India – Posterscope, the OOH specialist agency from dentsu India, has announced the appointment of Pallavi Patil as vice president-strategy to oversee clients nationally and empower strategy across out-of-home, retail, activation, and rural marketing verticals.

In her new role, she will focus on delivering a fresh perspective on the agency’s strategic expertise combined with a rich blend of innovation to clients in the OOH space. 

Pallavi will align with Posterscope’s global vision, addressing complicated issues with simple, strategic, human-centric solutions. She will report to Imtiyaz Vilatra, managing director at Posterscope India.

Prior to joining dentsu, Pallavi led strategy in Madison OOH as their AVP. She has a career spanning over 18 years and has worked with Kinetic Worldwide (GroupM), TNS (Kantar), Nielsen, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), and Force Motors.

Over the years, she has carved out expertise in marketing, research, and media strategy. She has also worked on some recognised and awarded OOH campaigns.

Imtiyaz Vilatra, managing director at Posterscope India, said, “We are thrilled to have Pallavi as part of the Posterscope family. With her wealth of experience and knowledge, I am confident she will bring a lot of value with fresh insights and ideas. I would like to welcome her onboard and am certain she will be instrumental to further scale our growth momentum.”

Commenting on her appointment, Pallavi added, “Embracing new opportunities, I step into this position with elation as I join Posterscope India. With experience as my guide, I am ready to contribute, learn, and thrive with the team in this exciting journey of growth and innovation.”

India – Surjo Dutt has been appointed as the new chief creative officer (CCO) for the West and South regions at Dentsu Creative  India, starting from September 1.  In his new role , Dutt will be responsible for leading the agency’s creatives, coordinating with creative teams, and developing solutions that make use of modern creativity for brands and aid business expansion. 

He will be reporting to Amit Wadhwa, CEO of Dentsu Creative India, in his new position.

Dutt has 24 years of experience, worked on more than 400 projects spanning over 70 brands and 20 categories. His career includes positions as the former chief creative officer at FCB India, national creative director – North at Sapient Nitro, and vice president and executive creative director (ECD) at JWT.

He has worked with companies including Pepsi, Frito Lay, Hero Motocorp, GSK, Google, Uber, Vistara, Dominos, Pernod Ricard, Nokia, Airtel, Nestle, and British Airways over the course of his career.

Speaking on the appointment, Wadhwa expressed, “I am delighted to welcome Surjo as our creative partner on this exciting journey at DENTSU CREATIVE India. Having previously worked alongside Surjo, I am well aware of his incredible talent for building powerful brands – a quality he has consistently demonstrated across every project he has been involved in.”

He added, “His seamless grasp of strategic contributions and deep understanding of the contemporary media landscape make him the ideal candidate to embody our philosophy of ‘Modern Creativity’. I firmly believe that together we will produce work that will leave a lasting mark in the industry.”

Meanwhile, Dutt said, “Dentsu has established itself as a creative powerhouse in India, delivering impactful campaigns that have made a huge impact across various categories. The conglomerate’s work has garnered recognition not only within the industry but also at prestigious national and international award platforms. I am genuinely thrilled and deeply grateful for this incredible opportunity.” 

He added, “I extend my gratitude to Amit and the dentsu team for acknowledging the value of my work and approach. I am looking forward to playing my part in this exciting new phase of DENTSU CREATIVE’s journey in India. The fact that I have previously worked with Amit and thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it is the icing on the cake for me.”

India — Dentsu India has recently elevated Anita Kotwani to the CEO position for the Media Division of the South Asia team. Previously, it was solely agency Carat India that was under Kotwani’s leadership, and with the expanded role, she will now move to the helm of all other media outfits under the division. 

The role will be seeing Kotwani leading agencies iProspect, dentsu X, Posterscope, and media investment arm Amplifi, aside from Carat which she oversaw for almost three years since 2020. 

Rob Gilby, the CEO of dentsu for APAC and Interim CEO of India until newly appointed CEO, Harsha Razdan, starts vouches for Kotwani as “a well-loved leader who firmly looks to the future,” bringing her people with her on the journey and someone who is fearless in approach to driving new solutions for clients. 

“The Media opportunity in India is growing exponentially. Anita’s background, coupled with Harsha’s complimentary experience is building a powerful force in our business to drive growth for our clients in this exciting market,” commented Gilby. 

Kotwani is a passionate media expert with over two decades of experience in the industry. She brings with her extensive background in media management for companies in the industries of consumer durables, financial services, FMCG, as well as MNC brands. 

