Mumbai: TBWA\ INDIA has appointed Amit Kekre to the role of chief strategy officer, with immediate effect. Amit joins TBWA from DDB Mudra Group, replacing Satish Krishnamurthy.
Commenting on Amit’s appointment, Govind Pandey, Chief Executive Officer at TBWA\India, “Amit is an exceptional leader and an impressive strategist. His ambition to discover and understand goes well beyond the books, tools and processes. Amit will be responsible for developing and executing an elevated strategic approach across our planning department, while working closely with the agency’s portfolio of brands.”
At DDB Mudra, Amit played a pivotal role in DDB’s emergence as one of the most effective agencies, consistently ranking in the TOP 3 Effie winning agencies in India. He also led marketing, brand and business strategies for the group’s clients – Diageo, Pepsi, Unilever, Future Group, Godrej, naming a few.
Beyond leading business and brand strategy, Amit championed the group’s diversity agenda – and has been pivotal in establishing diversity as a key strategic growth capability for the group. He is the chairperson for the India chapter of Open Pride, Omnicom’s ERG for LGBTIQ+ community at workplace and will continue to lead these chapters from TBWA.
Amit’s experience covers categories as diverse as FMCG, Food and Beverage, Fashion and Lifestyle, Automotive, across a variety of countries and cultures, which go a long way in taking the collaborative partnership across planning, creative and business management, to the next level. With 23 years of industry experience, Amit has worked with agencies across the world, chiefly Lowe, JWT, Ogilvy, Grey, McCann in India, Malaysia and Australia.
A Microbiology graduate with a post graduate degree in Communications, Amit also received education in Gender and Sexuality studies, from the University of Amsterdam. He believes his true education and experience has come from his voyeuristic eye on culture, an insatiable hunger for travel, his side hustle as a fashion designer, and last but not the least, from his fondness for uncomfortable questions.
Joining TBWA, Amit said; “We live in times when the question of growth cannot afford to be linear, it must be discontinuous. So must be the ways to achieve it, we need a fundamental shake up from comfort zones – of how we see our brands, our businesses, the consumers they serve and the world they (must) create. No better place than TBWA, the @DISRUPTION company to make this happen”.
