Tag: Amit Wadhwa

Kartikeya Srivastava to drive Dentsu Impact’s CRM, digital initiatives

MUMBAI: Dentsu Impact that was in news recently for winning the Maruti Suzuki digital business and the IKEA account, is expanding its investment and expertise in digital and CRM with an eye on the future landscape. The agency has launched two new divisions – digital and CRM that will be strategically driven by Dentsu Impact head – planning Kartikeya Srivastava.

The agency has also roped in Sanjay Pokhriyal as vice-president, CRM.

Over the past one year, Dentsu Impact had been advancing steadily in digital and CRM capabilities with an idea to create in-house expertise that would help the agency own the idea better and provide holistic brand solutions to its clients. Meanwhile, the agency will continue to partner and work with other Dentsu Aegis Network digital agencies, depending on client requirements.

Dentsu Impact president Amit Wadhwa said, “If we talk about brand building, digital and CRM are the two most important elements that continue to gain prominence every single day. However, today these two are more often than not discussed more from a technology and process point-of-view rather than brand-out or brand-led. What we at Dentsu Impact would want to do is to seamlessly bind these two elements together along with the brand idea. This is the reason why Kartik was a natural choice.”

Kartikeya added, “Digital and CRM are becoming great enablers in creating unified experiences and finding new ways to build brands. It is also a challenge because it requires change management, breaking of silos and reorienting the way people look at these functions not so much as technology or process led, but rather as brand and experience led.”

Sanjay said, “Dentsu Impact is the most exciting place to be in as it strives to build capabilities to deliver holistic and consistent brand experience for its partners.”

October 7, 2016
Dentsu Impact wins Ikea’s India business

MUMBAI: Dentsu Impact has bagged the creative mandate for one of the most anticipated brands entering India Ikea.

With Ikea all set to launch in India sometime in 2017, they set out looking for the right creative agency that would do justice to the brand communication that IKEA has always been known for, across the globe.

Post an exhaustive process of meeting various agencies to an elaborate pitch process that included multiple agencies across India, they finally have selected Dentsu Impact as their creative agency partner.

With this being one of the most sought after brands, no wonder this process lasted around three months before team Ikea finally arrived at their decision.

Commenting on the association, Ikea country marketing manager Ulf Smedberg said, “We are happy to sign up Dentsu as our creative partner in India after a long pitch process involving the best agencies in the country. We have high expectations on ourselves and Dentsu to build a strong partnership in India and use our collective knowledge, creativity and experience to launch Ikea in the most successful way. “

Having bagged the mandate for this prestigious brand, Dentsu Impact president Amit Wadhwa said, “Putting the feeling of getting an opportunity to work on this brand is even more difficult than winning the business. We at Dentsu Impact are delighted to work on brand IKEA and can’t wait to get started on this. It was one of the most structured pitch processes that we have ever gone through and the entire team at IKEA has been a delight to interact with. Time to get down to producing some amazing work.”

Dentsu Impact national creative director Soumitra Karnik added, “OMG! Look look, I will be creating for Ikea! What could be more rewarding than having been chosen by one of the most creative brands in the world to create their creative communication? We certainly must have done something right. And we did. We were not only very proud of the work we presented but also extremely sure of its potency.”

August 23, 2016
Dentsu Impact wins Ikea’s India business

MUMBAI: Dentsu Impact has bagged the creative mandate for one of the most anticipated brands entering India Ikea.

With Ikea all set to launch in India sometime in 2017, they set out looking for the right creative agency that would do justice to the brand communication that IKEA has always been known for, across the globe.

Post an exhaustive process of meeting various agencies to an elaborate pitch process that included multiple agencies across India, they finally have selected Dentsu Impact as their creative agency partner.

With this being one of the most sought after brands, no wonder this process lasted around three months before team Ikea finally arrived at their decision.

