Disruptive Marketing 101: Play Where Others Haven't Thought of Playing

What is it like to head up marketing for $7.7 billion dollar company out of India? For that matter, what does it mean to disrupt in a domain as continually on the short clock as digital technology?

It means always being on your game. Just ask Naveen Rajdev, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Wipro; I did.

In the Disrupt Yourself podcast, he Rajdev shares, “I see my role as: who is going to be buying our services two years down the line. And every single day I worry about that. So it’s about forward-positioning the company so that…the people who are going to be our customers two years down the line see us as relevant. I worry about that. That is the fundamental point I have taken up. And the second point I look at is our brand; we have a very, very iconic brand, both globally and in India, and of course, many interests outside of technology services. You have to really worry about the brand."

Rajdev is clearly a man who relishes worrying. His enthusiasm for his job is obvious. If he breathes the challenges of keeping the Wipro brand fresh and relevant every minute of his life, he is clearly happy to be doing so. And if he sees an employee carrying a competitor’s bag, or some other small thing picked up at a conference, perhaps, he is quick to approach them, take the item off their hands and substitute something more suitable. Something Wipro. Brand is the war cry, the rallying cry—the brand is all.

Along with staying ahead of the marketing curve. Rajdev wants every one of the 160,000 employees of Wipro to be engaged in advancing the brand and trend-thinking. “Who you are in the future, who are you going to be developing for...one thing which we have really driven inside the team is trend thinking, and not just our team but across Wipro. That trend thinking—what is going to be the next thing?”

Sometimes, ironically, Rajdev launched a magazine for Wipro, and surprisingly, given that digital is Wipro’s business, the magazine is print. Why this counterintuitive move? “Because I had read on other trends that the physical book sales on Amazon were going up. Printing has become more precious. You know, we take 2000 pictures in a month, but we print only two…So, why not work hard to make something precious and print and give it to our customers?” The magazine is a hit, one that Wipro is “building as a very, very strong property. Our entire competition is looking at us, ‘What did they do?’”

Being a trend-setter—doing something new—means doing something old.

Those competitors can try to imitate Wipro’s initiatives; Rajdev doesn’t mind. By the time they do so, he is already on to the next thing, staying ahead of that wolf-pack at his back. Nor does he waste time looking for others to imitate; imitation is death.

“I go and meet a lot of people in the peer group. Of course there are a lot of ideas which get talked about, but, that’s still a much more traditional approach to marketing.”

He acknowledges that he respects and admires the accomplishments of his peers, and applauds, “when I see a good ad word, when I see a good campaign, from my competition. They do a good job.” But then he is immediately back to worrying, the competition forgotten. “Do I have the same set of people? Is my customer base the same? They’re fundamentally changing, and when that thing is changing, you need to be changing even before that.”

In true disruptor fashion, what other marketers do is meaningless to Rajdev, “in terms of where my brand should be, what my brand promise is going to be two years down the line.”

Rajdev gives the example of one of their clients—Chelsea, a popular UK football (soccer) club. Wipro is helping them use digital tools to maximize the fan experience. “We try to live the life of a fan in 24 hours...what it means to be a fan of Chelsea 24 hours before the game. So you imagine, you think more disruptive, you think from a design standpoint. You help them build that experience for the fan. Imagining the experience, reimagining the experience, building it...and making it happen for 500 million followers on social media across the globe.”

The stakes are high; the scale of such a project is staggering. Rajdev smiles, a brilliant smile that communicates how much he loves worrying 24/7 about the Wipro brand. “They have 500 million fans. When you work with that, with that scale, it becomes a very different kind of thing to deal with. And that’s where we come in very handy.”

You’ll love hearing how this cutting edge marketer is using his skills, almost as a hobby, though a very ambitious one, to try to help U.S. cities reinvigorate themselves. Catch the podcast here.

Whitney Johnson is one of the world's leading management thinkers (Thinkers50), author of the critically acclaimed Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work and host of the Disrupt Yourself Podcast. You can sign up for her newsletter here.