India has been a bit behind the curve for us: Bruce Haines, Global CSO, Cheil Worldwide

Cheil Worldwide SW Asia has been seeing a lot of people churn in the last few months. While senior resources have been hired to head the verticals like activation - Vikas Khanna, interactive - Rajesh Bhatia and retail - Manish Shukla, it also suffered a setback as the chief operating officer Alok Agrawal announced his plans to quit the agency. The replacement is yet to be announced for Agarwal.

The agency, across the offices, has been trying very hard for some years to move out from the shadow of being identified as an in-house agency of Samsung. When asked about the plans for the agency and the new leadership at the agency, Bruce Haines, Global CSO, Cheil Worldwide shared, “We are currently recruiting for Indian management talent and once we have the right leader in place you will see more progress. “

He added, “ We are anxious to gear up in the global market and have already embarked on an aggressive schedule to hire more local managers and other talent in all our markets. All European markets now have high-level local leaders.”

The agency has Aaron Lau in Greater China brought in through the acquisition of his agency Bravo Asia, and recently it has acquired McKinney in the US. He did agree that India has been a little behind the curve on this, but also added, “we are serious about the market and know it has huge potential for us.”