As a seasoned marketer, Kotwani is a regular on the award circuit, chairing juries for various bodies including EMVIEs, Goafest, and Kyoorius. 

Dentsu shared that outgoing South Asia CEO Divya Karani, after building a successful media reputation for dentsu India over the last decade, will be transitioning off the media business to pursue personal interests 

Gilby added, “Over the past 10 years Divya has successfully scaled our business on a market-beating trajectory, evidenced by dentsu becoming the #1 agency in RECMA 2021. We thank her for her years of dedication and wish her the very best for the future. I am looking forward to the next wave of leadership accelerating the solid foundation Divya has built.” 

Meanwhile, Karani expressed her thoughts on the transition, and says she’s proud of what she has accomplished with dentsu and is very much confident with Anita taking over.

“Having worked closely with Anita – a valuable member of my leadership team, I know there is no better candidate for me to hand the reins to lead the media business to new heights. While it’s always a bittersweet moment to leave your ‘baby’, it is time for me to move on and pursue new opportunities,” said Karani. 

Newly appointed Kotwani commented, “I have learned a tremendous amount from Divya and am honoured to be given this baton to carry on the marathon. You don’t just replace three decades of experience overnight – I intend to take this on with my utmost commitment and will look to continually challenge myself and my wonderful team of media specialists to always stay at the forefront of the industry to deliver the world’s best-integrated media strategies.” 

The announcement closely follows last week’s appointment of Harsha Razdan as the new CEO of the overall dentsu network in South Asia. Meanwhile, over at the SEA region, the network has announced the creation of a new cluster for SEA which will include Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Dentsu has bolstered its leadership roster in line with the new arrangement with Sanjay Bhasin, Prakash Kamdar, and Bharti Agarwal being handed new roles as CEO of SEA, CEO of clients and solutions for SEA, and CFO of SEA, respectively.

This April, we have a new payments feature, a fresh creative leadership as well as an empowering campaign on gender inclusivity coming out as our top stories.

For the first time, a story from New Zealand enters the list – a web code developed by a telco and shared through a moving creative campaign. 

A rewards and discovery platform in Singapore has also launched a new payment feature that offers something new through its fresh payment process. 

Meanwhile, the Indian arm of a global communications network has named a new creative leader.

Top 3: Spark to make the internet more inclusive with launch of web code campaign

Spark releases new web code to urge all websites to ‘see all genders’

To kick off this month’s Top Stories is a unique proposition to ‘see all genders’ online: a web code released by New Zealand telco Spark, with creative campaign done by Colenso BBDO. 

With our society being more open and inclusive, there is stronger call for every part of our daily lives to align with this inclusivity. One of those areas is the gender selection on forms online, where traditionally, they are fixated on the choices of male and female. 

Speaking about the campaign, Frith Wilson-Hughes, brand lead partner at Spark New Zealand, said that their campaign direction has been inspired by their company’s motive to use data in a much more healthy way, which will benefit New Zealanders in general, including promoting diversity and inclusion.

“It does seem to be like a simple thing, but one of the things that we have made clear on our [campaign] site is that it’s not just about changing the code, it’s about looking at how you treat people with different genders holistically,” she said.

She also noted that their campaign site featured resources that companies and organisations can use to integrate the code into their website. This is aimed at educating them on the importance of diversity and inclusion and not overwhelming them.

Top 2: dentsu India names new creative leaders for Isobar and Taproot Dentsu

Dentsu India unveils two new appointments in creative leadership

Coming out on our top stories is the fresh appointment of Aalap Desai and Titus Upputuru as its new chief creative officer and national creative director respectively for Taproot Dentsu. Desai, who will carry the role for both Taproot Dentsu and Isobar, sat down with MARKETECH APAC and shared what he thinks has been the biggest change in brands over the pandemic. 

Without a doubt, Desai said it’s them going digital. 

“In the past 2 years, I think COVID has expedited the interaction element in every brand. Because everyone is at home, we had to shift to digital, and that’s the biggest change in the brand narrative that I’ve seen,” said Desai. 

He shared that the good thing is, over at dentsu, ‘digital’ has been an ongoing conversation. Brands are now more open to exploring, however, Desai points that their understanding can be limited. 

“We’ve also started upselling things, and brands have also started buying them. For example, [something] like a legacy Indian brand getting into a metaverse conversation,” he shared. 

Top 1: ShopBack launches new ShopBack Pay

ShopBack unveils new payment feature in Singapore

Landing on the Top 1 is the recent launch of ShopBack’s cashless payment feature Shopback Pay, which at its core, eliminates the process of topping up funds, instead enables to directly pay in the ShopBack app with only the linked payment method.

