Amazon India
My two years as a creative expat in Bangalore India
In 2015 our internal agency was looking for a creative leader to build the newest outpost of Amazon Creative Services in Bangalore India. Amazon had been hard at work for two years to launch e-commerce in the India marketplace, but there was still much work to do. I had been longing for an overseas position, so I drafted a proposal for how to expand in-house creative in the London office.
"That's nice," was the response from my VP. "I don't need you in London, but I could use your leadership in India. Why don't you go visit and see if you have what it takes."
There weren't any creative marketing heads yet in India, and the London office already had the leadership to hire their own talent. I said "no way, not India". But when offered the free trip to go check it out, I went. What I found there not only change my mind, but eventually my approach toward international marketplaces, leading remote teams, discovering nuanced cultural insights, managing talent across nations, and even how to trust my own creative gut in another culture.
In the end, my family and I spent two years there, hiring and building a creative team and backfill for my own leadership position to carry the torch when I left in 2017.
My work there included:
- Hiring and training staff of 30 in a brand new marketing and creative team for the India marketplace
- Building a social media creative team, campaign creative direction team, campaign management team, creative operations team, and added video and photography production capabilities
- Working with the recruiting department to establish best practices and candidate pipelines for advertising creatives, which was a new function and skill in the India offices
- Responsibility for all aspects of the business including creative directors, business planning and viability, budget management, legal and corporate finance integration, employee performance and development, operational reporting, employee culture, client management, account management, and all creative production.
