Commonwealth takes on board Rajesh Mani as ECD

Mani, who moves in from Leo Burnett, has worked on some memorable projects such as Zoozoos, BlackBerry Boys and HDFC Life.

Rajesh Mani has been appointed as executive creative director at the Commonwealth Mumbai Hub. He moves in from Leo Burnett.

Mani joined Leo Burnett in May, 2011 and was working on a mixed bag of brands including Bajaj Electricals, Tata Capital, Tashi, HPCL and Vedanta, among several others.

Mani says, "Leo Burnett was a leap of faith and at Ogilvy I worked on one of the best brands in the country - Vodafone. Commonwealth offered an exciting prospect of working on one of the biggest car brands in the world at a global level and a rare opportunity to interact and imbibe from the best in the business - Prasoon Joshi, Jeff Goodby, Linus Karlsson and Washington Olivetto. On a global platform like Commonwealth, it is important to understand the finer points of cross-cultural communication challenges and pegging ideas on simple human truths that are geography-agnostic."

In an official communiqué, Prasoon Joshi, chairman and chief creative officer, McCann Worldgroup India and president, South Asia, says "Rajesh Mani has tremendous experience and talent, which will further strengthen the operation. I am positive that Mani will be instrumental in creating and delivering stellar quality work."

Mani, who has about 12 years of experience, has worked across an array of brands. One of his recent ads is the BlackBerry Boys television commercial, which he co-created with Rajiv Rao, national creative director, Ogilvy. He has worked on Hutch (before Vodafone UK bought Hutch) caller tunes, Vodafone 60p/minute film, and the global launch of Lenovo X300 laptops through a commercial titled 'The Flying Sumos'. He was also a part of the core team that launched Zoozoos.

Apart from Ogilvy, he has worked with agencies such as Temple Advertising in Bengaluru, where he worked on Sun Microsystems, Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, TVS Motors, Kurlon Home Furnishings, Scullers and Indigo Nation. He has also worked with Rediffusion-Y&R in Bengaluru, on McDowells Signature Whisky and Airtel regional business.

In Mumbai, Mani has worked with Triton Communications. At Triton, he handled brands such as Fevicryl, Tata Home Finance, Eureka Forbes, Fortune Sunflower oil, Millennium Alcobev (Shaw Wallace Company), Dilip Chhabria Designs (DC), as well as MAPP.

For the record, Commonwealth is a 50:50 joint venture between San Francisco-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, an Omnicom Group company, and New York-based McCann Erickson Worldwide, an Interpublic Group company.