Mihir Sangani exits WPP after a decade at the coalface of media planning

MUMBAI: Ten years is a long time to stay anywhere in advertising, an industry known for its restless churn and shorter attention spans than the campaigns it produces. Sangani has just walked out of WPP’s doors after precisely that stretch, and the send-off he has received says rather more about the quality of his run than any job title ever could.

The arc is a textbook example of an agency growing its own. Sangani joined MediaCom as a management trainee in April 2016, a starting point about as unglamorous as advertising careers get, and simply refused to leave. Over the following eight years he moved through business executive, business manager, senior business manager and group head, each promotion arriving roughly on schedule, each one adding another layer of client trust and campaign expertise. When MediaCom merged into EssenceMediacom, he carried straight on up the ladder, becoming associate business director in 2024 and business director in 2025, a role he held until his departure this July.

What makes the exit worth noting is not the seniority alone but the breadth behind it. A decade spent across annual planning, advertising strategy and team management, absorbing a media landscape that has been rewired repeatedly by digital disruption, platform fragmentation and the rise of programmatic buying, is not a small achievement. Sangani has effectively grown up alongside the very transformation that upended his industry, and by his own account, every setback along the way became fuel rather than friction.

There is also something instructive in how he chose to leave. Public farewells in Indian advertising are often perfunctory, a few lines and a group photo. Sangani’s note reads like genuine gratitude, thanking the leaders who backed him, the colleagues who became friends, and the clients who trusted him with their business. That kind of goodwill is not manufactured, it is earned over years of pitches, deadlines and campaigns that actually worked.

Where he lands next remains to be seen, but a media planner who spent a decade rising through one of the country’s largest agency networks, learning the trade from the ground up rather than parachuting in at the top, is unlikely to be short of options. WPP’s loss looks very much like someone else’s gain.