This is from my previous post, posted a couple of years back when Piyush was conferred “life time achievement award” by AAAI and now “Clio” announced that its going to honor our man, and I truly believe there is no person more deserving in the world advertising then him ( including Marcello Serpa.)
Excerpts from my previous post:
Piyush Pandey was recently been conferred AAAI lifetime achievement award, an honor usually reserved for retirees. Piyush is still a practicing creative person in short a working legend. He is Indian advertising’s greatest, I will place him above Subhas Ghosal, Alyque Padamsee and Mohammed Khan for simple reasons: he single-handedly changed the target audience from elite British Indians to middle class heartland bharatvasi’s. And also for putting Indian advertising amongst the global greats. (I had the privilege of working with all the above legends except Piyush.)
Above all he is one of the greatest human beings I have met in my career, what can you say? In this pseudo advertising and corporate world, where people hesitate to thank there wife for being an inspiration and support in public, this man brings his mother to the ceremony and proudly introduces her to all honchos present. I always admired people who do not hesitate to show respect for parents and family in public. I can not think of any other Ad-man doing that.
Piyush is a large-hearted man, loves his life enjoys every moment with a hearty laughter. I have never seen him crib about anything. This is what gets reflected in his work and also in his agency, always enjoys and celebrate life. As we at Burnett believe that “creativity has the power to transform human behavior” Piyush showered enough creativity to change the way common people behaved in this country, right from “Luna” finding a place in middle class India to nation celebrating the success of “Pappu” with Cadbury Dairy Milk to Railgaddi for Indian railways to celebrating real life characters in Fevicol.
He changed the way Indians looked at advertising, he had created many stars, gave new vocabulary, made people love advertising more than television programming. I can go on and on as an insider what he had done to the Industry and why he deserved the award and this blog.
Today Hindus celebrate the festival of “Ganesh Chaturti”, where Lord Ganesh was made head of all deities by his father Lord Shiva, religion apart, Ganesh the half elephant- half human, short, fat and has rat (rodent) as his vehicle is the most loved god in India, he cuts across all religious and physical boundaries. In Bangkok or Barampur no business is conducted without worshiping him, similarly there is no child in the sub-continent who can not draw Ganesha. His physical appearance and his stature as god of gods and his victory over his smart brother made him as an identifiable hero with kids. And growing up with this affinity is what makes him the favorite amongst the creative people. Like kids there is no poet, writer, painter or a caricaturist who had not dabbled with this lovable god’s image. Great painters right from Raja Ravi Varma to M F Hussain all were fascinated by him which is evident from their work.
The greatest contribution to Lord Ganesha came from the much celebrated Calendar art of Shivakasi a small town in Tamilnadu. Today Shivakasi is the second largest printing capital of the world only after Gutenberg of Germany what started as a backyard litho printing units of British India, developed into rich hindu calendar art/ film poster studios to present day offset.
As a child I used to make clay Ganesha for the festival celebrations, now my daughter follows the tradition.
In hatred he saw love. In fear, courage. In weakness he saw strength. And in violence, truth. In cruelty he saw kindness. In anger he saw humanity. And in struggle, he saw peace. He saw things through his soul that are invisible to the eye. Yet through his eyes, we can still see the shining light of humanity. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. A different type.
Above are the words came out of Agnello Dias when I told him about my intention to create a font for Gandhi.
” There is no god higher than truth.” is what he said and is what got imprinted in my mind ever since I was a little boy, my grand parents always told me stories of Gandhi at bedtime, I am still a vegetarian thanks to the impression he made on me. I am just a spec in billions who follow him. Once he said “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”
When Indian Industrialist Vijay Mallya salvaged the pride of a nation by bringing back the priced possession of a man who owned nothing. The day New York auctioneer announced auctioning of Mahatma’s spectacles the nation put her head down in shame, as embarrassed Indian government’s desperate attempts to stall the action failed, Mallya’s $1.8 millon came to the rescue.
His glasses has a deep significance to all Indians, when he gave away the glasses in 1930’s to an army colonel he said ” these gave me vision to free India”. Today as we live in a free India we still are slaves to violence, terrorism, untouchability, communalism and many more evils. A young nation celebrates holiday on his birthday than his wisdom as Nitesh Tiwari one of our copywriters put it.
How do we make him and his vision relevant and how do we make people try to see the world through his eyes? Than the Idea of a typeface created out of his glasses came about.
Typographers from Leo Burnett went on to create this marvelous Gandhiji font in Devanagari and the team is working overtime to launch english and other Indian languages.( an up-date:English, Devnagari, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada are available ) The website went live last night http://www.gandhijifont.com
What’s the best way to keep Gandhi’s spectacles away from auctioneers than this?
