Anand Bhardwaj to join Lowe on February 3

Anand Bhardwaj, who quit Electrolux Kelvinator (as executive vice-president, marketing & marketing services) sometime back, is slated to join Lowe as senior associate director on February 3. Bhardwaj's appointment is part of the restructuring exercise currently underway at Lowe, which has been reported exhaustively by agencyfaqs!.

Forty-five-year-old Bhardwaj will be based in Mumbai and will bring to Lowe around two decades of work experience spanning advertising and marketing functions. Interestingly, he started his career at Lowe where he spent 10 years before moving on to tobacco company Godfrey Philips. In six years it was time for him to move again, and the next stop was EKL.

During his stint at the company, Bhardwaj has seen three rounds of restructuring and the integration of two of its brands Electrolux and Kelvinator under the umbrella brand - Electrolux Kelvinator. In fact, the company has been in the midst of a churn since November last when Ram S Ramasundar, managing director & CEO of EKL, quit to join Nipuna Services, the BPO (business process outsourcing) subsidiary of Satyam Computer Services, as its chief operating officer.

At Lowe, his exact portfolio is likely to be decided in the next few weeks. "While Bhardwaj will be a very senior functionary at Lowe, the exact allocation of accounts will be decided over the next two weeks," said Pranesh Misra, who as recently appointed president & COO of Lowe. Agency sources have indicated that Bhardwaj will be taking over from Misra and will be responsible for steering the course for HLL brands in the agency's portfolio.

Talking about the latest round of restructuring, Misra added, "The idea is to have a core team that will drive the Lowe agency in the future. We have observed a positive trend in the last few years and the task for Fali, Balki and myself will be to keep that momentum going." © 2003 agencyfaqs!