Sriram Venkitachalam a Brand Strategist
enjoys a man-on-the-street interview as much as querying a MS Access relational database
Education
VCU Brandcenter | Creative Brand Management (CBM) Work Experience
Master of Science | May ‘09 | GPA 3.47
PassionForCinema.com | Freelance | Sep 09 – present
Social Media Strategist (Intern)
VCU Brandcenter, considered the nation’s #1 AdSchool (AdAge
Creativity magazine) and one of the top 60 design schools
• Engage Web site's communities on Twitter and Facebook.
worldwide (Businessweek) offers the CBM graduate program
• Track social media traffic.
that marries the rigor of business school marketing education
• Research and report using Google Analytics.
with the creative pursuit of design schools, and cross-functional
• Develop advertising sales opportunities.
collaborative styles of modern marketing agencies.
Tata Interactive Systems | Mumbai, India | May–Dec 2006
Projects Branding Content Developer
Online Realty: Bloomkey.com
• Created marketing content for software products and
Bloomkey.com was trapped in the commoditized segment of Flat
services such as management simulations and enterprise
Fee MLS in the For Sale By Owner market. After thorough data
application platform for global markets including US, UK,
analysis, competency analysis, competitive analysis, and
Australia, and India.
customer research formulated a brand position akin to ‘Realtor
• Volunteered with web development skills and learned CSS,
on Call’ that better exploited the company’s core competency.
web Accessibility design, and search engine optimization
(SEO) to help rebuild corporate website that resulted in a
Read to Them “One School One Book” Reading Program
50% rise in traffic
Principals had closed their ears to 9 million reading programs.
Inspection revealed the brand truth that One School One Book
Cogito Media | Mumbai, India | July 05 – March 2006
was a local community development movement and not just a Assistant Director
reading program. Web strategy refocused fund raising from huge
corporations to individuals. • Multitasked as a quiz researcher, proofreader, and a
production assistant to cinematography and editing crews on
+ Google & Peace One Day, Jane Goodall Institute, Muhammad a daily TV quiz show broadcast live to over 10 million viewers
Ali Center, X-Games, Toys R’ Us, Hamilton Beach
Passions
Mumbai University | Bachelor of Mass Media | Advertising Learning web technology (self taught html, css), blogging,
major | 2005 | GPA: 3.7 cinema (made two short films), cooking.
804.501.8427 www.SriramVenkit.com SriramVenkit@gmail.com www.twitter.com/SriramVenkit
New York City

We wanted to promote MLB in India
Why?
Because MLB’s international ambitions are
audacious. MLB has been helping baseball
organizations in India since the 1980’s.
In 2008 MLB talent scouts carried out a hunt
for pitching talent through a reality TV show
in India and signed two javelin throwers for
training in the US.
India is bursting with curiosity for
experiences of the rest of the world. The
market for world sports in India is growing
in leaps and bounds.
People fall in love with a sport over the
course of centuries. The origins of baseball in
Japan and Latin America, the next best home
of baseball outside the US, date back to the
late 19th Century.
In that case, how could we promote baseball
in a culture that defines itself by its love for
baseball’s sibling, cricket?

INDIA
VISION
Every once in a while an infatuation will transcend the scope of its meaning
and bloom into a passionate pursuit for the unattainable.
A single response to a flirtatious gesture is all it takes to arrest two into an eternal conversation. Attraction
transports one to the surface, then surface fades to reveal another, and yet another, luring one in.
Baseball looks at adolescent India from the corner of its Looking through its own prism, adolescent India’s
eyes. Content with its inheritance, cricket, India has always infatuation will mature bewitched by an aggressive, straight-
dismissed this infatuation till recent times. talking and unforgiving organism: a game that puts individuals
on the spotlight and keeps each on their toes; a game that
Baseball is seductive because it is American like Coca Cola and rewards the opportunist yet unforgiving with its small window
Pizza Hut. They are all glossy and slick, big and provocative. of opportunity. Adolescent India will relate with the audacity
Baseball is fashionable with its shiny metallic bats, extravagant in the proclaimed intent to hit high in the air, deep in the
with leather gloves in every fielder’s hand, provocative with its field or out of the park. They will appreciate the informality
franchise names, logos, and outfits. in the liberty to throw the bat after the job of hitting is done.
Today baseball is played by a secret few who leverage their skills in cricket shirt. By 2012, ESPNSTAR will have Dilip Kudwalli, who scored India’s
to indulge in this infatuation. More will pick up the game to stand out. first run, with a home-run in the Asian Championships in 1987, at their
Younger kids will step up inspired by their older brothers and sisters. At studious as an expert panelist on the World Series. The same year,
13 they’ll play on soccer fields with imaginary diamonds sharing one bat Nathan’s would have opened shop in India with paneer hotdog on its menu. By
amongst 10. By 18 they will arrange night outs to watch the New York 2020 an Indian will pitch for an MLB franchise. In 25 years baseball will
Yankees play rivals Red Sox. They’ll watch it in one of their friends’ be one of many sports India indulges in. A ten year old would have a
home or a sports cafe or on their HP Inspiron laptop over the internet. cricket bat, a soccer ball, a basketball and a baseball in his room.
One of them will have a Yankee hat on, another will have a Red Sox t-

