JWT appoints new CEO for SL and reveals strategy for South Asian region

Tuesday, 28 April 2015 00:56 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Malik Gunatilleke J. Walter Thompson South Asia CEO TarunRairevealed the agency’s plans for the region as well as Sri Lanka and officially announced Alyna Haji Omar as the new CEO of the J. Walter Thompson Group Sri Lanka at an event held last week in Colombo. The newly-appointed CEO will take office in June and will lead J. Walter Thompson Sri Lanka as well as Contract Advertising. She is the third woman to be appointed the Head of the JWT’s Sri Lankan operation. Omar was previously the CEO of Response Marketing which is part of the Grant McCann group of companies.

“With Alyna’s deep insight and understanding of the local market, she is well posed to lead the J. Walter Thompson group in Sri Lanka. Alyne is young and ambitious and with her diverse experience, she will be able to aggressively drive the new growth strategy for the group,” he said. Furthermore, Rai, who was visiting Sri Lanka for the first time since he rejoined J. Walter Thompson this year, conducted a roundtable discussion with the media to reveal the agency’s strategy for the region as well as Sri Lanka in particular. “Colombo for JWT has been a sort of institution. We started out here way back in 1981 and we’ve been here for over three decades. It’s amazing how strong this operation is and there are some real stalwarts who’ve lead the operations here,” he said. Rai, who overlooks JWT’s operations in India, Sri Lanka and Nepal, stated that he was bullish about making JWT the number one agency in Sri Lanka. He announced that JWT South Asia came on top at the recently concluded Goafest 2015 where it won 35 trophies with JWT’s owned Contract Advertising coming in second. The group therefore took home a total of 55 trophies across various award categories. Rai revealed that the global operations for JWT was undergoing lots of positive changes as well which stood well with his personal belief that change is good. “I always believed that change is normally good. Change brings new drive, new energy and with the environment changing, it is an appropriate time to bring in change within the agency,” he said. He also touched upon the organisation’s drive to offer better solutions and a wider range of services in accordance with the growing complexity of client needs. A significant focus has been directed towards digital services. “We are offering clients a full suite of services; a complete holistic platform of communication solutions. We are currently in the top three or four agencies in the country in terms of revenue but are number one in India and Nepal. My objective is to ensure that we become number one in Sri Lanka too within the next three years,” he stated. He added that even JWT’s growth expectations of the region were higher than the other regions in the world and that he was confident the growth in Sri Lanka would gain even more momentum as the situation in the country continues to improve.