By Delshad Irani
- Prasoon Joshi
McCann Worldgroup, the biggest agency network in global advertising giant Interpublic Group’s fold, has elevated Prasoon Joshi as its chairman for Asia-Pacific region, bringing both Greater China and Australia under his purview, with immediate effect. Earlier, he was president of McCann Worldgroup South Asia and CEO of the agency’s Indian operations.
Harris Diamond, chairman and chief executive officer of McCann Worldgroup, flew down to Mumbai to make the announcement. In his new role, Mr Joshi will lead the network’s strategic vision in the region and integrate McCann Worldgroup’s skills across platforms in line with its core ideas.
“Collaboration and integration is the value we bring to the table,” Mr Joshi said. “McCann is a truly international agency and clients benefit from talent across the world through one portal that they can access anywhere, say, from Latin America and get the benefit of minds sitting in Mumbai.” Joshi will be based in Mumbai.
Charles Cadell, who spent significant time in India with another Interpublic agency Lowe, and Jesse Lin, will provide him business and operational width from Singapore and Shanghai, respectively.
In an exclusive interaction with Joshi and Diamond, when asked why has Mr Joshi decided to stay in Mumbai despite having several world cities to choose from? “His wife would kill him if he chose to move!” Mr Diamond retorted with a smile. On a more serious note he said, “I believe in the growth story of India, but we also have to play our part and not expect growth on a platter,” emphasising the importance McCann gives to the country. “India is a tremendous growth environment,” Mr Diamond said. “The new leadership, the new prime minister…we are very enthusiastic about the market.
Candidly, a year ago there were a lot of questions. Mr Joshi will not be the first person to run regional or global operations of a multinational from India. Vikram Sakhuja, the worldwide CEO of media firm Maxus, still works out of his Goregaon East office in Mumbai, two years after taking over. We recently reported that Nitin Paranjpe, who assumed charge of Unilever’s global home care division 11 months ago, was yet to relocate out of India. McCann Worldgroup, which has 23,000 employees in 330 offices across the world, has turned more aggressive under Diamond, who took charge two years ago. Earlier this year, Microsoft parked its global account with McCann.
Mr Joshi – poet, scriptwriter and creative mastermind behind some memorable campaigns such as ‘Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola’ and the Happydent ‘Palace’ – joined McCann in 2002 after a decade at Ogilvy. He’s a member of both McCann’s global creative council and its board.
Source:The Economic Times
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