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What do people want? What are people like? What are the values and desires that drive
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all of us? Some of us spend our lives trying to figure out these vital aspects of the human
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condition. This is what art is supposed to do. And this is also what advertisers try
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to do. Their job is to sell products and services. But you can't sell something to a consumer
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without understanding the consumer. In the case of the ad man, this quest for understanding
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may arise from self-interest and it may lead to empathy and insight.
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Welcome to the Scene and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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science. Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to the Scene and the Unseen. My guest today is Ambi Parmeswaran, a legend of the
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advertising world and an author of many books that both describe our society and teach the
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individuals within the society to lead better lives. Ambi's latest book is called Spring
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Bouncing Back from Rejection and contains lessons on how to react to rejection with
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many anecdotes thrown in from his own career and the lives of others. His other books are
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also a delight to read. For God's sake is about the business of religion in India. Sponge
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is a book about leadership. And my favorite is Nawabs Nudes Noodles, which sheds light
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on India and Indian society through the prism of Indian advertising. I've had one ad man
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on my show before. Santosh Desai joined me last year for episode 137 of the Scene and
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the Unseen to discuss Indian society over the last 30 years. My conversation with Ambi
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turned out to be quite as wide-ranging. Before we get to it though, let's take a quick commercial
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If you enjoy listening to the Scene and the Unseen, you can play a part in keeping the
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show alive. The Scene and the Unseen has been a labor of love for me. I've enjoyed putting
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together many stimulating conversations, expanding my brain and my universe, and hopefully yours
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as well. But while the work has been its own reward, I don't actually make much money
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off the show. Although the Scene and the Unseen has great numbers, advertisers haven't really
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woken up to the insane engagement level of podcasts, and I do many many hours of deep
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research for each episode, besides all the logistics of producing the show myself. Scheduling
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guests, booking studios, paying technicians, the travel and so on. So well, I'm trying
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a new way of keeping this thing going, and that involves you. My proposition for you
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is this, for every episode of the Scene and the Unseen that you enjoy, buy me a cup of
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coffee, or even a lavish lunch, whatever you feel is worth. You can do this by heading
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over to sceneunseen.in slash support and contributing an amount of your choice. This is not a subscription.
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The Scene and the Unseen will continue to be free on all podcast apps and at sceneunseen.in.
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This is just a gesture of appreciation. Help keep this thing going. sceneunseen.in slash
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support. Ambi, welcome to the Scene and the Unseen. Thank you, Amit. It's such a delight
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to be on your fantastic show. Thank you very much for having me. No, it's absolutely my
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honor and it's a bit overdue. And as you, you know, as you'd be aware of from my show,
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when we begin, rather than jump to the book at hand, and, you know, I was very excited
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to read your new book, Spring, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But before we get to that, I also,
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I want to talk a little bit about your, you know, your earlier life. You know, how did
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you get to what you're doing now? Because the journey is really, you know, fascinating
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all the way from room 224 at Godavari hostel in IIT Madras to, you know, where your next
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row neighbor had the only genuine Levi jeans in Madras, so you claim. And, you know, here
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we are almost, you know, 40 years later. So tell me a bit about your journey and how you
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went from IIT, IIM to advertising to what you're doing now. You know, when I was, you
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know, those days, 19, whatever, 1975, 76, I was, in fact, thinking of doing a charter.
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My dad had a business, which my grandfather had started. So I didn't want to get into
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that. I thought I'll do chartered accountancy. And I used to be very impressed with an uncle
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who used to come dressed in white and white and come and meet my grandfather. So I said,
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I'll become a chartered accountant, you know, like, very impressive stuff. And, you know,
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I, after my 10th standard, I had to do one year of PUC, what we call pre-university,
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you know, it's a one year course in Chennai or Madras. And so I was filling up the form.
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And when I was filling the form, I put what is called third group, which is economic commerce
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and maths, right? So my dad walked up and said, I was filling up the form for the Loyola
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College, you know, so I was hoping to get good marks and get into Loyola. So my dad
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said, do first group. So I said, why first group? He said, you know, you do first group,
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then you can go to IIT. So I said, okay. He said, IIT is good. You go there. Okay. You
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know, I mean, clueless, man. I mean, it's completely clueless, you know, reading my
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James Hadley Chase and you know, Arthur Haley and all that crap. So I filled up first group.
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And in my class of 30 students in my school, I was probably two or three of us who went
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to Loyola. The others went to what is known as the Brahmin College, which is the Vivekananda.
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So I went to Loyola and, and in the first day or second day of class, some of the guys
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I got to know, I met a whole lot of new people there. And they said, yeah, what are you planning
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to do after this? So I said, I want to go to IIT. So they said, oh, you started preparing.
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I said, what do you mean preparing? I had no idea that there was an entrance exam and
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one had to prepare for that stuff. And, you know, so, but anyway, to cut a long story
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short, you know, I managed to get into IIT Madras and had, you know, those days IIT was
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a five year course. So we had a, had a terrific, you know, five years of immersion in IIT.
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But around the third year, I realized that this is too heavy for me. You know, I mean,
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not, I was not really cut out for heavy duty. Actually, my mistake was, you know, if I'd
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enjoyed calculus and high-end mathematics, maybe I would have stayed in, in, in, in,
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in IIT and the engineering field. But I, I somehow started developing a bit of an aversion
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to, to maths and to calculus. So there was an opportunity to go abroad, which I kind
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of ducked. And of course, I tried getting a job. And in the spring, I've narrated the
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story how I blew that interview. And then fortunately, I got into, I am Calcutta and
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I went there. And you know, the whole world, I mean, I found subjects which I could enjoy
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reading. So I actually became, I was probably at the, in the third quartile of my class,
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you know, I mean, I was not in the top, not in the second, maybe not really at the bottom,
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but somewhere in the, in the third quartile. And I, I thought I will do okay in MBA school,
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but it turned out actually did very well. So by first year, I am Cal was pretty good.
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And I was among the top few people in the class. And, and then you know, and I've narrated
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the story in spring, how I went for a summer project interview with in the sun lever and
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I went through various rounds. And then I was called for the final interview with two
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people, you know, me and another guy. And we were asked this question, you know, we
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were given a watch and told sell, you know, try and sell this to me. And I gave a very
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long winded logical argument saying this watch, you're a manager, you need to watch a plan
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for time, blah, blah, blah. And, and my friend who got the job said, thank you sir, for giving
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me the watch. If you want it back, you have to pay me for it. And, and he got, he got
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the assignment very rightly at that time. I said, look, what's going on? And I mean,
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I blew the industry interview in it. Now I've blown it again. I mean, why am I, why am
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I chasing what everyone is chasing? So I said for the next two, three months, summer assignment,
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I will look for a Calcutta assignment. I want to go around Calcutta, taste the food, etc.
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in Calcutta. So I discovered it was a small, that time it was a small agency called Rediffusion
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coming for interview. I applied to Rediffusion and I, and I managed to land that, you know,
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I think I was the only guy who applied for a summer internship and I got it. And I enjoy,
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I discovered advertising at that time. So that's how, you know, I went from engineering
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to management, management to advertising. And I think probably I was the first engineer
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IIT, engineer MBA to get into advertising at that time, 1979. And again, in my final
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year, I was getting ready for final placement and I had applied again for Industan Lever
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and Rediffusion called me and said, look, are you interested? You know, this offer was
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technically made in the new Kenilworth Hotel Bar. And at the interview, I said, no, is
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it an interview? I said, no, it's not an interview. You want to join? Tell us now. I said, yeah,
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I'm interested, right? We spent two hours chatting about other things. The next day
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was Industan Lever interview. So I had to appear for the interview because my placement
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rep said, look, you applied, you have to appear. So I said, no, I don't want to appear. I want
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to go into advertising. And so he said, then you need to show a letter. You need to bring
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a letter and show it to us that you actually have a job. Otherwise, Industan Lever will
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ask us, why is this guy not coming for an interview? So fortunately, in spite of poor
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telephone lines, fax connection, etc., I managed to get the letter and I entered advertising.
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So from engineering, entering engineering itself was a bit of a diversion. Engineering
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to management, management to advertising. So and when I got into advertising, Amit,
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I enjoyed it so much. You know, for three years I was there in Rediffusion. I really
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enjoyed it. I used to work every day, morning, evening, night, Saturdays, Sundays. And then
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I said, look, like this is life, man. I mean, this is fantastic. But I said, am I missing
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something? Am I, you know, should I be doing something else? And that's when I said, look,
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you know, maybe I should get into marketing. Unfortunately, for me, I got an offer to enter
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marketing and I spent five plus two, seven years in marketing and sales. And then I came
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back into advertising. So this is the long kind of me. And then I spent probably 26 years
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in Ulka and Ulka became FCB Ulka. And, you know, before I joined Ulka, in fact, I met
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Alec Padamsi, the one and only Alec Padamsi. And he spoke for about two hours, gave me
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a bit of a headache. But he said, I was making a colossal mistake joining Ulka because he
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said, Ulka is going to shut down. My boy, Ulka shutting down. So I said, sir, I've got
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an offer and I want to go to Chennai. I want to work in Chennai. So he said, my boy, you're
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making a mistake of your life. I said, so be it. You know, so and interestingly, since
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we are chatting here, you know, when Ulka's founder passed away, Bal Mundkur, Alec was
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there too, at the condolence meeting to give a little talk. And he spoke very warmly about
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Bal Mundkur and how Bal Mundkur set up Ulka, which became an institution is now FCB Ulka
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and FCB Ulka so successful, etc, etc. And at the end of that, I went up to him and said,
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you know, Alec, I don't think you'll remember. But in, you know, in 1989, you told me, Ulka
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will shut down and you told me not to join Ulka. So he looks at me and says, good, you
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didn't take my advice. So it's been a good ride. And then I left Ulka in 2016. I'm doing
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my own coaching, consulting, mentoring and that kind of stuff. So that's been good.
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Absolutely fascinating story. And I actually what I'll read, you know, I mean, there are
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different parts of this, I want to ask you about an examine and your journey through
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advertising has also been marvellous, you sort of wrote a lot about it in Nawab's Nudes
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and Noodles as well. But I'll take you back even before that, I get people from various
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generations on my show. And I've noticed that, you know, we often take it for granted that,
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you know, our experiences of growing up and the way we grew up is something that is so
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normalized in our minds that it's not a big deal. But actually, you know, I realized that
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the way I grew up as a kid in the 1980s, for example, was just to see change from how kids
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are growing up today where they have access to all the music, all the literature, everything
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they want is just a click away, communication is easy. A friend of mine said a very interesting
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thing a few years back, he said that, you know, this generation will never know what
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it is like to be lost, you know, just in the sheer the physical value of having a GPS system.
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So I'd also like you to talk a little bit about your childhood in the late 60s. And
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then even in the 70s, in the sense of, you know, what is your day like? What kind of
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books did you read growing up? What kind of music did you listen to? What kind of intellectual
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influences were coming in? And how did those shape you? I mean, one imagines on the one
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hand that IIT, IIM is still even in the modern time, a very sort of aspirational path to
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take for many people for good reason. But you know, one can imagine that at that time,
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you know, the way you describe how you almost kind of, you know, wandered into it, not realizing
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how much you have to prep for an IIT or whatever. So tell me a bit about, you know, the teenager
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ambi as it were. Well, you know, I mean, we used to, you know, I studied in a school called
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Vidya Mandir, which was in Mylapore, which was like a walking distance from my house,
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you know, it's a nice 20, 20, 25 minute walk from my house. And, and it was a very, very
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kind of a Brahmin school, a small size, 30 students per class, and only one section.