Commenting on the association, Ikea country marketing manager Ulf Smedberg said, “We are happy to sign up Dentsu as our creative partner in India after a long pitch process involving the best agencies in the country. We have high expectations on ourselves and Dentsu to build a strong partnership in India and use our collective knowledge, creativity and experience to launch Ikea in the most successful way. “

Having bagged the mandate for this prestigious brand, Dentsu Impact president Amit Wadhwa said, “Putting the feeling of getting an opportunity to work on this brand is even more difficult than winning the business. We at Dentsu Impact are delighted to work on brand IKEA and can’t wait to get started on this. It was one of the most structured pitch processes that we have ever gone through and the entire team at IKEA has been a delight to interact with. Time to get down to producing some amazing work.”

Dentsu Impact national creative director Soumitra Karnik added, “OMG! Look look, I will be creating for Ikea! What could be more rewarding than having been chosen by one of the most creative brands in the world to create their creative communication? We certainly must have done something right. And we did. We were not only very proud of the work we presented but also extremely sure of its potency.”

August 23, 2016
Dentsu Aegis Network announces rebranding of Dentsu Branded Agencies

MUMBAI: Transformation is in the air at Dentsu Aegis Network’s Dentsu Branded Agencies.

One of the key advantages that Dentsu Aegis Network has as a network is, to create collaborations that keep clients’ business at heart. In a key move to help clients better leverage the capabilities of a global network, Dentsu Aegis Network has realigned agencies across several countries under three groupings.

In India, this is now being manifested in three of its creative agencies being rebranded to better reflect this alignment.

As a consequence, Dentsu Communications will now be known as Dentsu India, Dentsu Marcom will now be known as Dentsu One and Dentsu Creative Impact will now be known as Dentsu Impact. Meanwhile, Taproot Dentsu and Dentsu Webchutney remain unchanged.

Said Dentsu Aegis Network India & south Asia chairman & CEO Ashish Bhasin: “This new nomenclature is a first step towards expanding and reinforcing the global and regional services we provide our clients in India. It will help us serve our global clients better as well as acquire more new business.”

Commenting further on the change, Ashish Bhasin added, “We are consolidating our capabilities under a global agency network, with a uniform identity across markets, in order to strengthen the coordination across our network and expand the high quality service we consistently provide. The most important ingredient in creating innovation in an ever-changing environment is collaboration. This realignment will fuel, just that in newer, more efficient ways. This will help us further accelerate the tremendous success that Dentsu Branded Agencies have experienced in India over the last year, including the spectacular performance at Goafest awards and in the area of new business.”

There is no change in the leadership or staff of each of the individual units, Dentsu announced. Simi Sabhaney will continue as CEO and Vipul Thakkar as NCD of Dentsu India, Harjot Narang as President and Titus Upputuru as NCD of Dentsu One, and Amit Wadhwa as president and Soumitra Karnik as NCD of Dentsu Impact. Meanwhile, Narayan Devanathan continues as the group executive & strategy officer of Dentsu Branded Agencies, India.

August 9, 2016
Dentsu Aegis Network announces rebranding of Dentsu Branded Agencies

MUMBAI: Transformation is in the air at Dentsu Aegis Network’s Dentsu Branded Agencies.

One of the key advantages that Dentsu Aegis Network has as a network is, to create collaborations that keep clients’ business at heart. In a key move to help clients better leverage the capabilities of a global network, Dentsu Aegis Network has realigned agencies across several countries under three groupings.

In India, this is now being manifested in three of its creative agencies being rebranded to better reflect this alignment.

As a consequence, Dentsu Communications will now be known as Dentsu India, Dentsu Marcom will now be known as Dentsu One and Dentsu Creative Impact will now be known as Dentsu Impact. Meanwhile, Taproot Dentsu and Dentsu Webchutney remain unchanged.

Said Dentsu Aegis Network India & south Asia chairman & CEO Ashish Bhasin: “This new nomenclature is a first step towards expanding and reinforcing the global and regional services we provide our clients in India. It will help us serve our global clients better as well as acquire more new business.”

