In this excerpt from ad guru Piyush Pandey’s book ‘Pandeymonium’, the author debunks the myth that there is a ‘Piyush touch’ in every piece of communication that leaves the Ogilvy office. Humble to the core, he gives full credit to the bright young people at Ogilvy who have crafted cult ads, but emphasizes that the ad world can’t have a non-playing captain.
In his foreword to Pandeymonium, Amitabh Bachchan calls the book a ‘step-bystep guide to every aspect of advertising’ and ‘the precious lifeblood of a master spirit’. The book, which also has chapters such as ‘The Human behind the Client’ and ‘The Flea in the Tail of a Racehorse’, is engaging, frank and replete with anecdotes that give the reader a peek into the mind and creative genius of Piyush Pandey.
Those who are into cricket will agree that the sheer brilliance of Brian Lara could not make the West Indies win matches. Purely because he did not have a great team like Clive Lloyd did. I am no Brian Lara, but I have always had a great team.
Over the years, one of the biggest exaggerations is that I am involved in every piece of communication that leaves the Ogilvy office. This myth gets underlined each time the agency produces work that is clutter-breaking, hugely popular or wins awards.
Those who are unconnected with the agency will miraculously find a ‘Piyush touch’ in some elements or the other of the communication, even when I have had absolutely no direct contribution to the work. Take Vodafone, for example. My biggest contribution to the excellent work on the brand is the fact that I have never got involved in any creative directly, leaving it to V. Mahesh and Rajiv Rao, and after the unfortunate and tragic death of Mahesh, to Rajiv. My involvement in Vodafone is to be a sounding board to Rajiv when he needs one, to look at the work at critical stages and to offer constructive criticism when I feel the need.
This is true of many accounts. Competent teams do the heavy lifting, while I am available when required. Now, take a beautiful piece of work, where it is easier to believe I had no role to play: the ‘Google Reunion Search’ film. Anyone who knows me is aware of the fact that I do not use the computer, so how on earth would I know the nuances of Google and be able to leverage them? Yet, there are many who see the sensitivity and emotion in the film and say that’s ‘the Piyush touch’.
The truth of the matter is that it is Sukesh Nayak, Abhijit Awasthi and their teams who created the film; my first involvement was when I saw the film. The next contribution was to tell the team to ensure that they had a great track to lift the already brilliant film even higher. Immediately after the film became a runaway hit, many said that the track must have been written by me. Again, I had nothing to do with it; the entire credit goes to its creator, Nilesh Jain. Thank God I was not involved in the film; Sukesh and Abhijit were inspired and charged, and the director was on a roll. The team was so confident that they didn’t care about the unusual length and, finally, the client was so overjoyed that he bought the concept in its entirety and supported it strongly. In instances such as this, I get angry because I feel it is dangerous. If those who deserve the credit and recognition do not get it, they could so easily get demotivated. That’s why I am quick to set the record straight, loud and clear, in public. It’s easier to do so today when we have so many media publications that write about advertising, but it wasn’t always so. For example, while I certainly wrote ‘Har ghar kuch keheta hai’ for Asian Paints, I did not write the next one, which is even more beautiful. The line is ‘Iss ghar mein rotiyaan kabhi ginn ke nahi banti’. Many people started congratulating me for it and I was apologetically insisting that I had nothing to do with it. It was written by Shekhar Jha.
Over time, the moment we produced something brilliant in Hindi, everyone presumed it was my work. The moment it is Hindi, the moment it is emotional, a lot of people tend to believe it is Piyush. There is only so much that I am capable of; the magic of Ogilvy is that there are a whole lot of people who remember brilliant stories from their own experience and use them to create extraordinary advertising for the brands we work on.
Perceptions can also cause one to make bad decisions—and lose out on possibilities. For example, in the early days of my career, if a boy in the creative team had a surname, like, for example, De Souza, I wouldn’t have trusted him with a brand that needed communication in Hindi and would have suggested that he work on a brand like Lakme.
Think of what I would have done: passed a judgement on the capability of a young creative based solely on his name. It didn’t take me too long to learn to reject the name, the physical characteristics, the gender and the regional roots of my colleagues, and to embrace their knowledge and talent alone. Not surprising then that we have a Ryan Mendonca who wrote ‘Bournvita tayyari jeet ki’ and we have a Zenobia Pithawalla writing the brilliant ‘Bell Bajao’ campaign.
I get surprised every day by a colleague who might be Bengali or Malayali, yet narrating a brilliant script in Hindi. Sometimes, their accents may cause me to guffaw, but their insights and use of language surprise me pleasantly.
