There is no one quite like Jessie, they say in Bangalore?s software marketing corridors. Having been instrumental in the marketing successes of both Infosys and Wipro, Jessie Paul is someone everyone in the community looks up to. Today, she is an entrepreneur having started her enterprise called the Paul Writer Strategic Advisory. ?At 40, I wanted to be a managing director/CEO, so here I am with my own venture.?
Her book on frugal marketing titled ?No Money Marketing? was a success, with there being many wanting to create a big brand without having enough funds in the bank.
Jessie grew up in Australia. Her father was an IFS officer there, who decided to return to India after sometime. she grew up in a small town called Nazareth near Kanyakumari and had a tough time learning how to board a bus to school. Nazareth was tough, but she coped. Jessie knew that she had to study hard and get out of the place by joining a big town college. She got admission to the Regional Engineering College (REC), Trichy, and packed her bags, where she did computer engineering. She did get admission to an engineering college in Madurai, but chose to take up Trichy which was further away. Jessie did not tell her parents that she wanted to join Trichy, as they may not have let her.
But after passing out of the engineering college, she decided to go the advertising way. ?I found advertising a very exciting business to be in, though I may have got paid better in other professions. I wanted to take my own track.?
Jessie realised the importance of being a good human being while she was at Infosys. ?Infosys taught me how to be fair to vendors and other contact points. Here I learned my first lessons in frugal marketing. Infosys was not a big company back then and we had to make most of our resources.?
At Infosys, she also picked up the importance of personal branding and the need to use PR as a powerful tool. ?I remember in those days, Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani used to personally respond to every media query. The policy then was to never leave a media query unattended. Murthy knew that media had paid a role in the early success of Infosys and he remembered those journalists who wrote on the company very well.?
But as Infosys started to grow, it was evident that systems and processes had to be put in place. ?I played a role in that. We developed a few marketing processes, which were considered very novel back then. Those days, no IT services company had focused on branding.?
The emphasis at Infosys was on winning awards. Third-party endorsement was valued highly, and Murthy always said that the company should focus doing highly interesting things that would attract attention.
She decided to move on from Infosys when she realised that she was not getting to head the marketing team.
?I wanted to be the marketing head at 35. But since there was only a slim chance of that happening, I left. Phaneesh had also moved out around that time, and I followed him. I was with Phaneesh and i-Gate for the next couple of years, but could not make it a long stint.?
Wipro happened soon after, just the way other things in her life took place. ?I called up someone I knew in Wipro and there I was sitting in front of chairman Azim Premji. Wipro gave a lot of freedom to do what I wanted. As the head of marketing, I could finally do what I wanted to do always. Wipro allowed you to experiment and make mistakes. It was a really good period.?
It was at Wipro that Jessie started thinking of becoming an entrepreneur. She also decided to write a book during the period. ?After my book?No Money Marketing?I really wanted to start out on my own. For the book launch, both Infosys and Wipro leaders had come and that was a great moment.?
Her company Paul Writer Strategic Advisory has made a good start. ?I do not have great plans at the moment. We are slowly building ourselves up.?
Jessie believes India does not know how to brand itself yet. ?Just look at the way the rupee symbol exercise was carried out. Hardly anyone knew about the contest. One fine day, the symbol crops up, and no one had the opportunity to participate. Only a handful knew about it. That?s not the way to go about it. Also, the whole exercise was very tactical. There was no larger picture, there was no great branding done around it.?