EP 10 - Brand Marketing at India's Fastest Fitness Unicorn: Cult Store | Anita Rane

In this episode of Velocity: Performance Marketing Podcast by Hawky, we sit down with Anita Rane, Head of Brand Marketing at Cult Store. From crafting award-winning campaigns for Kingfisher Beer (Cannes Cyber Lion) to leading brand teams at hyper-growth gaming giants like MPL and Gameskraft, Anita now drives the retail brand strategy for one of India's fastest-growing fitness unicorns.

Discover how Cult Store maintains brand consistency across 500-rupee t-shirts to 50,000-rupee gym equipment, the truth about brand marketing vs performance marketing integration, and why the most important brand metric can't be quantified on a spreadsheet. Anita shares her 18-year journey from content writing at WPP agencies to building iconic campaigns for Kingfisher, Tata Tea Jaago Re, and CoWrks, revealing the frameworks that work across wildly different categories.
Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction: From Content Writer to Brand Leader
01:51 - 18-Year Journey: Agency to Gaming to Fitness Retail
05:54 - What Cult Store Stands For: Accessibility + Consistency
09:37 - Messaging Strategy: 500₹ T-Shirts to 50,000₹ Equipment
28:20 - Building Brand from Scratch in 9 Months
35:15 - Brand vs Performance Marketing: The Integration Problem
48:40 - Future Creative Team Structure: Organic vs Paid Directors
59:27 - The One Unquantifiable Brand Metric That Matters

Meet Surender (Host & Co-founder at Hawky): https://www.linkedin.com/in/say2surender/

Meet Anita Rane: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitarane/

About Hawky: A Creative Intelligence Platform that transforms marketing guesswork into data-driven success. From Ad Creative Analysis to AI-Powered Optimization, we help B2C brands and agencies achieve higher ROAS and predictable campaign performance.

More Episodes: https://hawky.ai/podcast