Alok Lall joins McCann Worldgroup as executive director

Lall recently quit Iris Worldwide where he was managing director.

Alok Lall has joined McCann Worldgroup as executive director. His responsibility at McCann will be to drive a broader integrated approach for all McCann brands. He will also be responsible for the agency's Delhi business.

Lall replaces Debashis Paul, executive vice-president and general manager of the agency's Delhi branch, who will now head the newly formed outfit, McCann Social.

This will be Lall's second stint at McCann Erickson, where he worked as an account director for a year, from 1996-97.

Lall started his career as an account executive with FS Advertising in 1989, where he worked for three years till 1991. He then moved to DraftFCB Ulka as senior account executive. This was followed by JWT where Lall worked as account supervisor, from 1993 to 1995.

After he left JWT, Lall joined McCann for a year, and then, moved back to JWT, where he worked for about six years before shifting to Saatchi & Saatchi Delhi, as branch head and executive vice-president.

In 2007, Lall co-founded the Indian office of iris worldwide with Stewart Shanley, the agency's global chief operating officer and Kenneth Augustine, creative director, iris India. The agency provides integrated service to companies such as Sony Ericsson, Dell, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Shell, Alpha G Corp, and adidas.

Confirming the development to afaqs!, Prasoon Joshi, executive chairman McCann Worldgroup, says, "In our changing media landscape, Lall's drive towards new age media solutions will add immense value to our offering and expertise."

Paul, who moves to McCann Social, a newly formed outfit, is an old hand at McCann Erickson and has spent more than a decade with the agency. He headed the Delhi branch since 2007. He had joined the agency in mid-2000 as vice-president on the Reckitt Benckiser business. Prior to joining McCann Erickson, he worked with agencies such as Saatchi & Saatchi, Lintas, Grey, and Clarion (now Bates). At Bates, he worked on brands such as Philips, Panasonic, the ITC cigarette brands, Tata Tea and DuPont.

Commenting on his movement, Joshi says that Paul has been keen to explore the social media for some time now. "Socially relevant advertising is an emerging need in the rapidly evolving development sector of our country. And, I can see no one better than Paul to be at the helm of affairs to address this need," says Joshi.

A few weeks ago Jitender Dabaas, who is highly regarded in the industry, had joined as the strategic planning head in Delhi.