CEO’s Diary

Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat – Sun Tzu


Dr. Sampath Dorairajan has had a glorious run in the marketing arena,  in regard to various industries and markets both in India and abroad.

Starting with a Consultancy firm run by an experienced professional who was well respected in the echelons of business in Kolkata as an Executive Assistant and having learnt the ropes of the trade through this amazing, tough management expert, it was never difficult for him to handle other assignments that he worked on.

In Chennai, he  worked with a leading Share broking firm and learnt the nuances well. Later he  moved to work as Executive Assistant to Chairman & Managing Director of Coromandel Indag Products. The firm was a pioneer in many ways and had all the Agro inputs under one roof. It had seeds, pesticides, weedicides, Water irrigation system, agro research etc. The company forayed into media, innovation in agro research with foreign collaboration.

Dr Sampath then joined Genelec, a leading name in lighting equipment and well known for its project division. He worked in 4 different offices and was involved in getting the tender for the first High Mast opposite Bangalore Railway station in the late eighties. He was also involved in successfully bidding and getting the order for High Masts in the Chennai Airport area.

The Hindu was the first assignment for Dr. Sampath Dorairajan in the media industry and he rose to be the Advertisement Manager in charge of Operations, across all editions of the newspaper, magazines and annuals. It was an exhilarating experience since it called for empathy to deal with people and be firm on occasions to meet the deadline of the print edition. This taught him various things and gave an insight to handling people and meeting deadlines and work in an organised fashion.

He moved to UAE and joined Khaleej Times in 1997 in Dubai and worked as the Marketing Services Manager. It was a completely different experience. The number of people to work with were far less and to put the resources to the optimum and ensure work happened without a glitchwas a gargantuan task.

MEC (Mediaedge : CIA) now called as Wavemaker was the next assignment and it was a tough assignment as it was a cross over to the Agency side of Advertising Business. Needless to mention, since company was the biggest across GCC, the responsibilities were huge. Over and above handing the operational elements of the media agency, including commitments to various media viz TV, Radio, Print, Outdoor etc he also handled the media buying of 50 advertising agencies. The concept of unified media buying was executed par excellence with these satellite agencies of MEC.  It was extremely necessary to be fair and firm with all agencies since many a time more than one of them pitched for the same business. Winning business for one meant losing business for the other  and therefore it proved to be tight ropewalk as a major portion of the business for MEC came from these associate agencies. The responsibilities also included coming up with innovative ideas and having it implemented and importantly, working out the best rates for the clients and negotiating hard with the media.

He then moved back to India in 2011 and tried his hand with friends to set up Mini Hydel power plants across India. Though the concept was good but it did not take off due to extraneous reasons.

Moving back to UAE, he joined Watermelon Advertising as the Group CEO. The agency had excellent goodwill in the market and had grown well vis a vis other equivalent agencies of that size.

Moving forward, he joined BPG Maxus as General Manager – Media Operations in Dubai and worked with them for 4 years.  An integrated Agency and a Media Buying Unit, with its own portfolio of clients and  Satellite Agencies, BPG Maxus was a regional collaboration Maxus Worldwide, one of the buoyant offshoots of the WPP & Group M, and a top player with an impressive client list. The work entailed increasing the business volume and healthy bottom line.

Dr Sampath Dorairajan moved back to India in June 2018 and worked as a Consultant.  This portfolio included a Ready to Cook Tur Dhal project, in co-ordination with CFTRI, Mysore and a Dairy farm based out of Tiruchirapalli.

Currently he works as a Consultant for the Hindu Group in their Advertising section.