Ad Land’s Young Guns: Hasti Mehta, Product Marketing Manager, Kotak Mahindra Bank
Muskan Sharma
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Ad Land’s Young Guns, a special series by Adgully, spotlights emerging talent across advertising, marketing and communications who are bringing fresh perspectives to the industry. Through conversations with young professionals shaping campaigns, building brands and exploring new ways to connect with audiences, the series captures the ideas, experiences and ambitions driving the next generation of industry talent.
In an era where modern marketing sits squarely at the intersection of business accountability and product design, the mandate for marketers is rapidly transforming. Nowhere is this evolution more pronounced than in the BFSI sector, where customer touchpoints are fast and mobile-first, yet the category itself remains deeply anchored in clarity, consumer trust and regulatory nuance. Stepping up to bridge this delicate divide between product complexity and genuine consumer relevance isHasti Mehta, Product Marketing Manager at Kotak Mahindra Bank.Bringing a 360-degree lens honed across both the agency and brand sides, Mehta champions an approach where marketing starts not with the brief or the campaign, but with the consumer, harnessing data-led intelligence, creative empathy, and transparent communication to build sustainable brand value.
In conversation with Adgully,Hasti Mehtareflects on the shifting boundaries of product marketing, the art of simplifying financial products without diluting trust, the synergy between agencies and brands and why the next generation of marketers must seamlessly marry data literacy with creative intuition.
Marketing today is expected to deliver both brand building and measurable business growth. How is this changing the role of marketers, particularly as they become more involved in product strategy, customer acquisition and retention?
I think marketing is moving closer to the business than ever before. Earlier, marketers were often brought in to communicate a product once it was ready. Today, we have an opportunity to influence how that product is positioned, who it is built for and how it creates value for the customer.
For me, the starting point is always the customer, not the campaign. If we understand what people need, what influences their decisions and where existing products fall short, we can make better decisions across the entire journey, from product positioning to acquisition and retention.
Working in product marketing has reinforced my belief that a great campaign cannot compensate for a product that isn’t relevant. Equally, a great product can struggle if people don’t understand its value. Our job is to bring those two together. Business growth matters, but the most sustainable growth comes when the product delivers on the promise that marketing makes.
Financial products are often complex, while consumer touchpoints are increasingly fast, visual and mobile-first. How can BFSI brands cut through the noise without oversimplifying their offerings or compromising consumer trust?
I think the opportunity is to make financial products easier to understand without making them seem simpler than they are. Customers don’t necessarily want fewer details; they want to understand which details matter to them.
In credit-card marketing, for instance, a long list of benefits doesn’t automatically translate into perceived value. The real job is to connect those benefits to how people live, spend and make decisions. A travel benefit becomes more meaningful when a customer understands how it fits into their next trip, rather than simply seeing another feature listed in an advertisement.
But relevance has to go hand in hand with transparency. We can make communication sharper, more visual and more engaging, but we cannot allow the creative idea to overshadow the actual terms of the product.
I believe the strongest BFSI brands will be the ones that respect the consumer’s intelligence. They will make the value easy to grasp, the information easy to access and the decision easier to make. In a category built on trust, clarity itself can be a differentiator.
With AI, algorithms and performance metrics increasingly shaping marketing, how can brands balance data-driven personalisation with creative intuition and the human touch?
I see data as a way to ask better questions, not as a substitute for human judgement. It can tell us what customers are doing, where they are responding and which opportunities we may be missing. But understanding why something matters to a person still requires interpretation, empathy and creativity.
One example is the cross-sell personalisation work we’ve done at Kotak. Rather than approaching customers with a single, broad message, the idea was to use customer insights to make our communication more relevant to individual needs and behaviours. The larger shift is from asking, “How do we get this message in front of more people?” to asking, “How do we make this message more meaningful to the right people?”
That distinction matters. Personalisation isn’t simply about inserting someone’s name into a message or creating more versions of an advertisement. It is about improving the relevance of the proposition itself.
AI will make it easier to analyse, test and optimise at scale. But the real competitive advantage will come from what we choose to do with those insights. Technology can help us recognise patterns; creativity helps us turn those patterns into something people actually care about.
As consumers seek more meaningful information before making financial decisions, do you see an opportunity for BFSI brands to move beyond traditional advertising towards education content and long-term thought-leadership initiatives?
