Joseph George of Mullen Lowe gets global role

George's is the second big elevation of an Indian advertising executive after McCann's Prasoon Joshi was promoted as Asia Pacific head of the agency

Mullen Lowe Lintas Group said it had given additional charge of the South and South East Asia regions to its India chief executive officer (CEO) Joseph George. The role will see him report directly to the global CEO of the Interpublic group agency, Alex Leikikh. He will be designated as regional president of South & South East Asia, even as he retains his India CEO tag.

The elevation will put George, who became CEO in 2011, in charge of eight markets, including Sri Lanka, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Phillipines and Malaysia, beside India.

This is the second big elevation of an Indian advertising executive after McCann's Prasoon Joshi was promoted as Asia Pacific head of the agency, also owned by IPG, last year. The role saw Joshi getting the responsibility of Greater China and Australia, beside India.

In a statement, Leikikh of Mullen Lowe said George was the right choice for a "dynamic" Asian operation. "A key component of his role will focus on tapping into the resources of the robust India operation that he has built up in order to develop our hyperbundled offering across the Southeast Asia markets," Leikikh said.

While consumer goods companies have for long promoted local executives to regional and global roles, the trend has been slower in advertising.

That is beginning to change. Most ad agencies have Indian creative and business executives on their global and regional councils in a bid to get an India perspective to their plans and decisions.

On the media side, the trend has been a little stronger, with a steady steam of executives taking up key regional and even global roles such as Vikram Sakhuja, who was appointed global CEO of GroupM agency Maxus in 2012. He, however, moved on from that position last year, joining Sam-Balsara's Madison Media Group as CEO this year.