Universal McCann beefs up Delhi team

"We are strengthening our set up and focussing on deliverables," says Chintamani Rao, president Universal McCann, talking about the new appointments at the media specialist agency. Among the new executives to come on board are Rama Paul, who joined the agency as media director earlier this week, and Peter Suresh who is slated to join on March 3, again as media director.

Thirty-six year old Suresh, who moves from BPL, where he was senior manager, media, will be the head of buying on the Nestle AOR. He would report to Sunandan Choudhury, who heads the Nestle AOR at Universal McCann. On her part, Paul, 34, would be working on the other businesses at Universal McCann (for the sake of convenience, the AOR businesses at Universal McCann are distributed as Nestle and rest of UM), and report to Anamika Mehta, who is vice-president, Delhi operations.

These two appointments come in the wake of a high profile movement from Universal McCann recently. agencyfaqs! readers would recall our story last month where we reported the departure of Rajul Kulshreshtha, who quit Universal McCann as vice-president and then joined Publicis Group SA company Optimedia as head of Indonesia.

Both Suresh and Paul join Universal McCann with long media and marketing experience. Besides two stints at BPL (July 1996 to December 1997, and December 1998 to early 2003), Suresh has spent about fours years at Initiative Media and O&M, and another four-and-a-half years at The Times of India and Kores (India).

Paul, who started her career in 1991, did a year Leo Burnett and another six years at RKSwamy/BBDO before joining Mudra as media manager in 1997. Among the brands she has worked on are Samsung, ICI Paints, Nestle, Frito Lays and HP. © 2003 agencyfaqs!