I could devote an entire book to correcting perceptions, giving credit where it’s due and sharing with you details of the numerous talented individuals who make Ogilvy the great agency that it is. Ogilvy is not Piyush Pandey, never was and never will be. Ogilvy is the sum of many Abhijits, Rajivs, Ajays, Zenobias, Prasoons, Bobbys, Anils, Sonals, Sukeshs and Sumantos who have worked here for whatever period of time. And of course, the many Piyushs.
All I have believed is that unlike tennis, in advertising there is no such thing as a non-playing captain. So, I write and think of ideas like every other creative director does. If I am not scoring runs like my partners are, then I shouldn’t be in the team. And if you are not in the team, how can you be the captain? Like Clive Lloyd, I also score some runs for the team, but then it doesn’t mean I score all the runs. I have my Vivian Richardses, Gordon Greenidges, and a battery of fast bowlers.
DON’T FORGET THE CHILD IN YOU
Cadbury was one of the first accounts that I worked on, but the brand wasn’t Cadbury Dairy Milk. I was working on Bournvita, which wasn’t the most exciting of brands, and in those days, certainly not one that was invigorating creatively. Most of the work was tactical, involving schemes (‘get a mug free’) and events (athletic contest, quiz contest).
Yet, I loved going to the Cadbury office. Cadbury occupied an entire colonial building on Peddar Road. One entered the building, stunned by well-maintained and polished wooden furniture, and by the carpets and the paintings on the wall. The products were all products everyone was familiar with and the company was one with a great reputation. In fact, in my earlier days, I had applied for the post
of management trainee at Cadbury, only to be rejected. The Cadbury business, especially Bournvita, was very important to Ogilvy. The account had been with Ogilvy since 1948; even now, Bournvita is our oldest continuing account.
In 1993, I was promoted to head creative at the Bombay office, and had not yet worked on a Cadbury Dairy Milk account. A series of events and circumstances however would ensure that I would handle the Cadbury account much sooner than any one of us in Ogilvy thought.
In 1993, my brother Prasoon, his wife and I had gone on a holiday to the US to spend Diwali with my sister who lived in Michigan. While there, we used the Michigan house as our base as we did the usual things tourists are supposed to do. The first trip was to Disney World in Orlando. We packed light and off we went. We had a fantastic time in Disneyland, experiencing all the rides that we could afford.
From Orlando, we went to San Francisco, where we met my sister-in-law’s uncle. He was seventy years old, and had recently undergone an angioplasty. He asked us whether we had tried a particular ride. When we said that we had, he said that he, too, had tried it and loved it when he had been to Disney a couple of months earlier. Some bells rang in my brain. A couple of months earlier? That would have been immediately after he had his stents put in—and I remembered that the ride was not recommended for anyone with a heart condition. When I asked him why he had tried the ride, he chuckled, saying that he wanted to check if the doctors had done their job well, and whether his heart would be able to take the excitement of the ride after the angioplasty.
The next day, we went to a toy store to pick up presents for Prasoon’s son. We walked into a huge store, crowded with toys and customers. As we looked around, I saw a toy car emerge from under a table. Seconds later, a couple, both at least eighty years old, crawled out from under the table, chasing the toy car on all fours, laughing unabashedly. That image was instantly imprinted in my mind.
From San Francisco, we went to Hawaii. As soon as we checked into the hotel, I received a message that I should contact my sister urgently. When I did, she told me that Ranjan Kapur, my managing director, had called and wanted me to return to India immediately. I called Ranjan, only to learn that Cadbury was very unhappy with our work on Dairy Milk and had decided to put the account up for pitch. I didn’t even have the time to pick up my luggage from Michigan (all I had in Hawaii were shorts and T-shirts).
My sister bought me a fresh ticket and I got on the flight, ruminating on the brief that Ranjan had given me. What was the brief? Simple. Cadbury wanted adults to eat chocolates. As I kept thinking about the brief, the only images I could see were of a seventy-year-old man with a heart condition on a dangerous ride and an eighty-year-old couple crawling on all fours behind a battery-operated car. Those images refused to go away. By the time the flight landed in Bombay, I had the campaign clearly thought through, and a song written at the back of my boarding card.
The lesson I learnt was that nobody rejuvenates the child in you like Disney does. They come up with human stories that touch parents and children alike. They have the purity of a child’s thinking, and messages which are woven without preaching.
My brother Prasoon and I were lucky that Lalit Modi (who then had the franchise for Disney in India) asked us to adapt Aladdin and The Lion King in Hindi. I think we were reborn when we worked on these projects. The waiter in the hotel where we were working must have thought that these two grown-ups had gone mad—all we did was watch animation films, laughing, crying, taking notes and drinking beer. We were practically reliving our childhood and adapting it for India.
What did I learn from the Cadbury experience? Or from Disney for that matter? Don’t let the child in you die. He or she is the genius. You are not.
[Extracted with permission from Penguin Books India Pandeymonium, Piyush Pandey on Advertising Hardback, Pages 244; Rs 799]
