GroupM Sri Lanka welcomes Arshad Ahamed as Director Strategy

Arshad Ahamed has joined GroupM as Director Strategy with over 13 years of experience in the industry both locally and internationally. 

He has worked in multinational agencies and corporates in Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Bahrain, and Sri Lanka.
His experience and expertise span across pharmaceutical, apparel, media, and consulting sectors delivering strong business growth by driving award-winning marketing campaigns, digital transformation, strategic portfolio focus, upskilling, deep segmentation, and hyper-targeting projects.

Arshad was the Senior Strategic Planner at J. Walter Thompson (now Wunderman Thompson) in charge of strategic planning for all clients across FMCG, Banking, F&B and Telecommunications before moving out to join the MAS Bodyline innovation team as Business Entrepreneur.

 At MAS his mandate was to scope new usage opportunities within the rapidly evolving lifestyles of women in western markets. He then moved on to co-founding the digital marcom consultancy Innovation Quotient where he served as Head of Strategy, Planning & Insight.  Later he exited to join GSK Pharmaceuticals Sri Lanka as Manager Digital Transformation where he took the operation from having no digital marketing infrastructure to having a fully integrated suite of multichannel marketing platforms which was on par with global markets within 7 months. He then took over a regional role for Malaysia and Indonesia GSK APAC as Portfolio Marketing Manager.

Arshad holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Bedfordshire, UK and a Post Graduate Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK. During his tenure at J. Walter Thompson, he played a pivotal role in many of the campaigns that won awards at Effies, while he was the recipient of many talent recognition awards as well. When he moved to GlaxoSmithKline, he was the recipient of global talent recognition awards every year.  GroupM is Sri Lanka’s market leader and the largest media consolidation company with over 20 years’ presence in the Sri Lankan media industry. GroupM is the world’s leading media investment management firm, a WPP company and is the parent company to the agencies Mindshare, Wavemaker, Mediacom, Essence & m/SIX. 

“My goal is to lead GroupM through its next stage of transformation by synergizing and leveraging 20 years of locally developed, globally accepted statistical analyses of traditional media, our suite of propriety digital planning & buying tools (Xaxis View, Display, Native), soon-to-launch multi-screen attribution models powered by AI and ML, and industry the industry-leading reengineered ways-of-working aligned to GroupM Global (the world’s largest media investment company), to deliver greater value to our clients through every stage of the GroupM Sri Lanka Chief Operating Officer Sabry Haniz believes that the unique skill set, and the vast experience of Arshad will help transform consumer experiences and grow GroupM’s offerings to match the expanding client demands in the post-pandemic new-normal.

“We’re excited to have Arshad on board as Director Strategy at the time where both media landscape and consumer touch points have rapidly evolved since the start of the pandemic, it has become increasingly important to grow our offering to match the expanding client demands.