Mukesh Anand, creative director of Heroes Project (HP), joins RK Swamy BBDO for a second innings
Mukesh Anand has recently joined RK Swamy BBDO as principal consultant, with the mission and vision of providing innovative market solutions to his clients. According to Anand, his position at RK Swamy is comparable to designations higher than senior creative director in other agencies.
"My objective behind joining RK Swamy is to contribute to as many brands as possible. I am presently working on brands such as Zuari Industries, LIC, and Asia Motor Works. There are many more to follow in a short while," says Anand, in an interaction with afaqs!.
Anand has an intriguing career graph. He joined the industry as copy-editor. Eventually, he served as a creative director for different agencies. However, his new role in RK Swamy is of a planner, providing thought leadership to clients' brands.
Anand's versatility and his wide knowledge base are highly appreciated by the management of RK Swamy BBDO. "Mukesh has the experience of both a creative person and a client handling one. No wonder, he is the one who can provide effective strategies from both marketing and creative point of view. Also, being from the client's side, he can very well narrate their point of view, which, otherwise, gets overlooked by the creative team," explains Sangeetha N, president (W) and executive creative director, RK Swamy BBDO.
Prior to this, Anand worked with the Heroes Project (HP) in Mumbai as creative director. His role involved developing communication plans and managing advertising campaigns and programming content at HP. In the past, he has worked with agencies such as McCann-Erickson and JWT (then HTA).
While talking about his previous assignment at HP, Anand says, "Three years in HP has been a great experience. I learned a lot and loved the freedom of working there." However, according to him, his six-year tryst with JWT played the most important role in shaping his career in advertising. "It's JWT which formed a solid foundation for me. It mentored me and taught me the basics of advertising."
From 2003 to 2005, Anand worked with RK Swamy BBDO's Delhi office. As a result, his second innings in RK Swamy is like a homecoming. "I'm now looking forward to another smooth and effective tenure in RK Swamy BBDO," he adds.
Other than this, Anand was one of the six Indians who were selected under the European Union-India Economic Cross Cultural Programme in 2005, to participate in the media training project on creative content development at Deutsche Welle Television, Berlin.
Some of the campaigns he has been a part of are Elementary Education (School Chale Hum), TB DOTS (Teen Hafta Bhai), and the UNICEF Girl Child Trafficking film (Lalli).
Anand has also collaborated on Hindi feature film scripts and has worked as a screenplay consultant with writer-director, Neeraj Vora on an Abbas-Mastan film. He has co-scripted two feature film scripts with director Kabeer Kaushik, one of which was Chamku, released in 2008.
He also writes poetry. His first book of Hindi poems, 'Tum Kabhi Boodhi Mat Hona', was launched in November this year. Screenwriter-director, Anurag Kashyap has written the foreword for his book.
At the Indian Telly Awards 2007, Anand was nominated in the Best Lyrics category for penning the title song of 'Femina Miss India contest'.