Secret Diary Of A CEO 2017

"Do what you feel like and not what makes you comfortable"

Secret Diary of Piyush Pandey

  • I am here because of My family
  • What I believe in most My roots
  • My strength and weakness People
  • Always looking for Ideas that touch people’s lives
  • Lump in my throat Hearing the national anthem at Rashtrapati Bhavan
  • Bliss moment Time with my wife in Goa or anywhere
  • Worst time The day I lost my mom
  • Most important decision Joining advertising knowing nothing about it
  • The biggest mistake To think Ranji Trophy was a goal and not an opportunity
  • My biggest gratification When my young colleagues do better than me
  • Most peaceful moment A drink with my wife after making up!
  • My sounding board Prasoon Pandey, my brother
  • Success to me is Winning the last game. Back to batting on zero now
  • What I tell the younger flock Chase your passion
  • What I dream of The great India story

***

Born into a household after seven girls meant I ended being both pampered and a brat. Thanks to the substantial age gap, at times I did feel like I had eight mothers — seven surrogate! My sisters played a huge role in giving me not just what they had but also what they did not get. All my sisters went to government-run Hindi-medium schools, but it was on their insistence that I went to St Xavier’s School in Jaipur. It’s hard for me to forget what Uma, the third eldest sister whom we lost early, did for me. Be it ironing my clothes or getting my hair done, she was always there for me. At the same time, she was a tough customer too.

I had reason to be reprimanded at least five times a day. I would be beating up someone in the neighbourhood or stealing fruits from a tree. Even in school, I was not easy to manage. The diary would always have remarks in red and, I think, there was an expectation that I would always be in trouble. My sisters groomed me and would often sign the diary, only to see me go back to my mischievous ways.

Boy, it’s such a joy growing up in a large family. I enjoyed the odd balance of being pampered and yet being treated like any other child. There were no expensive toys and we all ate what we were given. Working in a cooperative bank meant, dad got to travel to small places for giving out loans to farmers or to collect what had been lent. He travelled in a Willy’s jeep and as an eight-year old, on occasions, I too used to tag along.

I vividly remember his long hours and him bringing files back home. But despite the responsibility of a large family and a hectic work life, dad loved poetry and literature, especially the lighter side of it. My school used to have elocution contests and once my father taught me the Mira ka vishpan poem, which was quite intense. He sat with me and I learnt the style of recitation and delivery from him. I executed it so flawlessly and yet, I lost, as the teachers did not understand a word! My father kept my spirits up by saying that I would do better next year. Next time, I got a gold medal. The poem, “Idhar bhi gaddhe hain, udhar bhi gaddhe hain, jidhar dekhta hoon, gaddhe hi gaddhe hain,” was a political satire. It spoke about how inappropriate people become leaders and the common man gets nothing at the end of it. My father was a repository of poetry. He was, in particular, a huge fan of Harivansh Rai Bachchan and Kaka Hathrasi, though I never saw him writing.

My dad was neither an optimist nor a cynic. He was quite cool, but there was no question of being lenient. If I beat up my brother, who is seven years younger, or fought with my sisters, he thrashed me. My mother too felt the pressure but she had a “life goes on” attitude. She was clear that she paid the fees and had eight other children to take care of. She told the teachers to punish me if I behaved badly. In her mind, 9 AM to 3 PM was the responsibility of the school. Today, parents are obsessed about the well-being of their child. In those days, there was a lot of trust and it was normal to get caned. I had a Hindi teacher called Mrs Sinha. One day she compared my naughtiness to Hanuman's. “If someone puts you on the constructive path, you can create magic. If you want to be destructive, you can be very destructive.” It was a lovely way of putting across the fact that I was not using my abilities in the right fashion.

In Class V, I had my own cycle and would often go double to school with my brother. By 11, cycling down for picnics with a group of 30 other pranksters was a normal thing to do. On occasions we would travel to a spot 35 km away in the middle of a mountain. I cannot recall one occasion when my mother was crazily protective — she just let me be.

