Meera Patwardhan
Meera is a strategy consultant who specializes in Branding, Innovation and Creative Thinking, Insight centered Communication Strategy.
Meera is a seasoned advertising specialist having pioneered the account planning function for JWT in the early 1980’s. She spent more than two decades with the company working as a strategic planner. She headed the function first in Delhi, Mumbai and then in SE Asia where she served as Executive Vice President Strategic Planning Director and as Regional Planner for key Unilever brands.
Her experience straddles consumer markets across diverse cultures like India, Thailand, Vietnam and Latin America, across diverse scales and complexities, geographies and categories. She has worked on market entry and brand launches of highly successful brands such as Maggi Noodles, Pepsi, Ford Motor Cars, Kellogg’s breakfast cereals, HP lubricants, Sara Lee, Standard Chartered Bank.
She came back to India in 2004 and worked as a consultant for an independent Indian Advertising agency. Major achievement here was developing and launching I Pill for Cipla- the first consumer facing brand by the pharma major which went on to create a successful business franchise.
In 2007 she Co-Founded a strategic Brand Consultancy- Leapfrog Brand Consulting – which had distinct offerings in Brand Strategy, Brand Innovation and Brand Harmonization across Consumer Experience Journey.
Her unique and compelling model for branding Service businesses and harnessing cross functional teams to ideate and unlock high biz growth opportunities based on a strong brand concept has been successfully applied with Clients such as Aviva Global in Singapore and Axis Bank in India who used this model to develop their Customer Credo.
Her clients for Brand, Innovation and Communication strategy included Raymond’s, Godrej Group, Jet King, and Colgate.
She has run creative thinking workshops for a number of advertising agencies and clients.
She currently works as an independent strategy consultant helping organizations uncover and frame their Core Vision, develop a unique identity based on a deep connection with their stake holders and build an enduring competitive advantage
Her most recent assignment included building a customer centric brand concept for GVK airports in Bangalore and Mumbai.
Meera is a post graduate from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta and is a recipient of the Women’s Achievers Award in 2008 by FLO the women’s wing of the premier industry body FICCI.
She is passionate about brands and creative ideas based on compelling Insights, has strong listening skills and a love for the New.