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So everyone knew everyone, right? I mean, my brother was three years my junior and the
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Krishnamachari Srikant, Chika, we call him, Chika was his batchmate. And, you know, like
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this, you know, people across all the classes and all that, it was a very cozy kind of a
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school, right? I mean, teachers were like, you, my mother will be the teacher in the
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temple or in the sari shop, and you know, you know each other. And so it's very, I mean,
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we still have a very active WhatsApp group of this gang, and we actually met three, four
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times the last two years. So it was a study for very easy, right? And so I was not a great
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sportsman. I was not very good at sports, but I used to read a lot. So we used to be
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members of every possible library in that area. So we are a member of the British Council,
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we used to go and pick up books from there, we used to go to the USIS library to pick
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up books from there. There was also a legendary lending library called Eastbury Lending Library,
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it still exists in Chennai. It's a, so we used to go and pick up comics and books from
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there. And so we used to read a lot. And I remember, you know, we used to read from,
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of course, from Enid Blyton, we graduated to Alistair McLean, Alistair McLean was a
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huge favorite of ours. And we went to the guy who wrote Hotel and I mean, we used to
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read a hell of a lot of, you know, this kind of books. And we also, I mean, we also very
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fond of Billy Bunter, I don't know why, but Billy Bunter was a big favorite. And there
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was a government library called the Central Library. And someone discovered that Central
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Library has a lot of Billy Bunter's. So we actually went and became a member of Central
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Library paying that five rupees or something. And then we used to go by cycle and then pick
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up. So it was a it was a almost like a dreamlike existence, you know, every one of us had a
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cycle. So get onto the cycle and say, you know, you've read this, I've read this, okay,
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let's go and explore. And we used to read a lot of these kind of, of course, comics
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were there. As you remember, there was no TV, right? Those days, no TV. We used to listen
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to those radio Kuwait, which used to come in the night and we used to listen to rock,
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you know, pop music and rock music on radio Kuwait, which used to be Beatles and you know,
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stuff like that. And of course, Binaka Geet Mala used to be there. We used to listen to
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Binaka Geet Mala. There was no TV. Cinema was a regular every week. There was some cinema
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we used to go to English movies, as well as Tamil movies. And I think in the 10th standard,
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I started watching Hindi movies. And I still remember but you know, no one seems to remember
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this that, you know, at once I remember college school had this project where you sit and
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work on some projects and all that. There were no classes. I remember a friend of mine
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and I jumped over the back wall of the school and went and saw Johnny Mera Naam. First day
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for sure something, you know, maybe I'm just deluded. But you know, we used to go and watch
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those kind of things. You know, no internet, no mobile, no TV even. Life was so much simpler,
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you know, for us, you know, growing up was so much simpler, you know, and cricket was
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fantastic. You never got tickets. And I remember you get a match, test match ticket for five
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days, people go for one day. So my first experience going for a test match was the day Ken Barrington
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played the whole day and scored 25 runs. Right. And Bapu Natkarni bolt 25 made an overs on
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a trot. Can you imagine I was there sitting in the stadium watching that stuff, you know,
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I mean, and it was difficult to get those tickets, right. And you got the tickets, you
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went there for one day and you share it with your cousin. And then and then the school
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punished all of us who went out to watch the match. So we had to write imposition or something
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like that. So it was a very different life. I mean, you know, I'm feeling nostalgic. But
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if you move any of today's children into that life, you know, they will, you know, they're
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going to they're going to kill you. But we enjoyed it. We had a great time. But the widening
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of reading actually happened in IIT. School was still pretty narrow. You know, we used
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to read a bit of nonfiction, but not too much. But it's an IIT that you suddenly opened up,
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you started reading in Aldous Huxley and Somerset Maugham and Fritz Kapra and, you know, Godel
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and Sherbac and, you know, stuff like that. You suddenly started opening up, which is
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why I think IIT is a rare institution, because it really opens up your mind to so many things
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and so many concepts. And we had a fantastic library in IIT. And even in IIT, we used to
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get onto the bike and go to a British council to pick up books. And we used to do that.
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And, you know, friends of mine who discovered James Joyce read all his books, we discovered
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Atlas Shrugged. And, you know, what was the other one? Fontaine had an Atlas Shrugged
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was a very, very popular book in the 79, 80 period. So it's really IIT which opened up
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my desire to read more and more of different genres. You know, not really school. School
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was more fiction. Yeah. And in fact, you know, you've also written in one of your books about
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how, you know, your roommate in IIT at the Godavari hostel introduced you to Dark Side
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of the Moon. So all of you would sort of gather around and listen to that. And Pink Floyd
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was also, of course, a college staple when I was sort of in college in the 90s, though
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I wasn't much into them per se. And it strikes me as almost so like if you had to pick one
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day of test we get to watch, it would really have to be Bapu Natkarni bowling to Ken Barrington,
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because Natkarni was the kind of guy who could bowl 40 overs and give two runs. And Barrington
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was the kind of guy who is totally believable that he could bat all day and make 25. So
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those two are quite a deadly combination. Now you mentioned that, you know, when you
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like, first of all, advertising in those days was not a glamour profession. It was slightly
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infraday. And you've spoken about how your friends asked you that, you know, you are
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a IIT, IIM, why are you going into advertising? And, but you said that you enjoyed it enormously.
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So elaborate a bit on those early years. What about it did you enjoy? What part of the work
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was fun? Was it sort of the sense of new challenges every day, the creativity that came with it?
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Was it that sort of sense of having to look closer at your own society? Because advertising
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after all is about selling things to people and you need to understand the people first.
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What about advertising did you enjoy so much in those early years?
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I think, you know, I was prepared for it. So I knew it was hard work, but you know, those
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days, advertising was a much smaller business. So you did not have department like client
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servicing and account planning and media planning. So Rediffusion had a unique way that because
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they hired all these so-called high caliber IIM guys, you know, client servicing, account
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planning, media planning, all three were done by us. So the only the media releases were
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done by the guys, but we used to do it. So it was a lot of, you know, what we call job
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enrichment. It was a very, very rich and potent job. So I at one time remember working on
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five different accounts. One was a cigarette brand called Red and White Cigarette. The
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other was a industrial product company called Thermax. Third was a sari company called Khatao
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Saris. Fourth was computers, which was, you know, ICL or ICIM computers. And fifth was
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Xerox. Imagine maybe I'm forgetting caliber suitings and maybe one more. You know, look
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at the variety of products. So it was such a rich experience. So every single and then
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of course I worked on this fabulous brand called Appela. I've written about it in the
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book, right? The apple drink from Cadbury. So I had six or seven exciting accounts. Each
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was different. Each had a different consumer. So one had to understand the boiler buyer,
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you know, versus a soft drink buyer versus cigarette buyer. So we used to, I used to
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look at research across these six, seven types of consumers, analyze them, then write the
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brief, sit with the producer, sit with the creative team, get the creative out. I mean,
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I was a bottom rung, but I was reporting to the branch director. I was a one-year-old
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trainee, but I was reporting to the branch director and he and I used to go for meetings.
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And I remember he used to let me make presentations. Those days presentations are done with these
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handwritten charts, you know. So I wanted to sit and write those charts and carry them
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rolled up to, I remember one particular presentation. This was to Karthikeya Sarabhai. He's still
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a friend. So we were presenting a campaign for a brand of adhesive, which they had called
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Calibond, but we as an agency could not figure out what to do. So I went through the presentation
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and we presented the first idea, second idea, third idea, fourth idea, fifth idea, sixth
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idea, seventh idea, tenth idea. At which stage Karthikeya stopped and said, hey guys, are
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you trying to tell me that we should not advertise this product? So we said, yeah, you got it.
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So because he said, look, you guys come and recommend one idea, right? The fact that you're
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recommending, you know, you're saying 10 ideas, which means you're confused. I said, yes,
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Karthikeya, we're fully confused. We don't know how to market this product. And that
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time, you know, Favikal was still quite strong, but we said, look, this is going to be very
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difficult just by advertising. Nothing's going to happen. You know, start going and meeting
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carpenters and start selling it there. So every single client, every single brand, one
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was deeply immersed. And whatever reason, though, though Rediffusion was seen as a very
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hot creative agency, they also had this reputation of MBAs, you know, very high quality MBAs
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working with them. You know, they had guys from, I am Ahmedabad, I am Bangalore. No,
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not actually, I am Ahmedabad. I am Cal, FMS Delhi, all these kind of really top class
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guys working there. So we had a lot of, you know, respect from the client. We used to
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listen to a lot of things, what we say. So it was thoroughly enjoyable. And which is
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why, you know, for two and a half, three years, I was there, I really enjoyed my stint there
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and in the world of advertising. So actually, when I went from advertising to marketing,
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I remember Arun Nanda, Managing Director of Rediffusion telling me, Ambhi, you're going
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into a multinational company in the marketing role. Please don't get bored too early. So
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I said, what do you mean? He said, look, here, you've been working morning, evening, night,
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you know, the life of a brand manager actually is a little boring. So just take it easy.
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Slowly you will enjoy that work. And they fully, you know, they never tried to stop
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me from going. They said, yeah, you've got a good break, go. But, you know, be careful
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of a few things, you know, don't be impatient and don't be in a hurry to do things. You
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know, the multinationals work very slowly, work very differently. It'll be good for you
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to learn how they work. So, I mean, it was, advertising was great fun, yeah. And of course,
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you know, the other crazy thing in Rediffusion was really crazy. We didn't have a film manager,
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right? And therefore we guys used to add, the account executives used to do negotiation
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with film producers, sit with film producers. I remember, oh, this is a crazy story, you
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know, we had done our first television ad for Red and White Cigarettes. And Ravi Chopra
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got, he rest in peace. He was the director of that film. And Red and White Hero was a
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young aspiring actor called Raj Babbar. This was before Insaaf Ka Taraz. He was a really
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unknown guy then. So those days, films had to be presented in a double header in a cinema,
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you know, in a mini theater. So it was presented to us. And it somehow didn't have the, you
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know, it was a little simple story. A little kid is playing with a ball. The ball runs
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onto the middle of the road and a truck is coming. It's almost hitting the kid. When
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our man, hero, Red and White man jumps and saves the kid. And when the lady mother looks
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for the kid, he is gone. You know, he's, you know, Red and White Pinawalaon ki baati kuch
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aur hai. You know, that was a line written by Kamlesh Pandey, the one and only Kamlesh
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Pandey. So, you know, imagine the film is presented. We are all sitting there. And this
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really happened. It was a crazy story. So you're all sitting there and the film was
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not working, you know. So we were saying Boss Ravi and Goofy Payental, who later became
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very famous as Shakuni Mama, right? So Goofy was, you know, Ravi's assistant. So Goofy
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and Ravi's assistant. I said, look, Boss is not working. And my boss, Vish, said it's
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not working. Kamlesh Pandey said, ah, not working. So then I said, look, maybe we need
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to re-edit it. So Ravi Chopra said, Ambhi, you want to give it a shot? So I said, yeah.
