Commonwealth appoints Rajesh Mani as ECD

Rajesh Mani will take up the role of Executive Creative Director at the Commonwealth Mumbai Hub. Mani joins Commonwealth from Leo Burnett and has over 12 years’ experience in creating distinct, memorable, and indeed iconic, work.

Commonwealth is a 50-50 joint venture, combining San Francisco-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, an Omnicom Group company, and New York-based McCann Erickson Worldwide, an Interpublic Group company. Commonwealth will be guided by an eight-person Global Advisory Board, which will oversee all creative initiatives and strategy for Chevrolet globally. The board includes four of the most-accomplished creative executives in the industry: Jeff Goodby, who will serve as Creative Chairman; Washington Olivetto, Linus Karlsson and Prasoon Joshi. Assignments will be handled through global hubs, which will operate in Detroit, Milan, Mumbai and Sao Paulo, and will ensure consistent global branding across the diversity of local markets.

“We are delighted that Rajesh Mani is a part of Commonwealth. He has tremendous experience and talent which will further strengthen the operation. I am positive that Rajesh will be instrumental in creating and delivering stellar quality work.” Said Prasoon Joshi, regional president McCann Worldgroup South Asia, chairman / CEO McCann Worldgroup India, and Commonwealth global advisory board member.

Mani’s deep experience includes partnering Rajiv Rao in creating the immensely popular Blackberry Boys version 1 and penning the well-loved Blackberry boy’s song. He has also worked on a number of acclaimed films including Hutch callertunes, Vodafone 60P/minute film and was a member of the core team that launched zoozoos. Notably, he received international acclaim for the global launch of Lenovo X300 laptops, with a film titled ‘the flying sums’ that was showcased during the Beijing Olympics. At Leo Burnett he led the creative mandate for Tata Capital, HDFC Life and Bajaj Electricals.

Said Rajesh Mani: “Commonwealth offers an exciting prospect of working on one of the biggest car brands in the world at a global level, and a rare opportunity to interact and imbibe from the best in the business – Prasoon Joshi, Jeff Goodby, Linus Karlsson and Washington Olivetto. On a global platform like Commonwealth, it is important to understand the finer points of cross-cultural communication challenges and pegging ideas on simple human truths that are geography agnostic. That said, I think it’s adrenaline time!”

Commonwealth was named as Chevrolet’s global advertising agency in March this year and is responsible for the development of creative campaigns across all platforms for Chevrolet global advertising.