Jet Airways and Airtel started their journey almost in the same decade (90’s), few years ago Airtel opted for a complete revamp of logo, while Jet Airways retained the logo and modernized the identity. Both the businesses are very new in India, changing consumers and the changing business objectives forced both the brands to relook at the logos and identities.
Airtel opted for a new logo while retaining the red and white colors. I do not know what the equity studies have thrown up it took me by surprise and so where pundits and the millions of subscribers. Wisdom says to retain the elements, which made you successful and junk the baggage, Airtel dumped the Avant-garde typography and retained the color instead.
Jet Airways on the other hand retained the “flying sun” logo and introduced the yellow ribbon as a contemporary element in the identity. Because losing the equity of the “flying sun” would have proved disastrous in tying to chase a new international image. Protecting the successful domestic market was also a key challenge which they achieved easily by retaining the logo, while successfully managed to curve a new modern, young world-class airline imagery by the introduction of a cheerful, fluid ribbon motive.
So in other words Airtel opted for “Discontinuous” change while Jet opted for “Discontinuously continuous” change.
Proctor & Gamble invented the term “Discontinuously continuous” which means the design must look similar to the earlier one in isolation and dissimilar when observed closely, so that you do not loose out on the equity of familiarity, affinity and instant reorganization built over the years and still tries to modernize the graphics like what Jet did or “Apple” keep doing it every now and then.
Discontinuously continuous is a very pragmatic approach for all successful heritage brands to keep in touch with the ever-changing world; here are some classic examples of brands adopting this approach:
Be it Cannes or Goafest, why is it creative agencies steal the thunder from media guys? What is it about awards which brings magical enthusiasm from creative agencies? What can media brothers learn from hated separated cousins?
Believe me I am a neutral party here. I have worked in the same office and shared the same table and mind space with some of the media legends of today to name a few: Shashi Sinha, Ambika, Nandini Dias, George Mathai, Ashish Basin, Lynn, Hiren Pandit, Ravi Kiran and many more, I had the privilege of interacting with them every day,at leat thosedays there were no egos no fighting for credit, just partnership and respect for each other’s talent and thinking.
It pained me when I heard the whispers last night at Media Abby Awards, who deservers more credit or have right to enter a co-created idea. I truly believe advertising is not a solo game, it’s a large team game, often there are more than playing eleven behind the scenes who contribute most. It’s unfortunate to see them not collaborating insted confronting.
As the new leaders grow-up in this new collaborative and co-creative world these differences hopefully fade away soon.
Back to my original point of why creative agencies win more media awards than media agencies?Because of their emotional affinity and proximity to the heart of the brand and the passion for awards and most importantly ideas, media teams look at the scale and innovation while the international juries look for freshness and relavence of ideas. Added to all this is packaging and presentation of ideas make a diffence to winning, creative agencies tend to do a better job of the later.
No wonder Creativeland Asia stole the thunder yesterday by winning 2Golds at the media Abbies as Leo Burnett Sydney did it at Cannes last year by winning Media Agency of the year.
What the heck if pretty girls call me Pops? What’s the fuch if people think I was born in the same year as Zora Sehgal ? What the hell if people try to find similarities between Balki, and me thinking that I am his Pops? What the shet if Arvind Sharma’s driver introduces me as his saheb’s “papaji” ?
It’s not easy being Pops. Yes. It’s not easy to be Big B’s Popsji, Chennai’s Mr.Pops, Miss Universe Sushmita Sen’s Pops, Chiranjeevi’s Pops garu, Balki’s Pops & Tweetaratti’s kvpops. “Baap re” its difficult to take loads of affection, respect and love.
“Pops” made Kondiparthi Venkata Sridhar a brand, and proved to the world, power of naming and branding. Imagine Mr. kondiparthiji. What did I do to deserve to be called Pops?
Simply nothing.
In early 90’s when Chax and I joined Lintas as creative heads of one of their Bombay units, Alyque Padamsee was at his wittiest best when he hired an ex- military Major as chief administrator. Now one can imagine the hierarchy and bureaucracy ruling the floors of Express towers.
In such an office there was a quite shy-ish six-foot young copywriter named Sridhar existed. Since the culture did not allow bosses to be nicknamed, poor little baby-faced Sridhar was christened as “Baby Sridhar” and me, months later by default became “Papa Sridhar” and then came a livewire called Asha Rishi an account executive who started calling me Pops.
By virtue of my personality people felt it’s an apt description of me. Chax my partner in crime need to take some blame for not resenting in fact he started a chain of jokes on Pops. Around mid 90’s advertising and marketing media suddenly became big and they took up the mission of making Pops stick in people’s heads.
