As a seasoned advertising professional, Mohit Mishra’s career has spanned over 20 years, with stints at some of the biggest names in the industry, including WPP, Publicis, Lintas, and Cheil. But his transition to the real estate sector was driven by a desire to tackle new challenges and build experiences from the ground up. Speaking exclusively with Storyboard18, Mishra reflects on how his advertising experience shaped his approach to marketing in the commercial real estate sector, particularly at DLF.
Edited Excerpts
What inspired you to transition into the real estate sector, and how has your perspective on marketing evolved in this industry?
I was an advertising professional for about 20 years of my career, having worked with agencies like WPP, Publicis, Lintas, and Cheil to name a few. Rather than working on established players and brands, I was always kicked about building newer categories and turning challenger brands into leading brands.
Laying a foundation of the marketing ecosystem from scratch and working with partners to create brand identities and content platforms have always excited me more than becoming another cog in the wheel in the marketing journey of an established brand.
B2B marketing for the commercial real estate office segment was exactly the kind of challenge I wanted to pick up when I decided to don the marketing hat, leveraging the Integrated Communication Management experience of my advertising days.
Pre-pandemic, it was an organized but unbranded category with little or no strategic contribution of Marketing to the Business Impact but the microenvironment has changed drastically in the last 4. Today it’s not just the product that matters but also the brand, its differentiators, and its affinity to the core decision-makers beyond transactions.
What unique marketing strategies have you employed to differentiate DLF’s office business in a competitive market?
The differentiators for DLF Office business come from the core of the company’s ethos of delivering world-class sustainable, safe, social, and scalable space solutions to our esteemed tenant workforce comprising Fortune 500 and 1000 companies.
We believe in making and operating workplaces that respect ecology, optimize the usage of energy and water resources, and reduce waste. Our workplaces enable wellness and good health apart from being operationally safe and secure. The social infrastructure that we provide has a good blend of retail amenities with ease of connectivity and transport.
With hybrid work models becoming the norm post-pandemic, how is DLF adapting its office spaces to cater to the changing needs of businesses and employees?
The people who come to work in offices spend approx. 10 hours of their active life on the premises. Our endeavour is to make them as ‘social spaces’ rather than just workstations with amenities and infrastructure to connect and collaborate. Thus we give a special emphasis to more open areas, places to converge and work collectively.
What parallels do you see between promoting consumer electronics and marketing office spaces? Are there any lessons you’ve carried over?
Both the categories are valued and non-impulsive buys. Please do extensive research, evaluate the brand fit, and then decide on what compliments their vision. The customer journey post-purchase/lease also lasts normally a decade and thus the experiences in the post-purchase journey define their affinity with the brand and the likelihood of a repeat buy.
How is DLF incorporating green initiatives in its office business, and how do you communicate this to your audience?
We walk the talk on our Green Initiatives. DLF Offices is the world leader in Sustainable workplaces, with the entire portfolio being certified LEED Platinum by the US Green Building Council. Our endeavours to build sustainable communities in Gurugram and Chennai have bagged us LEED Platinum for Cities and Communities.
Our initiatives to reduce waste led to LEED Zero Waste certifications for Hyderabad, Chennai, and Gurugram and the water conservation practices have resulted in a LEED Zero Water certification for 45 of our projects.
The above becomes the backbone of my sustainability and green initiatives communication to my audience through social media, direct tenant connect and displays in the building lobbies.
As someone who has led teams across various organizations, what is your approach to fostering creativity and innovation within your marketing team at DLF?
I like mentoring people more than managing them. My team is a bunch of young energetic lot who are candid with their expressions and vocal with their point of view. I encourage them to change the status quo and contribute with initiatives and ideas that may be norms in traditional real estate communication but are appreciated by my target audience.
I also encourage them to learn new MarTech tools as their learning curve is much steeper owing to their young age. Once trained, they need to leverage their learnings on live cases.
Is there a particular quote or philosophy that you like and motivates you?
I live by the philosophy of ‘Planet before Profit’. I had inherited a much cleaner and liveable environment from my ancestors and want to leave the planet in a better condition than what it is now.
Outside of work, what are your favourite hobbies or activities? Are there any books, movies, or experiences that
have significantly shaped your perspective?
I am an ardent fan of Indian Yoga and Ayurveda. I am trying to imbibe the learnings of Yoga, both in my fitness practice as well as my thought process.
Read more: CMO Weekender: Federal Bank CMO MVS Murthy on life and work, success and failure