Shibani Gharat
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Commonwealth Mumbai to serve Asia, West Asia and North Africa

One of the four hubs of the IPG-Omincom JV, the Mumbai branch looks to employ more than 100 people. The head of the hub will report to the global advisory board of Commonwealth.

Mumbai, one of the hubs of the recently formed Commonwealth (the IPG-Omincom joint venture formed to service Chevrolet's global account), will have one head each for planning, servicing and creative department. McCann Erickson Mumbai also looks to employ approximately 100 employees for the newly formed JV. The head of the Mumbai hub of Commonwealth will report to the eight-member global advisory board.

Commonwealth will be based in the same building as McCann Erickson's Mumbai office. The new head for Commonwealth can be either from within or outside the agency.

Commonwealth Mumbai to serve Asia, West Asia and North Africa
Confirming the news to afaqs!, Prasoon Joshi, executive chairman and CEO, McCann Worldgroup India and president, South Asia, says, "Mumbai is one of the chosen hubs for the regional work that will be done for various markets in Asia, West Asia and North Africa. Hence, there lies a huge task ahead to service the entire region out of Mumbai. We are in talks with people from both McCann and outside McCann for this huge responsibility."

This is seen as an unprecedented move, which will involve the Mumbai branch in a structured manner as the regional hub for some of the most important markets of Chevrolet. A lot of work for many markets is expected to come to India through this development.

At the same time, McCann Erickson Delhi will continue to service the General Motors account separately. The agency won the account in a multi-agency pitch in 2011.

For the records, Omnicom-owned Goodby Silverstein & Partners, earlier Chevy's lead agency in the US, and Interpublic's McCann Erickson, the brand's lead agency in India, China and Latin America, formed a 50:50 joint venture (JV), called Commonwealth. The JV will service the global US$2 billion account of Chevy, worldwide.

Based in Detroit, Commonwealth will develop creative campaigns across all media platforms for Chevrolet. Earlier, Chevrolet used 70 agencies across the globe.

Goodby Silverstein & Partners and McCann Erickson pitched against Publicis Groupe and Cheil Worldwide for the business in a review which kicked off towards the end of last year.

Commonwealth has a four-member creative board including four global creative executives: Jeff Goodby, who will serve as creative chairman; Prasoon Joshi, Washington Olivetto and Linus Karlsson. The four creative leaders will work in collaboration on all major creative initiatives and resource allocations.

"The thought process to have a four-member creative board was to have seamless creative and strategy, across the globe. This board will lead the thinking for the world," explains Joshi.

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