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So I went to their, you know, editing lab and I sat with Goofy and I re-edited the film
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with the editor. And, you know, I'd learned, you know, because, you know, I'd learned some
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tricks working with other directors like Prahlad. So I said, look, let's chop it into small
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shots and create the excitement. And it worked. You know, I re-edited the film with the editor,
#
showed it to Goofy and showed it to Ravi Chopra. They said, yeah, we are okay with this. If
#
you're okay. I said, okay, let me go and take it and sell it to the agency. And we went
#
and sold it to the agency and said, yeah, fine. Let's take it to the client. So I look
#
at the, look at the kind of opportunity you have at those days, you know, because of lack
#
of specialization. You know, today an account executive or account supervisor may not even
#
know how a film is edited, let alone sit with the editor and actually edit it. You know,
#
so and I keep telling, you know, my own people, we used to, you know, I used to hire people
#
and I used to tell them, get involved, get involved in every stage of the advertising
#
process, you know, so those days we got involved and we really enjoyed it. You know, that,
#
that was the fun aspect of the, of the job, you know.
#
And I'm sure it'll sound quaint to a lot of young people listening to this because, you
#
know, what you describe of your presentations is really basically you're making a physical
#
PowerPoint. There's no computer, you're making a physical PowerPoint and taking it equally,
#
you know, when, you know, you speak of editing your, you know, actually talking of, you know,
#
taking the reels and splicing, you know, getting your editor to splice them and all of that
#
and you're not just sitting on a MacBook and, you know, moving frames around. So, so my
#
question is that, do you feel that this sort of process and it's a, you know, this dual
#
process, one is that you're doing everything, there's no specialization. So you have to
#
get involved everywhere and therefore you're enthusiastic about every part of the process
#
and you understand it intimately. And secondly, your inner sense working with your hands,
#
you can't take lazy shortcuts because you've kind of got to do everything. You know, today
#
if I make a PowerPoint, I can just put whatever I want because I can edit it five minutes
#
later. If you're making a physical chart, you have to do that thinking kind of beforehand.
#
So do you feel that there is value in that, that is lost in modern times? I mean, technology
#
is great, obviously, I'm not being a Luddite and saying that that's an issue, but in modern
#
times we have one, we have specialization and two, we have these tools, not just technological
#
tools, but also cognitive tools in terms of shortcuts that you take in the ways that you
#
think about these things. And do you feel that that, you know, those three years, the
#
sort of hands-on training that you got actually throwing yourself into everything was invaluable
#
and, and, you know, played a big part in shaping you?
#
I think that stayed with me for a long, long time. You know, I mean, the fact that you
#
could actually roll up your sleeves, sit with the editor, edit the film and got you prepared
#
to a lot of things. But, you know, I also think that sometimes we look at the past with
#
a lot of rose-tinted glasses. And I think today what the great thing I did, so-called,
#
you know, editing of the film, today a kid can do it with his mobile phone. So sometimes
#
we, the 60 plus lot think that, you know, you have to learn it the hard way. But today's
#
kids can, you know, can do the same editing. You know, what did I do? I took shots which
#
were 20 frame shots and I cut them into five frame shots. You know, I mean, the editor
#
was also surprised. He said, you want just five frames? I said, yeah, I want just five
#
frames. Cut five, five, five, five, five, five. In that 30 seconds, I want cut, cut, cut,
#
cut, cut, cut every five frames. Today a kid does it with his mobile phone, yeah. So what's
#
the big deal? You know, today, I mean, very often we think, you know, they are not, but
#
they are so bloody smart and they can do things so well with technology that now they need
#
to figure out what to do with it next. You know, those days, you know, the reason I did
#
that editing was because the director I was working with was more of feature film director.
#
He liked the long shot, you know, put a trolley and go slow shot. So he, you know, he was
#
shooting a, this is a 30 second film, which, which had so much drama and in his mind, he
#
could not comprehend. You could do a five second shot. You know, not even five second,
#
five frame shot, right? So, and when I finally did it, he said, yeah, this looks, yeah, this
#
is seems to have the drama, which you guys want. Because in his case, the drama is a,
#
the one second pulling the punch is the one, you know, it's a, it's a slow shot. But the
#
fact is, you know, a lot of us have that era of advertising. And I think many of us went
#
on to become CEOs of different agencies. We all grew up like that. I mean, Ashok Kurian
#
set up Ambience and of course Prasad, another friend of mine who set up Capital, Rajiv Agarwal
#
set up enterprise and, and, and, you know, sorry, Nexus Equity did great work for Raymond.
#
And of course that era people, you know, people like Arvind Sharma went on to head LaborNet,
#
you know, so all these guys, we, we come from that era where we rolled up our sleeves and
#
we did a lot of things, you know, now it's different right now. Now this era is going
#
to throw up a different set of people who are going to be probably understanding numbers
#
and algorithms and those kinds of things. So I think the whole thing is coming around
#
again. Yeah. And that's a, that's a great point you make about accelerated learning
#
in the sense that, you know, what you had to painstakingly edit out could be done by
#
a kid on his mobile phone. And I mean, I just look at chess, which I follow pretty closely.
#
And one of the interesting sort of insights about chess that is fairly commonplace now
#
is that 80 of the top hundred players of all time are probably young active players today.
#
You know, and one of the reasons is that it's your accelerated learning because so much
#
of your learning comes from playing, you know, tens of thousands of games of blitz on sites
#
like chess.com and chess 24 and so on. And therefore your pattern recognition becomes
#
quicker that much faster. You have so many better study tools for theory. You have so
#
much, you know, computer analysis as a pedagogical aid is so important. So you get that kind
#
of accelerated learning, which is pretty incredible. My next question is also about that sort of
#
period. Like in one of your books, writing about that period, you've written quote, the
#
Indian advertising scene was largely dominated by convent educated boys in the sixties and
#
seventies. They took over the task from the British admin who exited the country in the
#
fifties. Indian language writers were confined to the language department, a stop quote.
#
And as you've pointed out, you know, that was gradually beginning to change like Kamlesh
#
Pandey who went on to write Tezab is, you know, an example of that sort of change coming.
#
But my question here is that given that, you know, you're the people who worked with you,
#
all your colleagues and the people who formed the agencies would be from mostly from the
#
English speaking elites living a certain kind of life in the big cities. And yet the consumers
#
that you're selling to, and this is, I guess, especially true as the nineties happen and
#
liberalization happens and, you know, there is an explosion of the Indian middle class
#
in towns and cities all across India. So in a sense, the advertising community is drawn
#
from the elites, but your market is a much larger market. And that brings about the difficult
#
question of how do you sort of understand what this market is? And this is obviously
#
a time before there is, you know, enough data and so on. So what was that process like of
#
getting to terms with who you're selling to and learning to recognize your own biases
#
and kind of keeping them out of the way? You know, yeah, I think if you look at the fifties
#
and sixties, the Britishers field and all these guys, you know, great guys, they all
#
left. And the people who succeeded them were largely English speaking city living people,
#
right? The Gerson, the Cunha. I'm not counting Alec in that because Alec is somewhat different.
#
Gerson, the Cunha, Sylvie, the Cunha, you know, people like that. But around the mid
#
seventies, people like Alec and all figured out that, you know, clients are getting these
#
IAM types as, you know, brand managers. So he said, look, we need to match that with
#
on our side. So he, you know, lint as one of the first agencies to go and start hiring
#
from the IAMs. And then JWT followed, Rediffusion, all of them followed. So what happened was
#
in the sixties and say mid seventies, it was largely, I would call the English theater
#
type who were running agencies. You know, you need people who had to do drama to present
#
and, you know, and then the English, very English theater personalities. Then mid seventies
#
onwards a new thing happened. The MBAs started coming in and MBAs realized that the consumer
#
is different. Consumer is not you or me. And they started bringing in the discipline of
#
consumer research. And, you know, I mean, you're working in agency, but your friend
#
is working in Hindustan Lever or you're working in Richardson Wicks, or he's working in Nestle
#
is working in, and you know that they go into, go on market visit, they go and do deep immersion
#
with consumers. So in fact, both, I think in Rediffusion, one of the most memorable
#
part of my so-called orientation was two weeks or the three weeks I spent in Rajasthan, right?
#
I don't know that I've written it in my, one of my books. So, you know, they said, look,
#
for three weeks, you guys have to go. So I was told you have to meet Jetanand, who's
#
a sales rep of Seba Gayagi, you know, their toothpaste, Binaka toothpaste, Seba Gayagi
#
toothpaste. You have to meet him Monday morning, 9.30 at this Amit Verma distributors Barmer.
#
I was given that on Friday morning. So first thing I said, boss, where is Barmer? So that's
#
your problem. So I discovered Barmer was near Jodhpur. So I had to figure out how to get
#
to Jodhpur and then from Jodhpur go to Barmer. So which was, you know, fly down, hopping
#
flight up to Jodhpur and then from Jodhpur take a night train to Barmer and get out at
#
Barmer and then go to one of those local chaltries, have a bath, you know, and then go to that
#
distributor with my bag saying, Mr. Jetanand, I've come from Bombay. So three weeks I was
#
with him, you know, staying in local lodges, going, you know, I covered that whole belt,
#
you know, Ajmer, Sawai Madhavpur, I may even have the notes somewhere and every single
#
market I covered some 10 different markets. So that kind of got imprinted into, you know,
#
that is the real India. You know, what we see in Mumbai or Delhi is not the real India.
#
Though I feel in every big city, there are many, many little Indias, you know, almost
#
like a village type India in many cities. I spent two, three weeks in, shall I say,
#
small town India and that was very impressionable. I think a lot of agencies did that. You know,
#
they took these MBAs, they sent them into the market saying, look, you go and spend,
#
you know, one month working the market. And so from the seventies, let's say mid seventies
#
to around the, say the late eighties, the MBAs formed a defining culture in advertising.
#
They brought professionalism, they brought the orientation towards consumer research.
#
So it moved away from the theater wala onto a more all India messaging. And at that time
#
television was coming up, you know, Doordarshan was coming up. Doordarshan's reach was dramatically
#
different from the reach of, let's say, cinema theaters, you know. So we had to do research
#
to understand consumers. So that changed. And then of course, Kamlesh Pandey was one
#
of the early pioneers who actually, I used to say, used to think in Hindi and write in
#
English. So in fact, his Hindi writing is always better than his English writing. But
#
Kamlesh was the early pioneer. And then later, of course, Piyush came and the whole generation
#
of writers came, including people like, you know, Nethish Tiwari and all these people
#
came and then the whole thing changed. But it was, I think, the English theater type
#
to the MBA type. And then now to multiple types of people from all over, all over India,
#
you know, the, the MBA types are largely, like you said, from big cities, Bombay, Delhi,
#
Calcutta, Madras, kind of people. But now I think the leadership is scattered. People
#
are coming from, I think leadership is not just confined to the top four or five or six
#
cities today, you get leadership from everywhere. Like, you know, even copywriters, art directors
#
come from everywhere, right? I mean, Nethish Tiwari is coming, come from Indore and you
#
know, people are coming from everywhere, which I think is great.
#
No, in fact, a couple of the sort of case studies that you spoke out, which stood out
#
for me of illustrating sort of the danger of, you know, falling for preconceived notions
#
of what audiences are like, was, you know, the story you told about Pradeep Guha at Zee,
#
his chaiwala test, so to say, and also the sort of the Santur commercials. So tell us
#
a little bit about that, because I found these very revealing about how sometimes you can,
#
you know, have these preconceived notions of what people actually want. And then you realize
#
through doing stuff that it's actually very different.
