Sanjay Chaudhari

I am currently based in Colombo, Sri Lanka as the CEO for the Publicis Groupe. I lead Leo Burnett, Publicis, Saatchi & Saatchi, Digitas, Starcom, MSL & Arc.My core task is to build the "Power of One" Agenda in Sri Lanka and deliver more integrated creative solutions for our Clients.

The Grey Group won the Gillette Global business that had been held by the previous Agency for over 80 years. The need of the hour was for a proven leader to take charge of the business for Asia Pacific. I stepped up and transferred from Ogilvy in Japan to the Grey Group in Singapore. I quickly built a strong Client Relationship on Gillette through all levels of the organization and in every market across Asia Pacific. To stay on the cutting edge of China’s hyper growth in e-commerce and its unique Digital ecosystem, I moved to Shanghai and took the lead to develop our Shanghai office’s E-commerce, Social and Influencer capabilities in Gillette’s most dynamic Asian market. The key achievements of this assignment was the hugely impactful Gillette China Olympics campaign driven primarily by Social Influence and e-commerce with a fraction of the budget and in the most cluttered environment of the year. This campaign also helped us set a Guinness World Record. A personal highlight of the assignment was meeting the legendary Mr. Warren Buffet during the development of our China specific launch for Duracell featuring Mr. Buffet himself.I also worked with our Hong Kong office to explore building a base for a new Integrated team format to serve the requirements for P&G in China.

Ogilvy Japan’s International Brands team was facing severe issues with Client satisfaction with the creative quality as well as confidence in the team. I took on the challenge of rebuilding Ogilvy Japan’s International Client business & Client confidence with clear P&L responsibility as well as restoring the teams on the business to the Ogilvy standard.

The key achievements of this assignment were the renewed Client confidence in the team leading to one of the best ever evaluation scores on American Express, the return to profitability for all brands, the highly successful launch of Schweppes in Japan featuring an AR driven event and an award winning technology driven campaign on Coca Cola.

Unilever centralized their operations in Singapore and I pushed to relocate our entire team from Bangkok and Hong Kong to Singapore to be closer to the Pond’s Global Client team. I continued to head the Global platforms of Anti-Aging and Facial Cleansing for Pond’s.

The key achievements of this assignment were the development of the first ever Global Social Influencer program for Pond’s, an AME award for our facial foam campaign and the coveted PR Week award in China for Pond’s Age Miracle.

The Global Pond’s Client based in Bangkok specifically requested me to move to Bangkok and set up our Account team there to lead the Global Anti-Aging and Facial Cleansing platforms for Pond’s. This was a challenging experience since our support teams continued to be based in Hong Kong.

The key achievements of this assignment were the hugely successful Global Launch of the entire Pond’s portfolio resulting in that rare perfect score on Unilever’s challenging Agency Evaluation as well as the first ever shortlist at Cannes for our facial foam Campaign.

Ogilvy’s Unilever hub was moved to Hong Kong and I stepped up to help set up the hub and reset the Regional team in Hong Kong. It was during this assignment that I moved from the Regional Dove team to the Regional Pond’s team.

The key achievement of this assignment was the recruitment and setting up of our team in a single location resulting in a significant improvement in the Client relationship and therefore our Agency Evaluation.

In 2005, Ogilvy set up its first Asian Regional Hub for Dove in Tokyo and I was one of the key team leads handpicked to make the Regional hub a success. My key responsibility was to develop a strong working relationship with the Client team, some of who were new to the entire process of Regional communication development and set up the core team for Asia.

The key achievement of this assignment was the development and launch of Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty across Asia including Asia’s first ever campaign driven by real time digital participation. The hugely successful campaign was a benchmark setter for Integration and featured several unique touch points.

Dove in Taiwan was Unilever and Ogilvy’s Star brand that had fallen on difficult times. The Client-Agency relationship was filled with stress as the creative work failed to pass Unilever standards. Consequently, the Agency team’s morale was very low. I was approached by Ogilvy in Taiwan to reboot Unilever’s Dove account team and tasked with turning this situation around. I then took over managing Unilever’s Pond’s brand as well as Watsons.

The key achievements of this assignment was the complete rejuvenation of the Client Agency relationship, the development of Dove Taiwan’s first campaign based on consumer participation as well as New York Festival’s acknowledgement of our Watsons campaign.

DDB recruited me to set up the Asia Pacific hub to service the newly won Philips business. My immediate tasks were to build a strong Client Relationship on Philips across all levels of the organization and in every market. In addition, I also handled Singapore Tourism Board and Johnson & Johnson.

The key achievements of this assignment was the ‘Best Managed’ region rating on Philips as well as record breaking revenue on the Singapore Tourism Board account for the Agency at the time.

Dentsu Y&R approached me while I was in Casablanca and asked me to join them to manage the Colgate Palmolive business across all their brands for the Asia Pacific region. My responsibilities included developing and executing all Regional communication for Colgate Palmolive.