Leo without the Burnett is still brimming with creative ambition

An in-flight chat with an Australian doctor helped Rajdeepak Das, chief creative officer at Publicis Groupe South Asia and chairman at Leo South Asia, articulate the unique advantage his team holds. His co-passenger claimed that he treated six to 10 patients a day.

Das drew a sharp contrast with his father, a government doctor in India who once treated over a hundred patients a day. The sheer volume, he explained, wasn’t just a matter of necessity in a country of 1.4 billion—it became his father’s greatest training ground. With each passing day, diagnosis turned from skill to instinct. “That’s how you learn to think faster, connect the dots faster,” he said.

It’s a philosophy Das sees mirrored at Leo India. “We have 150 brands, out of which literally 100 are on fire all the time. So, you are jumping in from one to another to understand what's happening,” he said.

That rapid immersion, across sectors, clients and problems, makes for not just agile thinking, but unusually layered solutions. And in a year where Leo Burnett globally sheds its surname to become just ‘Leo’, this hyper-functioning Indian node is being reoriented as a key cog in the agency’s global creative engine.

The question is: in a post-name world, will Leo India get to lead radical campaigns or simply produce them?

Shedding a legacy, retaining the essence

Leo Burnett, a name long associated with persuasion, iconography, and Mad Men-era romanticism, is now just Leo. But neither Das nor Amitesh Rao, CEO–South Asia at Publicis Groupe, see this as dilution. For them, it’s a unification strategy—one that reflects speed, agility, and clarity.

Das insists that clients “don’t really care about what’s happening in the back end… What matters is they are seeing the same people solving great solutions for them.” The emotional capital, he argues, lies not in the name, but in the relationships, solutions, and results.

Rao supports this with cold metrics: “We’ve had an absolutely amazing 2024. Growth far exceeded industry averages. Profitability and efficiency are up. And we’ve invested heavily in planning, technology and capability over the last 12 to 15 months.” The change in name isn’t a new coat of paint—it’s the culmination of structural changes already underway.

Impact over impressions: Creativity with a business core

Rao and Das make it clear that the Leo of today isn’t chasing creativity for the sake of awards alone. While the agency racked up over 50 global awards last year—including Cannes Lions and Spikes Asia—Rao is focused on embedding creative work in business ecosystems. He believes that clients are not looking at work that is just good to have and will only win awards. They’re looking at how it will drive overarching business goals.

A case in point is Leo’s work for PepsiCo India, which didn’t stop at campaign slogans. It started with ‘Smart Farm’, tackling sustainable farming, followed by ‘Biochar’ to combat stubble burning. Then came ‘Drops of Joy’, a water reclamation initiative from Lay’s potato frying processes, and the gender-forward ‘Farm Equal’. Now, Das says, “We’re working on something called ‘Working with the soil again’ aimed at improving soil health,” which ties into PepsiCo’s Positive Agriculture initiative.

This isn’t campaign-thinking; it’s system-solving. “Our job is not to only create the most creative campaign but mostly how can we make it solve the business solution,” Das added. The agency’s metric of success is not virality—but long-term, measurable business transformation.

Rewriting the global playbook

Having secured global mandates for brands like PepsiCo and P&G, and added Reckitt, ITC, SRF, Birla, and Pfizer to its roster in the past few months, Leo India is increasingly positioning itself as the network’s creative hub. But that raises a familiar concern: will India become a volume-production backend?

Rao doesn’t shy away from the country’s economic advantage. “Yes, we are a labour economy, and yes, we can do things faster, cheaper and at scale.” But he’s quick to add, “India is also home to some of the best minds in the world, in technology, in finance, in creativity.”

What distinguishes Leo’s ambition is the confidence to export strategy and storytelling—not just execution. “We are confident that we can solve a problem for somebody in China or Dubai or Brazil or the US. When you walk into that belief system, the world is open to you,” Rao asserts.

