Creative duo Mehra and Akali join Grey India

Grey India has appointed creative duo Malvika Mehra (pictured left) and Amit Akali as National Creative Directors, with the aim of adding considerable weight to the agency’s creative product.

To be based in Mumbai, Mehra and Akali previously worked for Ogilvy, and will bring a fresh perspective to the agency that has been nabbing large new business, and which seeks to reposition itself as a creative leader in one of the region’s most buoyant advertising markets. The duo will work on many notable brands that include Audi, Bharti Axa,Britannia, Deutsche Bank, Godrej Sara Lee, GSK Consumer Healthcare,ITC, Parle, P&G, Suzlon, United Spirits Ltd., Wyeth and 3M.

“Greyis on a path of change and we’re hungry for new business. Our globalmotto is to be ‘Famously Effective’ and to live up to that, we have tocontinuously up our game on both strategy and creative. We are alwayson the lookout for key people and Malvika and Amit bring us thepassion, energy and creative know-how, offering clients a compellingreason to give their creative mandate to Grey”, said Jishnu Sen, ChiefOperating Officer of Grey India.

Mehra said of her new role,”Having met Tim Mellors, Grey Group’s Vice Chairman & WW ChiefCreative Director and Nirvik Singh, Chairman & CEO of Grey GroupAsia Pacific, I realise how determined they are to change Grey’screative reputation. The fact that Grey has been steadily increasingits tally at Cannes and hiring some great creative people like AliShabaz (in Singapore) and Jay Furby (in Sydney) is testament to thatresolve. What’s more, the agency has an exciting set of accounts acrossinteresting categories like confectionaries and automobiles thatprovide us an opportunity to do good work.”

Akali (left) adds, “Weunderstand that just bringing in two people is not going to make adifference. It’s the coming together of people and culture that willmake the difference. Our partners here, Jishnu and Bindu Sethi are bothsolid advertising individuals with a keen strategic vision and we’resure they’ll provide the right platform for our creative teams to goforward. Everybody we’ve met at Grey seems determined to provide aculture that’ll allow it to churn out a great creative product.”

NirvikSingh, Chairman & CEO of Grey Group Asia Pacific, reiterates hiscommitment to boosting the agency’s creative product: “With Mehra andAkali’s creative reputation and the work they’ve been doing in creatingeffective and award winning campaigns versus award winning scams, wehope to add value to the agency’s creative product.”