My Love Affair with Advertising

The thinking around what my next post would be usually starts the moment my post gets published and invariably continues till Tuesday evening a fortnight later, when I am left with no choice but to sit down and start writing to publish by Wednesday evening. I normally toss around a few topics in my head before zeroing down on one to research, write and publish. This time round, though, I hit a block. I was almost resigned to writing a short apology post stating that I just didn’t have any topic for you to read. Till it dawned on me that my post was scheduled for June 5^th and, voilà(!), I had my topic. The date is significant because that was the day, all those years ago, when I embarked on my career in advertising.

While June 5^th was the start of my career, in a way it was actually the culmination of a long-standing love affair with advertising. As far back as I can remember, I was always interested in advertising. It’s a cliché, I agree. But I would like to believe that in my case it was a little more than just a passing interest.

I don’t remember how I suddenly started noticing ads in the papers or magazines. And not just because many of them were either visually stunning or interesting or intelligent. I was also interested in how those ads must have come about. I was also interested in which agency created those ads. I was aware of names like Trikaya, Ambience (my first and absolutely the best employer of my career), Enterprise, Rediffusion, OBM, TSA, Ulka, HTA, and of course Lintas. I noticed when Grey got suffixed to Trikaya, when OBM changed to O&M, when TSA became TSME. Thanks to my interest in the behind-the-scenes world of advertising, and being an avid reader of A&M - a magazine dedicated to advertising and marketing - I made myself aware of names like Prabudha Dasgupta, Shantanu Sheorey, Prahlad Kakkar, Johnny Pinto, Namita & Subir, Alyque Padamsee, Mike Khanna, Ravi Gupta, Ashok Kurien, Elsie Nanji, Mohammed Khan, Rajeev Menon, Suzanne Merwanji, etc.

I devoured ads in print and on TV. Campaigns for the likes of Grindwell Norton (an abrasives manufacturer for crying out loud!), Festival of France in India, Arrow Shirts, Arvind Mills, Torrent Pharmaceuticals, Sil Jams, Garden, Thums Up, and whole host of others only ended up making me thirst for more. Little did I know then that a guy who harbored dreams of being a research scientist in Genetics or Molecular Biology would find himself to be a lifelong student of advertising.

In the early 90s, an M.Sc. degree holder in India had little choice but to go overseas if they had to build a career in their chosen subject. Research and the job market was not flourishing by any stretch of imagination. People like me were overqualified to be Medical Representatives (I was actually told that when I’d gone for a job interview at a pharma company while waiting for my MBA entrance results) and at the same time under-qualified to be anything else. Having applied for fellowships to quite a few universities, I did manage to get through to a couple – except that no aid was forthcoming since I had applied at a time when the U.S. was reeling under recession in the post-Bush Sr. era. Which, in retrospect, turned out to be a boon as it gave me the chance to pursue my love affair. I just had to first arm myself with an MBA so that I could make it to an ad agency. And I would finally be able to actually be behind the scenes in developing campaigns, rather than just appreciating them from a distance!

I feel that every love affair has three stages: 1) first you fall in love; 2) then along with your loved one, you wish upon things to build a life together, and; 3) when those are fulfilled, you keep wishing and fulfilling newer things that keep you in love.

In a similar vein, I have compartmentalized my love affair with advertising in three parts: 1) Ads that made me fall in love; 2) Ads that I wish I could have done; & 3) Ads that I got to do which kept me in love.

I hope you find the same joy / surprise / happiness / excitement that I found in some of these stellar pieces of work.

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(A special request to my non-advertising readers - since quite a few of the ads are not the ones that many of you may have seen on TV, please do take time out to watch the ones that are new to you. They will entertain you, move you, make you laugh, surprise you - all of which are undoubtedly good emotions to experience.)

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ADS THAT MADE ME FALL IN LOVE

The pieces of work below are the ones that have stayed with me for more than three decades.

One of the most enduring campaigns of our times.

This campaign appeared when readymade shirts had started making their presence felt. People like me rued the fact that our tailors were not equipped enough to do justice to the fabric that was presented so beautifully in the ads.

These ads used to appear in The Sunday Review supplement of The Times Of India. I have known of people who maintained a scrap book of these ads for ready reference.

This campaign put Mauritius on the must-do list of every traveler and honeymooner. Long before influencers made Maldives a household name.

Even ‘recruitment’ ads had pizzaz to them!

(Lakme: Just beautiful … the treatment, the track, and oh yes … the model.)

(Seiko: How a delay of a second can change the course of one’s life.)

(Hamlet: An enduring idea that was taken to absurd comedic lengths just to highlight its effect.)

(Harley Davidson: Respect was never better depicted.)

(Levi’s 501: Cheeky!)

