Creative producer and Strategist Sonakshi Tiwari on how innovative ideas are the only way to survive a curveball like lockdown
On her first day of joining Meesho as a Creative Producer and Strategist, Sonakshi Tiwari found herself acting in a Meesho branding video. This was but natural, because Sonakshi is not only a creative professional with stints in journalism and several creative agencies throughout her career, but is also a proficient stage actor. Acting in a Meesho branding video is a rite of passage for most Meeshoites, and Sonakshi has acted in several of them.
As part of the Brand & Communication team at Meesho, Sonakshi is responsible for hosting Mission Rise Women Entrepreneurial Summits, sharing reseller stories, ideating and executing videos that impact resellers and their business, and moulding brand Meesho into a strong entity.
Creativity runs through every aspect of Sonakshi’s profession (as a strategist and creative producer) as well as passion (performing on stage), and she is always thinking about the next big idea and bringing out of the box concepts to branding at Meesho.
Read all about Sonakshi’s life at Meesho here:
I joined Meesho on July 15, 2019, as a creative producer and brand strategist. As part of the Brand & Communication team, I was then primarily focused on organising the offline Mission Rise events that we used to conduct across the country, and my responsibilities included taking charge of the creative side of things.
I have always been in the creative profession, even though I actually started off by enrolling for engineering. I have worked in journalism for a few years (which became a little too insensitive for my palette) followed by more experience in advertising, which I loved.
During my years working in advertising agencies such as Cinimage Studios and Team Pumpkin I did it all — from storytelling to scriptwriting and conceptualising, video production, creative direction — you name it, and I did it.
A risk worth taking
The move to Meesho was scary initially because in advertising I worked with multiple brands, taking care of their needs, but in Meesho I had to now deep dive into a single brand. Despite the hesitation, I am glad I took the plunge because I have learnt so much during this one year spent at Meesho, than I could have anticipated. From brand building to running activation campaigns and digital marketing, I have gotten knee-deep into various aspects of the job. In fact, I acted in my first Meesho video during my first day at work.
I have not only been able to play an active role in the Meesho Community ( an online community of Meesho entrepreneurs), but also approach branding in novel ways — be it by highlighting the inspiring stories of Meesho resellers or by taking ownership of the #WeHearYou, a monthly video series where our leaders directly address reseller concerns, or by ideating and ensuring the end-to-end success of several social media campaigns.
For instance, the #SochSeAage campaign, where we ran stories of women entrepreneurs for Women’s Day, was an incredible experience, especially seeing how our Meesho entrepreneurs were positively impacted by the recognition they truly deserve. I also consider myself lucky to have taken part in the #SabkiSuraksha campaign, where we encouraged resellers to earn money during the lockdown by making masks that were bought by Meesho and eventually delivered to some of the most vulnerable on-ground workers in India like police officers, security guards, and more.
Another one of the most satisfying aspects of my Meesho career has been getting to travel to various cities in India and meeting with resellers from different walks of life at their homes and Mission Rise events, and amplifying their stories. This, however, came to a halt with the nationwide lockdown in March, and we realised that we needed to find other ways to recognise our resellers and their work.
Changing with the times
Mission Rise is extremely important to my team because we use that platform to celebrate our resellers and encourage their growth. Not to mention, the most important Meesho core value to me is Making Resellers Successful. We cannot lose sight of this particular value even for a second no matter what project we are working on. This is what drives me at work as well. I always ask myself how will any action my team and I take, help resellers? How will resellers respond to this? How will the Meesho brand be perceived because of this?
The way I see it, the work that we do at Meesho not only brings in a large section of the population who were sequestered to domestic life into the workforce, but we are also able to help them become independent entrepreneurs. I have a mission for our resellers, which is that they should be known as more than just Meesho resellers, and get to sit at the same table as the CEOs of huge corporations — as equals.
Thankfully, I work with a team full of creative folks who care for resellers as passionately as I do. So, we put our heads together and in a span of a couple of days, we figured out the logistics of how to make online connections with our resellers during the lockdown.
We wanted to celebrate our resellers as not just successful entrepreneurs but also as wonderful homemakers, philanthropists, community leaders, corona warriors, and every other facet of who they are as women.
As a team, we regularly clash on ideas and implementation, but proving yet again that our collective priority will always be our reseller, we managed to host our first Mission Rise Connect — the digital version of Mission Rise — in the weekend that followed the announcement of the lockdown, on March 29, 2020. It was honestly a brilliant display of another one of our core values — Speed Over Perfection.
From Nukkad artiste to Zoom storyteller
Lockdown has challenged me to think outside the box in my personal life too, especially as an artiste. Before the lockdown, my weekends used to be busier than weekdays with my days starting at 5 am and spending the entire day at rehearsal for plays. Now I do play rehearsals over Zoom, and have also started hosting a story narration programme for children. These are my passions that no lockdown can hinder.
My tryst with theatre started with nukkad nataks (street plays) in Delhi, and it is one of the most engaging art forms. When I moved to Bangalore, I took a while to decide how I wanted to quench my thirst for acting, but eventually became a part of the theatre circle and even went on to perform at a TedEx event at Mangalore in February 2020.
I like to think that I have gotten my creative streak from my mother, who has a Doctorate in Hindi literature, used to work as a radio jockey, designed clothes for Bombay Dyeing, and so on. My father, on the other hand, used to work in the Forest Department, and my older brother is a banker.
I almost went in the direction of data and numbers like them, having enrolled in an engineering college. Luckily I quickly realised that this is not my calling and dropped out, and spent a while at NDTV, before learning that my talents would best fit in the world of advertising and eventually finding my way to Meesho. The rest is history.
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