That journey from my childhood taught me a valuable lesson of being allowed to grow up, in your own way. Without a word being uttered, the voice said, “Go ahead and play. We are backing you.” In later years, I imbibed that lesson in my working style — I do not want to control my colleagues and certainly not the younger lot. They are like trapeze artists and I am the net. If they fall, I am there.

***

While I was not good at school, I was in love with cricket. My cricket coach in school was Nariman Marshall. A chain-smoking Parsi gentleman, Marshall was in the Indian team that went on that famous tour to England in 1932. A big area of interest for him was technique. He detested the sweep shot, which he thought was cross-batted. If you played the shot, you had to come to the nets an hour early at 2:30 PM with a jhaadu. The punishment was to sweep the ground for an hour. “No sweeping in my net” was his firm warning. If he had watched the reverse sweep today, he would have died.

My dad, though, did see a little bit of my academic success. I scored 53% in HSC and wanted to study at St Stephen’s in Delhi, where the cut-off was 75%. My parents let me go to Delhi, knowing fully well that there was no way I would get in. I am sure they did not want me to complain later saying, ‘I wasn’t given a chance.’ My admission to the BA course was on the basis of my stint in cricket and my parents were surprised, to say the least.

At St Stephen’s, my passion for cricket just consumed me. My father was worried about my obsession and always asked what I would do to feed myself. “Eat a bat?” was his sarcastic question. Yet, when I was selected to play for Ranji Trophy, he bought me a transistor. I remember a match that I was playing at Ajmer and had hit the bowler for three successive boundaries. I tried it again and promptly got out. After I reached home, his reprimand was quick, Woh shot khelne ki kya zaroorat thi?

Though I didn’t break any cricketing records, in the first year, I did top the university. It was a record of sorts since it was for the first time in 17 years that there was a First Division in the college and a topper as well. I was in Jodhpur with my father’s older brother, who was more like my granddad, when the results were announced. My friend, Om Prakash Pahadia saw the results and told my parents that I had topped the chart. They were in disbelief and asked him if he had seen it properly! Pahadia lived in central Delhi and the poor guy went back by motorcycle in the hot summer to check the result again!

My days at St Stephen’s were fabulous and also resulted in some lasting bonds. My longest association has been with Bhoot, whose real name is Anil Kumar. We were together from Class II all the way to our postgraduation and worked for the same company in Calcutta too. Imagine the guy’s plight when the principal at St Stephen’s also called him Bhoot! At St Stephen’s, Bhoot and I were a handful. We were really good at it! There was a fashion show that Bombay Dyeing had sponsored. We stole the collection and the models walked the ramp in their own clothes. The excuse given was that there was a mishap. The clothes were found on the Principal’s roof but we did eventually confess. Once we took a Baraat to our principal’s house as he had a pretty daughter! Mr Kapadia was a great sport. He called us in and served us tea. We used to wear scary masks and spook students. Every time, something happened in college, the talk was that it had to be Bhoot and Pandey.

From college, my close friends have been Arun Lal, the ex-cricketer, with whom I speak twice a day and Amrit Mathur, who is the manager of the Indian cricket team. While I have made friends at different points in time, they were all long-lasting. They have always been there for me. If I had good news to share, like a promotion, they got happy and would say, “This is not the end of it but just the beginning.” They always egged me on to achieve more. They were great motivators but were unsuccessful in getting me to stop smoking!

Arun Lal, who was my senior, always said we should work together and that was the only way to be in touch. He got a job in Calcutta and passed on my CV to his employers, Tea Manufacturing & Marketing Company, a part of the Goodricke Group. They liked it and I was on board.

