Vinita Bali of Britannia draws inspiration from those striving to make a difference.
Vinita Bali has crammed a lot of great work into her life. She has worked with fantastic brands like Cadbury’s, Coke and Sergio Zyman and has made sure she made a difference wherever she went.
In fact, making a meaningful difference seems to be at the core of this achiever.
After a long and envious stint abroad, she returned to India for personal reasons and took over the reins at Britannia at a phase in its corporate life that could be mildly described as turbulent. Vinita shrugs off any suggestion that she inherited a hot seat.
“I had at least two other options, but I saw this as a wonderful opportunity to work on a revered brand, and hopefully make a difference,” she says simply. But then, this seems to be Vinita’s style. Whether it was taking up an assignment in Lagos when others would have cringed at the thought of living in such a place, or taking over the operations in South Africa where in her words, she was “neither black or white”, Vinita is open to exploring the terrain, no matter how inhospitable it might appear, and then taking on a challenge which she would of course describe with characteristic modesty, as an opportunity.
After chatting with Vinita for about 45 minutes, I could only describe her as an explorer.
An intrepid traveller who revels in a restless nomadic existence in order to test the limits of new frontiers and understand what lies beneath the surface. A dyed-in-the-wool marketer with a noticeable clarity of thought, a penchant for the different, a commitment to her convictions and a charming smile.
Her professional approach is clear. She wants to be known by the contribution she makes to her job, not by the titles that follow her name or the zeroes that follow her salary. “Sure, money is important,” she says, “but I wanted to enjoy my work so I followed my sense of adventure and lived all over the world. I love to travel and love to explore new countries. By living in a country you learn so much about its history, and the culture of its people I am an experiential learner.”
This sense of adventure saw her learning Spanish during a stint in Santiago where what began as a necessity, in order to do grocery shopping, ended up with her conducting board meetings with bottlers of Coke in the lingua franca itself. Home is where the heart is for this leader who has a unique willingness to adapt to different places. She is equally comfortable in Bangalore where she is headquartered, Delhi where she spends weekends with her mother or Atlanta where she spent many memorable years scripting the marketing efforts at Coke.
So is there really a glass ceiling, I wondered aloud. “I haven’t personally experienced it,” she replied readily, “but have seen other people hit it. Given the great curiosity about it, it must exist. Don’t think about any ceiling. Just do what you like and enjoy doing it. All the rest will fall into place. If there is something I cannot influence or control, why bother thinking about it? I can influence people who work with me. I can influence their performance, so I will do it. If I don’t like doing something, I’ll just go find something else to do.”
Vinita has a lot of interests other than marketing. She has played the sitar, learned Kathak for 15 years and acted in plays. While studying at the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute in Mumbai, she was part of a theatre group that performed at Mood Indigo. And she loves Western and Indian classical music, and ghazals in particular. As if this was not enough, she loves reading and normally takes on a fiction and a non-fiction book simultaneously.
Vinita feels that advertising in India is at times great and at other times, eminently forgettable. Agencies seem to be responding to the national obsession with Bollywood and cricket by using film and cricketing stars to sell everything from soaps to health foods to cars. She labels this phenomenon as lazy marketing and lazy advertising. “Clients get the advertising they deserve,” she adds laconically.
When questioned about the responsibility that advertisers have while promoting products such as colas, chocolates and cookies, she is emphatic that marketing needs to be responsible and accountable. In India, she believes we are learning to live in what she calls a consumer democracy. At the same time she insists that we all need to be good consumers and demand our rights as consumers. “The “chalega” attitude has to end,” says Vinita.
Her advice to young managers is simple and delivered from the heart. “Do what you enjoy doing and give it your best. Continuously raise the bar on your own performance. Be true to yourself. Then you can be true to others.”
Though she grew up in an environment where she heard inspirational stories from her mother, and has been a great admirer of Gandhi and Mandela (whom she feels privileged to have met), she feels that these towering personalities inspire the masses. She herself draws inspiration from anyone who is doing something well, or anything that is done well: A great play, a great book, Lance Armstrong, Abeeda Parveen, Messner the heroic mountaineer, and even the maid with a drunkard as a husband who works tirelessly and selflessly to put her children through school, hoping to make a difference in their lives. Any or all of these inspire her.
Vinita sees everyday people as truly inspiring. And let me assure you Vinita, everyday people find you inspiring.