#
Yeah, you know, I mean, we can make two mistakes. And I think the Pradeep Guha Zee is one kind
#
of mistake, where the team at Zee felt that, you know, our consumer is Masi, they had the
#
term Masi. Whereas this stuff, which you're presenting is very classy. So this kind of
#
stuff, my consumer will not understand, will not appreciate. And therefore, let us massify
#
it. Let's make, let's dump it down, dump it down, dump it down. So we had really dumped
#
down the advertising to a very low mundane level. And when I went to meet Pradeep, Pradeep
#
was then the CEO. And I went to meet Pradeep. Pradeep said, you're doing good work, but
#
tumara ye, yaar bahut maja nahi aaya, tumara art direction teek nahi hai, something. I
#
said, yaar tu kya dek, kya dek hai art direction bol raha hai. So he said, no, I just saw,
#
you know, yes, last week that hoarding, which I saw, looks very, you know, very average,
#
you know. And Pradeep was actually very enterprising. So he said, do you know, actually you want
#
some art director on a freelance basis? Yaar, I will, I will send you some guy. I was very
#
good. So he let him hire a man. I said, ya Pradeep, you saw what has been put up on the
#
hoarding, right? Have you seen the, the options which are presented before what was put up?
#
So he said, what do you mean? So I said, yeah, we presented six rounds. And then this what
#
went up was a sixth round. So I said, do you want to see the stuff? He said, yeah, show
#
me. And I actually carried this stuff. So I said, this is first round, this is second
#
round, this is third round, this is fourth round, this is fifth round, this is sixth
#
round you saw. So he said, you showed all this. I said, yeah. And they picked the sixth
#
one. I said, yeah. What would you guys recommend? I said, I recommend the first one. I think
#
first one is fine. Very nice looking graphics and, but your team rejected it. So why did
#
they reject it? They said, no, they said, you know, this is too sophisticated for our
#
target audience. They will not understand it. You know, people, people in, you know,
#
Jodhpur and, and indoor and all, they will not understand it. So he's, oh, okay. Then
#
he called the head of Marcom and he asked her the same question. So she says the same
#
thing. Yeah, they presented all this, but we preferred the, the sixth option because
#
that is nice and Masi. Whereas the first two, three options are very classy. And I've been
#
trying to tell them, you know, our audience are different. You guys don't seem to understand.
#
So I said, ah, okay. So by then the chaiwala walked in and Pradeep said, you guys keep
#
quiet. He asked, you know, Raju, which one do you like? Raju was a chaiwala from a small
#
town, probably living in Bombay for the last two, three years. So he picked the first one.
#
He said, sir, I like this one. So he said, okay, fine. Bring everyone tea. Then he said
#
about, then he said, yeah, look, yeah, guys, you know, you're still looking at, uh, looking
#
at India through your, you know, wrong lenses. The India is changing. The small time, small
#
town consumer is becoming more and more sophisticated. Please, for heaven's sake, don't, don't massify
#
everything. You know, so, and then later, of course, they decided to do things, uh,
#
which are slightly different, but, but a lot of time we tend to make that mistake that
#
our consumer is, uh, you can make two mistakes. One is to think that our consumer is just
#
like us, which is wrong, right? In India, our consumer is not like us, but the other
#
extreme is a consumer is really one, Dehati, who will not understand anything, has very
#
poor taste. Both are mistakes. You know, both are mistakes. You need to find the right path
#
in between. Yeah. And the Santur commercial you spoken of was also sort of a great example
#
of that and almost part breaking work. Tell me a bit about how that panned out as well.
#
And that's also in fact mentioned in, um, uh, spring, your new book as, as an example
#
of how to deal with rejection. So it's a lesson in, uh, you know, that, that aspect as well.
#
Yeah. You know, so, so I've narrated that, you know, that story is from spring, uh, not
#
from, uh, sponge, you know, when I, you know, when I moved from Chennai, I was in Chennai
#
running the south operations of, uh, and I had resolved that I will not move to Bombay
#
till I turn it around. So it took me about three years to turn it around and start making
#
some profits. And the fifth year was a good year. And that other year I was told, okay,
#
now you move enough is enough, uh, sitting and, you know, having your, you know, Madrasi
#
rasam and sambar, you've really come to Bombay. So I moved back to Bombay. Uh, and I was told
#
there is an important account called Santur and you're supposed to handle it. And, uh,
#
when I started, you know, getting into the account, I realized that, uh, the brand had
#
come to the agency in 1989. The agency had done very good work based on this consumer
#
insight that every woman wants to look young, younger looking sin promise. And, uh, the
#
agency had done three ads, which had worked after that, the adder stopped working. So
#
actually I didn't know later I discovered, you know, I was actually inheriting a very
#
hot potato because the client was actually quite unhappy with what the agency had done.
#
And the agency was convinced that they were on the right track and they had a new script
#
ready, uh, which they wanted the client to buy. The client refused to buy that ad, put
#
it through research and said that it's not working. And this debate was going on for
#
about six months when I got plonked in the middle of this debate. And those were, you
#
know, different days really, you know, agencies used to take tough stance saying, no, we believe
#
in this. Uh, and the clients used to encourage that, you know, nowadays a brand manager will
#
say I'm sacking the agency. I'm calling for a pitch. Those days, the clients said, no,
#
no, no, if you guys believe in that, keep fighting, we'll find a way out. So, so the
#
agency and the client were engaged in a pretty tough disagreement and I was put in the middle
#
and I was told by the client, uh, later that, you know, we were told this guy is coming
#
from Chennai. He'll come with a fresh perspective and he's a bright guy, great experience and
#
he'll give fresh perspective. So when I got into it and I discovered the agency had presented
#
a film about a woman in an aerobics class being mistaken for a college student and the
#
little kid comes and says, you know, mommy, uh, and the agency had called, you know, agencies
#
have this habit of calling these ad films like feature films. So this film was called
#
jazz and the client was really upset. You know, what do you mean jazz? Who understands jazz?
#
My consumer is in, is in small town Andhra, small town Karnataka. What are you talking
#
about jazz? You guys are all Bombay type, Colaba type. You go, go to small town India,
#
understand India. You don't understand India, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I had to,
#
you know, uh, kind of unpeel this onion and I discovered that a client felt that, yeah,
#
maybe the younger looking skin is a good idea. Maybe, you know, maybe we should continue,
#
but this is not going to work. This, this jazz and all won't work. I said, look, I'm
#
stopping to call it jazz. Yeah. We'll call it aerobics, aerobics class. Okay. Aerobics
#
class happens in all cities and we'll call it aerobics. So we called it aerobics. So
#
then I said, you know, I will do this reframing. You know, I talked about that, right? So,
#
I said, look, that is one, let me, let me give you another option. So we wrote a script
#
about a girl entering a music store and buying a, buying a flute and someone comes and asks,
#
you know, which college are you in? And then she says, no, I'm not the college. And then
#
the little kid comes and says, mommy. So we presented both the scripts finally. So what
#
we did, instead of saying, buy this, buy this, buy this. So I said, look, we have to, you
#
can buy either of the two. We are okay. But our, our strong recommendation is let's invest
#
the money, make both the ads. Okay. Maybe the flute film you run in Andhra, the aerobics
#
film you can run in DD Metro or whatever, the more slightly more premium channel. So
#
the client for whatever it is worth was at a bit send. Yeah. Brand sale was going down
#
for nine months. He said, okay, we'll make both the ads. So they made both the ads. Right.
#
And then they took these both ads and they're very professional, right? It's not as if they're
#
wanting to bury the ad. They said, no, you will take both the ads and we will do research
#
in small town India. And when they did the research in small town India, they discovered
#
that the small town woman actually liked the aerobics more than the music store story film.
#
So and then later we said, look, she's liking the aerobics because that is aspirational
#
for her. She'll never go and do that, you know, dance class or whatever. She'll not
#
do that, but she loves to do that. She'd love to do that. And as a result, that film became
#
a breakthrough film for the brand, you know, and, and mind you, it took the agency nine
#
months to convince the client to do that film. And finally I managed to do it because I reframed
#
the problem. I created a wider canvas and then therefore the client could step down,
#
the agency could step down. And we, and at that time in 94, the client was even thinking
#
of abandoning this yellow, you know, this younger looking skin mistaken identity story.
#
They were said it's not working because you know, what happened with the agency was stuck
#
and they were doing shadi after shadi after shadi and it stopped working. And the aerobics
#
was a breakthrough film. And then from aerobics, we did dress designer, we did a whole lot
#
of other things. And today, you know, the agency has changed, but the client is continuing
#
with the same theme. And Santur has become the second largest soap brand in India overtaking
#
Hindustan Leaver's Lux, which is my little revenge to Hindustan Leaver for not giving
#
me that summer assignment. Right.
#
So they rejected you twice and you dethroned their big soap. So yeah, it's, it's, it's
#
almost a soap opera. It's a real soap opera. So I want to, you know, before we touch upon
#
the big themes of your books and I want to talk about all of them, you know, advertising
#
as a whole, you know, the lessons of sponge, you know, leadership and knowledge management
#
and all of that. And also of course, the lessons of spring, how to bounce back from rejection.
#
But before we want to do that, I also want to continue talking about your personal journey
#
because a couple of things stand out for me. And, and one is that, and this is something
#
that you've described in great detail in sponge, for example, your previous book. One is that
#
you're always eager to learn things. Even after you've become a senior advertising person
#
and you become the CEO and all of that, you're not a know it all. You're still talking to
#
people asking questions, trying to learn things. And at the same time, you are also beginning
#
to teach. Like in the nineties, you spoke about how, you know, you started teaching
#
at KJ Somaya and then various other places. And because there were no brand studies, because
#
there were no case studies away, you know, Harvard and all, would you put together your
#
own and that became the first of your 10 books and so on and so forth down the line. Tell
#
me a bit about this. And would I be correct in surmising that these two in a sense are
#
related in the sense that I would imagine that the necessity of teaching something forces
#
you to learn and that these two impulses are, they almost go together in a sense. Would
#
that be correct? Yeah, I think it's perfect. I think Amit, I think it's absolutely perfect.
#
If you want to be a good teacher, you have to be a good learner. Like, you know, if you
#
want to write an article of 1000 words, you should at least read 10,000 words about what
#
other people have written on the subject and you know that, you do that so diligently.
#
So I, in fact, tried teaching in my early days, you know, as an account executive, working
#
with my ESD motorcycle. I had a job in Worley and a friend of mine recommended that Bhawan's
#
had this evening program and they wanted someone to teach advertising to them. So I used to
#
drive down from Worley to Andheri to take a class for my evening thing, but I found it
#
too difficult. You know, I mean, I had a advertising job, it was very strenuous and I could not.
#
So it used to be bad. I mean, I had a lovely bunch of working professionals who used to
#
come to my class, very nice people. And I think twice I missed the class and they waited
#
for me and went away and I felt really bad. And I said, I'll complete the course, but
#
I will not do this again. So I stopped. And then when I came back to Mumbai in 94, a friend
#
of mine told me to go and meet Professor Pyarelal Arya, who was then the director of Somaiya.
