Kotak Mahindra Bank’s Rohit Bhasin: Marketers must keep consumers at the heart of everything

Rohit Bhasin, president, retail liabilities, product and chief marketing officer at Kotak Mahindra Bank, ensures his team does not work on weekends. They are pulled in only in exceptional cases such as quarterly results or a board meeting, he told Storyboard18 in an interview.

With many meetings during the week, Bhasin barely gets time to think during the week. So he keeps a part of Saturday just to think about things on top of his mind and about who he wants to speak to.

Edited excerpts:

The creator economy has taken the world by storm. Which influencers and trends are you following?

I'm a lot on Instagram, and I developed awareness about many influencers from their felicitation by PM Modi at the National Creators Awards ceremony. Post this event, I have begun following Ranveer Allahbadia aka BeerBiceps. I also follow RJ Karishma and Aiyyo Shraddha. With Aiyyo Shraddha, we did some work with her on Kotak in the past, and I had actually gone to attend a workshop with Meta. She was the MC there and did an amazing job.

Podcasts are something which have become extremely popular. I'm a lot on Instagram because that's where I pick up a lot of trends, and a lot of what is happening in popular culture. If you really want to see what is happening in popular culture, the place to go is Instagram.

I'm also on LinkedIn a lot and it is a great place to read good content, on marketing, on news, on what's happening in the world in terms of good pieces of creatives, especially what they have been inspired by.

What marketing-related content do you consume in your free time?

I don't consume market-related content in my free time. I do a lot of that during my work time. If I'm on LinkedIn looking at content, I see what other brands have worked on.

Also, a lot of marketing content may feel like it's entertainment. But, to be a good marketer, one needs to really understand what is happening in popular culture. And if you don't understand popular culture very well, you will not really be able to feel the pulse of the country.

When you're trying to build a campaign and you think of insights, your insights will be very theoretical. So whether it's watching movies on OTT, going to cinemas to watch movies, you'll see so much of popular culture there.

So, for me, any and every place where I go is a place to just get insights about what's happening in this country. What are the aims and aspirations of people? What is the cultural fabric and social fabric of the country? What are people talking about? What are the insights? How is the new generation behaving?

I'll give you one example – the pre-wedding festivities of Anant Ambani. It was the world coming together to celebrate the pre-wedding of a couple from India's richest family. But for me, it was an amazing experience in earned media. My thought was process was that none of that content was paid media. But imagine how they would have thought about how we drive visibility? How do we make this event the most talked about event? And that happened.

And for me, a big insight as a marketer was when I think of my campaigns, ‘How do I really use the power of earned media to do something similar to that scale?’

That's my learning. If I can ever build a campaign of mine to that scale where it is the most talked about event on the weekend, I would have really done amazing as a marketer. So while people saw it as a means of entertainment, my biggest lesson was the amazing use of earned media to drive visibility about your campaign, and about your brand.

There’s a lot of talk of burnout, workplace toxicity and the hustle culture. What steps have you taken to avoid the always-on culture? And what advice would you give your peers, colleagues and next-gen marketers?

The lines are blurring between personal time and office time, which is good and which is bad. The good part is that you're always thinking about how you can get an insight from anybody and not switching off from that perspective. And, you're just learning.

But I'm on LinkedIn on the weekend. I'm learning something. So I may not be sending emails. But am I using it to become a better marketer and if I'm a better marketer, I can help drive better campaigns for Kotak. But what we have to be very careful of is to respect the personal time and personal spaces of people.

So as a practice, we don't work on the weekends and unless there is an unavoidable event like declaring annual results or quarterly results on the weekend, or a board meeting on the weekend, a media event or a media conference, then we work on a Saturday. But that should be an exception and not the norm. So therefore, everyone gets those two days to just unwind, spend time with friends, families, entertain themselves, play, and make sure that they're fit, and just come back recharged and energised on Monday. But at the same time, there are people who want to work on the weekends.

