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| Edited By: Pritha Mitra Dasgupta |Source: |Updated: Sep 14, 2017, 04:09 PM IST
Jasmin Sohrabji will be managing director
It’s official. Global marketing communications holding company, Omnicom, is finally launching its media planning and buying network OMD (Optimum Media Direction) in India. OMD will operate out of Mumbai and media veteran Jasmin Sohrabji has been roped in as its managing director.
Sohrabji was the former MediaCom South Asia president and was on sabbatical for the past couple of months after her departure from the agency. Keki Dadiseth, non executive chairman, Omnicom Group Inc in India, could not be contacted.
However the news was confirmed by George John, chairman and managing director, TBWA India-an Omnicom agency.
DNA Money had earlier reported about Omnicom due to launch OMD in India soon. Omnicom’s India ad agencies are TBWA, RK Swamy BBDO and Mudra DDB,
which together command more than Rs 1500 crore in billings.
OMD is expected to do media buying and planning work for all these agencies’ clients in due course, so expect some interesting media business reshufflings in the days ahead.
Some of the power brands that these agencies handle are Godrej, Reliance, Raymonds, VISA, Nivea, Pedigree, Standard Chartered etc. After establishing base, OMD is also expected to start pitching for new businesses, says John.
Mike Cooper, OmnicomMediaGroup chief executive, Asia-Pacific, confirmed this news to international media. He said that Sohrabji would be spearheading OMD’s operations in India.
In a quote given to an international marketing website, Copper said, “We are late to this market. OMD has been a long time coming in India, but we can turn this into our advantage, learn from the mistakes and manoeuvre our brand so that it is clearly positioned in the market. We see huge opportunity in the marketplace and Jasmin is the best person to help us take that forward.”
Sohrabji joined Grey in 1990, after a brief association with Contract. In early 1997, she was seconded to head the MediaCom Indonesia operation; from there, she went to MediaCom New York, where she was part of the team that developed MediaCom’s proprietary media optimisation system.
In 1999, she returned to MediaCom India to handle the South Asia region. Her mandate was to build the fledgling agency into one of South Asia’s top-ranked media agencies.
Sohrabji, during her long innings at the Grey Global Group, won several awards for path-breaking research activities.