In old day advertising guys used be real characters with some quirkiness, Alyque with his diction, Kersy with his suspenders, Chax with his Gandhi glass and signature beard, Piyush with his handlebar mustache, Prahlad with his cigars and hat, since I had none, “Pops” helped me to be remembered.
All jokes apart, the changes that came along with the name Pops are: made me look wiser, acquire patience, forced me to listen to people and lend my shoulder, made me stop leching at young girls once they call you Pops. Convinced me to adopt young talented kids and above all reminds me to make my bucket list every morning.
Most of the enlightened brands today stopped doing “Ads” and started doing “Acts”, Ads usually chest thump about how good they are and propagate their superiority in all media channels. Acts on the other hand are the deeds brands do in public domains and are neutral to paid media channels or they put up their act in real life rather than communicate through paid mediums.
Brands today try to behave in a selfless manner and propagate certain values to emotionally connect with like-minded people, like Tata tea never asks you to buy its branded tea instead urges you to be awakened to the responsibilities of a citizen. This action or the behavior of a brand makes you want to connect and live alongside.
Human like behavior of a brand is what Leo Burnett terms as “HumanKind Brand”, brands are trying to find its purpose of existence in people’s lives so that they can play a meaningful role and become a part.
Thus to make this journey possible brands can’t fake things as fake friends are not difficult to spot, they need to be honest and earnest therefore they must “Act” the way they promise.
Now you know the power of ‘Acts” here are some powerful and earnest “Acts” put-up by Indian Brands in 2010:
Gillette “Shave India movement”- by women against lazy stubble.
Women prefer “clean-shaven men” is a universal truth. Men are dumb and they never get it, they all want to look macho by sporting a stubble. This insight had led to an inspired “Act” of “Shave India Movement”
Around November last year “Shave India movement”- by women against lazy stubble was announced and launched by sexy sirens of Bollywood: Neha Dhupia, Manisha Lamba and Mugdha Godse forcing men to get shaved, thousands of women joined soon in the protest against men with stubble. Television and social media transmitted the idea like wildfire, soon shaving camps were organized, media started ridiculing men with stubble forcing them to shave, in the midst of all this Gillette launched its cheaper Mach-3 razor for 125 rupees.
Bravo BBDO, Mediacom and Proctor & Gamble!
Hippo “Crowd Sourcing” on twitter.
Creativeland Asia and Parle Agro had an innovative solution for a complex distribution problem, they appealed to the tweeters to report to them if they have not found “Hippo” in the neighborhood shop and promised to make it available in an hour’s time. Curious tweeters reported and participated in the drill actively making the brand more fun and inclusive.
This cleaver “Act” not just saved the brand’s distribution or inventory problem but also created a bond with the consumers and made a statement to the young social media audience how innovative, young and agile they are!
“Aman ki Asha” an Initiative by Times of India & Jung Group Pakistan.
What can one say to an ‘Act” like this? Mahatma Gandhi would have been proud. Two nations have been fighting bitter wars since 1947 while the majority of the people in both the nations want to live in peace and harmony. Two huge newspapers take plunge of propagating peace in the midst of terror and distrust. Teachers, artist, businessmen, filmmakers, intellectuals, poets, actors, scientist and commoners all came together to exchange ideas and peace messages.
This “Act” I believe had re-kindled the love and affection this two nations once shared.
Virgin Mobile: “Indian Panga League”
When you want to be young and happening what do you do? Simple. You behave like one. Virgin had a choice of hiring a lesser cricketing star and do a conventional 30 seconds spot or think little different. They chose to do the later and took the trouble of going the extra mile by behaving little “hutke”.
Indian Panga League is launched for the IPL session-3 is a complete digital campaign with 100 viral films on YouTube and the website, allowing young fans to take friendly pangas with their buddies supporting rival teams, this generated huge participation on the micro site over 1 million visitors, 500,000 views on YouTube and 3000 fans on Facebook. Bates and Virgin’s choice proved to be the right one, young janta went berserk.
Gandhiji Font.
To commemorate Mahatma Gandhi’s 141 birthday, Leo Burnett had decided to create a special font designed from his iconic spectacles to enable a young nation to see Mahatma’s vision. This “Act” will take wings, once the ambitious project get into top gear by launching the font in all 16 Indian languages, currently Devnagari, English, Marathi and Telugu are available awaiting for a symbolic gesture of dedicating to the nation by The Government of India.
The ambition of this project is to make mahatma’s vision relevant to younger generation especially by using digital space to connect.
In the land of Mahatma Gandhi the “Act of Acts” is no new discovery, the symbolic “Salt Production” was an “Act” to bring behavioral change, so is non-co-operative movement. Imagine Bapu trying to explain the significance of freedom in a long copy ad than to a metaphoric act of salt making”
