Kalyanram Challipalli joins TBWA as disruptuion head from today. The position was left vacant after Narayan Kumar left the agency towards the end of 2008.
Shiv Sethuraman, CEO, TBWA India has been on the lookout for the right disruptive mind for a long time. He is glad with the appointment of Challipalli, who comes with nearly eight years of experience in the advertising industry.
Prior to this Challipalli was head, strategic planning at Contract Advertising’s Mumbai office for the past 20 months. This was Challipalli’s second stint with the agency. He joined the agency in 2005 and quit a year later to head the consumer planning and research division at Diageo.
On this new appointment Sethuram said, “Kalyan is a serious practitioner of disruption,” who was keen on bringing aboard someone who doesn’t view disruption as just another planning tool.
Challipalli will be playing dual role. Apart from heading disruption nationally, he will also be the head of planning for the Mumbai office.Sethuram said his mandate will be to drive disruption and make it far more visibly relevant and demonstrate the power of the tool.
Sethuraman feels that though disruption is actively a part of the present brands that TBWA works on, it hasn’t been taken to the next level and he expects Challipalli to do just that.
Challipalli had a brush with copywriting as well in his younger days in Hyderabad, with a local agency.
Of his new journey, Challipalli said, “The aim is to practice disruption with purity and a lot more depth.”