Live the present moment
 

Eric Kerboriou, Marketing Director, Nawras live a diverse and colourful life both personally and professionally, reports Visvas Paul D Karra

When acclaimed French make-up artist Fred Farrugia decided to go solo and launch his own makeup line, he was not afraid to break classic makeup fundamentals by designing totally personal and adaptable make-up. The result: The Swiss army knife of make-up, boasting of a very contemporary, practical, pretty and simple packaging all in one. The designs, sold in white plastic containers, include eye shadows, foundations, blush, lipstick and concealer. The year was 2005 and Farrugia’s make-up line went on to become world-renowned.

The notable part of this success story is that Eric Kerboriou, the marketing director of Nawras, had been the business consultant for Farrugia when the latter decided to go solo. Before anyone’s eyes begin to open wide in amazement, let it be also known that the multifarious skills of Kerboriou also led him to work for French automotive giant Renault before he got into the telecom sector.



Living the brand

Having seen and worked in industries as diverse as chalk and cheese, Kerboriou, however, draws a parallel between the telecom sector and the wellness and beauty industry. Both are about brand life and passion. Both need extensive media publicity to hold the brand and both need people who are passionate about their brands. Holding Nawras CEO Ross Cormack in high esteem, Kerboriou opines that Cormack lives and breathes Nawras just like Farrugia who is passionate about his brand.

The key elements to the success of a brand are the right positioning, the harmony of the logo with the visuals along with good financing and marketing. These coupled with good publicity build a brand and ensure that it stays on top for a long time.

Kerboriou, with a Franco-Italian parental lineage, lived his life all over the world. He obtained a masters degree in economics from the University Paris IX Dauphine and worked with Renault in France where he developed a strong financial and commercial background. He did his MBA at the Business School of HEC Paris and finished it at Wharton School, in Philadelphia, US. The 42-year-old Kerboriou says that more than 25 years of his life have been spent outside of France, much of which was in the so-called Black African countries like Nigeria, Senegal etc.

Telecom stint

Kerboriou worked with American startup FusionOne and French startup Bouygues Telecom in the period between 2003 and 2006. During his time with the latter, his responsibilities included sales, marketing, communication, e-commerce, advertising and business development with the creation of two subsidiaries Mobile Direct and Bouygues Telecom Caraibes. The period in telecom startups and companies took him to the Caribbean as well as the Black African countries.
Many companies, including telcos, which flourished during the dotcom boom later went bust as they had difficulties in managing cash, due to which overseas operations of many US telcos had to be shut down. When this began to happen, Kerboriou moved away from the telcos and went into the consulting business. It was during this time that he was the consultant for launching the famed Fred Farrugia make-up line.

From 2006 to 2009, Kerboriou worked with Tunisiana telecommunications company, a 50-50 subsidiary of Qatar’s Qtel and Egypt’s Orascom. While there, he participated in the development of the company’s marketshare and profitability also contributing to its market leading position in Tunisia. Kerboriou joined Nawras in 2009 to further strengthen the Nawras brand and lead the team focusing on the company’s pleasingly different marketing objectives.

Talking about his experience in such diverse markets, Kerboriou says that it is a difficult process to build a brand but it is easy to kill it. Moreover, talking about living the customer’s experience is an easy thing to say but difficult to apply. In this regard, he is full of appreciation for all of the Nawras staff who is able to carry the brand so well.

Sure-fire projects

Kerboriou has an enviable educational background in finance and marketing. This heady combination gives him an edge while proposing new projects for his company. With number crunching coming easily to him, whenever he proposes a new marketing strategy for Nawras, there is a higher chance that it will be accepted quickly because the management is aware that Kerboriou would have worked out the financials as well. In this way, he has been able to get approval for more than 100 projects in the last one and a half year he has been with Nawras. Some of these projects are not visible to the public but most of them have been instrumental in increasing the goodwill of the brand.

By the end of 2009, Nawras had achieved 47 per cent market share and received the ‘Brand Leadership’ award at the global awards for brand excellence as well as ‘Customer Service Provider of the Year’ from CommsMEA and Middle East Call Centre of the Year from Insights. Towards the end of 2009 itself, Nawras gained the Superbrand status.

Kerboriou’s mantra of success consists of two elements: Good interpersonal skills and creativity which includes a vision along with analytical and financial skills. These will help you to understand the job better and help you to bridge any gap and enable the company to grow translating into better margins and cash flows.

Sportive life

If the professional life of Kerboriou is remarkable, then his passions in life are impressive as well. This father of two children, at age 42, has mastered two martial arts – karate and kung fu. Actually, he is learning a third one, Brazilian jujitsu, thanks to sensei Steve Deltoro, former MMA (Mixed Martial Art) competition fighter, whom he met in Muscat. Besides this, he is a great lover of outdoor sports activities like sailing, water skiing, tennis etc. He does not just love these sports, but also teaches some of them.

As a tennis coach, he coached European wheelchair tennis champion Frenchman Laurent Giammartini for three years. Giammartini was the European wheelchair champion for 10 years and won a medal at the 1992 Barcelona Paralympics where wheelchair tennis was introduced for the first time as a full medal sport.

Kerboriou also has great affinity for water sports like sailing and water skiing. He was the Senegalese sailing champion in two categories – the optimist and wind surfing, and was involved in the sport as an instructor. Here in Oman, jet skiing is amongst his favourite activities. He has many friends in Muscat who love the exhilarating rides and he has bought two jet skis for himself – magnificent beasts as he calls them. At other times, he also goes scuba diving to seek underwater thrills.

Set goals in life

Psychological books are part of Kerboriou’s reading habits and he has consumed most of Dale Carnegie’s writings. Currently, he is studying Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), which he says is good for human resources development. NLP is considered as a controversial approach to psychotherapy and organisational change. NLP is based on ‘a model of interpersonal communication chiefly concerned with the relationship between successful patterns of behaviour and the subjective experiences (especially patterns of thought) underlying them”. This system of alternative therapy seeks to educate people in self-awareness and effective communication, and to change their patterns of mental and emotional behaviour in order to help them achieve specific goals in life.

Everyone should have some goals in life and a personal drive to achieve them, says Kerboriou when asked what his plans are for the future. If you want to attain your goals, you should announce them to your friends and family as this will make you to remain committed until you reach that goal. There are numerous examples of this, says Kerboriou. He cites the example of Bruce Lee who was noticed as a karate champion at a very young age. When journalists asked what he wanted to become in life, Bruce Lee had said he wanted to be a star and he did become a movie star.

On a philosophical note, Kerboriou believes that every person should programme themselves to live the present moment to the fullest because if you wait to do or achieve something later on in life, the body and mind may not be functioning at the same optimum level as before.

Having worked in diverse professional capacities of marketing, sales and finance, Kerboriou says that one day he would like to start his own company or become the head of a telecom company. For a multi-faceted personality like Kerboriou, we can be sure that opportunities would come knocking at his door because excelling in what he does and living life to the maximum are part of his nature.
 

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