In Calcutta, I became a tea taster and that was fun. Though I was a smoker, it never came in the way of my job as a tea taster. It’s just a myth. The palate has to be clear 15 minutes before tea tasting. As an apprentice one had to just follow and observe what the taster did. The process was simple. The taster used to taste a tea leaf and then spit it out. One had to take note and taste the leaf after him. Over time, you get the hang of it. There is no course for this and you learn it on the job. We were young kids in Calcutta just having fun and just hoped that we were right. Apart from Arun and Amrit, Vece Paes, Leander’s father was also with us.

One evening in Calcutta, I met a friend from college, Debnath Guha Roy, who was then working for Hindustan Thompson. Arun and his wife Veena had been to Roy’s house and seen his work. During a casual conversation, Arun said, “Buddy, I saw these ads at Debnath’s house. You come up with ten lines that are better than this every day in normal conversation. I think you should give advertising a shot.”

Soon, Debnath took me to meet Mr Ghosal (HTA’s big boss then) and that’s when I got to know what is advertising. The only smart thing I ever did was to say one thing to myself — since I have started three years later, I will not work in Calcutta. I will go to Bombay where advertising is practised the best. That brought me to the maximum city and I started looking for a job for three - four months.

***

I joined O&M as a trainee account executive and, in hindsight, I learnt it was most important to do what you feel like and not what makes you comfortable. In Calcutta, I had a well-furnished chummery and ate multi-course meals. In Bombay, my salary was one-third of my former salary but I was enjoying myself. In that sense, life is about what you feel like doing. In Calcutta, I had a small Herald car. There was no chance of that here and I sold it before moving. Once I moved, I stayed with my sister, Ila Arun at Santacruz. My starting salary at O&M was Rs 2,000 and Rs 200 was deducted as PF.

But the break came with its fair share of drama. I was introduced to Ranjan Kapur, the-then deputy MD, through a family friend. He was honest when he said there were no vacancies at O&M but he was willing to refer me to other agencies. The meeting progressed and Ranjan kept flipping through my CV. He then asked me to wait for a minute and said Mani Iyer, the-then MD, would meet me the next day. My CV, in all honesty, was damn impressive. Someone advised me to always have a job in hand. Therefore, once I came here, I joined a construction company where I would spend two hours each day. I did nothing much except having lunch there!

The issue was I had three years of work experience. I did not know anything about advertising and maybe O&M did not know where to fit me. I met Iyer for a while and he asked me all kinds of questions. The last one was quite pointed. “You have been a cricketer, tea taster and also worked in a construction company. What is the guarantee that a year later you will be with us?” In all fearlessness, I said, “What is the guarantee that you will keep me for a year? But chances are I will.” I don’t know where it came from. Iyer gave me the job and 35 years on, I am still here.

Being a people’s person, I had fun in client servicing. I joined Ogilvy in 1982 and worked on the Sunlight detergent powder account. The brand was launched in December that year. My client, Hindustan Lever’s office was right behind mine. There were a lot of meetings and I soon got friendly with the people there and that helped.

When you enter the building at Levers, you had to register yourself. The moment I was spotted, they would recognise me and say, Pandeysaab, dekha nahin aapko do din se and I would be in. Once they stopped the Brooke Bond marketing team from Bangalore but there was no such protocol for me.

There used to be a young girl working in O&M then who would travel on the same bus with Jeroo Ghaswalla, who dispersed cheques at Hindustan Lever. Each time my collections were due (payments were made 30 days after bills were submitted), Ms Ghaswalla would send word through that girl (Lynn de Souza) asking me to come over. I would take the trouble of saying hello to Ms Ghaswalla and ask her about her family. These little things make a big difference.

Client servicing gave me that karna hai attitude. If a guy was in trouble, one had to help him. Even then, the O&M team would want to be different. Iyer and Ranjan would speak of executives from HTA and Lintas being in ties and jackets for a client meeting. They would say O&M was not like that. “We are a Boy Scout agency that rolls up our sleeves and work,” was their line. I liked it and still maintain that one should be formal when it comes to thinking and not by way of dressing.