#
And I've been shaped a lot by what he told me. So I went and I met him and he said, he
#
always calls sir, sir, sir. So again, he's an I am Ahmedabad graduate. So he said, sir,
#
you have to come and teach. So I said, you know, Dr. Arya, Dr. Arya, I said, no, I will
#
figure out. You tell me what time can you give me? So I said, okay, Saturday or Sunday,
#
Sunday two to five. He said, okay, done. Sunday two to five, you come and teach. So I started.
#
That's how I started. Actually, you know, I, he said, come and teach a course. Which
#
course? He said, you teach advertising sales management. Okay. Advertising and sales promotion.
#
That's how I started 95. I think I started advertising in sales promotion. And I used
#
to go, I think it was about 10 or 14 Sundays, two o'clock, you drive down to Somaiya campus
#
and a lovely bunch of students and some of them actually ended up joining my agency.
#
In fact, one of my students is a senior, is a president of the Bombay office now. And
#
then I started teaching them and I used to take articles from, you know, business world
#
used to come out of those articles. I used, you know, those days I'm talking 95, 96, Harvard
#
cases are very expensive. You know, the copyright was difficult and, and some of Dr. Arya said,
#
no, no photocopying, legitimate dengue. So we know photocopied, you know, the Harvard
#
cases. So I used those business world cases. And then I said, why don't I write some cases
#
of my own to you? So I then wrote a few cases based on my own experience with say, Santur
#
and Sundrop and Tropicana and you know, some of those brands. And I even, I even wrote
#
cases on some of my brands I worked on in when I was running the South operation, like
#
there's a article, there's a case on Fenner, Fenner fan belt, you know, Bangaram Island
#
resort, which is a very interesting little case, Cochin export processing zone. So I
#
put all these together and, and I use them for, for teaching. And that's how the writing
#
journey started once again. And one of my professor friends in America, I shared these
#
cases with him. He said, yeah, why don't you publish the book? I said, what? He said, yeah,
#
I mean, put together 10, 12 cases, put some theory stuff and publish it. So I said, okay,
#
so he said, look, let me share it with a friend of mine who was a big, big time professor.
#
So he sent it to that friend. And that friend said, look, these cases look more like promotional
#
puff pieces for the agency. And I don't know who will publish this as a book. So my friend
#
was a little disappointed. He said, yeah, I'm sorry. You know, this guy says this will
#
not is not publishable as a book. I said, that's okay. I mean, that's his point of view
#
sitting in Chicago, but I'm in Mumbai. And so I sent five of those cases to Tata McGraw
#
Hill. And within a week, someone from Tata McGraw Hill, Deepa came, met me. She said,
#
we are keen. When can you give me the other cases? So I said, yeah, give me about three
#
months. I put it together and I gave it to her. That's how the book came out. It came
#
out in I think year 2000 was when the first book came out. Just a bunch of cases with
#
some little bit of theory. And I used all of them. You know, I used all of them in teaching.
#
And I know a lot of business schools continue to use them. Though it's out of print now.
#
Sometimes I get a call saying, you know, where can I get it? I have a PDF version. I give
#
it to them saying, go ahead and use it. So, you know, that was then, right? I mean, that,
#
you know, you could not get the Harvard cases. You could not get the IV cases. It was so
#
impossible to get. So we had to create our own, what you call jugard innovation to do
#
There were a few good advertising in a brand management case study. There was an advertising
#
case study. The first book was written by Shubrata Sengupta. I still have a copy of
#
the book. And in some sense, he is my role model, because he was a CEO of a large agency
#
called Clarion Advertising. He took time out to write a book of cases. And he used to go
#
and teach at IIM Ahmedabad. And he used to come and teach us in IIM Calcutta. And a lot
#
of my friends who took marketing specialization in IIM Calcutta do believe that was the best
#
marketing course they attended on campus. So, but you know, between that was 1979, but
#
from 1979 to almost 1995-96, there were no real Indian case study books which had come
#
Labdi Bandari wrote a very nice book, which I still have. And I have very good cases which
#
I use. But there was almost like a vacuum from something like 76-77 till around 96-97.
#
And of course, 96-97 onwards, a lot of people have started writing books on Indian brands
#
and Indian cases, which I think is very good today. If you go and search on the Harvard
#
Publishing, there are a lot of Indian cases there, you know. There are cases on Bipro,
#
cases on TCS, Infosys, Mahindra, Royal Enfield. So many good Indian cases are available today.
#
Over the years, Harvard has also reduced the pricing. So it's become much, much cheaper
#
to get legitimate case studies to use in class.
#
So the utility of my case books, I wrote two of them, one alone and one with a colleague
#
called Kinjal Meen. My utility of those books are probably not as relevant today as they
#
were in the year 2000 to 2010, 11, 12.
#
And would you say that the process of teaching where you're basically, you know, taking a
#
body of knowledge and you're presenting it in a systematic way to your students and therefore
#
you're having to not just present a frame for them through which they can look at whatever
#
you're teaching, but you're also in a sense building a frame for yourself. Does it then
#
sort of clarify your thinking and make your thinking clearer as well? Like I would imagine
#
that, you know, sometimes when I'm deep in a subject and there is that moment where suddenly
#
everything makes sense and there is that so to say that thrill of understanding that you're
#
seeing things clearer because you're being sort of forced to delve into it that much
#
more deeply. Was that there for you as a teacher as well? Like, do you think your teaching
#
side gig made you better at your advertising gig in some way?
#
Absolutely, Amit. You hit the nail on the head. I think my teaching gig made me a better
#
advertising professional. And I have spoken in the book, Spring, I've spoken about how
#
we got the Tata Motors account, right? You know, again, with Dr. Professor Arya, he said,
#
you know, sir, we should do something together. I said, what? You know, could you think of
#
some idea of some competition or something we can do together? I'm talking of 95, 96.
#
So he said, why don't we do a case study competition? I said, huh, we can do. So I said, we'll
#
create a special brand, which will be an advertising case study competition. And we called it ComStrat.
#
It still exists. And I said, look, we will do it across all campuses. So what we will
#
try and do is get a client to contribute a case. With this case, we will use as a competition
#
to select and we'll give the price. So Professor Arya said, price hum dekh lenge. I said, no,
#
sir, we will design the trophy and we will give some money as support. So we'll call
#
it the FCB Ulka KJ Somaya ComStrat case study competition. I'm talking of, you know, this
#
was 95, 96, 97. You know, there were very, very few of these happening then. And luck
#
would have it when we were chasing a big auto account. And when Tata Telco that time had
#
unveiled their new car at the auto show in 98 January, I said, look, we will get Tata
#
to participate in this. So we went and met them. And that time they're not even called
#
for an agency pitch. We met them. We said, we want you to participate. They said, no,
#
no, we can't reveal any information. We said, don't reveal anything. We will write it from
#
public domain information. You please come for the judging. So they came for the judging.
#
I think there were five campuses which were selected. I think NIMS, KJ Somaya, I think
#
IIT, I think one or two outstation came for the final presentation. And he was there.
#
I think we had the presentation in one of the auditoriums in Marine Line. And it was
#
a great presentation. He loved it. And maybe it gave him a bit of a positive vibe towards
#
the agency. And later when we pitched for the business, we got the business. But you
#
know, we started leveraging all this, right? Teach, write cases. I remember giving my first
#
case study book to a lot of my clients. And some of them said, look, when you're writing
#
your next case study book, we should be there in the book. I said, yeah, you know, you will
#
be there in the book. And they were there in the book. So, you know, it kind of helped
#
us in many different ways. And of course, you know, the fact that you teach, you'll
#
read more, you pick up more. I used to pick up articles and give it to my colleagues to
#
read. We had a very, very vibrant account planning team. The account planning team was
#
again, encouraged to read and write and do research. So it kind of became a nice, kind
#
of an upward spinning positive cycle of what the agency can do and will do. So you became
#
almost like a, you became more knowledgeable about what was happening. You were reading
#
more, you were understanding more. And that helped us to become a better agency.
#
Tell me also about, you know, another fascinating part of your personal journey, which is when
#
a few years ago, you decide to do a PhD. So what was sort of the impetus behind that?
#
And, you know, and that also, of course, became a book later on. So, you know, what drove
#
you to do the PhD via PhD?
#
Yeah, you know, I mean, I was teaching, right? I was teaching at KJ Somaya. And then later
#
I was teaching at NIMS. So it was doctor, it was Professor Arya, who put that idea into
#
my head in the year, I think, 99 or 2000, saying, sir, apko toh PhD karna padega. So
#
I said, you know, Professor Arya, mein kider time nahi hai sab. He said, no, no, Pune University
#
is offering a flexible PhD. You can go to Pune, spend, I'll arrange for it. You go and
#
do attend some classes, which you have to in one week, and then you can come back to
#
Bombay, do the PhD. I said, no, uskere time nahi hai, you know, I don't think I can do
#
it. So I dropped it. A year or two later, Professor Suresh Ghai was then the director
#
at Somaya. He called me one day saying, sir, are you free to come to campus tomorrow? So
#
I said, ha, kal aaya thaun. So I went there and we sat down. He said, look, Bombay University
#
now offering flexible PhD option. You've been registered. I want you to do PhD with us.
#
I said, sir, mere paas kider hai time. He said, nahi nahi, jada load nahi hai. You have
#
to come here once every two weeks for a half a day class. And I will find you a guide.
#
I know you're academically minded. I know you'll do it seriously. So I want you to do
#
it. So I got literally, you know, kind of arm twisted into doing it. And then when I
#
got into it, I found it very enjoyable. I mean, we had a group of about 15 of us who
#
were in that batch. And I, you know, one was a very senior executive at Wokhart Hospital.
#
One was a guy from a nutrition company. The third was Hariharan from Jet Airways, Isaac
#
Jacob, who was a professor. So we had a nice group of people. Baaghi, who is a professor
#
at IM Indore, I think. So we had a nice, we used to meet every two weeks. And we took,
#
we learned a lot and we learned the fun of doing research. And of course, dealing with
#
Mumbai University is a different game. But we learned that also, you know, how to get
#
the various permissions, approvals. So I did my PhD. I published, you know, I got my PhD
#
and I said, look, I want to publish this PhD thesis as a book, you know, and then, and
#
that didn't turn out that way, but it turned out into a different kind of a book. Yeah.
#
So that's the other story. Yeah. Well, let's take a quick commercial break now and we'll
#
come back and continue the rest of this conversation. Cool.
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Welcome back to the Seen on the Unseen. I'm chatting with Ambhi Parmeswaran about his
#
fascinating career and the fascinating books that he's written including the latest book
#
Spring Bouncing Back from Rejection. You know, among your books, one that I found particularly
#
fascinating was Nawab's Nudes Noodles because, you know, I spent a few months rather myself
#
in advertising back in 94 before moving on to television and doing a bunch of other things.
