Majid Khan joins WPP Media as vice president, client services

CHENNAI: Twenty years, a shelf of famous brands and a new desk at one of the world’s biggest media agencies. Majid Khan has started a new position as vice president, client services at WPP Media, and he arrives with a reputation for turning business goals into full-funnel media outcomes.

Khan describes himself as a digital-first marketing strategist, driving business growth with digital innovation and building bold brands. Across two decades and sectors such as auto, BFSI, tech and lifestyle, he has helped brands earn attention in crowded categories, blending performance precision with storytelling impact, from platform-first ideas to high-impact performance campaigns and retail media strategies.

He has worked with some of India’s most respected brands, including Renault India, Yamaha Motors, TVS Motors, MRF, Intel, Levi’s, Hewlett Packard, Citibank, PUMA, Fossil, Star Health Insurance, Hatsun Agro Products and Cavin Kare. Khan has also been named one of ET Brand Equity’s Top Ten Creative Minds in Indian Media.

What does he bring to the table? Khan lists four strengths. The first is strategic leadership that aligns digital planning with business outcomes. The second is a client-centric mindset, built on trust, clarity and sharp execution. The third is creative innovation, from award-winning AR/VR to influencer, retail media and AI-driven strategies. The fourth is a commitment to team growth, mentoring cross-functional talent to deliver with agility and ambition. He says he wants to build bold, measurable and meaningful digital journeys with clients.

His new role has a clear brief. At WPP Media, Khan leads client relationships and digital growth in Tamil Nadu across auto, BFSI, tech, lifestyle and FMCG. He owns senior client relationships and the commercial health of the accounts he leads, and leads teams across media, performance, data and content to give each client one joined-up plan. He brings data, technology and AI into client work early, so they shape the plan instead of staying in the pitch, and he is tasked with growing existing accounts and winning new ones.

The move follows a long run at Motivator, GroupM, where Khan was client partner, digital. There he owned end-to-end strategy and budgets across paid social, e-commerce, influencer and multi-channel digital, built AI-powered tools and concepts for clients, advised them on the shifting media landscape, led new business pitches and negotiated partnerships with emerging platforms. His campaigns included Yamaha’s Riders of Tomorrow, which teamed up with Spotify to reach India’s Gen Z through personalised playlists.

Before that, Khan was chief marketing officer at Vikatan, where he led digital strategy and growth, made Vikatan.com India’s most visited and engaged Tamil news site according to comScore in Jan 2021, scaled digital subscriptions and launched CaaS (Content as a Service). Earlier, he spent nearly a decade at OMD India, rising to vice president, digital, where he led the Bengaluru business and South digital portfolio, and co-authored The Curious Digital Marketer 2.0 with 12 other digital media professionals.

The logic of the hire is easy to read. Agencies are being judged less on the cleverness of the pitch and more on how well data, technology and AI sit inside the plan. A leader who has worked on the agency side, run a media business at Vikatan and handled clients from cars to insurance to chips is well placed to give Tamil Nadu clients a single, joined-up plan. If the brief is growth, Khan has the record to chase it.