My brand manager and client was one Rajkumar Mitta. I was in his office for a meeting one day and it seemed like he was having a hard day. He walked into his room and closed the door really hard. In the process, I was hurt. In the contact report, that the agency executives filed at the end of a meeting, a copy of which went to his boss, I wrote, “Client hit agency on the head” and the action point was —agency to revert.

We were a young bunch of people at the agency and Hindustan Lever. We grew up together and these friendships have lasted a lifetime. Be it Micky Pant, Ravi Dhariwal, Vindi Banga or Harish Manwani, they are all very dear to me and are family. I still think of all those product launches, working with them late into the night. It was just the client and the agency.

There were great moments with them. If Micky and I were ever on a bus or train, we would have been thrown out. I have lost count of the number of times on a flight when we were laughing too loudly followed by passengers complaining. Micky is a gold mine of jokes and we continue to share them. Even today, we laugh like maniacs.

Initially, Harish and I worked on a campaign for Le Sancy soap. There was a template from HLL, which was really boring and none of us felt like doing it. Between Harish and me, we changed the rules of the game and did some fantastic advertising. We first told the international guys that this was an Indianised version of your ad. We came up with a line called Rahul, paani chala jaayega. The international ad had the father and mother coming into the bathroom with the kids playing in the tub. The voiceover says — paani mein daalne se saabun nikal jaata hai. Le Sancy - shower mein bhi chalein, basin mein bhi chalein aur tub mein bhi chalein, khoob chalein, chalta jaye. We retained just the khoob chalein, chalta jaye line. We had a story and Harish helped me beat the system.

Vindi is a very dear friend and we launched Sunlight together in Delhi. We were in the midst of distributing ladoos to dealers when the news broke that Indira Gandhi had been assassinated. Being a turbaned Sardar, he removed his turban right after the riots broke out and was lucky to get out alive.

When my father died in Jaipur, I was on an HLL market visit in Delhi. When the news came, they immediately organised a car with a driver and instructed that I be provided food on the way. I reached home and there was an HLL guy with a packet of money. Though I did not take it, it is a gesture I will never forget.

***

In the early days in Bombay, I played cricket for Ogilvy. There was no team and I had to put it together. It was picking up guys who had played some cricket here and there. The inter-agency cricket tournament was what we played for. All the matches were on Saturdays. The hitch was Shunu Sen, marketing head at HLL, had his meetings on that day. I decided to take my chances. Shunu was a lovely man who did not scare anyone yet everyone was afraid of him. I went to his secretary and asked for time to meet him. In all fearlessness (yet again), I said, “Mr Sen, I have a problem and I need your help.” He listened to the bit on the cricket match. I offered to come to his office at 7 AM. “I can meet you on Sunday also but please excuse me on Saturday,” was my enthusiastic line. He very slowly responded, “Go play your match boy. You are not so important that I will call you on a Saturday?” Obviously, I was thrilled.

My relationship with him lasted even after he quit HLL to start Quadra Advisory. He would call and ask for a showreel of what I thought was the best advertising for his presentation. It was a great relationship that lasted till his last breath.

The shift from client servicing to creative was completely by chance. At that point, my colleagues in servicing were working with creative partners who were English writers. A client, Bajaj Tempo, wanted work in Hindi though. Often, I would be asked by the guys in office to do some work in Hindi. I happily did it without realising it would soon change my life.

It all began when Sunlight brand had just gone national and my boss, Chintamani Rao, knew what lay ahead. He just said, “Tu likh le”. That night I wrote three campaigns and presented it to the client. HLL loved it and asked me to congratulate the creative team. There was no way I could say it was my work and I just nodded my head. Once the campaign took off, I told my client head, “You bastard, I wrote it.” He was stunned. That was enough for Suresh Mullick, O&M’s national creative director to ask me to join his team.

Suresh and Iyer created a cell that I was to head. That meeting was all about telling me there was an opportunity. I was unsure since I certainly did not want to be stamped as a translator. Suresh said he wanted me to be copy chief for Indian languages. I asked for a day.