(British Airways: Executed at a scale unprecedented for those days! It brought back the airline from the brink.)

(Stella Artois: Again, an enduring idea that saw many manifestations. This one is my favourite.)

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ADS THAT I WISH I COULD HAVE DONE

(Honda: No words will ever be enough. Just watch. Some trivia about the ad: There is no CG at work here. Between testing and filming, it took approximately 100 takes to film the commercial. The team commandeered two of Honda's six hand-assembled Accords—one to roll off the trailer at the end of the advertisement, the other to be stripped for parts.)

(Volkswagen: Sweeeeet!)

(Ikea: A masterclass in how to put life into an inanimate object.)

(Budweiser: Wasssup remains part of popular lexicon two decades later.)

(Bud Light: A brilliant, brilliant, brilliant campaign that had probably 10-15 different ads. The beauty is that they were also aired as radio spots and none of the impact was lost.)

(Bajaj Avenger: I worked on its sequel. The original above was instrumental in me taking up my job at Lowe Lintas.)

(Old Spice: This campaign turned Old Spice from ‘my dad’s brand’ into ‘my brand’. Howlarious stuff!)

(Vodafone: How I wish I had worked on this campaign!)

(Air Argentina: Goosebumps stuff!)

(Polo: This is one of those mad ads that wasn’t aired all that much, but managed to get the line ‘beta sweater pehno’ to be part of conversations.)

(Nike: A lone out-of-shape runner in an ad for a brand that is known for high octane action and a winner takes it all ethos.)

(John West: What a fun way to highlight your product’s superiority.)

(Fevikwik: Superb product demo to highlight the proposition.)

(John Lewis: John Lewis’ Christmas ads are not just ads. They are a national event in the UK. And rightfully so.)

(Cadbury: Hats off to the team that sold this concept for a chocolate. Hats off to the client to have taken that leap. It led to a rise not just in sales of the chocolate, but also gave a new life to Phil Collins’ track.)

(Ericsson: This ad was done by the agency that had its offices on the floor below my agency’s. I remember feeling envious, though my agency also did some really pathbreaking work as a matter of habit.)

(Delta Lloyd Insurance: What a twist to the tale at the tail!)

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ADS WHICH KEPT ME IN LOVE

The ads below are the ones that I was privileged to work on. In a way each one of the ads are quite unlike what the typical codes attached to each category are. Which is what makes them special for me. While they may not make it to the ‘classics’ category, each one of them have a special place in my heart.

(Bajaj Discover: A very un-bike campaign for a bike. No speeding, no stunts. No glamour. Or glamour girls giving ‘come hither’ looks. We had close to 15 stories that brought the proposition to life. Ended up producing 5, airing 4. The Holi one never aired. This campaign is special for me as it positioned the bike as a mileage champion without claiming mileage in numbers. We later came to know after the client had pulled the plug on the campaign that it was the only campaign that the client’s biggest competitor of mileage bikes fervently hoped our client would scuttle. Sure enough their prayer’s came through. :-( As they say, it is the clients who tire of the communication strategy, not the consumer.)

(GMR: This was a 6-ad campaign where we promoted an infrastructure behemoth without showing a single structure.)

(J&J NRP: Street theatre as an art form has always fascinated me. So when my creative director floated the idea of using street theatre as a storytelling device, no way was I going to let it pass. The client had his apprehensions on the treatment, but seeing our passion he relented.)

(Xbox: An imaginary village with an imaginary language playing an imaginary sport that has no connection to the product it is promoting. If it was an ad agency that had presented the concept, it would have lost the account. But because it was MTV that was promoting the Xbox, there was not only creative license but total freedom to just have fun. This was the only time I thoroughly enjoyed my otherwise forgettable stint in MTV.)

(Kaam Wapasi: One of the most fulfilling campaigns I have done. At the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic our creative head came up with a brilliant concept of putting together an employment exchange platform for all the displaced workers. It was our agency’s initiative to contribute in alleviating the plight of the average labourer. From conceptualising the name, to building the platform, to putting together the logistics of not just producing the campaign, putting together the technology backbone, launching a fully functional platform with a toll free number, IVR based information dissemination, online registration forms, tie-ups with organisations which would be able to recruit from the platform to finally getting sponsors who bought into the vision and sponsored various aspects of the initiative. It took us a better part of 3 months to put it all together - in a work-from-home scenario and with regular work on ever-demanding clients not allowed to take a back seat. All of it was pro-bono, but all of us came out richer. I would like to believe that since the initiative saw thousands of registrations and job matches on the platform, this one ‘campaign’ redeemed me of all my ‘sins’ of having chosen a career that was deemed to be inconsequential in the larger scheme of things.)

Be braver. Be kinder.

P.S.: No ‘Keep Watching’ this time because there’s enough and more to watch in the post.