Aatika Ehsan Ansari, Head of Media–Digital at Pernod Ricard India, is a new-age marketer with a rich and diverse background across agency, automotive, luxury, and FMCG brands. From leading media at Skoda and Volkswagen, to shaping campaigns as the Luxury & Whites Marketing Lead at Diageo India, to partnering on Pantene China at the agency end, her experience spans global and local mandates. Known for crafting consumer-first strategies and driving media process transformation, Aatika focuses on strengthening brand resonance among young, affluent audiences. In this conversation, she shares her perspective on creating efficient, insight-driven media ecosystems that align creativity with business outcomes.
Your career spans leading roles across automotive, FMCG, luxury, and now alco‑bev. How have these diverse experiences shaped your philosophy on building consumer‑first media strategies?
I’m incredibly grateful for the varied experiences I’ve had across different verticals. At the outset, they taught me the importance of being open to both learning and unlearning because consumer needs shift from one category to another, even if the core motivations stay consistent.
These experiences have given me a panoramic view of how consumers connect with brands on both emotional and functional levels. I’ve learned the impact of high-involvement storytelling, as well as the discipline needed to drive salience at scale, where media works just as hard as distribution. Working in Alco-Bev and Luxury, in particular, sharpened my understanding of aspiration. Every touchpoint in these categories needs to feel curated, exclusive, and aligned with the brand’s ethos.
All of this has shaped my approach to brand-building. I believe in a consumer-first media strategy, never a one-size-fits-all. It’s about understanding context, showing up where the consumer is, and using the right mix of channels sometimes mass, sometimes hyper-personalized—to build relevance, trust, and lasting brand love.
You’ve often spoken about balancing brand building with performance marketing. How do you ensure both coexist to drive sustainable growth rather than short‑term wins?
With my limited experience in performance marketing, I see it as a powerful opportunity to build brands—not as a competing priority, but as the other side of the growth coin. One side drives brand love, awareness, and consideration (or whatever the brand is striving for), while the other drives immediate purchase action. As marketers, we need both to work in sync, not in silos.
In an ideal world, this starts with a clear understanding of the consumer journey, where exactly are we trying to influence behavior, and at what stage? From there, we can set distinct but complementary KPIs: brand campaigns should be measured on metrics like awareness, consideration, and preference, while performance campaigns should focus on acquisition and sales. It’s also essential to ensure consistency in messaging so that short-term pushes reinforce the long-term brand story. And then comes measurement,setting up frameworks that track how these efforts interact and amplify each other to deliver sustainable growth.
However, in the real world, brand and performance are often handled by separate teams. So, my recommendation is simple: collaborate, work together to drive creative consistency and sales impact.
Younger affluent consumers are redefining brand engagement. What shifts in media planning or messaging have you found most effective in reaching this audience?
In my view, today’s affluent youth are value-conscious, digitally native, and expect brands to engage with them on their terms not through top-down communication like in the past. For me, this shift has influenced my approach in three key ways:
Participation-Driven
We need to go beyond simply telling them a story. The goal is to invite them into the brand world, whether through co-creation, immersive experiences, or content they can relate to and shape themselves.
Authenticity Matters
This audience gravitates toward brands that reflect their values—whether it’s sustainability, inclusivity, or cultural relevance. Both the product and the messaging need to feel real. For instance, a brand like Alexander McQueen stands for avant-garde design, theatrical storytelling, and impeccable craftsmanship blending subversion and tradition in a way that feels true to its identity.
Consolidated consumer journey:
This generation thrives on connectedness. That means creating an integrated ecosystem where social, influencers, experiences, and commerce all work together to reinforce the brand narrative in a meaningful way.
Ultimately, we need to meet them with relevance, transparency, and experiences that feel personal because that’s what builds connection and loyalty today.
Having led media transformation initiatives, what are the key levers that drive efficiency without compromising creativity in today’s fragmented media ecosystem?
One of my key learnings while driving transformation is that efficiency and creativity can absolutely coexist. And there are a few powerful levers that make this possible:
Data layered with human insight
While analytics play a crucial role in targeting and optimization, creative communication must still be grounded in cultural understanding. That’s what keeps the message meaningful—not just mechanical.
Medium-out creative thinking
Instead of defaulting to a one-size-fits-all campaign, it’s important to build a creative idea that adapts across platforms and formats. This way, we get scale and efficiency without losing the soul of the message.
Specialist partners
Collaborating with platforms for programmatic execution or content adaptation brings speed and cost efficiency. At the same time, working with specialist partners helps inject distinct creative thinking into the process.
A test-and-learn mindset
Setting aside a portion of the budget to experiment—with new formats, platforms, or ideas is key. Learn from the results, improve, and then scale what works.
When these levers come together, they don’t just balance efficiency and creativity, they strengthen both. And that’s what drives shared success for the brand.
From managing global brands like Pantene in China to leading digital strategies in India, what lessons stand out when adapting campaigns for different markets and cultures?
My biggest lesson from working across cultures is this: never lift and shift. A campaign that works brilliantly in one market can completely miss the mark in another if it isn’t meaningfully adapted to local culture, consumer behavior, and even media habits.
When I worked on a global haircare brand in China, success came from hyper-localizing the offering and messaging—partnering with local KOLs, tailoring the storytelling to their beauty rituals, and staying true to the brand’s tone of voice. Sometimes, it also meant reimagining the role of e-commerce, using it not just for conversions but as a brand-building touchpoint.
Alco-Bev in India, on the other hand, is a very different challenge. It’s a dark market where you can only advertise genuine brand extensions. The regulations here differ significantly from global norms. Beyond that, today’s youth value local heritage and craftsmanship more than a Western expression of the same ideas. That means reframing narratives through a cultural lens leaning on collaborations, experiences, and authentic storytelling that resonates locally.
For me, while global consistency has its place, true resonance comes from cultural empathy and localized relevance.
With technology and data reshaping marketing, how do you see media leaders evolving their skill sets to stay ahead in an increasingly automated and insight‑driven landscape?
Technology and data are no longer just support functions—they sit at the heart of media strategy and marketing decisions. For marketers, this means evolving into effective storytellers who can blend data, creativity, and business outcomes seamlessly.
I see three critical skill shifts shaping this transformation:
Data-Driven
Marketers don’t need to become data scientists, but we do need to know the right questions to ask of data and how to translate those answers into actionable media insights.
Tech-Friendly
It’s essential to stay on top of emerging platforms, AI tools, and automation not just to optimize media buys, but to enhance consumer experiences meaningfully.
Creative-Forward
Even as automation brings efficiency, we can’t lose the human touch. Creativity is what builds emotional memory structures and that’s what makes brands unforgettable.