Nothing is ever achieved in life without a bit of audacity. The following morning I met Suresh, I was account supervisor after four years. “Does this move mean I will never be NCD?” was all I asked. Suresh said, “No” and I ended up saying “yes”. My logic was I did not want to be stamped as a Rajasthan administrative service officer compared with an IAS officer. It was a gutsy question to ask then.

The situation was also slightly tricky since they had to give me accounts that somebody else was handling. The plan was to give me very Indian accounts. They asked the team what they wanted to give up. Instantly, Luna, Pidilite and Asian Paints landed on my desk as the team felt these clients, in particular, did not appreciate their good work.

What they did not realise (neither did I!) was that my career was being made.

***

My first break was for Luna moped. The Chal meri Luna line came only from common sense. In those times, a guy from a middle-class background had a cycle or travelled by bus. The next step was the moped and it was logical for anyone to speak in that language. Luna was popular, high on mileage and an easy-to-ride two-wheeler.

The line was an extension of a horse or the relationship between a sawar and a sawari. The Bata outlets would have a rocking wooden horse and the kids would sit on it. The line was Chal mere ghode and that was the relationship between the kid and that inanimate object.

Arun Firodia was the client and I went to him with three ads. As the presentation was being made, he did not say a word. He was emotionless all through and had a toothpick in his mouth. My feeling was we had made a mess of it. After a while, he removed his toothpick and said, “Teeno bana do.” The guys at work were having a problem selling one ad to an useless client and he said okay to three!

A big moment came in 1987 and it had an impact of a very different kind. I had worked with Suresh Mullick, Ogilvy’s creative boss on Mile sur mera tumhara campaign. I wrote the lyrics for that. There was really no ideation process for that. The brief from Suresh was simple. Was there a way to find a link between water evaporating and making a connection to life? The other way to look at it was to watch the formation of clouds which leads to rainfall and narrate the story of life and togetherness. The essence was how one cannot work without the other.

I liked what I had written but the real magic took place when Pandit Bhimsen Joshi played the first composition. That was something else! Like every other work of mine, simplicity was what worked. Some time later, I picked up Panditji from the airport. By this time, Mile sur had really taken off. He was very nice when he said, “Mein apne circles mein kaafi popular tha. Aapne toh mujhe har ghar mein pahuncha diya.” I smiled and slowly said, “Panditji, mera manna hai ki aapne humein popular bana diya.”

The idea came completely from Suresh starting from the concept to deciding who should be in it. I was merely a lyricist. Convincing him was not easy and it took seventeen rejected drafts before I was done. When I presented the eighteenth to him, we were having a drink at the Ritz bar in Churchgate, a stone’s throw from our office. He heard me out and said, “OK, we are rolling!”

The client was Lok Sanchar Seva, whose advisory committee had Shunu in it. The next act was Vel. His first idea was the freedom struggle, which had the sportsmen running with the torch. That was a big hit and mile sur was a bigger success. That spontaneity in the first two was not there in desh. It was more of an effort.

Around the same time, work on Asian Paints Mera wala pink and blue along with Fevicol’s Dum laga ke haisha was taking off. I enjoyed working with Bharat Puri at Asian Paints and used to ring him up early mornings. Though he constantly complained about me calling him as early as 6 AM, he is easy going and a very rooted guy. Bharat understands India at the grass-roots level. I think that helped us connect easily and produce some great outcomes.

We were working on the mera wala blue idea. Again, it was an early morning call. My conversation was brief. “I have an idea. There is a Rs 20 crore set and we have to shoot in the next five days.” My sister was then in the Tourism Department and the Pushkar fair was on. This was too big an opportunity and a bigger set would have been impossible. I wrote the story and Bharat just asked me to go ahead. There was no procedure or process. We just shot it and it went on air.

