Dentsu Comm relaunches 'Citizen Dentsu'

Dentsu Communication announces the relaunch of Citizen Dentsu, a specialized division for social and development sector communication. Recognising the power of specialisation, Citizen Dentsu has been formed as a division of Dentsu Communications to address the unique requirements of the social and development sector, with the support and resource bank of Dentsu Global.

The ambition will be to build Citizen Dentsu as a ‘Centre of Knowledge’ with specialised skill sets and strategic capabilities that would address the specific sectoral requirements and focus on building currency for causes, and thereby deliver value-added communication solutions for social clients.

Says Rohit Ohri, Executive Chairman, Dentsu India Group, “Citizen Dentsu will focus on developing communication for social issues. Social sector communication is unique, in that it has to touch a multiplicity of target audiences and advocacy groups and, therefore, demands unconventional communication devices and unique interactive community media. Our investment is going to be on ‘innovations’, so as to create currency for social issues. I’m delighted to have Rajendra Singh on board to lead this new initiative.”

Arijit Ray, CEO of Dentsu Communications, adds “Social and development sector communication demands talent with a human touch and passion for ‘making a difference’. Therefore, our endeavour has been to put together a team with the right mix of cross-category and cultural learning and passion for social marketing. I am sure Rajendra and his team will strive towards building and crafting simple and breakthrough solutions that will add value to various community groups and stakeholders’

Rajendra Singh has recently joined Citizen Dentsu as Senior Vice President. His last tenure was with JWT, where he worked for 10 years. Apart from a set of mainstream clients, Rajendra headed JWT’s social communications division called Thompson Social for 5 years. He has worked on a multitude of social programmes, from issues like HIV/Aids, Polio, child health and safe motherhood, health and hygiene to causes such as environment, education, food safety & drug usage, safe water and ozone layer, for clients like UNICEF, World Bank, Nike Foundation and various ministries. One area where he has worked extensively is political advertising. Starting with the Congress campaign for the Lok Sabha Elections in 2009, he has handled numerous state elections for the party. He says, “We believe we need to break the mould of traditional advertising and leverage the power of ‘innovation’ for social communication, by employing technology as much as possible. That’s the only way to beat the din and build strong currency for a cause. This is going to be the Citizen Dentsu differential”.

Citizen Dentsu has already helped conceptualise, design and create communication campaigns for diverse social issues.