Our objective is to offer a flirtatious gesture seeking that first response.
&INDIA
Finding common ground
Baseball is a game of Hustlers
Tr a n s i t i o n i n g f r o m
Get to the point: Do or Die — 3 Strikes, No Quarter
socialistic abstention to
Under the Spotlight — On your Toes
individualistic indulgence
Celebrate those who see a run where there is none
Baseball is a product of a value system
Baseball = America
Hungry for diverse cultural
experiences of the world
Surging self esteem fueled
by economic boom. In turn,
inspires ambitions to design
destiny
Acknowledge global
spotlight and seek attention
at the individual level

Strategy
Introduce: break the ice with a wider sports-fan-base
Experience: extend a home for interested folk to
experience Baseball
Learn: help young players seek mentors
Introduced MLB as Baseball and Baseball as “The Hustlers
Game”. We made posters meant to be distributed through sports
magazines.

Designed MLB Lounge—a few concept stores in select cities—as
a destination where one can experience baseball. The stores would
have batting cages, bleachers to watch MLB games on big screens,
a restaurant that serves hot dogs, and some equipment and
merchandise.

Find a Basepal: A community website where Indian teenagers
picking up baseball could seek mentorship or just hang-out with
baseball fans from the US who are keyed in to MLB.
Jake Dubs - Copywriter | Aditi Sheorey - Communication Strategist | Husayn Raza - Art Director | Sriram Venkitachalam - Brand Strategist

Creative Brand Management Independent Brand Study:
Bloomkey.com
The MLS is the holy grail of the real estate business: the Key Insights
database home sellers want to list their property on
because 80% of sale happens off the MLS. For years real Business: Conversion rates are considerably low. In a
estate agents guarded their 6% commissions by restricting commoditized market where the product is the bread
common folks’ access to the database. Then came the winner, business needs to make up with the three other Ps,
renegade agents who listed sellers for a flat fee on the MLS place, promotion, and price. Where home selling and
for just $300. Lawrence Bunnell is one such renegade, a buying is a once in a 5 year event, and typically users only
visionary in the transition of real estate business to the made single orders, higher cost of marketing could not be
internet. But then, a Google search for flat fee MLS brings justified. Hence, investment must be directed towards
up hundreds of such companies. Bloomkey is selling product development
commodity.
Consumer: Consumers were looking to save on
30 charts, tables and concentric circles later, Bloomkey commission fees, but were not comfortable lacking realty
was repositioned from “flat fee MLS vendor” to “convenient agent’s marketing knowledge.
realty intelligence online”.
Competitive Landscape: Technological innovation is being
My knowledge of the real estate industry was limited to the brought about by companies with over $30 million
cliche, “location, location, location”. I was attracted to the investments. Realty information was being perfected, with
project because it was a web site and internet is my Zillow.com, Trulia.com and others but a big gap still existed
favorite medium. I thought I would come out the other end in the space where high tech met realty intelligence.
with search engine optimization and search engine
marketing: the only two terms showing an uptrend in Competency: Bloomkey has its roots in founder Lawrence
indeed.com for 2009. How wrong I was. Bunnell’s two decades as a realty agent.
Solutions: A Realty Intelligence Delivery Device was
developed that allowed sellers to provide information about

their homes to Bloomkey, online, and enabled Bloomkey to
revert back with a customized marketing strategy.
• Since contractual paper work is a constant technical
chase for Bloomkey, suggested insourcing
SureClose, a technology platform that delivered
realty contracts online and allowed streamlined
transaction online for all parties involved.
• Immediate steps involved an information architecture
that guided users through the steps of the “for sale
by owner” concept juxtaposed with relevant
products.

