Lubna Khan quits JWT to join Grey, Malaysia

Grey Group Malaysia recently appointed Lubna Khan as head of planning to manage strategically driven work across disciplines in line with Grey Group’s ‘Famously Effective’ global core mandate.

Prior to joining Grey, Khan held the post of associate vice president and strategic planning director at JWT, where she led the Nestle chocolate portfolio which included Kit Kat, Munch, Milky Bar and Bar One. She also managed the entire innovation and new product development portfolio for GlaxoSmithKline consumer healthcare. She was also senior planning director at Cheil Worldwide Inc, Samsung’s global agency. She looked after strategic planning across all categories for Samsung: televisions, home appliances, mobile phones, laptops, IT infrastructures and cameras at Cheil. In addition she has held senior planner roles at Wunderman and Y&R, which collectively exposed her to a diverse set of categories and partnering with organisations like Nestle, GlaxoSmithKline, Samsung, Kao, Microsoft, Nokia, LG and the Government of India.

Khan holds a double master’s degree in psychology, with a major in science and arts. Her professional journey began as a cognitive behavioural therapist working on sexual and reproductive health issues with patients. She also worked on change behaviour for coping with HIV/AIDS. This led her to co-author a book on strategic communications for HIV/AIDS that still serves the Government of India as core reference even after several years it was published. Khan has also been recognized by WPP’s Atticus Awards in 2011 for her work in the area of Innovation Strategy. She was awarded a Highly Commended for her paper that argues for a shift to a more task based approach to customer needs.

“Malaysia is a critical market for us – it’s ASEAN’s second most dynamic country in terms of operating business and financing environment for growing businesses. In the last 20 years, Malaysia has gone from consuming technology to producing technology. Within a remarkably short timeframe, the country has become a creative and innovative hub for information and communications technology creation. It’s a fast evolving economy and Grey has a strong presence in the market as well as across the region – 2013 marks our 50th anniversary in Asia. We are committed to delivering breakthrough solutions for our client’s brands – ideas that make our clients and us famous,” explained Dheeraj Sinha, Chief Strategy Officer, South & South East Asia. “Lubna has both ability and experience in building sharp insights and delivering them in an integrated approach. She makes a good mix of intuition and rigour. Apart from adding value to our current set of businesses and our new business initiatives, her role involves running thought leadership projects and championing our effectiveness agenda. I’m confident that Lubna will help us up the temperature of our creative thinking in the market,” he added.

“I’m excited to be at Grey because there is a clear desire to push the quality of work in a way that generates tremendous impact for clients, consumers and in culture. Culture shifting ideas are at the heart of integrated thinking and inspire all that we create. And a thriving, complex and multidimensional market like Malaysia is, in my opinion, a great environment to bring to life ‘famously effective’ work,” said Khan.