A working progress for 21+ years.

Two decades of brand marketing experience, with multiple leadership roles – the last being CMO of  Scripbox, has given me a unique blend of brand vision, creative thinking, and digital expertise, and has helped me create scale strategies, set up high-performing teams, and collaborate with diverse individuals to drive business growth. 

Combine this with the empathy that comes from working closely with founders and cross-functional leaders and teams, and you get someone who’s in perfect position to be a Fractional CMO. 

Selected media coverage, and some favourite work from across the brand marketing stack below.

P.S. In other worlds, I have been a blogger since 2003, a columnist for The Times Group on tech, startups, and food. 

Reading, travelling, and Malayalam movies are my joys.

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Manu Prasad | Brand Marketing, Digital, Growth| Fractional CMO


News & Views

Manu Prasad Fractional CMO India
afaqs : The Uberisation of the Chief Marketing Officer
afaqs : The Uberisation of the Chief Marketing Officer
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ET Now Manu Prasad Fractional CMO
ET Now: Decoding the rise of millennial investors
ET Now: Decoding the rise of millennial investors
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Marketing Automation Virtual Summit, Manu Prasad, Brand Equity
Brand Equity: Marketing Automation Virtual Summit
Brand Equity: Marketing Automation Virtual Summit
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Manu Prasad| Brand Campaign| Television Advertising
CNBC TV 18 Storyboard: Urban Ladder Brand Campaign
CNBC TV 18 Storyboard: Urban Ladder Brand Campaign
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Myntra Social Strategy Manu Prasad
Social Samosa: Myntra's Social Media Strategy
Social Samosa: Myntra's Social Media Strategy
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Microsoft Ventures Manu Prasad
CIOL: Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in India graduates third batch of 13 tech startups
CIOL: Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in India graduates third batch of 13 tech startups
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A few favourites

Manu Prasad | Brand Campaign | Positioning
Scripbox : Invest with confidence​

The objective of this campaign was to reinforce the positioning of  Scripbox as a wealth manager for an older cohort of users. We started with an insight that even experienced investors are not completely confident when it comes to their investments. We used a series of creatives to communicate that with the right approach, confidence is indeed possible. We followed it up with an RTB (Reasons to Believe) campaign that highlighted features which would enable this. Creatives in-house, executed with the help of production partners.

Manu Prasad | Lead Generation | Digital Marketing
Scripbox : Lead Generation

I’m quite proud of this for two reasons. One, there is really no playbook for selling a product to a TG over 35. But with this approach, we cracked it across multiple display channels. Great ROI. Two, while this is a ‘sales’ ad, it tells a story about the customer as well as our knowledge capital, and validated my hypothesis that brand and performance marketing are not an either/or.

Manu Prasad | Brand Campaign| Influencer Marketing
Scripbox : Tax Saver

In 2019, we worked with Tilt Brand Solutions to create a clutter-breaking campaign for Scripbox Tax Saver. I love this campaign because we had very clear insights for the four personas, and got the perfect influencers to play the roles. This campaign really amped up our top of the funnel.

Scripbox : Economic Times

This was a three month campaign we did in 2022 to reposition Scripbox as a wealth manager for mature investors. Same spot on ET every week. Proverbs with a wealth management twist. Concept and execution in-house. Brand Lift? Indeed.

Manu Prasad | Digital Marketing| MarTech
Scripbox : MarTech

In any business that has some consideration stage, nurturing leads is extremely important, and huge factor in reducing CAC. When it comes to investments, it’s never a quick decision. We used a multiple platform approach that includes paid and owned media to convert users at the bottom of the funnel. This also involves setting up and tweaking analytics across tools like Amplitude, Branch, and Google Analytics. This interview sheds light on that marketing automation journey.

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Manu Prasad Scripbox Content Strategy
Scripbox : Content

Back in 2003, when I began blogging, that was probably the universe of digital content. In a couple of decades, things have moved quite a bit. At the time of this interview with Pepper Content in 2021, content creation and distribution in multiple formats had become much easier, and it could play a role across the funnel. In the two years since, the creator economy and generative AI have exploded and taken content to a different level. This is a rapidly evolving space and the importance of content in brand building cannot be overstated.

Manu Prasad| PR| Public Relations
Scripbox : PR

PR is an extremely valuable tool in brand management that does not get the credit it deserves. Even in this era, media is still a large ‘influencer’ in driving the narrative about a brand and its business. CMOs rarely do an interview on the subject, and hence this is important.

Urban Ladder Airport Brand Marketing Manu Prasad
Urban Ladder: Brand Activation

While aesthetics is a big decision parameter when customers evaluate furniture options, so is comfort. What better way to showcase both these than the waiting lounge of an airport! So we bought media, came up with an attention-grabbing line, and replaced the airport furniture with some of  Urban Ladder’s best. Thanks to the uniqueness of the idea and the team’s excellent execution, we got a full funnel throughput from this activity. This article by afaqs has all the details. 

Urban Ladder: Comfort Creatures

The concept, developed by Circus Elephants, was excellent, and we did this on a shoestring budget back in 2015! It was a classic combination of an entertaining ad sliding in the sales pitch smoothly. This worked really well for the urban millennial persona that Urban Ladder wanted to appeal to.

Manu Prasad | Social Media
Myntra: Twitter Trends

The first time an Indian brand trended globally on Twitter. At this point, you might ask “what’s special?”. But this was 2013 and no one had a playbook for social media. However, we learned to engineer trending campaigns without spending money – through creativity and some clever planning, and thus impact business growth.

Manu Prasad | Brand Campaign
TOI: Bangalore Mirror

A decent campaign, but that’s not all. This was the first time that the Times group agreed to create a site outside Indiatimes for a publication. Purely on the strength of the idea. Was it successful? Well, this template was subsequently used for all Mirror publications. Also the time I honed my wire framing skills, in 2008!

Manu Prasad | Brand Launch Campaign
MidDay : Bangalore Launch

FishEye was one of the earliest agencies I worked with. This was for the launch of MidDay in Bangalore in 2005. This is creatively my favourite campaign. It is cerebral, with a specific pattern to each creative, but still conveying the melting pot that was Bangalore, and landing MidDay as a paper with a unique point of view.

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