#
And I found it really insightful. I'd also done an episode more than a year ago with
#
Santosh Desai, who had some, you know, stunning insights about Indian society, part of which
#
came from his time in Indian advertising. Because if you're figuring out the consumer,
#
you are also figuring out the individual, the citizen, all these broad social currents
#
and so on. And a lot of your journey seems similar in terms of sort of understanding
#
what India is all about and so on. So I want to ask you a sort of a few broad questions
#
about advertising and you know what you've seen over the last three, four decades. And
#
my first sort of question is how much of a reflection of popular culture or how much
#
of a reflection of our society rather is advertising and how much can it actually play a part in
#
shaping it? For example, you've quoted in one of your talks, Marshall McLuhan, where
#
he says, quote, historians and archaeologists will one day discovered that the ads of our
#
time are the richest and most faithful reflections that any society ever made of this entire
#
range of activities, stop quote. And you also quoted Kurt Vonnegut as saying, what passes
#
as culture in my head is really a bunch of commercials, stop quote. And you know, for
#
me, when I sort of look back at, you know, all of the advertising that I've been sort
#
of exposed to over the years and while reading your books, you mentioned so many commercials
#
and I am the kind of person that if you mention a commercial, I will immediately go to YouTube
#
and look for it and watch it. So it was almost like, you know, reading your books took me
#
on this sort of this trip through my memories through this changing India, where, you know,
#
we take the present time and what it is for granted and all changes immediately normalized.
#
But you know, looking at commercials of the 80s and the 90s and all of that was quite
#
a fascinating trip in that sense. So, you know, what's your sense of how advertising
#
has kind of coped with the great social change in India in the last 30 plus years, for example?
#
You know, so let me pull back a bit, you know, like we were talking about my PhD and how,
#
you know, as a part of my PhD, I started understanding religion and how religion is involved in shaping
#
our behavior and I ended up writing a book called For God's Sake, which got published
#
by Penguin. And the guy who was my publisher at Penguin, Anish Chandy, went out on his
#
own and he said, I want to be a literary agent. So I said, yeah, but I said, I don't, nothing
#
else to write. He said, no, no, no, I'm coming to Bombay. Let's have a coffee. Let's chat
#
about it. So we were sitting in my office and he said, Ambi, you should write the most
#
definitive book on Indian advertising. I said, what do you mean? Yeah, something like, you
#
know, one or two books he gave. I said, look, I don't have that kind of time and I don't
#
know. I don't know enough to write that. He said, okay, what can you write? I said, look,
#
I can write about how advertising has changed over the last so many years and how it has
#
reflected societal change. So he said, okay, start writing 50, 60. I said, no. I said,
#
I don't think that will work, but let me think about, you know, how to write it. So then
#
we disagreed. I said, look, I want to look at advertising as showing children, showing
#
women, showing men, showing food. You know, I want to show it like that. He said, no,
#
I don't think it will work. You should look at it more like a historical piece. So I said,
#
no, no, no, yeah, I'm not a historian. So then when I started writing, I wrote three
#
chapters and then he then warmed up and then we found a publisher, Penguin, who added a
#
great amount of value. So that's when I started my career in advertising in 1979. Okay. Maybe
#
I was following advertising from 1977 onwards. So I had to go back and look at the advertising
#
of 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and then of course 2000 when I was writing the book. And I started
#
putting them in silos, you know, ad which show men, ad which show children, ad which
#
are about marriage, ad which are about, you know, food, transportation. And then I realized
#
that while people have written books about how television programming has reflected changing
#
society, Rachel Dyer has written some fascinating books on how Hindi movies have reflected the
#
changing society, the entire anti-angry young man, the NRI face. I realized no one has looked
#
at advertising and how advertising has reflected the change in Indian society. So that became
#
the anchor. And I said, I will look at it, you know, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, how marriage
#
is being shown, how sports is being shown, how, you know, how men are being shown, et
#
cetera, et cetera. That's how I started putting things together. And I said, look, see, the
#
good thing about writing this book at that time was that I was almost out of advertising,
#
right? I was in my last phase of Ulka and I knew I was, you know, going to get out in
#
2016 and the book was going to be published in 2016. So I could write very openly about
#
all other ads, you know. So till then I was a little bit more constrained. You know, I
#
cannot praise other agencies ad that liberally. I have to be a little constrained, but I said,
#
look, now I'm going to open up and I'm going to write what I think about great ads, you
#
know. And I said, in this book, I will not only write about Ulka and FCB Ulka, I will
#
write about all ads. So maybe there are some 300 ads mentioned in the book, maybe 10 of
#
them are from Ulka, you know, the rest are entirely outside the domain. And that I think
#
worked. And I think as a mark of respect for the industry, when I asked my leading competitors
#
for an endorsement, right, Piyush, Balkhi, Prasoon Joshi, everyone, you know, didn't
#
need a second reminder, you know, boom, the endorsement came. And that was good. And maybe
#
that's also because I was moving out, right? So there was no question of am I going to
#
use this as a promotion piece for the agency. So when I started looking at advertising and
#
I started reading, you know, like I said, when you start writing, you got to read and
#
you start reading a lot of stuff like I went back to Marshall McLuhan. And I spoke to this
#
friend of mine, I think you have quoted him in some places, Arvind Rajagopal, who was
#
a professor of media studies at NYU. He pointed me towards six, seven books to read. One of
#
them is a book called Gender Advertisements, written by a professor called Arvind Goffman
#
at University of California, right. And this book was not available anywhere. And therefore
#
I had to get my son to buy it on secondhand and Amazon in the US and send it to me and
#
I went through it because I realized that it was a useful book to read and to have.
#
So one had to do a lot of this kind of research, you know. There are, you know, the books on
#
Indian advertising, so-called somewhat historical books are not very great, you know, I'm sorry.
#
There are a couple of ones which have been written, but you know, nothing is in the league
#
of say gender advertisements or one or two other books I read in America. The American
#
books are very negative to advertising. You know, a lot of books which are about American
#
advertising take the good one, a good route, which is, you know, American advertising destroyed
#
our culture. You know, so Fables of Abundance, a lot of those books I read, I read a whole
#
series of them. And then I said, my voice will be somewhat different. And I had to develop
#
a particular voice, which is more happy, a more positive, a more, shall we say, inclusive
#
voice of what advertising is. And I think, I think unlike in America, in India, I don't
#
know, maybe because we are all nautanky artists, our advertising is a lot more enjoyable. Even
#
my friends, Indians who settled abroad, they keep telling me, you know, yeah, when we see
#
those ads on Sun TV and all, much better than the ads we see on American TV. But I don't
#
know why, maybe because we are better storytellers or whatever. So I had a great time. So the
#
big question, Amit, is does advertising reflect society? Can it change society? Now I think,
#
I think the argument is that advertising invariably reflects society. So I remember when I was
#
doing this talk at Godrej Culture Lab, Santosh Desai was my fellow panelist. And a dear friend
#
of mine, KBS Anand of Asian Paint stood up and asked me this question, saying, Ambi,
#
you're saying that these copywriters are great observers of societal change. I don't think
#
so, I don't think they understand societal change. They are writing stuff which they
#
think is fun. And in fact, Santosh also said, look, Ambi, I think you're giving too much
#
credit to the advertising industry for spotting societal change. I said, no, let me think
#
about it. And then I wrote a piece in Economic Times saying, look, I don't think advertising
#
copywriters are actively looking at social change, but they are part of society and they're
#
observing the change, right, that goes into their system that comes out of ads, right.
#
So willy-nilly, whether you like it or not, if you're a copywriter, you're watching TV
#
serials, you're watching movies, you're watching what is happening around you that goes into
#
you that becomes an ad, right. So whether you like it or not, you are in society, you're
#
a part of the change, and therefore you're reflecting that change in society, in your
#
advertising consciously. And when you pull back and say, okay, I actually see how marriage
#
has been depicted or how old age has been depicted, right.
#
The other question, can advertising change society? I don't know. I don't think advertising
#
has that much power to, for example, reduce color bias or to reduce caste bias or religious
#
bias. We can nudge it, we can nudge it a bit, and I call that neo-visualization. Irving
#
Goffman says that whole advertising industry is about hyper ritualization. So all the rituals
#
are hyper, you know, so men are bigger, women are smaller, et cetera. And I'm saying advertising
#
can do neo-visualizer. You can think of a new role for the kid, you can think of a new
#
role for the husband or the wife, right. But can you change deeply held societal beliefs?
#
I don't think so. I don't think advertising can do that. That is a job of social worker,
#
that is a job of religion, that's a job of, you know, larger popular culture. I don't
#
think an advertising campaign can remove color bias or can remove, we can do a little bit.
#
I mean, I think some of the stuff which brands are trying to do is helping it, but I don't
#
think we can do too much. Maybe I'm underestimating it.
#
So if you'll indulge me, I'll think aloud a bit. Like one, of course, I agree with you
#
that it's a reflection of society, but it strikes me that it is of necessity and unavoidably
#
a simplistic reflection. Let me explain what I mean by that. I think whenever you're trying
#
to understand something that is very complex, you do it by figuring out certain heuristics
#
and taking simple narratives and making sense of the world through those simple narratives
#
which cannot possibly reflect the complexity. And it strikes me that, you know, what you
#
refer to as hyper ritualization, for example, is an example of that. For example, you know,
#
you've written and I'll quote from your quote, racial and religious stereotyping is used
#
in marketing communication to telegraphically code values that would be difficult to input
#
into a small ad format, a stop code. Now, for example, we might know that Indian women
#
are, you know, there is no such thing as the Indian woman. It's just extremely complicated.
#
But when an advertiser is thinking about how do I appeal to the Indian woman, they have
#
to build up a simple construction which obviously evolves over time. Like in one of your books,
#
you've spoken about how, you know, during the Santur commercial, it struck you after
#
the commercial was made that there's no bindi on the forehead of the lady and you went to
#
your video head and said, can we use rotoscopy or whatever to put a bindi there? And she
#
said, chill, you know, no need to worry. And there was no need to worry because that campaign
#
was such a big success. So it strikes me that one, there is a certain lag and a certain
#
possible sort of simplisticness with which anybody not just advertising people, but anybody
#
who's trying to figure out a complex society might, you know, look at a society. Now, the
#
issue with advertising is that it creates a feedback loop that a simplistic vision of
#
society then actually goes into the advertising. And I sort of agree with Vonnegut. I'm not
#
pessimistic or negative about it, but I agree with Vonnegut that commercials are actually
#
a part of a popular culture. You know, many of the memes and the ways we speak and all
#
of those things, you know, I was actually in the room when I was an HTA at the time
#
when nothing official about it, that slogan was coined. I think Aruja Chauhan was a young
#
copywriter at the job then who came up with it. And so it can create this feedback loop
#
and therefore this simplistic vision that advertising might have can actually go back
#
into society and exacerbate that. Like, a couple of examples of this which come to mind
#
is one is the great colonial example that when the British came to India, they needed
#
to figure out this incredibly complex countries and the early interlocutors were these elite
#
Brahmans and therefore they formed their whole vision of what Hinduism was and India was
#
from the vision of these early interlocutors, you know, and could actually have played a
#
part in the further entrenchment of the caste system and looking at Hinduism as one monolithic
#
thing rather than, you know, something that is far more diverse, which is, you know, one
#
example that comes to mind of this happening. Is that something that as a person within
#
advertising and as a very self-aware person who is not just thinking what does a consumer
#
want, but who's also thinking how is society changing? Is that something that sort of concerned
#
you and you looked at closely? And also some of the case studies you've spoken about, particularly
#
for example, I was struck by Maggie as something that in a sense spoke to a need that society
#
did not know existed and filled it so beautifully that it became a part of culture that, you
#
know, the kid comes home from school, what do you have to eat? And the mother says bus
#
dominant and, you know, and that might have been an unexpressed need that I need to make
#
something quick to give my kids. And suddenly that becomes something cultural and is a way
#
of sort of advertising, shaping a social habit, though not in any deep, meaningful way. So
#
what are your sort of thoughts on this? Is this something you've grappled with?
