DMA: India appoints Vatsal Asher as CEO

He will be responsible for strengthening DMA: India's presence as an apex body for advocacy of direct marketing practices

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | October 31, 2011

Direct Marketing Association: India has announced the appointment of Vatsal Asher as CEO. Asher moves in from Deepak Fertilisers where he was Vice-president for consumer facing division Vare. He will be responsible for strengthening DMA: India's presence as an apex body for advocacy of direct marketing practices.

On his new role, he said, “With multitude of choices, Indian consumers are becoming more discerning about their brand preferences and where they spend money. Considering this consumer behaviour and the increasing media clutter, it is imperative for marketers to create data driven customer centric campaigns. From being defined as a 'response generating' domain, direct marketing is now used for ongoing customer engagement. By emphasising on global best practices for marketing services providers and marketers, I aim to carry forward DMA: India's vision of establishing industry standards and promote the direct marketing community.”

Sanjiv Swarup, member of DMA: India board of directors, said, “In 2010 spends on direct marketing accounted for more than 50 per cent of overall ad spends in the US. A similar trend is also witnessed in India where marketers using data, backed with analytics, are focusing on creating campaigns that generate interest, measure customer response and continuously engage with their customers. Vatsal's depth of experience will help drive our agenda to advocate direct marketing and provide networking opportunities that will help the marketing industry to reach the customers more effectively.”

Direct marketing has gained immense popularity in past few years with emphasis not just being laid on measuring the returns on marketing spends but also campaigns being created to initiate a dialogue with the customer. With advent of new media and innovative usage of technology to engage with customers, spends on direct marketing have also increased significantly.

Asher has also worked with Reliance Retail, Tata Teleservices and RPG Group. He brings with him more than 15 years of experience in marketing communications across brand management, sales and promotions, loyalty and customer experience.

Asher said, “Thanks to direct marketing going digital, it is now considered as a targeted and customer specific media rather than an intrusive form of marketing. In coming months I look forward to promote new trends and technology in direct marketing, besides creating platforms for knowledge sharing and innovation.”

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