New Mindshare Country Head Jhumka Saha to focus on skills development

Wednesday, 2 July 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

“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 behaviour. She draws many parallels between the Indian and Sri Lankan advertising markets. “Clients and brands in every market are ever evolving,” Saha added. “Consumers too are changing rapidly. Media habits and purchase patterns have evolved. With digital media coming into play, consumer behaviour 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 behaviour 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 program and the research tools have helped accelerate my career. It is the type of environment that rewards result based work,” Saha concluded.