A comic series for DataviCloud

Articles & Blogs, Brand, Social media

In October 2023, I began working with DataviCloud, a Chennai-based startup by ex-Freshworks founders. They are building a data platform for small to mid-sized businesses, which will make accessing, handling, and visualising organizational data ridiculously easy.

Over the last few months, we’ve worked on refining the brand messaging, writing useful articles/guides on building a data culture, and sharing these on social channels (for now, that’s LinkedIn.) You can read the blogs here and follow updates here.

I want to talk particularly about a fun content project we’re doing.

Much of analytics and BizOps in any fast-growing business is absolute chaos. The only way to get through each day is to look at the humorous side of things. How do we reflect that in the brand messaging? Vikas (CEO, Co-founder) had the idea of creating a comic series featuring Penguins (they’re adorable and already dressed in suits!) as characters in just such a work setup. I have a ball coming up with funny ideas and writing the dialogues each week. And Ruchi Shah, a talented illustrator, visualises them with amazing attention to detail.

Predictive analytics delivering bad news.

Secret Santa Gift Ideas for the Entire Growth Team (slideshow)

Techies celebrate Valentine’s Day

A Sales guy, a Marketer, and a Product Manager walk into a meeting room…

Calling Unicorns, Soonicorns, Chimeras & Yalis

It’s 2024 but some things haven’t changed.

Go-To-Market or Get-The-Eff-Out!

What it’s like to be the only data person in the room

Sam Altman says ChatGPT will soon be doing everything. Until then, we have to deal with humans.

DataviCloud is still building their product and I am building their comms strategy—there’s lots to do. But I am thrilled that we’ve already got some great feedback.

Content for Printo

Brand, Web/Landing Pages

Printo is a 17-year old Bengaluru-based organization that revolutionized the print-on-demand space back when they launched. Over the years, they’ve expanded and pivoted many, many times but their communication has been pretty simple and straightforward. It definitely did not reflect all the interesting categories they’d expanded into.

In January 2023, I got the opportunity to work with their marketing team to refresh their messaging for these lesser-known verticals and train the tiny in-house team to ideate, write, and design better. I had big plans for this project but in May 2023, the entire marketing team was laid off and my engagement came to an abrupt end. Such is life!

Most of the work we’d put in was at a nascent stage and hardly any of it went live. I do want to talk about one of the projects because I think we did have the right ideas.

The goal: Printo had established itself as a go-to place for retail customers (individuals) to take document printouts, print photo books, and create custom gifts. The business team had curated extensive offerings to serve the Corporate Gifting space and wanted to target the vibrant startup ecosystem in Bengaluru. The question was: how could one come up with messaging that resonated with this audience?

What their existing landing page for Corporate Gifting looked like:

As you can see, there was very little storytelling and nothing that differentiated Printo from others in this high-competition, operationally-heavy space. In reality, Printo’s offering was very different and designed to simplify the way gifting is done. Operationally easy for the admin/ops/HR folks on the procurement side, lots of options for them to choose from, and reliable too.

In the revised wireframe I suggested, I tried to bring out all these aspects while also leveraging Printo’s long legacy in Bengaluru. Please note: these are rudimentary Canva pumpkins that didn’t get to be transformed into glass slippers by the magical touch of a professional designer.

[Spec Ad] A print ad for UPI

Brand, Print

In late 2019, Amazon Pay was trying to scale up their UPI customer base, having entered the game quite late. At the time, Google Pay was ruling the roost, itself soon to be deseated by PhonePe. I was a freelance communications consultant for Amazon Pay, commissioned to help the many business units under it bring some consistency to the brand voice and messaging. At the end of a 2-year engagement, we did a series of training sessions and closed with a Write Guide for the team.

But I digress.

Back in 2019, while Amazon Pay was trying to win over customers from Google Pay, I had this idea for a print ad. Never pitched it, knowing that one of the brand’s policies is to not take on the competition directly. But, it still remains one of my favourites.

Disclaimer: This ad was created on spec and was not commissioned/approved by Amazon Pay or published in the Times of India.

Bigbasket emails (Since 2019)

Brand, Emails

Nobody wants to read. Open rates are dead. Email is spam.

People have been saying this for years — I disagree. I think email is a powerful way to get someone’s attention. It is not intrusive like calls and messages; yet, more personal than ads & social media. It gives you a wonderful canvas to say what you want to. And it stays in someone’s inbox, more or less permanently.

Provided, of course, you do it well.

I have built up email strategy for a number of brands: nurture sequences at CrackVerbal to guide young professionals looking to study abroad; engaging newsletters at Urban Ladder to put the fun in furniture shopping; nudging parents to let children play wild & free at shumee toys; telling uplifting stories of giving without selling poverty porn at GiveIndia.

Since 2019, I have been doing this for the marketing team at bigbasket, India’s largest online supermarket. During the pandemic, bigbasket faced a massive surge in demand, coupled with operational challenges. In spite of their best efforts, they could not fulfill many orders, leaving customers disgruntled. The team’s first priority was fixing the issues. But once things were getting back to normal, they wanted to reach out to all their customers to explain what happened.

Before I set to work on this email, I had multiple conversations during which the team was very clear about the problem statement. ‘We did our best but we still disappointed some customers. This falls short of the service standards we set for ourselves. How can we make it better?’

All along, we have been working to craft Bigbasket’s voice to reflect its values: authentic, straightforward, heartfelt. No gimmicks. No deflective humour to draw attention away from the problem.

So that’s what we did here. We owned up. We explained what went wrong. We told customers what we are doing to make things better. And signed off with a coupon-equivalent of an apology bouquet. We also asked them to give us another chance— and I am happy to see some of the comments here expressing that sentiment. You can see the email here.

Post-pandemic Update email Download

This email, sent to over 10 lakh people, caught attention and Bigbasket exceeded their expectations in terms of customers retained. It also created a buzz on social media.

Is it possible to make fruit interesting? Or cooking oils? In bigbasket emails, we try. We do this by telling fascinating backstories, busting myths, and sharing practical tips. You can see examples here.