Recognition helps. The agency ranked No. 1 globally on the 2025 WARC Effective 100. At the Effie India Awards 2025, it clinched the Grand Effie for its ACKO’s ‘Health Insurance Ki Subah Ho Gayi Mamu’ campaign and walked away with a total of 37 metals—4 Gold, 14 Silver, and 19 Bronze—for work across brands like Spotify, Lay's, Gatorade, Ikea, Oreo, Quaker, redBus, and Whisper.

“A lot of the growth is coming from us going to other markets. Last year, we had significant success in the Middle East, China, and Southeast Asia,” Rao said.

Leo India’s upcoming work reflects this global-local duality. From Whisper’s campaign about declining puberty ages among girls (from 19 years in the 60s to 8 years now), to Oreo’s ‘History in the Baking’, and a new sustainability-led initiative for Lay’s, the creative work is designed to resonate both emotionally and intellectually.

The team is also working on campaigns for Cathay Pacific and Mountain Dew, an indicator of its expanding regional and global footprint.

Not just talent, but talent systems

If there's one word Rao returns to often, it’s “culture.” Growth, he says, is not an objective, but an outcome—of people and systems. “Most companies drive growth for the sake of growth. At Leo, growth is a result of better work. And better work is a result of great talent and culture,” he emphasises.

To build this culture, Leo uses a 60:40 approach—60% of its workforce are insiders who understand the system; 40% are outsiders who bring raw thinking. The mix allows for both continuity and creative abrasion.

Contrary to industry hand-wringing about Gen Z, Das calls them Leo’s “massive talent pool,” of who many have stayed for seven years or more. “We train someone who has been in the system for long, so they understand Leo’s vision and culture… that way we have a long tail of leadership team,” Das explains.

Leo’s secret sauce to retaining this capricious Gen Z talent sounds simple—catch ‘em young and give them wings to soar. “If you're talented, you're going to do well, and we're going to empower you to do well,” Rao says. Hierarchies are flat, with even junior talent leading pitches. “Our attrition rate when it comes to young people is way better than most other creative companies,” he added.

Short-term metrics versus long-term thinking

One of the biggest pressures creative agencies face today is reconciling short-term, performance-led metrics with the slower, deeper work of brand-building. Das doesn’t deny the tension, especially when briefs are increasingly geared toward immediacy.

But Leo’s approach is to align creativity with business relevance. “We constantly start to solve year after year,” he says, referring to the long-haul relationships the agency builds—like with PepsiCo India or P&G’s Whisper. This creates a rhythm of strategic continuity, not just episodic storytelling.

With 150 brands on its roster—legacy giants like Tata, P&G, Bajaj Auto alongside new-age disruptors like Spotify and Flipkart—the ability to switch mental gears is not just a skill, but a core capability. “You are operating in a plug-and-play model, only faster,” Das explains. “Because your brain is operating like a machine, at an amazing speed.”

The human side of decentralised creativity

Even as Leo moves away from personality-led structures to team-based models, there’s still the challenge of providing a strong, visible face to clients who expect it. It’s a paradox in a business where relationships drive decision-making.

Rao isn’t worried. “We’re not a top-heavy personality-led culture. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have leaders. It means leadership is distributed, visible at every level. If someone is just two years into the business, but has the spark, they’ll lead a pitch.”

The safety net? “We tell them, if you fall, we’ll back you. That’s why they stay.”

Leo India’s rebranding is more than cosmetic. It reflects a deep, structural shift in how the agency approaches creativity, business, and talent. Under Rao and Das, the agency is building a scalable, exportable model of high-impact creativity—rooted in business outcomes, driven by young talent, and shaped by global ambition.

As the Leo brand goes mononymic, the India office isn’t just keeping pace—it’s setting the rhythm. The real test will be whether the world sees India not as a creative factory, but as a strategic brain trust. If the last year is any indication, Leo isn’t just chasing global mandates—it’s preparing to lead them.