Abhijit Avasthi Quits Ogilvy

Avasthi has been leading the agency's creative department as NCD or national creative director, along with his co-NCD Rajiv Rao for the past five years.

Abhijit Avasthi, national creative director, Ogilvy India, has quit. This is perhaps the most high profile 'creative exit' of the year so far.

In a 2009 story, afaqs! reported: "Piyush Pandey (executive chairman and creative director, South Asia, Ogilvy) has decided to hand over the creative throne for India to two long-time creative hands of the agency -- Abhijit Avasthi and Rajiv Rao. However, he continues to oversee the creative output churned out of South Asia."

Since then, Avasthi and Rao have led the creative function at the agency as co-NCDs.

As mentioned in the aforementioned story, Avasthi has a background in engineering -- he completed his studies in 1993. From 1993 to 1997, in his words, he "almost did everything", from working in a steel plant, to preparing dyes for textile design for his father, and even trading in saris. Avasthi was made creative director in 2002; and in 2005, he was designated group creative director. The responsibility of ECD, South Asia followed. As group creative director, he worked on brands like Perfetti, Cadbury, Asian Paints, Bajaj, Motorola, Coca Cola (Sprite and Limca) and Yahoo.

In 1997, he began his career in advertising at Enterprise Nexus (now Bates) as a trainee writer. After two years at the agency, he quit as senior writer and went on to join Ogilvy as creative supervisor.

Watch this space for more.