Umesh Khandelwal Crosses From WPP Media To OMD India
Umesh Khandelwal has joined OMD India as general manager for media planning, moving from WPP Media, where he was business director for integrated media and growth strategy.
- Role: general manager, media planning, at OMD India
- From: WPP Media, most recently business director, integrated media and growth strategy
- Remit: media planning and growth strategy across clients, with a focus on integrated, data-led solutions and media effectiveness
- Earlier: Sony Pictures Networks India, Sansha Hospitality and Match Box
- Career start: event planner at Match Box in 2015
What Umesh Khandelwal Is Being Asked To Do
The brief is described as translating insights into media strategies that drive business impact, working closely with clients and internal teams. That is the standard shape of a planning leadership role, and the part worth noting is that growth strategy is in the title alongside planning.
Those are different jobs in most agencies. Planning is about the work that exists; growth strategy is about the work that does not yet. Putting both under one general manager suggests OMD wants planning to argue for its own expansion rather than wait to be handed briefs.
A Move Between Holding Companies
Crossing from WPP Media to OMD, part of Omnicom, is the kind of move that happens quietly and matters commercially, because planning leads carry client relationships and category knowledge with them.
Announcing it on LinkedIn, Khandelwal described it as a chapter arriving a little later than planned, said the first couple of months had already brought new perspectives and challenges, and thanked Anisha Iyer and Namrata Roy for the opportunity. More agency appointments.
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