The two of us work very well together and that was obvious again during the 1996 cricket World Cup. It was being hosted in the sub-continent. Since India wore blue, we ran with a Hamara blue campaign with wishes from Asian Paints. As luck would have it, we lost to Sri Lanka in the semis. But an ad was nevertheless required and I suggested that to Bharat. I changed the same shirt to a dark blue, which is what the Lankans wore. Hamara wala blue was changed to Tumhara wala blue (it was of course darker) with the line saying, “Congrats Sri Lanka. You were a shade better.” I told Bharat the line over the phone and got the green signal. The first time he saw it was in the newspaper the following morning.

The one Asian Paints campaign that made us very emotional was in 1992. The theme was about a young man going back home for Pongal. He was to surprise his parents. We initially presented a 30-second script to Bharat and came back with a 60-second one. Between Rajeev Menon and Sonal Dabral, who was then my partner, we shot and put together a fantastic 60-second commercial. AR Rahman composed the music. He was still known as Dilip then. We showed it to Bharat at a studio in Tardeo and he broke down at the end of it. We promptly got drunk after that! Needless to say, the client was impressed.

Around this time, Pidilite was going berserk. The magic of Madhukar Parekh was visible and he had immense faith in me. There is no doubt I worked ten times harder on Pidilite than anybody else. This was really because the brief was such. The client said, “You make the next ad when you think we need to. That is, when you have an idea.” That meant, I had nine scripts in my head and had to deal with my brother, Prasoon, who would reject half of them. After all, he was going to shoot it and would say things like “is this good enough for Pidilite!” It was back to the drawing board then!

The thing is two fantastic partnerships emerged. One was between O&M, Pidilite and Prasoon and the other was O&M, Asian Paints and Prasoon. Now I realise how a lot of mutual respect leads to good work. There have been several occasions when the client said, “Piyush, this is fantastic. What does Prasoon have to say?” When the three fall in place, it is incredible and that happened many times.

***

Many a time, your best work comes when pressure is intense. An early insight into this was after a much awaited holiday was cut short quite unexpectedly. In 1993, I was in the US blissfully unaware of what was to unfold. My sister lived in Michigan and I spent a few days with her. The plan was to go to Hawaii and get back to be with her for Diwali.

I carried only a few pairs of shorts and T-shirts to Hawaii waiting to see paradise. Ranjan had just taken over as managing director (not even officially) when a crisis hit him and then us. The Cadbury account had been with us for many years. We enjoyed a great relationship with them but something had gone wrong in the recent past. Poor Ranjan was told that they had called for a pitch. It was a difficult start in the new position for him.

To be fair, all was not well between the client and us. Rajeev Bakshi, who was the marketing director at Cadbury, was getting impatient. Ranjan called me and I had to get back from Hawaii. My sister was nice enough to quickly send me a ticket. On the first leg to Seoul, I got to work and wrote the lyrics on the back of the boarding pass. This eventually became the ad with the girl dancing on the cricket field. Kuch khaas hai hum sabhi mein was what I thought of and there were ten ads in all.

The thing was we bounced back in style. In all confidence, we presented the idea to the client and it became the campaign of the century. The insight was that the brand needed a complete breakaway from the existing advertising. We gave it a lot of freshness and it worked.

Cadbury again presented itself with another challenge, which really pushed us to the limit. A worm infestation in Dairy Milk meant they had a huge problem on their hands. The news came to me through the media and Bharat called me. It was obvious the situation was grave. The problem in this brand was that it was edible and one that the family shared.

Cadbury did a smart thing by introducing the double packaging machine. We then got in Mr Bachchan for a campaign that really worked. What I picked up here was that if you are a lovable brand, people will forgive you. That is the difference between a product and a brand. It was a hard learning but worth it!

***

One meeting with Piyush Goyal at my home in January 2014 led to the most intense campaign I have ever been involved in. We spoke for close to three hours and his message was clear and to the point. “We need you” was all he said at the end of it.

