Purnima Lamba Leaves Unilever To Run The Mahindra Brand
Mahindra Group has appointed Purnima Lamba as chief brand officer, ending a career of nearly 25 years at Unilever. She takes responsibility for the group's corporate brand and communications strategy.
- Role: chief brand officer, Mahindra Group
- From: Unilever, after a two-and-a-half-decade career across India, the UK and the Netherlands
- Brands handled: Lakmé, Sunsilk, TRESemmé and Vaseline
- Most recently: global brand vice president for Knorr
- Mandate: strengthening the overarching brand narrative and consistency across the group's businesses and platforms
The Brand Problem Purnima Lamba Inherits
Twenty-five years at Unilever is a career spent on brands that do one thing each. Lakmé is cosmetics, Vaseline is skin, Knorr is food. The consumer knows what they are for, and the job is preference within a defined category.
Mahindra is the opposite shape. Vehicles, farm equipment, technology services, financial services, hospitality and more, sharing one name and very little else. The corporate brand has to mean something across all of it without becoming so general that it means nothing anywhere.
Why The Knorr Job Is The Relevant One
Of everything on her record, the global brand vice president role at Knorr is the closest fit. Global brand leadership is about holding a proposition steady across markets that behave differently, which is structurally the same problem as holding one steady across businesses that behave differently.
Mahindra's stated mandate is consistency: strengthening the overarching narrative and how the brand is represented across its businesses and platforms. Announcing the appointment, the group cited deep global experience in brand strategy, strategic thinking, digital innovation and consumer insight. Consistency across a conglomerate is largely an internal negotiation rather than a creative one, which is the part the title has to carry. More appointments.
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