Interview with Mudit Mohilay from Encora

1. Your professional journey is vast and quite impressive. What are the inspirations and influences behind your shift from a purely marketing role to corporate communications?

I have had a very off-the-track introduction to marketing.

I was 11 when John, a British national at the volunteer-run school I attended, gave me my first book: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, in Hindi. When I asked for the second book, she brought me The Chamber of Secrets — but this time, in English. I couldn’t understand a word. Then she handed me an old English-to-Hindi dictionary. No lectures, no instructions — just a quiet nudge to figure it out.

It took me nearly a year to finish the book. But when I did, I hadn’t just read a book — I had taught myself a language. That dictionary became my first communications coach.

Fast forward a few years, and I was in college and desperately looking to find a way to make ends meet.   I came across a media startup that was looking to hire writers. I had never written professionally, but I knew how to tell a story. I applied — and got in. One article turned into ten, then a hundred, then thousands. I became part of the founding team, and together, we scaled it from zero to two million monthly readers, raising investments and telling stories in the process. That was my first real education — in content, in audiences, in the power of a narrative that can move people, shape opinions, and build communities from scratch.

Over the next few years, I moved from tech journalism to B2B marketing and corporate communications, leading different charters at multi-billion dollar enterprises, catering to different audiences and solving very different problems through diverse channels.

But here’s what never changed though: the power of stories. Since I’d always looked at myself as a storyteller, the transition from journalism to corporate communications and marketing never felt difficult. I was still doing what I loved, just for different audiences and through different channels.

I have spent the last couple of decades first reading and then telling stories. Whether in the form of journalism, or corporate communication, or marketing, stories have the power to bridge cultures, align teams, humanize technology, drive action, and turn a brand into something people care about. They don’t always require perfection or polish, but they need to have the ability to help others see what you see. In a world that’s drowning in content, the art of telling the right stories and being real while doing it with empathy is going to prove more important than ever.

2. Engaging, humorous, and informative content is crucial to captivate the target audience. How has your unique perspective and expertise contributed towards innovating content strategies at the companies you have worked at?

I’ve had the good fortune of playing in two very different arenas — the fast-paced world of tech journalism and the more strategic, long-cycle universe of B2B IT marketing. One is about gut instinct, the other about data. One thrives on volume, the other on precision. And navigating both has deeply shaped my approach to content.

In journalism, the challenge is to identify what might interest your audience, often before they know it themselves. There’s room to experiment, take risks, and tell the same story a dozen different ways until something lands. In B2B, the stakes are different — you’re speaking to time-strapped decision-makers who care more about insight than entertainment. Here, content has to be laser-focused, value-driven, and backed by real trends and data.

That said, across both worlds, the rules of engagement are changing. Attention spans are shrinking, and readers — myself included — have become more impatient. Gone are the days when people would wade through paragraphs of backstory for a nugget of insight. Today, you have to lead with value. Hook them fast, give them a reason to care, and then earn the right to tell a deeper story.

In my corporate roles, I’ve leaned on my journalism instincts to bring more humanity into enterprise content. When you are producing content at scale and the impact is slower, it can be easy to forget about the reader you are creating the content for. This is something B2B marketers must be on guard against; every word that you send out into the internet is an ambassador for you as well as your organization, and it is your responsibility to ensure that it accurately communicates your organization’s values. You never know which blog may inspire a CXO to reach out to your organization for help. I have seen and actively directed content campaigns that have supported multi-million-dollar deals. Words are all important, and that is something that we as marketers should always keep in mind. 

One framework I live by is: Utility × Inspiration × Empathy. Is this content useful to the reader? Does it make them feel understood? And does it inspire them to think or act differently? If it doesn’t tick all three, we’re not done yet.

Ultimately, the goal is simple: respect your reader’s time, understand their world, and deliver something that informs, delights, and empowers.

3. It’s crucial to ensure that a business’s marketing syncs up with the other functions. As the Global Head of PR and Content, to what extent do you think content can help reinstate a brand’s reputation?

I don’t need to talk about the importance of having a strong brand. Brand is what makes us pick one product over another in the supermarket aisle, or choose to go ahead with one service provider over its competitors to support our organization’s journey into the future. As the world becomes more and more flat and the average consumer is spoiled for choice, it is your brand that will make them choose you over others, and if you are doing your branding right, become ambassadors for your organization.

Today, content is your brand’s currency. Spent right, it can evoke interest, drive engagement, and inspire prospects to take action and become customers. Content communicates your brand’s value to prospects and shows them how your product or services can solve their problems.

The key to creating content that serves your brand and, by extension, your organization, is consistency and courage. Consistency in showing up with clarity across all platforms and touchpoints — so employees, customers, partners, and analysts hear the same heartbeat. And the courage to ask questions no one else is asking, acknowledge missteps, offer transparency, and communicate with humility and intent.

I’ve seen this play out in real-time. During rebranding exercises, post-merger transitions, or market realignments, the content we craft — from the CEO’s letter to a website banner — becomes the first line of storytelling. It sets the tone. It answers the unasked questions. It builds confidence into your brand, brick by brick.

Great content has the power to humanize a brand, clarify its values, reinforce trust to build evangelists out of your customers, and introduce it to people who don’t know it yet — not just as a company, but as a character the audience can root and cheer for.

