INDIA – BBDO India has appointed Edward Gunn as Head of Planning, Mumbai – a position that will see him working closely with CMOs, brand managers, HR and corporate communication chiefs of the agency’s leading multinational and national accounts like P&G, Visa, Mars, Idea Cellular, Crompton, Racold, Glenmark and Vakrangee.
Ed comes to BBDO India via DDB Mudra and Colenso BBDO.
Ed is a psychology major with planning running in his blood. He started out at an independent agency in New Zealand and then worked for many years in one of the world’s best strategic creative agencies (Colenso BBDO). After which he ran his own creative agency for a couple of years.
As a planner, he has worked for global powerhouses like Samsung, Fonterra, Volkswagen, Gulf, Johnson and Johnson, Pedigree, Mars and Anchor, as well as smaller charities. He’s won an armful of awards – including Cannes Lions, EFFIES and APG global strategy awards.
Ed moved from New Zealand to India in 2017 in order to create strategies and help build creative work that is not only good for the client’s profits, but great for the larger society too.
Talking about his shift to BBDO India, Ed said, “BBDO India becomes a natural fit for this. Their notion of creating Acts Not Ads is perfectly aligned to my own. It’s the exact reason that I decided to move to India and I firmly believe that there is no place on earth that lives and breathes those ideals more than BBDO India. They’ve had a huge amount of success transmitting these values throughout India and the world, and I can’t wait to be at the epicentre of it all with the great Josy, and the wider team. The modern Indian consumer isn’t without a conscience, they know how to vote with their wallets and want to do what they can to make India progress. Brands should have a role within this, and that’s what I want to implement in the most effective and creative way possible”.
Josy Paul, Chairman, BBDO India, added, “Ed represents the wanderer in all of us. His search for cultural truths led him to us, and us to him. That’s the joy of serendipity. His ‘fresh eyes’ will help us open our mind about the world we live in. We are excited to have his ‘international Indian’ heart add value to our deeply local observations. Some may call it diversity, we see it as our third eye.”
