Ogilvy Africa has named Vikas Mehta as its new Chief Executive Officer. He takes over from Mathieu Plassard who is moving to Ogilvy South Africa in a new role. Prior to his appointment, he was the CEO of Mullen Lintas, in India.
Vikas who is a strategist by training has experience spanning managing units across disciplines including advertising (on and offline), digital transformation, social, shopper & experiential and PR & influence. He believes in an omni-channel approach to building brands which creates a unified experience across consumer touchpoints.
He joined Ammirati Puris Lintas in 2002, and was based in its New Delhi office. After a brief stint with Leo Burnett, he returned to the network in 2006, moving to Lowe Viet Nam in Ho Chi Minh City. At the age of 31, he was named Managing Director – Lowe Viet Nam, making him the youngest country head in the global network. Under his leadership, the agency went on to create some iconic campaigns, dominate effectiveness awards in the region and become the largest creative agency in the country.
In 2011, he was named Regional Growth Officer for Lowe Asia-Pacific. Based in Singapore, the role was instrumental in charting out and implementing the strategy for business and capability expansion for the network. The role included 15 countries across the region including North Asia, Greater China, South & South-East Asia and the Pacific with a focus on developing and emerging (D&E) markets.
He moved to India in 2013 to head marketing for Mullen Lowe Lintas Group as the first CMO in Indian advertising. Since then, he’s played several roles in the group including Head of Digital, President Group Marketing Services and then founding the group’s omni-channel creative agency, PointNine Lintas in 2017. Built as a beta (version 0.9) of a new operating model for an integrated agency, PointNine Lintas was incubated and successfully merged with the group’s flagship agency, Lowe Lintas. Vikas took on the role of CEO at Mullen Lintas in January this year.
Bharat Thakrar, CEO of WPP-Scangroup which owns the Ogilvy Africa Agency Network, had this to say, “Vikas has the right combination of leadership, people and technology skills to continue to scale Ogilvy Africa to even greater heights. This is something he has demonstrated extraordinarily well over the years as proven by his career track record of 15 years in various agency leadership roles across Asia-Pacific markets including Singapore and Vietnam.”