Himanshu Saxena, who succeeded Rajesh Gangwani as Senior Vice-President and Managing Partner, JWT South, Bangalore, on Monday is looking to add start-ups, local FMCG and retail brands with a pan-India footprint to its bouquet of existing customers in the South. The agency’s portfolio of brands in the South include marquee names such as, Nike, USL Brands, Kingfisher, Levis, Lifestyle, Van Heusen, GRT (jewellery) and Univercell.

Emerging sectors

“I am looking to tap emerging sectors in the South. For instance, there is a huge opportunity here, with Bangalore being the start-up capital of the country. We are working with some leading brands that have recently been added to our portfolio such as, Columbia Asia and Commonfloor.com and we are looking for others across categories to work with,” said Saxena, in an interaction with Business Line , on his first day as JWT South head in Bangalore.

He said, some of the other opportunities the agency wants to tap include the large number of Indian-origin companies like Café Coffee Day, EID Parry, MTR, etc, who have established a national brand presence and are looking for many other forms of engagement beyond advertising, such as, digital design services.

Organic growth

However, his first priority as the South Head would be to accelerate the momentum and maintain the standards of existing clients in the South and grow with them organically. “We have long standing relationships with many brands, some as long as 25 years and many of these brands are organically spreading into many new areas. We are ensuring that we are present in all of their new ventures,” added Saxena.

JWT also announced key leadership changes across its Mumbai and Sri Lanka offices. While the previous head of JWT South, Rajesh Gangwani, is moving to JWT Mumbai as Senior Vice-President and Managing Partner JWT Mumbai; Joy Chauhan will be taking over Saxena’s previous role as President, JWT group of companies, Colombo.

Most awarded

Ranked third in India for 2013 after McCann and Taproot, for the most awarded agencies in the Gunn Report; JWT won eight Lions including four silvers and four bronzes at the recently concluded festival of creativity at Cannes.

“We are an agency that is centred around our creative product and we have a few companies to deliver on this including, JWT, Hungama Digital Services, Social Wavelength for social media; Encompass for experiential marketing; Design@JWT for branding architecture and retail design solutions, among others,,” said Colvyn Harris, South Asia CEO, JWT.

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