Commenting further on the change, Ashish Bhasin added, “We are consolidating our capabilities under a global agency network, with a uniform identity across markets, in order to strengthen the coordination across our network and expand the high quality service we consistently provide. The most important ingredient in creating innovation in an ever-changing environment is collaboration. This realignment will fuel, just that in newer, more efficient ways. This will help us further accelerate the tremendous success that Dentsu Branded Agencies have experienced in India over the last year, including the spectacular performance at Goafest awards and in the area of new business.”

There is no change in the leadership or staff of each of the individual units, Dentsu announced. Simi Sabhaney will continue as CEO and Vipul Thakkar as NCD of Dentsu India, Harjot Narang as President and Titus Upputuru as NCD of Dentsu One, and Amit Wadhwa as president and Soumitra Karnik as NCD of Dentsu Impact. Meanwhile, Narayan Devanathan continues as the group executive & strategy officer of Dentsu Branded Agencies, India.

August 9, 2016
Dentsu India elevates four execs; eyes No. 2 rank by 2017

MUMBAI: Dentsu India is set to move towards version 3.0 of its India story. The company has a two-fold aim to transform the creative reputation of the Dentsu brand in India, bringing it into the top 5 and contribute towards the objective of taking the Dentsu Aegis Network towards an ambitious No. 2 position by 2017.

In line with this, the roles of four key professionals in the India leadership team of Dentsu have been upgraded.

The current CEO of Dentsu Creative Impact Group and national planning director (Dentsu India – North) Narayan Devanathan has been promoted with immediate effect to the newly created role of Dentsu India group executive & strategy officer.

In his role, Devanathan will be the chief steward of the Dentsu brand in India, ensuring consistency of vision and output, in line with Dentsu’s global philosophy of good innovation. He will also play the role of an integrator with the other members of the Dentsu Aegis Network, both within and outside India, helping leverage the power of the network.

In addition, he will continue to helm the two specialist units of Dentsu Mama Lab (dedicated to connecting brands with mothers meaningfully) and Citizen Dentsu (dedicated to connecting brands with social purpose).

Dentsu Marcom branch head Harjot Narang has been promoted with immediate effect as the company’s president. In recognition of Narang’s contribution to the agency’s turnaround over the last four years, and his continued drive to catapult the agency to be counted among the top 3 agencies in the Delhi / NCR market, Narang will be charged with driving the pace of growth at Dentsu Marcom.

Dentsu Creative Impact brand head Amit Wadhwa has been promoted with immediate effect as the agency’s president.

Over the last four years, Wadhwa has grown from heading the account management function to overseeing the branch’s operations, and has grown the agency from strength to strength. His charge, with more autonomy, will now be to transform the creative reputation of the agency while achieving never-before scale.

Dentsu branded agencies India group CFO C.P Arora will have an expanded role in the Dentsu Aegis Network in India as well. He will now, in addition to his existing responsibilities, take charge as Dentsu Aegis Network India (North) CFO.

Commenting on the developments, Dentsu Aegis Network, South Asia chairman & CEO Ashish Bhasin said, “We are now at the forefront of our next phase of growth in our creative agencies and it is important for us to recognise the excellent talent pool that we have within the network and give them more autonomy to better service our clients. Narayan, Harjot, Amit and C.P. are amongst the best that we have in the network and I am sure that, they will drive the Dentsu Creative Agencies to new heights and help Dentsu Aegis Network become the second largest agency group in India by end-2017, overturning for the first time the existing ranking which has historically been in place for over 80 years in India.”

January 5, 2016
Dentsu Creative Impact strengthens team with several senior level hires

MUMBAI: Dentsu Creative Impact, creative division of Dentsu Aegis Network, has made a host of new talent acquisitions.

The beefing up of the team has happened across functions, ranging from strategic planning to account management and creative. The appointments come in the wake of the recent client wins such as Maruti Suzuki, Carlsberg and a set of soon-to-be announced brands.

In the creative function, the agency has roped in Sundar Iyer as copy ECD. Iyer will form the creative leadership team along with ECD Sumitra Sengupta and Art ECD Deepak Singh, whose appointment was announced a few months back. Both Iyer and Sengupta join in after their recent stints at JWT.

