MAM
Bates gets Sourabh Mishra as planning head
MUMBAI: Bates India has appointed Sourabh Mishra as the agency‘s national planning head and group chief strategy officer.
Mishra will commence his new role in October.
He moves in from Saatchi & Saatchi India where he was working as chief strategy officer.
Based out of Mumbai, Mishra will lead strategic planning and brand management at Bates across its offices in India. His mandate includes integrating media and discipline neutral solutions into Bates‘ core planning process and practices.
Bates India chief executive officer Sanjay Thapar said, “We are excited to welcome Sourabh within the bates fold and have him as part of the leadership team. Sourabh‘s strategic planning abilities, knack to get under the skin of brands combined with his incisive consumer insights are second to none and will play a critical role in delivering solutions to clients that will take their campaigns to the next level. We have great confidence in his abilities and are privileged to have recruited someone of his calibre into the business.”
Mishra added, “I am very excited to be a part of bates in the current juncture of its journey. bates‘ holistic solutions driven approach and the ‘changengage‘ philosophy represent an opportunity to create solutions for today‘s fast changing times driven by engagement ideas that provoke conversations among brands and customers”.
Mishra comes in with two decade of experience in ad agencies and client organisations. He has headed the strategy planning function in agencies since 2004 and started his career with Contract Advertising where he spent almost seven years. He later worked at BPL Telecom, Ogilvy & Mather, McCann Erickson, Everest Brand Solutions, Reliance Capital and TBWA India. On the client side, he has worked with companies like General Mills, Cadbury, Coca Cola India, Skoda Auto and ITC Foods.
Brands
Faber-Castell India appoints Sunaina Haldar as director – marketing
With stints at Tata, SleepyCat and ADF Foods under her belt, Haldar is primed to redraw Faber-Castell’s brand story
MUMBAI: Faber-Castell India has poached Sunaina Haldar from ADF Foods, appointing her director – marketing as the German stationery brand looks to muscle up in a category that is rapidly reinventing itself around creativity and self-expression.
Haldar hit the ground running. “My first couple of weeks have been incredibly energising, understanding consumers, visiting markets, engaging with retailers and immersing myself into the world of Faber-Castell Group,” she said.
She arrives with considerable firepower. At ADF Foods, Haldar ran marketing across India and international markets for a portfolio spanning Ashoka, Aeroplane, Camel and ADF Soul. Before that, she was vice-president – marketing at direct-to-consumer mattress brand SleepyCat, where she helmed brand, content and performance marketing. Her résumé also includes a stint leading marketing, new product development and CRM for Tata SmartFoodz at Tata Consumer Products, no small proving ground.
Between corporate roles, Haldar also operated as a fractional CMO for early-stage startups, building marketing strategy and operational structures from scratch, a signal that she knows how to move fast with limited resources.
With 18 years straddling FMCG, D2C and the startup world, Haldar now takes the reins at a brand that has long owned the classroom but is clearly hungry for the living room. In a stationery market where the pencil has become a lifestyle statement, Faber-Castell has picked someone who knows exactly how to sell that story.