I must confess to having a few reservations when it came to political advertising. David Ogilvy believed that issues like religion and politics meant the entire team had to be aligned. It is not possible to force it on someone and there is a risk of taking sides. Besides, you may not get paid for the work done! Not a great thought at all.

Honestly, I had said no to several political parties for six-seven years but I was eventually persuaded by Piyush Goyal to take on the BJP campaign. After I said yes, I looked at the calendar and that’s when the magnitude of the work dawned on me. We were in the end of January and elections were due in March.

The brief was simple. Narendra Modi’s ratings were higher than that of the BJP. Issues such as corruption were gaining ground. My first task was to call my team at Ogilvy and ask them if they were on. The answer was completely in the affirmative and work started.

Political advertising before this was known to be heavy and loaded with messages like janta maaf nahin karegi. It was always someone talking to you from way above. The way to do it was to make it simple and have people speak. I think about it now and say, “Wow, we made 170 films!” Only we at Ogilvy knew what we went through. This was a mammoth task with respect to scale and size. We had things changing on a day-to-day basis. Challenges were around tailor making ads for small pockets in India. They still had to be relevant.

I wrote Ab ki baar, Modi sarkar early and stuck to it. There were other lines that were needed and the team was working like crazy. We wanted it to be different from any other political campaign and we surely managed to do that. As a client, the BJP was obviously not like a marketing company. There were a lot of discussions and arguments and they were very professional. I met Mr Modi two or three times during that period, though most of the decision making was left to Arun Jaitley and Piyush.

I had worked with Mr Modi on the Gujarat Tourism campaign earlier. He first spoke to Mr Bachchan who agreed to do it. Later, Bachchan recommended our name and mine in particular. That led to the formal process of me getting briefed by Mr Modi.

He was then Gujarat’s chief minister and knew the state like the back of his hand. I still remember the first meeting, which was meant to last for 20 minutes to cover six destinations. Three hours later, we were still on the first one! He was quite funny and said he talked a lot. “But you have to say it in 60 seconds,” he joked. I requested him to just talk, while I picked up my nuggets. Once the campaign was on air, magic happened. This was followed by the 2012 Gujarat assembly election, when we were first approached. The campaign for the general elections two years later remains one of the high points. A lot of credit has to go to the BJP team and the mutual respect for each other really helped in a very successful campaign.

As I saw the campaign, I could not help but think of a time when my first ad went on air. The Luna days came back and with that came the memory of running to my neighbour’s house to watch it on the TV.   There are a couple of things I do not believe in. There is nothing called a tough or a bad client. We need to understand it is not his job to think of stories every day. It’s our job. It becomes our responsibility to hold his hand if he is not used to it. There is nothing called a boring product. I am surprised when people say cement is boring or banking is boring. Why is anything boring? The most boring must be an adhesive! In adhesives, we have come out with a consistent body of work for 27 years. No other category can boast of it like Fevicol.

Chocolates could be interesting to you but that does not mean adhesives is boring or, for that matter, is paints boring? Why does communication have to be boring? There is nothing like a difficult category or an impossible client. That is the premise on which I work. Some ads may not sell but I would stick to it. On cement, we did some great work on Tata Cement, Siddhi Cement and with Mr Bachchan on Binani Cement.

But despite working with celebrities, I have a very strong reservation on such advertising. First of all, I think it is lazy advertising. There is no doubt in my head about that. The problem is when you have not thought about how to use the celebrity. Money really gets wasted then.

To get it right, you have to think through it well and also plan it out. A celebrity needs to complement your brand. If a celebrity looks good by doing that, you have got it right. There are ads of semi-clad women against a bottle of booze. I am so perplexed when I see that and just think it is idiotic. It will never work.

Feedback is very important. It can come from family, friends or just people around me like competition, my barber, the driver and cook. It can be very funny sometimes but it is still feedback.

