Catch up with Media Director, Prachi Karan, Social Media Superwomen of 2018

Two people from Isobar India were recently named in the Social Samosa Social Media Superwomen 2018 list, an annual commendation for accomplished women in the industry in the country.

For the final interview in a two-part series with both winners, we caught up with Prachi Karan, Media Director, who was named in the Agency Professionals category.

You are part of Isobar’s Women’s Council, can you tell us about that?

In today’s world to be truly successful, a business needs to be diverse and give equal opportunity to everyone. Gender diversity and how we maximize female talent potential in our business, is the first step towards this direction.

Isobar India came up with a very thoughtful idea of launching the Women’s Council for its female employees across India and is one of the first agencies in the country to do so. The role of Women’s Council is to nurture and help women succeed in the workspace and achieve the aim of having many more women in leadership roles within Isobar. The establishment of Isobar Women’s Council mirrors Isobar’s solemnity to encourage women to reach top positions inside corporate India and to create an environment where they can flourish.

Keeping up with the reformed laws on maternity leave, Isobar now gives six months paid maternity leave to women. However, in case women employees feel the need to take a sabbatical, they are entitled to take one and can return after 18 months.

You have a breadth of work experience from Pepsico, to Havas, and Isobar. Do you have any advice for people coming into our industry?

When I started my journey in digital, it was more of an accessory to large media plans, always shadowed by mediums boasting scale. But, the digital revolution had already begun and this evolution was consumer driven which gave the industry a lot of power.

Digital today is not just a marketing or a media channel anymore, it has become a way of how we do business. We are in the era of digital transformation and we are moving at a supersonic speed. Today’s change is not just the only constant, ‘Change is basic’, which means we all need to be extremely agile, at all time and must possess the ability to adapt quickly.

At the same time it is important to have grit and not lose your focus. In our industry, if you stay still, you are moving backwards.

You have worked for Isobar since 2013, how have you found it?

My journey has been very interesting. The exposure I received in terms of scale and diversity from a business point of view led me to fall in fall in love with this place. The culture and values Isobar promotes are just phenomenal.

Isobar’s believes in Ideas Without Limit and that is deeply rooted in its people and is demonstrated day in day out in all the great work that we do. In the last couple of years the campaigns I have worked on or led have gone and won over 20 awards across IAMAI, IDMA, CIDCA, Maddies, Crest, Digies, Mobexx, Drivers of Digital, Smarties and Global Marketing awards including the use of AR / VR for the launch of Marvellous Creations from the Mondelez portfolio.

Finally, how has the Ideas Without Limits belief helped you in your career?

The Ideas Without Limits belief and the never-settle attitude in people here at Isobar inspires everyone and pushes them, including me, to give one-hundred percent.

This has led me to become the Annual Achiever of the Year — Isobar and the Isobarian of the Year in 2018. I was also featured in Social Samosa 30 under 30 list, Social Samosa’s SocialMedia Super Woman list and was featured in Ad Gully’s W-Suite section which caters towards profiling inspiring women leading the advertising and media landscape in 2018.

I was also extremely honoured to have represented Isobar India in the very prestigious ‘Campaign Asia MediaWorks workshop’ in April 2017 in Hanoi.

Isobar also helped me achieve one of my biggest interests of helping young talent. I recently conducted workshops and seminars on Digital Strategy and Media Planning for college students who are want to be a part of the ever growing digital industry.