In an interview with Julian Foo, head of payments at ShopBack, he shared that the main idea behind Shopback Pay is primarily overcoming the adversities that consumers and merchants faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“I think in terms of what we saw, in our user base and surveys, it was that consumers actually had quite a fair bit of cashback, right, in the shop bank account. On average, we see about like, $200 worth of cash in every customer’s account, which is actually not doing anything at this point in time. So then we ask ourselves, hey, what can we do to help the users actually use their cashback? And for us, it was quite simple. What if we developed a payment method that allowed users to burn the cashback that they had earned online,” Foo said.

He added, “With this product innovation, I think it really allowed users to see an additional use case of earning cashback on shopping, where they can now use their cashback to burn at the merchants.”

Foo also shared that their primary goal has always been making the consumer experience convenient and rewarding.

Watch our exclusive interviews with the brands themselves on the latest episode of MARKETECH APAC Top Stories, now live on our YouTube channel.

Rankings are based on Google Analytics from the period of 16 March to 15 April.

India – dentsu India has announced the appointment of Arjuna Gaur as chief creative officer of Dentsu Webchutney & dentsuMB. Gaur’s new role is to increase both firms’ creative mandate. 

He will be responsible for creative thought leadership across the network, combining the expertise of Dentsu Webchutney and dentsuMB to provide clients with forward-thinking creative solutions. Gaur will report to Ajay Gahlaut, dentsu creative India’s group chief creative officer (GCCO).

Gaur has earned over 40 national and international honours over the course of more than 16 years of experience. Prior to this, he worked as a creative director at Leo Burnett India, MNC Saatchi Kuala Lumpur, BBDO India, and Grey. 

Since then, he’s collaborated with a slew of household names in the business sector, including Coca-Cola and Amazon as well as P&G and PepsiCo and Wrigley’s as well as Celcom and Airtel and GE India and HP. He also has a background in filmmaking thanks to Equinox Films.

On his appointment, Gaur said, “The talent and energy of the creative teams at Dentsu Webchutney & dentsuMB are limitless and frankly, a little intimidating. There is no better creative role in the country right now than this.” 

Ajay Gahlaut, group chief creative officer at dentsu Creative India, said that it is a privilege to have yet another brilliant creative onboard as part of the team. He says that Arjuna is a rare creative person who is equally adept at traditional and new age media.

“We are looking forward to him significantly raising the creative quality of our output and adding even more value to the solutions that we provide to our clients,” Gahlaut adds.

India – WATConsult, the hybrid digital agency from the Isobar India group and within the dentsu network, has elevated Sahil Shah, the agency’s former chief business officer (CBO), to the role of managing partner.

As one of the key founding members of the organization, dentsu said that Shah has played a significant role in shaping and building the agency since 2009. 

“He has moved from strength to strength, successfully cultivating a culture of creativity and innovation within the agency,” said dentsu.

It is under Shah’s ‘hawk-eyed’ leadership alongside his team’s ‘powerful’ guidance that WATConsult has grown to become one of the most accoladed agencies in India over the last decade. 

Some of the awards that the agency has won in the recent period include the GRAND PRIX at Prague International Advertising Festival, the Grand Emvie & Gold Effies for Racold’s #MindYour Language, an Emvie Gold for SBI Life’s Thanks a Dot, and a Gold at Shortys for Starbucks’ Barista Call Out. To date, WATConsult has brought home 11 Agency of the Year titles.

In his new role, Shah will continue to report to newly appointed CEO of Isobar India group, Heeru Dingra, and will spearhead the agency operations. Shah will also be responsible for bringing in new business for the agency.

Speaking on his new role, Shah said, “After spending a decade and more in building this agency, my heart fills with pride as I watch it grow stronger each day. The digital landscape has certainly evolved and the teams at WATConsult have kept pace with this change by delivering some path-breaking campaigns. 

“As we move towards our next phase of growth as a network, my team and I look forward to taking on this new journey with power and gusto,” added Shah.

Meanwhile, Dingra comments, “Sahil is one of our strongest assets. His expertise in managing clients and the team is commendable. A great team leader, Sahil, along with the talented workforce at WATConsult, will continue to bring in new creativity to ensure persistent growth of clients. Together, and as a network, we are ready to explore a new pathway to our future.”

Just recently, dentsu India has bolstered its digital, experiential, and pr capabilities under the Isobar India group, comprising Isobar India and WATConsult, and the PR agency, Perfect Relations. 

The change is part of the network’s global plan to transform into the world’s most integrated group by 2024.