Rising Star: Esha Tiwari, Senior Copy Writer, Isobar

Hailing from Gwalior, advertising wasn’t big business where Esha Tiwari is from. But the doors opened for her when she left her small town and headed to Delhi to pursue higher studies.

“After 12^th, I moved out of Gwalior because I wanted to do something different and I found myself in literature (literally and figuratively). I spent about five years studying literature and that was a major turning point in my life.”

Tiwari believes studying literature helped her understand how people think and gave her the opportunity to refine her observation skills.

“Once I was done with my Master’s in English Literature, questions like what are the prospects of this course in real life started surfacing. I floated my CV for content writing opportunities but when I started getting calls for content writing jobs, I realised that it was not what I wanted to do.”

Then on a Sunday afternoon, Tiwari got a call for the opening of a Copy Writer from a start-up agency. Tiwari got through the interview and was with the agency for about a year.

“After spending close to a year there, I floated my CV again and got a call from Isobar. When I came here, I went through a 3-4 hour interview. It was a very interesting experience.”

Tiwari, who has been with Isobar for about two years now, believes that her journey in the organisation has been career changing. She has worked on accounts like adidas, National Geographic, Fox Life and Colorbar among others.

Speaking about her time at Isobar, Tiwari said, “I really like the work culture at Isobar because we always take an integrated team approach and teams don’t work in isolation here.”

The project Tiwari had the most fun working for was the adidas ‘Uprising Hijack campaign’.

“We had a blast writing copies for that campaign. As team, we really pushed our boundaries. We did not have any restrictions and we could really explore with that campaign.”

Reebok’s ‘Bruises can be good’ campaign was the project that Tiwari found the most challenging.

“We really had to be sensitive with that campaign because the brief that we got was to make women sign up for self-defence. It was an interesting as well as a sensitive topic because almost everyone has had some kind of history with the issue of women’s safety in this country. The simple insight that we had for that campaign was that bruises on a woman’s body is always seen as a sign of violence against her, why can’t it be a sign of strength? So, telling people that bruises can be good sometimes was a challenging task.”

For Tiwari, two of her biggest strengths are her skills of observation and her emotional quotient. Her biggest weakness, however, is second guessing herself.

“All creative people suffer from this problem — of thinking that a particular idea is not creative enough. Many a times, some of the best and most successful campaigns are born out of the simplest of ideas. Doubts like ‘Is this too simple?’ or ‘Is it too direct?’ start to creep in but at times that is what the customer wants. So, it becomes very important to distinguish what will work and what won’t and not be too critical of your ideas.”

For Tiwari, the trust that her organisation places in her is not only a huge confidence booster but she also considers it one of her biggest achievements.

“Isobar has trusted me enough to let me go and present to some of our biggest clients. It is a big responsibility and I also consider it an achievement.”

The fact that the work she does can have some real impact in the society is the one aspect of her profession that Tiwari likes.

“The work we do can impact people’s lives in so many ways. You can surprise them, make them happy, get them emotional and bring about a real change. For one of the campaigns that we did, ‘The blind faith upgrade’, we actually got a mail from someone who was visually challenged and who appreciated our efforts at making tourism accessible to differently abled people.”

An avid reader and a travel buff, Tiwari spends her leisure time exploring new destinations and devouring new books.

If not advertising, what would she be doing?

“I haven’t really thought about leaving advertising because, to be honest, I never thought I would end up in advertising to begin with but I guess I would have been one of those social media influencers who travel and then blog about their experiences.”

Work links

Reebok Bruises Can Be Good

The Blind Faith Upgrade 

National Geographic Earth

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