MUMBAI: Last week, the industry got the news of KV Shridhar (Pops) moving on after 17 years with Leo Burnett.
Today, the agency announced the appointment of RajDeepak Das as the chief creative officer (CCO), Leo Burnett India. In his new role as CCO for India, he will be looking at operations across Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru and Chennai.
Das will be based in Mumbai and will work closely with CEO Saurabh Varma. He said, “I always believed that ‘Agencies don’t create iconic brands, people do.’ And that is what Leo Burnett stands for. In Leo Burnett I want to bring in new trends of communications to make our brands future ready.”
Leo Burnett Worldwide chief creative officer Mark Tutssel who was personally involved in the recruitment process that spanned several continents, said that Das, with his proven track record behind world-class, award-winning work for global brands including P&G, Pepsi, Visa, Pizza Hut and Tesco among others is a new breed of creative, modern-day leader, a holistic thinker with sharp business acumen.
“Raj brings with him an exuberant amount of global experience, creativity, focus and best-in-class leadership. He understands today’s creative landscape is always-on and always integrated. The decision to bring Raj on board as our CCO holds immense promise for our clients and our creative product. I strongly believe that Raj, alongside Saurabh will form a perfect unity of creative and strategy, making the agency, one of India’s leading creative agencies today, the best integrated agency in the region going forward,” Tutssel said.
“The appointment of Raj and his partnership with Saurabh represents a new beginning and milestone for Leo Burnett India. India’s growing importance as an economic force on the world stage and its rapid change from a traditionally print and TV dominated market to one that will see online ad market reach $1.12 billion next year are key indicators of transformation in our clients’ businesses. We are focused on ensuring that Leo Burnett is at the forefront of this change, with the agility to meet the needs of today’s marketers. I have no doubt that under the combined power of Saurabh’s strategy and Raj’s creative leadership, they will be able to jointly take the agency to the next level and evolve into the new model of HumanKind communications company. Both of them will have the full support of the network to make Leo Burnett the fastest growing and most creative integrated agency in India,” said Leo Burnett Asia Pacific president Jarek Ziebinski.
Varma added, “Five months back we communicated our intention to be the best integrated communication company in India. With the appointment of Raj, we have made a decisive step in that direction. Raj and I will partner to create work that is not only human, but also participative by design. We will focus on work which brings out the purpose of our brands. Ultimately, the route to building the most popular brands is in creating work which creates believers not just consumers.”
