AD Agencies
Samir Shanbhag steps up as executive director at Saatchi & Saatchi India
MUMBAI: Saatchi & Saatchi India has strengthened its senior leadership bench with the elevation of Samir Shanbhag as executive director, effective January 2026. The move caps a steady rise at the agency, where Shanbhag has spent the last two-and-a-half years shaping business, clients and culture.
Shanbhag was most recently executive vice-president at Saatchi & Saatchi India, a role he held from August 2023 to December 2025. In his new position, he will play a wider leadership role across client partnerships, strategic direction and agency operations from Mumbai.
With a career spanning close to three decades, Shanbhag brings deep experience across markets and categories. Before joining Saatchi & Saatchi India, he was a founding leader at Rain Creative in Dubai, where he helped build the agency into a respected independent creative outfit. He spent nearly a decade there as director, overseeing operations, business development, profitability and strategic output, while also championing planning and integrated thinking in a young agency set-up.
Earlier, Shanbhag was business director at DDB Dubai, where he led the agency’s largest and most profitable business group. His portfolio included marquee brands such as PepsiCo, Emirates, Henkel and Abu Dhabi Media. In his final full year at DDB Dubai, the unit delivered annual revenues of $4 million, including 35 per cent year-on-year growth driven largely by organic expansion.
His career began in Mumbai in the mid-1990s, with stints at Ogilvy and Contract Advertising. At Contract, he was part of the founding team that built iContract Mumbai into one of India’s leading direct and digital marketing agencies within four years. Notably, he was also part of the team that won India’s first Gold Lion for Direct Marketing at Cannes in 2002 for the ICICI Children’s Growth Bond campaign.
A post-graduate in banking and finance from the University of Mumbai, Shanbhag entered advertising in 1995 and never looked back. Over the years, he has worked across categories ranging from snacks, beverages and dairy to banking, insurance, travel and logistics, combining strategic rigour with creative ambition.
Outside work, he is an avid reader, traveller, food explorer and cricket watcher, interests that mirror the curiosity and range he brings to his professional life.
With Shanbhag’s elevation, Saatchi & Saatchi India signals its intent to double down on seasoned leadership at a time when clients are demanding sharper thinking, deeper partnerships and business-led creativity. For Shanbhag, it is a homecoming of sorts, and for the agency, a clear bet on experience that knows how to turn ideas into impact, fast.
AD Agencies
Publicis Brazil’s creative chief Mauro Ramalho lands the jury chair at Abby Awards 2026
Mauro Ramalho brings 25 years of global advertising firepower to the new creative commerce, use of data and B2B category at Goafest
GOA: The Abby Awards 2026, powered by The One Club and The One Show, has appointed Mauro Ramalho, chief creative officer of Publicis Brazil, as jury chair for its newly launched creative commerce, use of data and B2B category. The announcement, made on 18 March, signals the awards’ intent to bring serious international muscle to a category that sits squarely at the intersection of creativity and commercial performance.
Ramalho is not a name that needs much introduction in global advertising circles. Over 25 years spanning three countries, he has worked at some of the industry’s most creatively restless addresses. At AKQA in San Francisco, he worked across McDonald’s, Nike, Fox, Target, Kraft Foods and GAP, and helped lead “The Lost Ring” for McDonald’s, one of the first alternate reality campaigns and among the most awarded projects of its era. He later moved to Organic in Toronto, bridging the Detroit and Toronto offices on Dodge, Jeep and Chrysler, before spending over a decade building CUBOCC into one of Brazil’s most iconic and innovative independent agencies, which subsequently joined the IPG network.
A stint at FCB followed, where Ramalho led integrated work bridging online and offline, before he joined R/GA São Paulo as vice-president and executive creative director, stitching together the São Paulo office with New York, London, Portland and California on global clients including Verizon, Google, Meta, Samsung, American Express and Heineken. He now heads Publicis Brazil as its chief creative officer.
His trophy cabinet includes Clios, Effies, TikTok awards and MMA Smarties, and he has served on juries at the Andys, TikTok and the Lisbon Awards.
The Abby Awards 2026 is scheduled to take place at Goafest 2026 on 20, 21 and 22 May in Goa.
For Indian advertising, landing a jury chair of Ramalho’s calibre for a category built around data-driven creativity and commerce is a statement of ambition. Goafest just raised its own bar.
