Priyanka Saini Leaves Cheil For BBDO As AVP
Priyanka Saini is leaving Cheil India for BBDO Worldwide as AVP, after four years running one of Indian advertising’s most decorated automotive accounts.
- Ran a 25-member team on the JSW MG Motor account across ATL, BTL and digital
- Work helped push sales up 19 per cent year on year in 2025 and past 100,000 cumulative EV sales
- Handled Windsor EV, Comet, Astor, ZS EV, Gloster and Hector
- Campaigns included ‘Unbelievable’, ‘EV Sahi Hai’ and ‘Drive the Legend’, recognised at Effie, Maddies, E4M, IMA, Times Drive, Brand Storyz and ICOTY
- Also worked on Hero MotoCorp’s 2025 festive campaign ‘Aaya Tyohar, Hero Pe Sawaar’
What Priyanka Saini Actually Ran
Six vehicles, three disciplines and a 25-person team is a large remit for an account director, and the EV portion of it was the part with no established playbook.
Selling an electric vehicle in India between 2022 and 2025 meant arguing with range anxiety, charging access and resale doubt before getting anywhere near the product. Campaigns like ‘EV Sahi Hai’ were doing category education at a brand’s expense, which is the least glamorous and most useful advertising there is.
The Category-Hopping Underneath
Her route ran from account manager at a Jaipur outfit called Nutcrackers to group account manager at Brand Bazooka, taking in real estate at Ashiana Homes, FMCG at Panzani Pasta, e-commerce at ShopClues and telecom at Beetel.
That is an unusually wide set of categories for someone who ended up an automotive specialist, and it is probably why the EV work reads as consumer argument rather than car advertising. Ashiana Regal’s 96 per cent bookings in a year is the other half of the record: building a brand from nothing, alongside scaling one that already existed.
What BBDO Is Buying
The move takes her from a client-services structure at a manufacturer-owned agency to a network shop.
Those are different jobs. An in-house-adjacent agency works to one client’s calendar and one category’s constraints; a network AVP has to win work it does not already have. Someone who has done both the launch and the scale-up on the same brand is a more useful hire for that than a straight lateral, and the industry will read her first pitch closely.
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