I have lots of meetings during the week and therefore, I do not get a lot of thinking time during the week. So I keep a part of my Saturday just to kind of do my thinking. What are the things which are on top of my mind? What do I want to do about some of those things? Who are the people I want to speak to? So that kind of gives me a clear direction when I come back to work on Monday, I'm very clear what I want to drive this week.

When I send out an email or a message to someone on the weekend, I'm very clearly telling that person that ‘I don't expect you to respond to this message. I may not have time to send emails on a working day.’ But I'm very clear that I want my team to respond at a time when it is feasible to you and there is no pressure on anyone to immediately respond to an email.

When I was in Singapore, I had joined a badminton club and was a part of a group who would play badminton every morning on Saturday and Sunday and then sit down for a cup of tea after that. So, that was like a weekend ritual which really made me fit as well as got me bonding with a valuable set of friends.

I was an avid biker. I would kind of bike every alternate day or run to just spend a lot of time outdoors while I was in Singapore. I don't do a lot of that here in Bombay. But I kind of regularly go to the gym on alternate days. I do yoga twice a week which keeps me fit. It also channelises my mind and energises me.

What are you watching or streaming this weekend?

I have been watching the IPL (Indian Premier League) these days. My girls play cricket for Singapore and one of them is a CSK (Chennai Super Kings) fan. She loves Dhoni (MS Dhoni) and I'm a Mumbai Indians fan. So, we have a bit of a rivalry.

Other than that, we kind of share notes on IPL every day. So that's our common ground.

Any work hack or life hack you swear by?

I wish I could become a bit more disciplined with my time. I'm not very good with my time. For me, one work hack I always try to follow is to be prepared for a meeting. I always prefer to have a pre-read for a meeting so that I can read before I go to the meeting. I'm clear about what this meeting is for.

Then, I avoid people making presentations at meetings because I feel that when you get together as a group, you should spend more time discussing the issue and finding solutions rather than spend most of your time where people presenting to each other.

I always basically ask a simple question: What does success look like for you in the meeting? And by the time you end the meeting, you should be able to ask the same person the question: ‘Do you think the meeting got you what you wanted?’

If the answer is yes, it's a successful meeting. Otherwise, we wasted everyone's time.

What happens in a workplace is you just get pulled into various meetings. And you need to make sure that meetings where you don't add value, you should try and cancel 50 percent of meeting. And use that time to do thinking and talking to people. That's a much better use of time. Secondly, have an agenda for the meeting, have a pre-read for the meeting, be prepared. And basically try and have expectations clear for the people who organise the meetings so that you can deliver those expectations. That's really my work hack.

The other work hack I always try to do is for every mail that you write back to a person, do you think you can have a better outcome if you pick up the phone and speak to that person?

That will also help you build a more personal equation with the person rather than sending two mails to and fro. So that's what I try to do. Of course, if it's one to many people, I write an email. But if it's one-on-one, the best thing is to pick up the phone and speak. So those are the two hacks which I try to follow.

What are you reading? Any recommendations?

We got a new CEO and he gave us two wonderful books to read. One is called ‘The Secret Lives of Customers’. The second book is called ‘Competing Against Luck’. I've read the first one. It's a fabulous read. It takes a theoretical concept of jobs to be done. It lands on a simple philosophy that consumers have needs. They have jobs that they want to do. For those jobs, they hire brands.

If those brands and products do their job very well, they rehire those brands. If they don't, they fire those brands. So if you really want to be a preferred brand, you should understand what is the job for which the consumer wants to hire you and to be able to do that very well.

And that's really the concept of jobs to be done, which I learned at Unilever and brought here to Kotak, is beautifully explained in a very storytelling way.

A piece of wisdom you would like to share?

As a marketer, always start with keeping the consumer at the heart of everything you do. Always start with understanding what are the needs of the customer – whether they are stated or latent. Be the voice of the consumer in the room. And build products and solutions which really answer those needs.

If your product doesn't really answer the needs of the customer, then the customer is not going to buy it.

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