Tag: Samir Singh

  • Management shuffle at HUL

    Management shuffle at HUL

    MUMBAI: Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) has announced key changes in the management committee of the company. Subject to Unilever Indonesia’s external board approval, Hemant Bakshi, currently executive director – home and personal care, will be appointed as executive vice president (EVP) of Unilever Indonesia.

     

    The home and personal care (HPC) business will now be organised into home care and personal care businesses in India. Samir Singh, currently global brand vice president Lifebuoy and vice president – personal care lead, south Asia cluster, Unilever, will be appointed as HUL executive director – personal care and Priya Nair, currently vice president – Laundry, HUL, will be appointed as executive director – home care. Both Nair and Singh will be part of the management committee of HUL and their appointments are effective 1 October 2014.

     

    HUL CEO & managing director Sanjiv Mehta said, “I wish to take the opportunity to express my deep appreciation for the significant contribution that Hemant has made to the India business, both in his current role as executive director – HPC and his earlier role as executive director – CD. I would like to congratulate Hemant on his move to Unilever Indonesia and wish him all the best in his new assignment.”

     

    Nair joined the company in the consumer insights team in 1995, where she brought with her a diverse and rich experience including customer development and marketing. In her earlier roles, she has worked across various brands such as Dove, Axe, Rexona, Closeup, Pepsodent. As VP home care she has been leading the entire detergents portfolio of HUL. More recently, she has led the launch of HUL’s path breaking rural mobile marketing initiative ‘Kan Khajura Tesan’ which received three Gold Lion awards at the 2014 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

     

    Singh on the other hand joined Unilever in 1997 as a management trainee in India. He has worked across many brands including Fair & Lovely, Vaseline, Ponds and has also worked in Foods in Customer Development in India.

     

    For the past four years Singh has been the global brand vice president for Lifebuoy and a member of the Global Category Leadership Team for skin cleansing. In this role, he has led global strategy, innovation and communication for Lifebuoy in more than 30 key countries across the world. He was also the personal care cluster lead for south Asia in 2014.

     

    “We have reorganised the home and personal care business into two separate businesses to ensure focus on the growth drivers for each of these businesses. I am pleased to welcome Priya and Samir to their new roles. Both bring with them rich and diverse marketing and business experience in Unilever. Priya joined HUL in 1995 and has worked in roles across marketing, customer development and CMI. Samir joined HUL in 1997 and has worked in various roles in HUL and across the regional and global Unilever organisation,” he added.

  • Lifebuoy rolls out ‘Saving Lives’ campaign

    MUMBAI: Lifebuoy has announced the launch of a campaign with a three-minute film that seeks to inspire action from viewers to pledge support for Lifebuoy’s hand washing programs on the ground.

    According to the brand, the objective of the campaign is not to sell a product, but share a lofty brand purpose. Also, the brand wants to tap the “technology-savvy” audience by inspiring them to spread this message of saving lives. The campaign aims to create an act that will make a real difference.

    Lowe Lintas chairman and chief creative officer R. Balki said, “A small act like washing hands with Lifebuoy can save a child‘s life. This message needs to reach far and wide. So, we created this campaign that can open one‘s mind to this amazing message. A campaign that moves people to the extent that they care to share it with others”.

    Lifebuoy global vice president Samir Singh said, “Lifebuoy’s goal is to change the hand-washing behaviours of a billion people by 2015 in order to help save lives and reduce disease. On top of the work we have been doing on ground for the last 10 years, we needed people to support our cause in huge numbers to reach our goal. We wanted to tell the world the Lifebuoy story in a deeply emotional way. Our brief to Lowe was to translate the statistic of “2 million children still die in the world before the age of 5 due to preventable infections like diarrhoea and pneumonia” into something real, personal and powerful. And through this film, they have done just that.”

    “We wanted this ad to evoke a meaningful response towards the initiative and not to say ‘what a beautiful ad’. It‘s a real, true and honest programme and the work should embody that. Judging from the responses we have from people and industry alike, I think we‘ve managed to achieve this,” Lowe Lintas NCD Amer Jaleel added.