BY JAGDISH ACHARYA
Founder & Creative Head, Cut the Crap
SEA FOOD
It was our agency’s first cheque. I wanted to collect it myself. I went to meet the accountant at the client’s office. He smiled mysteriously at me. “Where are you from, Mr Acharya?” he asked.
“Mangalore,” I said.
“Aaahhh...,” his eyes opened as eyes do when revelation hits. “That’s why... You love sea food that much, eh?” he was grinning. The conversation was getting bizarre but the penny dropped as I looked at the cheque he was pushing towards me across the table. It was drawn in favour of ‘Cut the Crab’.
CITY TOUR
We handle Hills Cements, a client based out of the North-east. We had given the name and a one-word tagline for the brand ‘Taj Cement. Permanent’. After a meeting at the client’s office, the Seth asked his son to drive me around and show me the city of Guwahati. I took it to be Marwari courtesy. The meeting seemed to have gone off well. It was time to relax and do some sightseeing. Just then, Sethji laid his trap.
“Ghoom aaiye. Aur city launch ke liye koi ‘cut the crap’ cheez bataaiye.”
There is no such thing as a free ride, I thought. Sethji’s son went about his job with great enthusiasm: “This is west Guwahati…north-west Guwahati now... I’ll be taking you to North Guwahati…”
I was praying for a spark. If Buddha got enlightenment by just sitting under a tree, surely He would bestow upon me an idea for so many hours of roaming. Finally it flashed. The city was dotted with buildings under construction, most of them 3-4 floors high. The idea was to drape these buildings with a message: “Something permanent is under construction. Taj Cement. Permanent.”
Negotiations were conducted with several builders and more than 50 under construction buildings across the city wore the message for up to 60 days during the launch; giving the impression that everyone everywhere was using Taj Cement. The brand did extremely well, and we had done the ‘cut the crap’ cheez.
NO SHOW
It was our most important pitch. Finally, almost two years after starting the agency, the opportunity to handle a well-known national brand was knocking at our door. We were so excited with the insight we had cracked that we debated the merits of it endlessly, and in its wake, forgot to write the presentation. Just imagine being at a pitch without a Power Point presentation! We tried taking the Vice President into confidence. He told us the CEO was an IIM alumnus and that was it. In due course, in walked the CEO, took his chair at the head of the table in the conference room and stared at the blank screen. I requested him to look at me, not at the screen. He looked annoyed. “No presentation?” he asked. Suddenly something dawned upon him. “But of course... you guys are ‘cut the crap’.” He swung his chair and faced me, all ears. We won the account in the next half hour. The idea was executed as presented and the campaign became a case study in brand revival. But it was our name that had saved us that day. The brand – Livon Hair Serum.
POPAT
Clients do not expect lengthy presentations from us, given our name. Just to prove them wrong, I had requested our planner to work on an elaborate five course presentation for a new client we had just signed on. The MD looked at his team before we began. “I am sure Cut the Crap won’t bore us with long presentations like the agencies normally do!” he said.
NOUN VS. VERB
I ran into this ad film-maker at a coffee shop. When he heard that I had started my own agency, he asked the obvious question, “What’s the name of your agency?”
I said, “Cut the Crap.”
He immediately apologized. “So sorry I asked. You are right, the name really doesn’t matter,” he said.
***
Just when I thought there would be no more incidents and accidents over our name, Asia Society invited me for a convention. All my mails to the director and others at the society started to bounce. Our system maintenance guy took a look and said my mails were being rejected as spam thanks to the word ‘crap’ in the ID. The irony was in the subject of panel discussion I was being invited to: Toilet Adoption in India!
Feedback: jagdish.acharya@cutthecrap.in