4. You’ve helped develop and run content-focused lead generation campaigns before. How do you recommend navigating the various hiccups of content curation, especially in the age of content fatigue?

In the age of content fatigue, the challenges are more nuanced. Unless you are working for an organization that sells one product, you can’t really give up on scale. You are probably marketing multiple products, or if you are in corporate communications, a brand that may have hundreds of products and services under its umbrella, all at once.

You can do it by creating content that makes people pause, and then ensuring that the content reaches the right audience at the right time.

Curation becomes especially tricky when everyone’s vying for the same eyeballs. The inbox is crowded, the feed is noisy, and attention spans are on a diet. So the first step is to stop thinking like a marketer and start thinking like a reader.

When curating or building content-led lead gen campaigns, I start with three simple filters:

1. Is this truly helpful to the person I’m targeting?
2. Does it say something new, or say something better?
3. Would I click on this if I weren’t paid to care?

To avoid falling into the content fatigue trap, we’ve also leaned on a few principles:

• Value over vanity: Trade keyword stuffing and long-form-for-the-sake-of-it content with focused, insight-rich pieces that solve a real problem or spark a conversation.
• Format agility: Not everyone wants to read a white paper. Repurpose insights into snackable formats — carousels, 90-second videos, interactive tools — to meet users where they are.
• Thoughtful timing and sequencing: Often, it’s not just what you say but when and how you say it. A good campaign is like a conversation — curated with intent, personalized with empathy, and paced for impact.

In my recent work, we’ve also started leveraging AI-assisted curation to identify gaps, elevate emerging topics, and customize content journeys. But the human touch still matters — especially when building trust or nuance into B2B messaging.

The bottom line? In a world of too much content, the real differentiator is care. Care about what your audience needs. Care about how your brand shows up. And care enough to say something worth remembering.

5. Building a marketing stack from scratch is no easy feat. Navigating the challenges requires a lot of trial and error. What do you think is important while building a robust Martech stack?

Building a Martech stack is like building a city — the tools are your infrastructure, but it’s the people and traffic flow that make it come alive. I’ve built stacks from scratch at both startups and billion-dollar enterprises, and the one thing that’s stayed constant is this: tools don’t fix chaos — clarity does.

When I was at a multi-billion-dollar brand, fresh off a merger, we had to not only unify tools but also cultures, mindsets, and marketing goals. We looked at the merger as an opportunity to combine and improve upon what both companies were already doing. Instead of just picking the latest shiny tools, we started by asking: “What do we need to do better?” Not just faster, not just more automated — but better.

We mapped the entire content-to-conversion journey and realized our stack had to serve two masters: efficiency and empathy. It had to scale campaigns, yes — but it also had to make room for storytelling, testing, and personalization from both the brands that merged together, and do it at a human level.

That’s where most Martech conversations go wrong. We start with platforms, but we should start with pain points.

A few guiding principles I’ve learned:

• Start with your strategy, not your wishlist. If you can’t connect the tool to a specific business outcome — whether that’s shorter sales cycles or better content attribution — it’s probably a distraction.
• Balance automation with creativity. Your Martech stack should make room for nuance. A good tool helps you personalize emails at scale. A great one helps you remember that the person reading it is more than a persona — they’re someone with a to-do list and a headache.
• Invest in adoption, not just acquisition. I’ve seen companies spend hundreds of thousands on tools that collect dust because the teams didn’t understand the ‘why’. Training, integration, and evangelism are part of the stack, too.

You don’t need the most expensive stack. You need a stack that works for your context, with your people, and most importantly — for your customer.

6. Mergers and acquisitions have a significant influence on an organization’s branding. How do you suggest navigating the rocky terrain of a post-merger refresh, ensuring a smooth transition for employees and clients?

A merger or an acquisition isn’t just a financial event, it’s a very human one. Behind every ticker symbol and press release are thousands of people — employees, customers, investors, and other stakeholders — wondering, What does this mean for me?

Post-merger branding isn’t about blending two identities. It’s about forging a new one — one that doesn’t dilute, but distills the best of both worlds into something sharper, stronger, and more future-ready. All this must be achieved while ensuring the new messaging stack isn’t unduly complicated. As Steve Jobs once said, “Simple can be harder than complex.” In a post-merger world, you need ruthless clarity and deep empathy with stakeholders from both brands to understand what the new brand will actually mean to different people.

At one organization where I supported the post-merger/acquisition refresh, we started not with taglines or templates — but with interviews. Dozens of them. Across functions, levels, and geographies. We asked employees what the brand meant to them before the merger — and what they feared, hoped, or expected from the new one. Those interviews became the foundation for a one-page manifesto every employee could rally around.

At the heart of a successful post-merger refresh is narrative — not spin, not jargon, but truth. What do we now stand for? What are we choosing to leave behind? And what are we inviting our employees, clients, and partners to believe in going forward?

The rebrand has to be more than cosmetic. It must be cultural. That means:

• Start with your people. If your employees can’t articulate the new brand in their own words, your clients never will.
• Communicate like a product launch — because it is. A new brand is a promise to the market. Treat every touchpoint like a chance to earn trust.
• Design for belief, not just aesthetics. Your new visual identity should feel like the future — not a compromise or a forced mix of the past.

When done right, a post-merger/acquisition rebrand becomes a reset button — on perception and ambition. It is your opportunity to signal to the world: We’re not just bigger. We’re better. And we’re just getting started.