SOHAIL KASMANI

The relaunch that took a challenger brand to No.2 at GPs

Vitaresp FX had been stuck at rank 4 for years while the big names split the market between them. When I took over the brand I rewrote the plan from scratch and relaunched it to 12,000 GPs and 2,000 ENT specialists. A year later it was the second most prescribed brand in its market at GPs, breathing down the leader's neck.

The insight that carried it: patients stopped taking the medicine after 3 days when they needed 4 weeks. So the campaign taught doctors and patients to finish the course. We called it 1-2-3-4, and it ran through everything from Rx pads to the "Goodbye Allergies, Hello Smiles" creative.

• Cut the price and strip size so patients could actually afford the full course. Units grew 60%.
• Moved the field force from print to digital visual aids and saved 30% on print and agency costs.
• Won Emerging Marketer of the Year for this one.

Headhunted at 25 to run a £2.6M dry-eye portfolio

Cipla hired me before my MBA to run the Flogel range. The core problem took one week of doctor visits to spot: doctors treated every tear drop as the same thing, so our two brands read as interchangeable lubricants. We repositioned them by severity, following the clinical guidelines doctors already trusted. Flogel HA for surgery recovery. Flogel Hydra for moderate to severe disease. Each brand finally had one clear job.

• Co-developed a screening tool with R&D that checked 22,000+ patients in four months.
• Ran the top-50 KOL research myself, wrote the survey instruments, and turned an 8-brand category study into the launch plan.
• Built the Anti-VEGF business case with projections out to FY30. It became the division's roadmap for retinal disease.
• For Doctor's Day we turned 4,600 ophthalmologists' photos into personalised art cards. Dry Eye Month campaigns reached 68,000 people.
• A rate analysis with Finance cut credit-note issuance by 25%.

For awareness month I wrote six patient stories. Same arc, six different lives, so almost anyone scrolling would meet someone like themselves. Cipla's design team shipped them as carousels. Tap one:

The traveller · Neha, 34 The designer · Riya, 29 The severe case · Shalini, 54 The wrap-up · everyone

576,000 children reached. 1,580 followers. Something was broken.

ACTAsia has taught compassion education across Asia for twenty years. More than half a million children have been through its programmes. When I arrived, its Instagram had 1,580 followers. I called that the 100x gap, and closing it is now my job. New positioning, a proper supporter funnel, and a year-long 20th anniversary campaign running April to December.

• Walked the donation flow like a donor would. Found 5 clicks and 9 form fields between wanting to give and giving. Benchmarked 8 top charities and proposed fixes that ship in one engineering day.
• Rebuilt the email programme by hand: 4 automated journeys, 8 flows each, 22 emails. Open rates went from 13% to 17%.
• Set up an analytics pipeline and a monthly 5-competitor report, run with AI tools so a 4-person team can do a big team's job.
• Supporter base up 10%, first-time conversion up 25%. Measured, not projected.