GroupM’s Junaid Hakim joins Brandie as national director – India

Social media word-of-mouth marketing platform, Brandie, has appointed Junaid Hakim as national director for India. Hakim joins from GroupM, where he headed the media mandate for Dell. In his new position, he is tasked with overseeing Brandie’s growth in the Indian market, in addition to developing stakeholder engagement, driving sales and new business development.

 

He will be based in Bengaluru where he will direct nationwide operations and liaise with Brandie’s global team in Sweden.

 

Pranav Kosuri, co-Founder, Brandie said, “The global impact of COVID-19 has fundamentally impacted the marketing industry and highlighted the growing importance of word-of-mouth marketing and customer advocacy. Junaid’s vast experience, strategic perspective, and operational focus will play a vital role in strengthening Brandie’s core leadership team and ensure our continued fast growth and adoption amongst agencies and brands in one of our core markets.” 

 

Added Hakim, “As per McKinsey, word-of-mouth is much more influential than advertising in driving brand consideration at each stage of the decision journey. Yet the Indian ad industry stands at $ 11BN and investments in word-of-mouth are near zero. This is partly because we have not been able to figure out ways to drive word-of-mouth. Brandie addresses this latent need by offering a platform for brands to engage with their existing customers to generate UGC and drive word-of-mouth/brand advocacy. I am sure, in Brandie, we have an industry-disrupting offering. The challenge is we have an industry-first offering and people are unfamiliar with it, so it will take a little bit of awareness and education around the product for adoption to happen. That's what I am going to focus on in my first four-six months at Brandie.”

 

Hakim has over 14 years of industry experience. Apart from GroupM, he has also worked at Mediacom in Bengaluru.