Chief Marketing Officer / India
Keep the smaller result when it tells the truer story
- Regional commercial-insurance broker
- 9 offices
- 230 employees and ₹63 crore FY26 brokerage and service revenue
- Marketing organisation
- 22 colleagues
- Three heads and eight agency colleagues counted separately
- Events to brokerage communication
- 28 years
- Five contiguous roles from July 1998; no statutory seat
Decisions & consequences
01Keeping the education invitation separate from a sales approach
The 2022 workplace education programme cost ₹46 lakh and drew 480 attendees through participating employers. The invitation offered an explanation session, with a separate choice to request a later brokerage conversation. Three hundred and twelve people made that request; 168 did not. The relationship-development lead wanted the full attendance list for follow-up, arguing that the company had paid for the programme and that people who joined were likely to be interested. I understood the commercial logic but did not accept that it changed the invitation after the event.
We retained the separate follow-up choice and routed only the 312 requests through the agreed process. Attendance administration and any later professional conversation had different purposes. Vivek Dazvethi's organisation owned the relevant broking work, while responsible colleagues and advisers determined appropriate handling of the records. Marketing did not use the employer's support for the event as a substitute for each participant's expressed preference. The 168 people who declined a further conversation remained valid participants in the original education programme.
The decision reduced the contact list the commercial team expected to receive. We did not call that reduction a failure of attendance or treat the 312 requests as policy sales. A request could lead to a useful discussion, a conclusion that no service was needed or another appropriate outcome. No conversion, premium or customer-benefit figure is inferred here. The programme's financial account retained the full ₹46 lakh expense, rather than allocating it only to people who later expressed commercial interest and making the other participants disappear.
I learned to agree the reporting language before an event is promoted. If a plan promises every attendee as a lead internally while offering education externally, the conflict has already been built into the programme. A clear invitation must be supported by a clear internal account of what participation means. Next time I would have the relationship lead sign off that distinction during planning, when the size and cost of the programme were still choices. The result was a smaller authorised follow-up list and a more faithful account of the occasion we had invited people to attend, without pretending that the marketing team had settled every later professional or data-handling obligation.
Correcting a brochure that made the broker sound like the insurer
In 2023, selected comprehension conversations tested a proposed business brochure with 72 readers. Forty-eight understood its central message as if Navzuri itself were the insurer responsible for paying claims. The qualifications elsewhere in the material did not prevent that interpretation. I had approved the creative proposal because its shorter phrasing seemed more confident. The review showed that confidence had come partly from assigning the brokerage a responsibility it did not hold.
The creative lead wanted to keep the headline and enlarge the explanatory note. Production colleagues also pointed to print work already commissioned. I recommended changing the central account of the service, with Vivek and the appropriate specialists checking the description of the broker, client and insurer. The revised material explained the brokerage's role without implying that marketing could select individual cover or decide a claim. The work cost ₹38 lakh in total: ₹12 lakh of discarded print and ₹26 lakh of redesign, review and replacement production. The discarded amount was retained as a consequence of my earlier approval.
Later conversations involved another selected group of 72 readers. Fifteen still needed clarification about the broker's role. We used their questions to improve explanations for relationship colleagues. Because the groups and circumstances differed, the two figures were not reported as a controlled reduction in misunderstanding or a representative estimate for the market. The later result showed that the revised material still required support; it did not prove that every reader would now understand the relationship correctly.
The choice gave up the original headline and incurred real rework. It also required us to explain that a broker could be useful without borrowing an insurer's promise. I would now ask for an early reader account of who they believe is responsible for each action described in a campaign. Approval of technically accurate wording is necessary, but it does not by itself establish the meaning a reader takes away. My responsibility was to bring that meaning back into the creative decision and own the cost when the proposal I had supported needed to change.
Separating contact records from buying organisations and appointments
A 2024 commercial campaign reported 126 contact records as its pipeline. The accompanying request sought another ₹1.3 crore of campaign spending. Relationship colleagues noted that several people could enquire on behalf of the same organisation and that an enquiry did not establish a suitable broking brief. The growth lead wanted to preserve the contact count because it was consistent with the campaign platform's report. I agreed that the count described contact records. It did not describe 126 separate prospective clients ready for professional work.
We spent ₹28 lakh on record review and reporting with authorised business owners. The 126 records represented 84 buying organisations. Of those organisations, 32 had a brief within the brokerage's intended service scope, eighteen were outside that scope and 34 were not ready to define a brief. These were categories for the reviewed organisations, not judgements about the worth of the people who had contacted us. Several colleagues within one company could have legitimate reasons to ask different questions. Their records were not dismissed as fraudulent or useless merely because they did not represent separate buyers.
Nine of the 32 organisations with an in-scope brief subsequently signed brokerage appointments during the review period. The other 23 had not done so by the reporting date. A signed appointment was not a policy count, an insurer's acceptance or a measure of premium placed. Professional colleagues retained the relevant advice and placement responsibilities. We did not attribute all nine appointments causally to the campaign, because the review had reconciled the pipeline rather than isolated incremental marketing effect.
The proposed ₹1.3 crore increase remained unapproved at that decision point, with work continuing inside existing authority. I did not report that unapproved proposal as cash saved. The useful result was a more specific account of which organisations were ready for which next action and where the original contact count had overstated the stage reached. The lesson was to define the unit and the commercial milestone before using a campaign report to justify another allocation. A CMO should be able to defend the smaller account without suggesting that all the early conversations excluded from its final stage had no value.
Declining event funding that would have changed the speaking promise
The 2025 regional business programme was first planned as eight events costing ₹80 lakh. An insurer offered ₹36 lakh of sponsorship, leaving ₹44 lakh for Navzuri to fund. The offer required an exclusive insurer speaking position across the programme. Our invitation concept described a broader discussion of how businesses could prepare for a professional insurance conversation. The event lead favoured the offer because it would double the programme's reach within the same company contribution. That was a real benefit, but the condition changed what the programme would represent.
I took the proposed arrangement to Nisha Belqemi and Vivek Dazvethi. We did not make a general claim that sponsorship was improper or that a broker could never host a particular insurer's explanation. The question was whether this condition fitted this invitation and how attendees would understand the relationship. I recommended declining the conditional funding and running four company-funded events at ₹44 lakh. The narrower programme preserved the planned range of discussion without asking a sponsor's contribution to determine the insurer speaking position.
The four events brought together 140 participants from 88 organisations. We reported both numbers rather than implying 140 distinct corporate relationships. Participation was not evidence of a brokerage appointment, a policy purchase or better insurance outcomes. Appropriate professional colleagues owned any subsequent client-specific discussion. Marketing also retained an account of the four planned events that did not proceed, including the locations and relationships we had been unable to serve in that wave. A smaller programme was not presented as delivering the original geographic reach more efficiently.
The decision meant giving up ₹36 lakh of proposed external money and half the planned event count while keeping the company's ₹44 lakh contribution. That was a more expensive programme per event from Navzuri's perspective. I would settle the intended speaking relationship before building a plan that depends on sponsorship next time. The lesson was not to reject funding on principle; it was to examine what the funder receives in exchange and whether that exchange matches the occasion participants have been offered. A leadership account should show the reach and money forgone as clearly as the purpose retained.