CAMPAIGN MEDIA FACES TO WATCH 2019 – ECCHA KHEMANI, 27, SENIOR MEDIA PLANNER (AND PLAYING SEVERAL DIFFERENT ROLES; MOSTLY, A GOOD PACIFIER DURING STRESSFUL MOMENTS), WAVEMAKER
Nominated by Tamanna Moolchandani, business unit director
“Eccha brings a considered and thoughtful approach to our client leadership team. She has shown agility and vigour throughout her career here. Her level of impeccable commitment, willingness and eagerness to learn makes her a great example amongst her peers. Her performance and commitment to the client and agency was unprecedented and extraordinary in some of the most stressful situations. Despite being the youngest in the team she has shown immense maturity in leading the campaign launches across planning and measurement.”
“With a to-do attitude and no time barriers, she’s been a subtle shining star, strongly proving this by getting her work accomplished. Her righteous personality and morals are really a breath of fresh air and much needed in our media industry today. It only helps keep everyone grounded.”
Career path
“The last five or six years have been quite an interesting and challenging journey as I’ve been fortunate to work with a wonderful pool of talent and be a part of this forever-evolving industry.”
“I’ve seen the best and flip side of owned, earned and paid media. To be fair, none can do without the support of the others. I was part of a hardworking team at a PR agency for three years, working on several different industry categories, building brands by story-telling and the right coverage. Then I became a part of Apparel Group as a marketer myself, giving the agencies a bit of a tough time.”
“Currently I am crunching numbers all day and making waves at Wavemaker MENA, heavily involved in the slightly mysterious ways of working around omni-channel planning.”
Guiding principles
In the midst of a hectic day, chances are a lot of tasks could be missed out on. First and foremost, one main thing to abide by is a written to-do list – no mental list allowed here. I may not be able to tick off everything from my lists, but it gives me a rough estimate of how to pace my work, and perhaps take help if required.
Secondly, I have a stress hour dedicated each day. With all our juggling and multi-tasking, we tend to spend a lot of time stressing over where to kickstart our tasks from. I’ve solely dedicated 3pm to 3:30/4pm as my stress hour of the day. Even if there’s an issue working me up at 11am, I know I must look forward to 3pm to stress about this. By the time I’ve reached that hour, I’ve tried gathering responses to most of my concerns. That itself reduces my thinking time and helps me action tasks effectively in the most composed/ problem-solution manner possible.
My ex-bosses are who I learned the importance of the to-do list from. I’m very sure it’s the most efficient way of working across several organisations. And the second process was an inspiration from a well-wisher.