On his new role and expectations, Iyer said, “Great work can only come from collaboration, which seems to be inherent to the way this agency functions. It’s a place that doesn’t have to unlearn to be ready.”

Sengupta added, “Two months, and Dentsu Creative Impact has already broken my preconceived notions about it. It’s a great place to work at this time. The client is open to innovations, actually demanding it and I’m working at the best place that can provide it.”

On the account management side, Dentsu Creative Impact has roped in Arvinderjit Singh as vice president, who along with vice president Hindol Purkayastha, will bolster the function and bring in greater depth and strength.

Speaking about his new role, Singh said, “The sands of engagement as a creative partner have shifted and our industry is going through tremendous change. Working with an agency like Dentsu Creative Impact that not only recognises change but embraces it, is very exciting.”

Purkayastha added, “It’s rare we get a chance to build and create internal ecosystems to mirror our client needs. This is exactly what we are doing around our clients. I am also excited on utilising Dentsu’s strengths in digital and new media to create advertising that actually touches people’s lives.”

In strategic planning, Shveta Singh has been appointed as vice president. She will work with strategic planning senior vice president Kartikeya Srivastava. Shveta said, “For me, crossing over the digital divide was the next logical step because the future will have no such divide. A new approach to strategic planning is the need of the day. And, Dentsu came across as the right place with the right vision and a set of people who are already breaking the mould of traditional agency planning.”

Talking about the new team additions, Dentsu Creative Impact Group CEO Narayan Devanathan said, “Great work happens when people commit to constantly raising the bar. At Dentsu Creative Impact, we’re doing that by first raising the bar on the talent we’re bringing together, across functions. Across Creative, Account Management, Planning, we have a first-rate second rung in place at Dentsu Creative Impact to sustain the momentum that we have going now.”

Echoing a similar sentiment Dentsu Creative Impact branch head senior vice president Amit Wadhwa said, “It’s been great going for Dentsu Creative Impact especially in the last year or so, and one way we can really continue this upward journey is when we have the right people around. And when we were looking to expand our team this was precisely the thought in our head. We are excited about the fresh thinking and energy that all these guys bring and I am looking forward to working with all of them.”

August 17, 2015
Close Dentsu creates new campaign for Maruti Suzuki

MUMBAI: The campaign conceptualised by Dentsu Creative Impact aims to launch Stingray as a stylish, premium offering for the youth of today.

The agency’s approach for the campaign is to understand the audience well before the communication started. The youth who is experimental, always hungry for more and wants to make the most of his/her life. In a nutshell, he/she wants ‘everything’ from life.

On the campaign Harish Arora, NCD, Dentsu Creative Impact NCD Harish Arora said: “Pick any youth today and just peek into his car… you find Pizza boxes, cans, ties, shirts, shoes inside. Simply put, the youth today practically live out of their cars, the car is more than just a mode of transport, and it’s their world today. Our idea was to take this insight to the next level and hence the idea – ‘My thing. Everything.’ We wanted our TG to see the TVC and relate with the various situations as each of them is a slice of his life.”

Two films were created for the campaign. Both the films showcase how Stingray plays many roles in the life of our youngster – it is his café, his disco, his wardrobe, his work station, his shack and so on.

Dentsu Creative Impact branch head Amit Wadhwa added: “We are talking to the ‘everything generation’. And the one partner for them in everything they do, are their cars. With Stingray being designed keeping the youth in mind, we brought it alive through the idea – everything about me packed in one.”

Apart from television, the campaign will be available on print, digital, outdoor, POS.

Maruti Suzuki India AGM (marketing) Thomas Cheriyan said: “Maruti being the leader in the automobile segment caters to a wide range of customers cutting across various markets and various segments. With the launch of the Stingray, which is a stylish, premium offering, we wanted to target the younger audience while retaining the core values of Maruti. The campaign has also been made accordingly, showcasing how the car fits into the life of today’s youth – work, personal life, friends, family etc.”

November 6, 2013