Search THE READING ROOM

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Why ad guru Piyush Pandey cried, along with his clients

An excerpt from a thoroughly entertaining and enlightening book I finished reading in just a few hours on Tuesday:

(THE CHAPTER IS TITLED "UDNA AATA HAI? DO YOU KNOW HOW TO FLY?")
It was in the early 2000s that Ogilvy's Thought Leader, Madhukar Sabnavis, and his team, along with the Asian Paints marketing team, came to me with a new insight. They said that the focus of the consumer is on pride in their house, and paint is only an expression of that. This ground reality gave me the licence to fly when I wrote, 'Har ghar kuch kehta hai' (Every home has something to say).

I still remember having written that emotional piece on my pad — one shot, no change of word or punctuation. I read it to myself and cried.

I called up the clients, K.B.S. Anand and Amit Singhal, and said, 'Drop everything you're doing and come straight to my office.'

They arrived within an hour. I read out that piece. And this time all three of us cried. We knew we were about to take a flight together.

There are a couple of other instances in the book when Piyush Pandey talks about tearing up over ad copy. And there are many, many examples he gives us of the terrrific concepts he has come up with over the years for ads that continue to be fresh in our memories. What a great learning experience this book is for anyone interested in media! Get hold of Pandeymonium now. Commitscions: A copy has been placed in the Commits library.

SACHIN TENDULKAR SPEAKS AT THE LAUNCH OF PANDEYMONIUM; AMITABH BACHCHAN, WHO HAS WORKED CLOSELY WITH PIYUSH PANDEY, HAS WRITTEN THE FOREWORD.

No comments:

Post a Comment