#
Well, in a sense, you know, whenever you do any advertising, you do worry a bit saying,
#
you know, am I, like you said, you know, it's an echo chamber, right? So, you know, am I
#
doing something which may reinforce something wrong in society? And I remember a young account
#
executive who said I refused to work on a fairness cream, right? And then he refused
#
to work on that brand we were handling. So that kind of protest happens. But, you know,
#
I don't know whether, suppose I reflect something in advertising, is it going to harden these
#
societal beliefs, right? Or is it going to, and how can I do something different? Like,
#
for example, in that famous Dara film, where that little boy is waiting there, you know,
#
trying to run away from home. And that, you know, old man is coming, you know, and he
#
says Ramu kaka, I said Bablu, you know, Mummy toh jalebi bana rahi hai. Now, when I wrote
#
that in the book, and I said it's an old postman. Now, my editor said, how do you know it's
#
an old postman? So I said, look at the semiotic symbols, you know, he is dressed in khaki
#
uniform, he's on a cycle, he knows the kid, kid knows him. So we had to telegraphically
#
put all that, you know, so that the consumer can quickly, quickly understand that it's
#
a postman, you cannot sit and explain that he's delivering post. And then, you know,
#
you don't have the time in 30 seconds, you have to tell that. So you have to, so in a
#
sense, you take a lot of these shortcuts. Some of these shortcuts actually reinforce
#
those wrong things in society. Like the whole, you know, the servant, the Ramu, in this case,
#
Ramu kaka was a postman, but you know, there's a Ramu is the servant in the house. So the
#
servant is always dressed in dhoti, you know, whereas the Malkin is dressed in a nice thing.
#
So you do that to unfortunately, present some things which should not be presented that
#
way. But you don't have the liberty to do that. In fact, the chapter on mystery of the
#
missing saree, I've written about how the lot of brands have moved away from showing
#
women in sarees. Though your average consumer is using a saree, you're showing a woman dressed
#
in trouser and shirt or in or in churidar and pants or whatever, because that is the
#
aspirational dress of the Indian, urban Indian woman. Everyone wants to be dressed that way,
#
though they are dressed in sarees. And so today, the telegraphic thing if someone is
#
dressed in a saree, she's probably 60 years old, or she's a maid servant, right? So how
#
do I quickly communicate grandmother, put her in a saree, put the mother in a pant shirt,
#
and the kid can be in a pair of jeans. So I've quickly established three generations, right?
#
So we take some of these shortcuts, and maybe reinforcing some wrong things. So I think
#
I've written that, you know, in the, you know, there is this group of people who are trying
#
to get advertising people to become sensitive about gender. And how willy nilly you may
#
actually press the wrong buttons without realizing like there is this wonderful film written
#
by my good friend Arun Kale about these bunch of 10 boys playing football, right on a rainy
#
day. And, and the goalkeeper is actually polio afflicted is, you know, he's got a crutch.
#
And the game is going on. And the finally the kick happens. And this goalkeeper dives
#
and saves the ball, right. And when this happening, you know, six kids are watching the game.
#
They're all sitting on a parapet wall and watching it. All six of them are girls. So
#
without realizing what have I done, I've said, boys are energetic, boys are the boys play
#
football, girls don't girls sit and observe girls sit and clap. I tell you know, till
#
I went through that workshop, I didn't realize this that I said, God, I mean, you've done
#
something wrong. They could easily put made it three boys and three girls on the parapet
#
and put two girls to play football. No one, you know, no one realized it, you know, and
#
I keep getting asked questions about, you know, why, you know, it's such a wonderful
#
thing that Santosh has always showed a girl child. I said, is it because of gender sensitivity,
#
etc, etc. I said, I wish it was gender sensitive. It was not. It was a purely selfish motive
#
that a little girl looks much more sweeter than a little boy and you're selling a beauty
#
product. When you're selling a beauty product, you want someone who looks beautiful. So,
#
you know, I have a pretty woman and a cute looking daughter makes better sense for a
#
beauty product than showing a pretty woman and a nice looking boy, right. But people
#
gave us credits, it's such a forward thinking, you know, that the girl child, but that was
#
not that way. It was thought of differently. Sometimes you make the right decision for
#
the wrong reason. And sometimes you do something without realizing that you're actually doing
#
Yeah. And, you know, another sort of interesting example, which comes to mind, which you spoke
#
about in Nawab's News Noodles is, again, the example of fair and lovely, where, you know,
#
the father doesn't really have much hope of the girl because, you know, she's not a son.
#
What is she going to do? And she's not now using fair and lovely to attract somebody.
#
She's using it to help her get a job and she gets a job. And right at the end, you know,
#
when she takes her father out to a hotel to celebrate, he calls her beta ki beta ye mangwa
#
or whatever. And I remember when watching it, nothing struck me. It was just a commercial.
#
When I read your description of it again, I kind of almost recoiled saying, you know,
#
how could, which also shows in a sense that I have changed in the way, you know, I look
#
at the world change. And I suppose all of us, that's a natural and positive thing. But
#
looking back, it just seems like such an incredibly regressive commercial and indeed such a, you
#
know, some would argue like, I totally understand why the account executive you mentioned didn't
#
want to work on the product. You know, that's, that's completely sort of natural and understandable
#
today. So the thing is that when a brand is sort of in a complex landscape, where for
#
many people, they would not recoil, they would feel a surge of emotion, a positive emotion
#
that the father has validated the girl by calling her beta, which was the original intent,
#
obviously. And at the same time, there is a sliver of the consumer, which doesn't feel
#
that way. And obviously, I often say India lives in three centuries at once, you know,
#
the 19th, the 20th and the 21st. And the 21st is kind of small and vocal and on social media
#
and virtual signaling a lot, and they're going to jump on you for anything you do. So that
#
sort of tightrope, how do advertisers and a brand manage that on the one hand, you want
#
to sort of go in the right direction and do the right things and fight those stereotypes.
#
On the other hand, to speak to these larger masses just for, you know, signaling to them
#
who the mother is and who the daughter is, you know, you might argue the stereotyping
#
plays a functional role there. And you also don't want to go too far to go out of your
#
way to signal something to a particular elite bunch, which will piss off the rest of the
#
people. And you also have to keep an eye on the politics of it, as we've seen from what
#
happened in the recent Danish controversy, you know, so how does one walk this tightrope?
#
What is sort of how does the advertiser deal with it? Because even if your core consumer
#
doesn't care about a particular set of values, you might have an entirely different set of
#
people jumping on you for, you know, who you're not even selling to. So how does one kind
#
of navigate this? And is this something that you faced in your active days and advertising?
#
Or is it something that's happening much more now? And you can just step back and say, okay,
#
not my circus, not my monkey anymore.
#
You know, I think it's a tough, it's a tough situation, especially in India, because you're
#
living like you said, in the 18th century, 19th century, and the 20th, and maybe entering
#
the 21st century, it's a tough job. What you think is a perfectly harmless ad, fun ad turns
#
out to be politically incorrect. I remember, we had done this ad for Tata Indica, which
#
said box shape, bubble shape, but then gentlemen prefer curves, and a lovely photograph of
#
the car, right? We all thought it was nice, cute, fun. But you know, God forbid, some
#
old gentleman actually wrote a letter to Mr. Tata, saying that this is a very sexist ad,
#
how did your company run this ad? So, you know, the question came to the marketing team,
#
which gave it to us. And we said, look, it's over. The ad is not going to appear again.
#
So that was a reply given to that old gentleman saying, you know, we apologize. And you know,
#
we made the mistake and we're not running it again. Then the guy was very happy. You
#
know, so today there are, there's a multiple complexity here. Let's look at the fair and
#
lovely and what is called the glow and lovely issue. I mean, is the consumer complaining
#
about it? No. Does the consumer want to look fair? Yes. But where is the problem? The problem
#
probably is coming from the global audience, right? The global investors are asking questions
#
about, you know, you're saying I'm a socially aware corporation, how can you sell a product
#
like this? Now they pull off the product, what happens to a shareholder, right? It's
#
a very, very profitable brand for them, right? So they're caught in this kind of a never
#
never land. So not only is India living in 18, 19, 20 or 21st century, there is also
#
maybe an influencer group sitting in London who is living in the 22nd century, right?
#
So you know, balancing all this is very tough. And I think we did some amount of balancing
#
during our days. Today it's becoming even more tougher because of social media. So I
#
think companies have to be clear that at a point of time, I'll ignore social media, I
#
don't care, right? Like what, you know, when, when fair and lovely did that a roasters ad,
#
they were banned, right? Social media banned them, saying that, you know, this is in fact,
#
some website even rated it as the worst ad of the decade or something like that. But
#
they said, forget it, this is too small. Doesn't matter. We ignore them. Or even that wonderful
#
Airtel ad, right, where this the girl is a is a boss, and she goes home. And she's cooking
#
something and then she's asking him, what do you have for dinner? I mean, social media
#
freaked out about it saying, why is she going home and cooking for him? Can't you advertising
#
guys think of nothing better than women as cooks? But I think Airtel said, yeah, that's
#
okay. You know, you can rant and rave about it. But we think we have done it right. Because
#
we've shown a very modern woman. She's a very educated woman. She's actually her husband's
#
boss. And she's going home and, and she's enjoying the cooking process. You know, she's
#
dressed nicely and in a whatever, a t shirt and whatever and she's making whipping things
#
up and she's having fun cooking. It's not that she's toiling in the kitchen with her
#
prestige pressure cooker and you know, making, she's having fun. So they said we'll ignore
#
and I think they ignored social media and they went ahead. Now, Tanishk was complex.
#
One it went on YouTube, it didn't go on TV. Maybe if it had gone on TV, positive force
#
would have also, you know, worked in favor of Tanishk. They went on YouTube, which meant
#
the the renters saw it first before the lovers. And they started ranting about it. And the
#
company decided to back off, which I think probably they realized that the time and the
#
place was not right for something like that. You know, so you know, for example, they did
#
that wonderful ad with this girl getting married for the second time doing the saath feira.
#
Now I could say someone might say, you know, in our Hindu Rashtra, there is nothing like
#
second marriage. You know, you can't do it. And someone can start, you know, yesterday
#
someone protested that, you know, you're insulting Manushmiti. Because, you know, you said Baba
#
Sahban Baker burnt Manushmiti. That's a historical fact. That's a historical fact. Now, so you
#
got to, I don't know, it's very tough to navigate all this. So you've got to be careful what
#
to avoid. By and large, advertising avoids religion. Internationally, of course, advertising
#
avoids religion like the plague. I mean, America, American advertising, there is never any religion
#
in play. You never show multi-religious people in an American ad. And as you know, and I've
#
written about it, in America, they don't even collect data about your religious orientation
#
in the census. That data is not collected because it's seen as privacy, invasion of
#
privacy. Here, not only in India, we collect religion, we also collect this caste and subcast
#
and maybe even gotra, whatever we'll collect all that, right? They don't do that. So we
#
are kind of, we need to balance all this so that without, and then finally, our job is
#
what in advertising? Our job in advertising is to sell the brand, right? So in, you know,
#
we cannot suddenly put on the mantle of, you know, I'm a social reformer and therefore
#
I'm going to reform society. That's not your job. Your job, you're being paid to advertise.
