By Our Staff
It took Wieden+Kennedy 15 years to set up office in Mumbai, and truly expand its wings. Now a year later, it appears to be doing to do that in right earnest.
Last year, W+K got on board Santosh Padhi (Paddy) as CCO and later Ayesha Ghosh as President. And then Anirban Roy as Head of Strategy and Shreekant Srinivasan hopped on as Head of Business, Delhi towards the end of 2022.
And now, it’s got Kapil Batra Batra who joins as National Creative Director. It’s a countrywide role, but, as a communique notes, his focus will be the Delhi office. In his last role, Batra was heading creative for the Gurugram office of McCann Erickson. He will report to Padhi. To begin with, his focus will be the Delhi office, which is where he will operate from.
The communique we received has a a slew of quotes. Here they are:
Batra: “W+K has consistently created work that’s awe-inspiring. It is bold and rooted in culture. So when this opportunity to be a part of this truly creatively driven organisation came, I got all excited. And in my subsequent interactions with Paddy and Ayesha, where they spoke about their vision for W+K India, the culture, and more importantly, the vibes I got, everything was just fantastic. I am happy to join the talented team here and contribute to writing an exciting new chapter for W+K India.”
Padhi/Paddy: “We are in the people business and people are the source of creativity and ideas. We were looking for a solid creative people’s person with a great depth of insights, ideas and love for craft, we found all of these and many more in Kapil. After spending two decades in the industry, his passion and hunger to do more is what impressed us the most, his versatile body of work reflects human culture in a big way, which is one of the strong beliefs of W+K India and Global.”
Ghosh: “When we saw the creative work that Kapil has been responsible for, we knew that we had to have him join us. Within the agency we often talk of breaking out of ads and breaking into culture. That is what much of his work represents. And it doesn’t hurt that some of his campaigns have gone on to make a sizeable difference to the brands they were created for! What completely sealed the deal for us over and above the work, is that Kapil is an incredibly nice, humble person, who lets his work speak for him. And we’re suckers for that.”
Wieden+Kennedy has hired Santosh ‘Paddy’ Padhi as Chief Creative Officer for India. The hire also means an expansion for the independent creative agency into Mumbai, where Padhi will build out the shop’s second India location. Wieden+Kennedy has been established in Delhi since 2007, over the years working on brands loike IndiGo Airlines, Royal Enfield, and the Government of India.