Popularizing Bocce Ball
Developed a business model to aid the transition of a lethargic
game played whilst sipping wine to an aggressive social game
played while chugging beer. Created Bocce Battlegrounds, online
and offline, as the stage to settle all arguments, inspired by the
insight that public challenges are strong human motivators: be it
western duels, arm wrestling or the phenomenon of “getting
served”.
I enjoyed this work because: It involved creating a structure where
none existed.
The Problem: No one knew the
face of Bocce Ball.
The Truth: Bocce Ball, a game played by older Italian Americans had been adopted by
their grandchildren. They revolutionized the game by playing open bocce: bocce
outside the traditional clay court, on lawns, and beaches. A good example of this
revolution is Dominic Bernacchi’s Beach Bocce League.
The Personality: Bocce is now played with beer and not wine. While Bocce has a low
skill barrier to enter the game, players in the new leagues were being tested not so
much by their accuracy but their mental capacity to deal with competitive “banter”.
The People: It became evident that the ones picking up Bocce were mostly what we
traditionally know as the “creative types”, found in the advertising and media industries.
One could say, a few hundred were taking to Bocce as if to indifferently declare, “if we
played golf, this is how we would do it.”

The Solution:
• Spreadable Strategy:
Open bocce was cool. We just needed a device to give impetus to its growth, inject a viral element. The banter-fueled
mental battles reminded us of public duels of the Old West or even of the “You got Served” phenomenon. When
challenged in public no one worth his salt likes to back out. We wanted to take the competition from individuals to
organizations that larger pools of people connect with. What if a few guys who play Bocce from one advertising agency
set a date and place, and challenged its rival in the same city? A small grass roots initiative that slowly builds momentum;
we could start with the advertising industry and slowly grow as per the hierarchy of industry coolness.
• Business Plan • The Pilot
Our business plan had two horns: The strategy was manifested as a summer bocce
tournament for the ad industry. Marketing material for
• We realized that if we could gather pools of people the same follows.
within their professional niches, there are always
dependent businesses interested to communicate/ • Blue Sky Ideas
network/market/hang out with them. For the
Bocce would be the game one played to settle any
advertising industry it could be media and
trivial argument: that was our brand plan. We thought
production companies.
why not settle some classic arguments over annual
• The second part was Bocce Battlegrounds online: a Bocce competitions (a bit like Red Bull Flugtag)
Web site that allowed people to throw down a
Bocce battle to their friends or adversaries. They
could buy the bocce set right from the web site,
choosing from various manufacturers. This helped
establish a business platform to benefit bocce ball
manufacturers in exchange for the marketing dollars
they would be providing for popularizing Bocce.

Jeffrey Fortune (Communication Strategist) , Kris Kennedy (Copy Writer), Husayn Raza (Art Director), Sriram Venkitachalam
(Brand Strategist)

Read to Them “One
School One Book”
Reading Program
Principals had closed their ears to 9 million reading
programs. Inspection revealed the brand truth that
One School One Book was a local community
development movement and not just a reading
program. Web strategy refocused fund raising from
huge corporations to individuals.
I enjoyed this work because: I don’t remember
being read to as a child. I never enjoyed reading till
college. I know the effects, because I experience the
world of difference reading brings. This was
personal. Besides, I made an animation film for this
project.
The Objective: Enroll several schools to participate.
Raise funds for a fledgling organization.
The Barrier: Principals didn’t wish to hear about yet
another reading program.
Insight: Talking to schools who had tried One
School One Book before we realized this was more
of a community builder. As a whole school —
students, staff, parents, even bus drivers read one

book; the story brought everyone close. It brought the parents and teachers working together.
The Strategy:
• Changed the conversation from “reading program” to “community building initiative”
• Suggested a new brand name “WeBook”: more contemporary, actionable, and involving
• A web site that articulated the organization’s mission in a quick 2 minute animation
• Web site that showed how each party: teachers, parents, principals, corporations had a role in the ambition
• Communication campaign expressing the involvement students and the school enjoy during One School One Book
• Fund raising focussed on individual donations through web site and blog widgets rather than big corporations.
Also, refocussed fund raising from national corporations to local small business.
Team: Alex Aloise, Jessica Barrera, Enrico Gatti, Alex Jeon, Hank Leber, Sriram Venkitachalam