If someone says the music was great, it means the film is lousy. People have a way of being polite and one has to be smart to get it. I remember bringing two ads back home one evening. My cook Goshto joined in. One was an ad for Perk with a girl in a ghoonghat. The other was a Nokia ad, which was artily shot with lots of emotion. Goshto watched both and immediately delivered his judgement — Woh Nokia ka ad award jeetega. Perk ka, maal bechega!

Not every campaign works out well. When someone gets stuck, he will see this as the best I can do. I have a simple theory. You can take a horse to the water, but cannot do a thing if it wants to drink piss. Yes, there are compromises but you must understand that hitting every ball for a six is not possible.

Unexpected successes too might happen. Two years ago, we created a campaign followed by an activity in a mall — There are many objects in a cupboard and they can be taken for free. People try in vain to remove it when a line pops up saying it is Fevicol. Now, that has gone viral and I don’t know why. This reminds me of the ladis during Diwali that burst when you think it has lost its fizz. I received messages from my client at Gujarat Tourism saying it was amazing work. Even after having spent so many years in advertising, one can’t guess which campaign will create dhamaal.

Very often, I am asked how much I had to change after taking over as the agency’s head. This was a position I had said no to for two years. A senior colleague finally told me that I was anyway the leader. “So just accept it.”

It is true that Ogilvy has had a lot of success. To the outside world, this is linked to Piyush Pandey but that is not true. I have had nothing to do with the Vodafone Cheeka and ZooZoo ads. It came completely from the late Mahesh V and Rajiv Rao. It was great work and required nothing from me. It would have been spoilt had I touched it.

O&M is not just about Piyush. It would not have survived without SN Rane, who is the co-Chairman. I can do things. I wanted him because he can manage things. There are many things that go into making a company like legal, business and administration. Advertising is not a one-man game. It’s not like Roger Federer, who too has a team of coaches and physios. We have a fabulous team and I just happen to be the captain. There are times when the captain scores a zero and the team still wins. That does not mean he wins every match. It is for the team to win.

People say every client wants a piece of Piyush Pandey. I do not think so. Just look at the work done by Rajiv and Hephzibah on Vodafone. You have to build people and you have to do work for 10-15 years. I tell a client that I now have a rock star and you don’t need me. In fact, it is not mandatory for them to show me the work.

Everyone introduces somebody to somebody and that respect has to be earned. Suresh also introduced me and I slowly took charge. Now with Rajiv and Abhijit, it is the same. It is physically impossible to do so much and the youngsters are really good.

***

Through my career, there have been several emotional moments. When my father passed away in 1985, it left a big vacuum in my life. My mother’s biggest regret was that he did not live to see the response to mile sur mera tumhara, which came two years later. In her mind, it was the new national anthem and would have made him very proud. My mother was very strong and she came out much stronger after dad passed away. I remember calling her quite excitedly from Cannes after winning two golds. She was happy and said “Good work but don’t let it go to your head.” It was worldly advice conveyed in the most beautiful manner. She passed away in 2010. We were all in Jaipur. It was not looking good. I missed her when I won the Padma Shri last year. She would have been very happy.

It’s been 35 years in advertising. Change is inevitable and obviously the way of working is very different today. None of it bothers me except one part. Earlier, there was a sense of stability about a person being around for 10-15 years. Now, people are moving around too quickly. It complicates my job since just as one is starting to build a relationship with a client, he is gone. It’s really the era of One Day Internationals versus Test cricket.

The good part is learning new areas like digital, where I am a zero and the youngster is at 100. People speak of a lot of things having changed after 1991. In my own head, human beings are human beings. How much can they change?

I always draw a parallel with my career and believe in the horses-for-courses approach. That really means, you do not have to deal with every individual in a standard fashion. There will be some with fantastic ability and those with a shortcoming as well. Some guys work late and you cannot expect him to be in office at 9:30 AM. It is important to balance it out. In life or at work, you have to deal with someone who is short-tempered or someone who is late. Human beings are not made in a mould. Therefore, if you see a spark, you have to make it shine and not look at deficiencies. If you are looking for a standard pattern, you will never find it.