Image of Kumuda Rao
Jury

Kumuda Rao
Group Executive Creative Director
Leo Burnett, Mumbai

MUMBAI, INDIA // Building brands and creating brand legends is what Kumuda believes her raison d'être in advertising is. And that’s what she’s done over the last couple of decades.

From Mudra DDB, to Ogilvy, Y&R and Leo Burnett, she has worked on almost every cate¬-gory - food, fashion, beauty, laundry, fem-care, automobiles, e-commerce, jewellery and finance. She has handled brands for mega clients such as P&G, Colgate, General Mills, Fiat, Heinz and Amazon across India and the Asia-Pacific region.

Her iconic ‘God’s Own Country’ campaign for Kerala Tourism turned this Indian state into a brand of its own. She launched one of India’s most memorable campaigns for P&G’s Tide and created its enduring brand personality with the use of an iconic white stripe. As the Regional and Global Creative Director for Rejoice, a P&G haircare brand, she developed campaigns for the Asia-Pacific region that explored innovative benefit visualization and developed Effie award-winning communication through music marketing.

Along the way, she has won nominations and awards both nationally and internationally. She was the President of the Print Jury for the Lisbon Ad Fest in its opening year. She has written and directed ad films for the Indian and US market. She turned entrepreneur and opened beach huts resorts in Goa and founded a creative platform, Creative Exchange, for freelancers. But her pride and joy remains all the creative people she has mentored. All are now creative leaders – each one building brands and creating brand legends of their own.