Digital marketing through the eyes of a young L'Oréal executive

A painter, a writer, a mother, a wife and of course a digital marketing professional – Anvesha Poswalia was recently appointed as the digital marketing lead at L'Oréal Professionel and Decleor, a brand of the professional products division of the L'Oréal Group. A poet at heart, the lady in her early 30's has had a versatile career graph – starting with her two year 'comfortable' and 'sheltered' stint at Google to joining online bus ticketing startup Travelyaari as head of online marketing, then heading digital media at Asian Paints for four years before finally landing her new role, where she does not feel like a newcomer at all.

If you were to ask her what marketing looks like through the lens of a digital marketer, she would pause for a moment before saying, “...it is just about marketing on digital channels. The technologies, platforms, formats and base metrics might differ, but it is all about keeping the consumer at the centre and creating value for the user who is interacting with any touchpoint in the digital world. The key advantage that digital marketing brings is more ways to measure the impact, although it all needs to be tied down to the business objective at the end of the day.”

Born and raised in Jaipur, before settling in Mumbai, Poswalia shares with us that specialisation in digital marketing wasn't an option during her MBA days at the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management (2009-2011). It was in her sales profile (Account Strategist) at Google, where she realised during client interactions that digital marketing was a lucrative career option and switched to a startup (Travelyaari) to explore the field.

She remembers with fondness her journey so far in the industry and how digital marketing has evolved over the past couple of years. She outlines, “India has been riding on a digital marketing growth wave since 2013. The Jio revolution in 2016 completely changed the game, with India becoming the highest mobile data user in the world, just six months after its launch. As a marketer, it has been a power packed five years, where I have seen focus moving from data gathering to data privacy, from vanity metrics to clarity metrics and from desktop to mobile.”

Of the many experiences and lessons learnt as a digital marketing professional, the three that she keeps on her fingertips are: ideas are only as good as their execution, relationships matter (building great connections goes a long way) and that you've got to keep unlearning and learning at every step.

A recent Google and BCG report claimed that digital influence will drive 63 per cent of all consumer durable sales in India by 2020. Poswalia states that the actual influence of digital is much more than this quantifiable number, because the communication put out by the brand also affects the brand imagery and equity in the long run.

The marketing professional likes to define herself as someone who is always curious and challenging the status quo. A travel enthusiast, Poswalia is the kind who would be star gazing during the night and crunching complex data the next morning.

She believes that business objectives and target audience are the starting point to graph the media pie chart, but parameters like viewability and ad fraud instances also contribute to the decision. To her, ad fraud no longer means just placing an ad with inappropriate content. With the rise of UGC and influencer marketing, it is also about who is mentioning your brand in what way and if someone is faking a collaboration with the brand. A proactive approach towards brand safety is keeping eyes and ears open to conversations, own analytics and digging deeper into media reports.

Personally, she likes to follow the 70:20:10 rule - put 70 per cent money on what has worked for you or the industry, 20 per cent on what could potentially work and take some portion out to experiment and even make that mistake you are going to learn from.

Poswalia, who lives by the mantra, 'always keep an open mindset towards constantly learning', simply can't seem to get enough of traveling and talking about it. “I had a wish to visit 30 countries before I turned 30 - I could do only 20, but I am glad that I took that trip every time I could. Meeting new people and discovering different cultures makes your own life so much richer, I believe”, she shares. Her love for travel can also be seen in one of her art works that she shared on social media:

Before ending the conversation, she shares with us her love for the written word and presents a piece that she recently wrote; a part of which reads:

Narrows his eyes, with a frown on his face..

He walks away saying "What a disgrace"!

While the eve teasers continue their game..

Unabashedly, fearlessly, without any shame.

"I know that she is not guilty" she whispers in her colleague's ear..

While the boss continues to rebuke and bad mouth her peer.

They walk away to their workspaces..

With drooped shoulders and blank faces.

Sees the doctor steal the kidney during operation..

Shamelessly disgracing the noblest profession.

But he is just an assistant.. what can he say?

Can only watch the lousy games they play.