Ogilvy & Mather India promote two to National Creative Directors

Fire up the theme to The Jeffersons, it’s major promotion time again! This time it’s happening at Ogilvy & Mather India.

Let’s not beat around the bush and go straight to the press release, shall we?

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Ogilvy India has elevated its long-time creative hands – Abhijit Avasthi and Rajiv Rao to national creative directors (NCD). Until now, both Avasthi and Rao have held the post of executive creative directors for the South Asian region. The duo will share the responsibilities of the post.

Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and NCD, Ogilvy India and South Asia, and vice-chairman, APAC has been at the creative helm for almost a decade and a half. However, he continues to oversee the creative output churned out of South Asia, as NCD for the region.

“This is a move that the Ogilvy board has made in order to ensure that the agency is ahead of the game in the changing times. The responsibility given to these two gentlemen is to ensure that brand Ogilvy shines creatively in all disciplines to deliver more dramatic brand-building for all our clients.” says the official Ogilvy spokesperson. 

“In addition they will be responsible for grooming the talent that we have in our organisation. They will work closely with all other creative directors to ensure that the famous Ogilvy battery of creative directors becomes stronger and better.” the spokesperson says.

Both Avasthi and Rao, along with Sumanto Chattopadhyay (Sumo) and Anup Chitnis, were elevated to the position of executive creative directors (ECD) for South Asia in 2007.

Rajiv Rao ,(L) Abhijit Avasthi

A metallurgist by formal education, Avasthi has been with Ogilvy India for ten years now; he joined the agency as creative supervisor in 1999. He has been in the advertising industry for 12 years, and worked with Enterprise Nexus (now Bates 141) before he joined Ogilvy. 

At Ogilvy, Avasthi has worked on some landmark campaigns in India. He has worked on accounts such as Fevicol, Asian Paints, Motorola, Bajaj Pulsar, Cadbury’s, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Coca-Cola and Perfetti.

He has been judging at the Abbys in India for several years now. He has also been a member of the jury at the Clio Awards 2004, Asia-Pacific AdFest 2005, Singapore Creative Circle Awards 2006.

For Rao, keeping the tradition of clutter breaking communication like the ‘Boy & Dog’ Vodafone campaign, he currently heads the national team on Vodafone and was responsible for the Zoozoo campaign that topped the most viewed virals in India.

Rao, began his career in advertising in 1994, and has been with agencies such as Ambience Advertising (now Ambience Publicis) and Heartbeat. He joined Ogilvy in 1999 as creative group head.

Rao has worked on businesses such as Hutch (now Vodafone), Lenovo, Allen Solly, Brooke Bond and Titan. He has also been at the agency’s Bangalore branch for a while with his creative partner, the late Mahesh V.

Rao has has won awards at Cannes, One Show, Clio, Communication Arts and also a Grand Prix at the London International Advertising Awards. He has also been part of the London International and Asia Pacific advertising award festival jury.

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A metallurgist by trade?! See that’s where kids go wrong these days; all they know is advertising and ad school. These guys don’t even need to win fancy ad show awards… they can smelt their own.

Congrats Abhijit and Rajiv. We’ll be looking out for your work.