit our consumers at their home, shoppers at the shops, vendors at their place formally and informally so that I can have more knowledge and understanding about them. You get to see things beyond the surface and it takes a lot of time and effort to pass that initial levels of surface only exploration.

A lot of decision in marketing is made based on the gut feeling which I don’t consider as the right approach every time. Data is something that can help you to develop a better understanding. At the same time, data is not always sufficient. You also need to go out in the field to see things in action.

Future Startup

Do you use any kind of technology to track how many or what kind of people are buying your product?

Galib Bin Mohammad

As I have said, we do formal research to know our consumers. However, if we really need to understand the consumers, we meet them, talk to them and try to watch closely their purchasing behavior and communication.

When you draw a picture, you are actually connecting a lot of dots. Formal research, technology, market survey, household data, sales automation data etc are all single dots and entity. It will not create much of an impact individually and will not make much sense but if you connect all these dots, all these data, then you can understand the market.

Future Startup

If you look down the line about 5-10 years, what are the major marketing and advertising trends you see in the context of Bangladesh?

Galib Bin Mohammad

The market will be much more cluttered. The competition will grow given that market will be more open in the coming days.

Considering the increasing per capita income, people will be earning more. More money will push people to look for better products and better services. Consumers will be more aware and conscious of quality.

I see a lot of fragmentation happening in the next few years. For example, look at the food consumption pattern. In the past, it was only 3 meals a day, now it is 4 to 5 meals a day. There are different kinds of foods for different times. There are different places of having foods as well. Restaurant culture is booming and so does home delivery service, catering. How are all these affecting the traditional ways of cooking and eating?

This is happening in other industries as well. One of the greater repercussions of this will be personalization in communication and offering. Because of the availability of data about users, it is now easy for brands to personalize communication for the audience. That means, the companies can touch distinct segments with distinct activities. I think this will be a major trend in the marketing.

In the future, storytelling will get even more importance and content will play a key role in our marketing and communication efforts.

Finally and most importantly, be interested - not interesting - in everything and be curious. Curiosity is of short supply in our context. Hence, if you are really curious it can be your competitive advantage.

Future Startup

What advice would you give to people who are just starting out in the field of marketing?

Galib Bin Mohammad

Read a lot. This is the most important daily task for a marketer. Read stories, magazines, history, novels and anything and everything that you can get your hands on.

Reading is not only about understanding or acquiring knowledge, it is also about how you communicate with people. Unfortunately, reading is not something that we value as a culture. With the emergence of Facebook, things have become more unpleasant.

I still try to read daily. I read anything and everything and I believe reading is a wonderful intellectual exercise. Eventually, you will see that your reading habit will set you apart from others.

Watch movies and dramas of different cultures and languages. Movies are a reflection of the society and reality. Movies are best for developing a taste for storytelling and gaining perspective on communication. You will find that all great movies are great stories and because of their stories we like those movies, not actually because of their lavish setup or amazing special effects.

Travel a lot. However, you don’t need to travel abroad. Go to places within the country, even in your own area. Roam around your locality, see your village. As a marketer, you need to know all the small roads and places because things happen not at the office but on those roads, streets, and alleys.

Travelling helps us to see things, develop perspective and look at the lives of the common people as outsiders. It will help you to think more clearly about their buying behavior and communications.

I believe that great marketing and communication efforts are all about life. Anything that touches life, stays alive. Travelling helps us to get closer to lives that we don’t often get to know.

Meet people, talk to people and get to know people. A marketeer is not doing anything for himself rather he is doing everything to get other people into your product. So, people are your workplace and your main job is to get the attention of others to your products. Develop a habit of getting along with people and observing people.

Finally and most importantly, be interested - not interesting - in everything and be curious. Curiosity is of short supply in our context. Hence, if you are really curious it can be your competitive advantage.

I believe that great marketing and communication efforts are all about life. Anything that touches life, stays alive. Travelling helps us to get closer to lives that we don’t often get to know.

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