Mumbai: Publicis Communications India has promoted Vandana Verma to COO, Arc Worldwide, India. Vandana will continue to report to Saurabh Varma, CEO, Publicis Communications, South Asia.
With over 2 decades of experiential marketing under her belt, Vandana joined Publicis Groupe in 2012 as VP to set up the Groupe’s experiential offering. In 2017, Vandana was handed the reins to Arc Worldwide India. Within two years, Arc Worldwide has grown to become the leading brand activation and experiential agency in the country working with top notch clients such as Nerolac, Citibank,Nissan, Welspun, Shell, P&G, Fitbit, Hewlett Packard, IOC, Skoda SBI, UB Group, Hotstar, Odisha Government, Cisco, Godrej Security Solutions and Sandisk among others. Additionally, Vandana also leads the Arc Worldwide Singapore agency.
Through the Publicis Groupe’s “Power of One” model, Arc Worldwide works closely with its creative, media, digital and PR agencies i.e. Leo Burnett Group, Publicis Worldwide, L&K Saatchi & Saatchi, Digitas, MSL, to deliver best-in-class experiential solutions that create shopper interactions with brands. These solutions are designed using tools, learnings and expertise from across the Groupe’s global network.
Saurabh Varma, CEO, Publicis Communications, South Asia, said, “Arc Worldwide has seen tremendous growth in the last two years in India. The agency, under Vandana’s leadership, has played a critical role in enabling and taking our ‘Power of One’ platform to greater heights. Arc Worldwide has provided its clients meaningful “Acts” merging data, technology, human insights and behaviours, to create incredible work. The next few years is going to be big for experiential marketing in India and I couldn’t have asked for a better leader than Vandana to take this head on.”
On her new role, Vandana said, “India has proved to be one of the biggest markets for Arc Worldwide across the globe. The shopper and experiential market in India is witnessing a shift from being looked at as an “activation” or “event” management category to a more robust solutions partner for brands. This is primarily because today, people want to have an immersive experience with products. For brands in turn it’s a great time to invest more in experiential marketing because of the different tools, technology and data points we use currently to help them understand their consumers a lot more in detail. I’m looking forward to exploring more innovative ways to really use this market to its full potential and continue to deliver on best-in-class solutions for our brand.”