Absolutely. Financial services are a category where the product can be difficult to evaluate until you understand how it fits into your life. That creates an opportunity for brands to do more than advertise benefits; they can help people make sense of their choices.
For example, instead of only telling consumers what a credit card offers, brands can help them understand how to evaluate rewards, choose a card based on their spending habits or make better use of the benefits they already have. That is a much more useful role to play.
I also think education needs to be designed for how people consume information today. It doesn’t always have to be a long article or a formal financial-literacy initiative. Sometimes, a short video, a simple explainer or a well-timed piece of communication can make a complicated concept easier to understand.
The important distinction is intent. If education is simply another route to push a product, consumers will recognise that. But if a brand consistently helps people make more informed decisions, it can earn credibility beyond an individual transaction. That is how communication can evolve into a longer-term relationship.
Having worked on both the agency and brand sides, what is the biggest gap you see between creative ambition and business expectations? How can agencies and brands work together to produce more effective, distinctive campaigns?
Having worked on both sides, one of the biggest lessons for me is that the best strategy starts with understanding people, not the brief.
A brief is important, but it is only the starting point. It captures what a business wants to achieve; it doesn’t always reveal the deeper consumer tension or behaviour that could unlock a more distinctive idea. That is where agencies and brands need to work together.
Agencies bring creative ambition and an outside-in perspective. Brands bring product knowledge, customer understanding and accountability for the business outcome. The best work happens when these strengths come together early, rather than when a campaign is already being developed.
I also think brands need to be clear about the problem without being overly prescriptive about the solution. If we define every detail upfront, we risk limiting the very thinking we hired an agency for. At the same time, creative ambition needs to be grounded in a genuine consumer insight and a clear role for the product.
Ultimately, I don’t think creativity and business effectiveness should be competing measures of success. The most distinctive work is often the work that finds an unexpected, compelling way to solve a real problem for people.
As marketing teams work more closely with product, technology, analytics and engineering, what skills will young marketers need to succeed? How important is it to combine creativity and communication with commercial and data literacy?
I think the next generation of marketers will need to be comfortable moving between consumer insight, creative thinking and business strategy. Understanding just one part of the process will increasingly limit how much impact you can have.
You need to understand people well enough to identify a meaningful insight, communicate well enough to turn it into a compelling proposition and be commercially aware enough to understand whether it is working. Data literacy is essential, but so is the ability to question the data and recognise what it might not be telling you.
My experience across the agency and brand sides has made me value this combination. At an agency, you learn to look for the big idea and find a compelling way to communicate it. On the brand side, you see how that idea connects to the product, customer journey and business objectives. Both perspectives are valuable and the ability to connect them is what makes a marketer more effective.
I’d also emphasise curiosity. Marketing is becoming more interdisciplinary and young professionals need to be willing to learn from people in product, technology, analytics and other functions. You don’t need to know everything, but you need to understand enough to ask the right questions and bring different perspectives together.
Looking ahead, which developments will have the greatest impact on India’s advertising and marketing industry over the next few years and what opportunities should young professionals prepare for?
I think the biggest shift will be the move from marketing that is primarily communication-led to marketing that is increasingly experience-led. Consumers will continue to expect more relevance, greater convenience and a clearer reason to choose one brand over another. That means the product, the experience and the communication will need to work much more closely together.
AI will accelerate this shift by making research, content creation, experimentation and optimisation faster and more accessible. But when everyone has access to similar tools, simply producing more content won’t be enough. The ability to identify a genuine consumer need and develop an original point of view will become even more important.
I also see a significant opportunity in using customer insights more intelligently. Especially in categories like financial services, where products offer multiple benefits and customers have different needs, the opportunity is to move beyond broad messaging towards more relevant propositions and experiences.
For young marketers, my advice would be to build range. Understand the consumer, learn the business, get comfortable with data and embrace new technology, but don’t lose your instinct for good ideas. Most importantly, learn to look beyond the campaign and ask how marketing can make the product and the customer’s experience better.
I believe the marketers who will make the greatest impact are those who can connect what people need with what businesses can deliver and then find a distinctive way to bring the two together.
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exclusives31-Oct-2026advertising industryfinancial servicescustomer experienceAI in Marketingdigital marketingconsumer insightsBrand StrategyBFSI marketingProduct MarketingKotak Mahindra BankAd Land’s Young GunsHasti Mehta
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