Episode 120 / GSK / Ashish Porwal / Head of Insights & Analytics, South East Asia & Taiwan / Seeing Through the Glare of Shiny New Objects
Why Marketers Need to Delve Deeper Into Shiny New Objects
Ashish Porwal is the Head of Insights & Analytics, South East Asia & Taiwan, at GSK, where he is responsible for finding actionable insights across multiple brands and markets. While Ashish is sometimes a “strategy guy” and other times the “brand doctor,” he is always an analyst looking keenly at the raw data and interpreting it to support his brands. This is why he turns the Shiny New Object on its head, advocating instead for seeing through the glare of shiny new objects and delving deeper to fully understand the question the data is asking.
Ashish’s journey into marketing took a long detour: he started off in intellectual property rights and took several small steps to eventually work in FMCG product pricing and finally in marketing as an analyst. At the same time, he ran several e-commerce ventures in parallel to his career, leading to him gaining valuable insights into how data can help a brand grow.
In his current role, Ashish always asks himself what drives every area he works with, in order to enhance their collaboration. One of his previous managers taught him: “If somebody is in conflict with your idea, you should make a genuine effort to appreciate and understand their own constraints and motivations. This often leads to a better result for both.” Especially with data and ROI, seeing how insights can be adapted for win-win scenarios within a business is crucial.
A great example of this in action is suggesting that investment is re-directed rather than simply cut when a type of marketing initiative isn’t yielding as much ROI as you would expect. This could be the difference between cutting investment in TV ads vs. keeping some of that going and re-directing some into digital. And this brings us to the Shiny New Object – or lack thereof!
Ashish believes that “marketers need to see through the glare of shiny new objects and delve deeper” – avoiding being seduced by new numbers or data and understanding the underlying information. In the example of TV ads ROI, this could mean looking at the type of brand (perhaps a new, emerging brand trying to establish itself, so less likely to have a strong ROI from the beginning) and at what the competition is doing (not running TV ads could put this brand behind its competitors who are strong in that area).
The concept, in a nutshell, is to “Identify these onions that you have to peel in order to delve deeper and get the right answer.”
To find out more about Ashish’s marketing tips, his approach to deeper analytics and his advice for finding mentors in marketing, listen to the podcast.
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