#
You're being paid to sell the product, sell the promise. As long as you do it well, and
#
you don't piss off too many people, I would say keep doing. So it's become more interesting
#
today. Like you said, you've got to be a little more sensitive. I don't think in today's world
#
I would have done that box shape, bubble shape, you know, gentlemen prefer curves. I learned
#
my lesson. But it's interesting that, you know, today there are multiple target audiences
#
you need to be wary about. Yeah. And you know, I caught you using the phrase like the plague,
#
which is not a phrase one should use in 2020, I guess. I just want to sort of, you were
#
talking about the Airtel ad, which I think is a, you know, a perfect case study to go
#
deeper into this. And I just want to quickly point out to my listeners what exactly happened
#
in that commercial. That commercial basically shows an office scene and there's a lady sitting
#
in a cabin and she's obviously the boss and this male employee of hers walks in and she's
#
not happy with something he's done or whatever she wants him to work further on it and he's
#
unhappy about it. But she says, no, it's got to be done. And she gives the orders and she
#
goes. And the next shot is she's at home and she's cooked a nice meal and she does a video
#
call to this same guy who you realize is her husband. And she says, okay, when are you
#
coming home? Your food is ready. So it's like a dual role. And I found it on the one hand
#
for the vast majority of your audience. I think the signal here would be pretty progressive
#
that women can work and aspire to great careers, that women can be the boss of men and it need
#
not be something that hurts a male ego. But at the same time for another constituency
#
is regressive because even though you've shown a, you know, a forward thinking progressive
#
woman, you are showing her cooking and therefore you're going back into the old thing. And
#
there's a similar dilemma, for example, that comes up around say, just thinking back, if
#
you're talking popular culture about the film article 15, which came out and which I think
#
most people would say is a very progressive film in the way that it looks at cast and
#
tackles it head on and all of that. But I witnessed a panel discussion last year at
#
this festival I'd gone to where the director Anubhav Sinha was being absolutely slammed
#
because of promoting the white savior complex. And you know, why is the main protagonist
#
a Brahmin and why couldn't they have had a Dalit protagonist? And this is again, you
#
know, the guys made for what for 99.9% of the country is an incredibly progressive film.
#
And you have a small sliver who are probably just signaling to the to their peers and looking
#
for things to outrage about, just kind of going nuts on that. So I can sort of imagine
#
that that's a fact. In fact, in that Airtel film, they don't reveal that their husband
#
and wife and in the mobile phone, when the mobile phone rings, when he picks it up, it
#
says wife, right? That's how we get revealed. But today someone may say, why should it be
#
wife? Why can't they be partner? Why can't they be spouse? You know, so like you said,
#
there are different people. I remember at that talk which I gave, I showed the ad of
#
fast track where there is this little cupboard which is rocking and then two girls come out
#
of the cupboard and they kind of adjust their skirt and they walk off. And the line says
#
come out of the closet or something like that. And then I presented it as an example of,
#
you know, propagating LGBT or whatever, right? I said very progressive ad and from a very
#
conservative group, Tata, Titan, etc. At the end of the talk, an elderly gentleman my age
#
or even older walks up to me and said, you said it's very progressive. But what was so
#
progressive? Two girls came out of the cupboard and they walked away. I said, sir, what were
#
the two girls doing inside the cupboard? That is the story. And he said, ah, ah, I didn't
#
realize. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's in fact what the two girls were doing inside the cupboard,
#
you could say is a classic example of the seen and the unseen. I'll move on to my next
#
question now, which is on, I think, a fundamental challenge that advertising has to face. And
#
I'll again quote your words about the media explosion over the last 10 years where you
#
write quote, the last 10 years have seen an explosion of consumer choice and media consumption.
#
Print is under attack from digital. Even though Indian language print is still vibrant and
#
blooming, that television has been growing rapidly as well. The numbers are astounding.
#
There were a grand total of 55 licensed television sets when Nehru died in 1964, about 100,000
#
when Indira Gandhi declared emergency in 1975, a little over 2 million when the Asian Games
#
came to Delhi in 1982. 34 million families owned a TV set when Manmohan Singh opened
#
up the economy in 91. And when Narendra Modi was sworn in as prime minister in 2014, over
#
60% of the 250 million homes in India has had a television set, stop quote. And now
#
of course, people don't only sort of consume video through television, you know, the mobile
#
phones are almost ubiquitous now. So I have a couple of questions. One of course goes
#
back to that famous almost cliched quote of John Wanamaker when he said, you know, quote,
#
half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is I don't know which half, stop
#
quote. And it kind of strikes me that what has happened is one media has become very
#
diffused and dispersed to whatever metrics one comes up for gauging advertising effectiveness
#
can very easily be gamed. So for example, I remember a time when digital advertising
#
used to be sold on the basis of we get so many page views, but that's easy to game with
#
crazy pagination, or that, you know, the clicks became a measure, but all measures are easy
#
to game. You don't really know how efficient advertising very often is. In fact, you have,
#
you know, use the term spray and pray for digital marketing. And what's happened and
#
I keep pointing out in the context of journalism, which obviously, I know a little bit more
#
about their advertising. But in the context of journalism, what has happened is that over
#
the last 10 years, the way people consume and discover information has changed completely.
#
And journalism hasn't figured it out. And it is completely clueless in that regard.
#
And especially the mainstream outlets, but frankly, every single outlet more or less
#
hasn't figured out that the way people are consuming information has changed so completely
#
and they need to do something about that, you know, and that might even be one reason
#
that advertising as a business model seems broken for so many different industries. So
#
what are sort of your thoughts on this? You know, how challenging are these times for
#
advertising itself? Do we need to call into question how we define advertising and how
#
we, you know, the practice of advertising itself?
#
So I think that's a tough, tough question to handle, Amit, because it's a huge question
#
and it depends on the product category we are looking at. You know, I was chatting about
#
this with Professor John Philip Jones, who's written several books on, you know, advertising
#
effectiveness and he's got a new book coming out. And he says that India has for a long,
#
long time been dominated by packaged goods advertisers. You know, the Unilever, the P&G,
#
the Godre, the Coke, the Pepsi, etc. He says that this is going to change because those
#
products consumers will not want to consume based on advertising. They will want to consume
#
based on whatever discovery or pricing, etc. And other products will rise to the top. It
#
could be healthcare, already wasting healthcare, technology, you know, those will rise. But
#
my feeling is, you know, that we keep saying the 30 second spot is dead. The 100 column
#
centimeter ad is dead. I mean, I remember attending an FCB global conference in 1997
#
and Bruce Mason went on stage, I think it was Phoenix, Arizona, and he announced that
#
the 30 second ad is dead. You guys better learn what is the new advertising going to
#
be. At that time, when he predicted 30 second ad is dead, it was not because of online.
#
It was because of video recorders, right? There was that fancy thing, which was a rage
#
in the US and people said people will not watch the ad. They will record it and the
#
recordable DVRs, I think, right? DVRs, they'll record it. It didn't happen, right? 30 second
#
ad continued to 1997, 2000, 2017. 30 second ad is still around. So my feeling is there
#
is an old comment, right? Television killed the radio star. It doesn't kill the radio
#
star. It kind of made the radio star do something different, like for example, what you're doing,
#
you know, podcast. So I think, I don't think television will go away. I don't think print
#
will go away. But you know, in print, you know, since you are in print, and I am also
#
have some exposure because I sit on the board of the Hindu. So, you know, we always have
#
the dilemma. Is the news consumer who's consuming newspaper different from the news consumer
#
is consuming online version. You know, till now, till now, it was chalk and cheese. The
#
person reading the newspaper wants more detail, you know, doesn't want, you know. So he would
#
rather have a headline saying Amit Verma interviews, serial author, Ambhi Parmeswaran, and some
#
interesting insights. Whereas the online version will probably say 10 things to learn from
#
Amit Verma and Ambhi, right? Or 10 mistakes Ambhi and Amit Verma discovered when they
#
talked. So the online is always a little sensational. But I don't know, you know, if more and more
#
paper people are going to go to online, will that online also have to change? Will it start,
#
you know, I don't think Wall Street Journal or New York Times are pandering to that Buzzfeed
#
and the VT feed audience, right? They are still maintaining integrity. So that I think
#
will happen. As far as advertising is concerned, the big problem, Amit, is attribution. You
#
know, ideally, you could say, why do I need anything? I just do search, right? But search
#
is the last mile. So clients are figuring out that, you know, this pray and pray is
#
not working. Unfortunately, in India, what has happened is YouTube has just become another
#
television channel. So you buy, you know, what is the cost per million? So cost per
#
thousand on Hindi GEC is whatever 50, 80 rupees, cost per thousand on YouTube, with slightly
#
better targeting is say 100 rupees, 200 rupees, 300 rupees. Same thing with Facebook. Some
#
of the clients I work with saying, hey, you spend one lakh, you get one million views
#
on Facebook. I said, who? Generally anyone, right? So it's not then that there is nothing
#
then that defeats the purpose of digital. Digital is supposed to be targeting, right?
#
So I think smarter clients are figuring out. They're saying that I need to keep running
#
experiments. I need to keep collecting data. I need to understand attribution a little
#
better, right? And I think even Facebook and all these guys are trying to educate clients
#
and saying, look, we can do the full, what they call the full stack or the full pipeline
#
managing and full pipeline monitoring. But it's coming. I think in the next five years,
#
we will see a lot of that happening and advertising. And another thing, which I think at high
#
time it happened, is that agencies and clients are now figuring out that it's completely
#
unproductive to have multiple people working on the same brand. So I think I've been speaking
#
to some of the agency people are saying, look, we handle everything for this client, right?
#
I handle this, for example, Nissan and I handle all that happens on Nissan. I do the print,
#
I do TV, I do online, I do search, I do everything because I understand the brand, I do everything.
#
So I think the whole, what we call 360 degrees, I think is coming back. And some of the smarter
#
clients are saying, look, let's not have multiple agencies running amok with our brand. We need
#
to put all that with someone whom we can trust. If that happens, then it's good for the agencies.
#
They'll be able to command a premium, invest. The problem is in the good old days, when
#
the client came to an agency, the agency started investing. You started investing in doing
#
your own research, understanding the product category, understanding the consumers. So
#
you actually became a good sounding board for your client. I wish if that happens, that'll
#
be very good for everyone.
#
No, I actually agree with you about what you said about that the online reader isn't necessarily
#
looking for a simplistic kind of experience of Buzzfeed, clickbait, you know, five words
#
of wisdom from Amit Verma today, or, you know, why Amit Verma was strangled by one of his
#
guests on a live Zoom recording. But for me, what I see and in a sense, my podcast exemplifies
#
that is that there is also a great hunger for depth and nuance, which you often don't
#
get in many other sources. And all of us in that sense contain multitudes, right? I am
#
the same guy who is hitting clickbait, and who is, you know, who's got 60 tabs open on
#
his YouTube, but also the person who listened to a 3R podcast, and who will read a book
#
and take notes diligently. But I have a sort of a more fundamental thought on this. And
#
I don't even know if this is a question, but I'm just putting this thought out there for
#
my listeners, because from a content creator's point of view, I've been thinking about this
#
a lot recently, which is that, look, you know, where was the scope for advertising to even
#
exist to begin with? And part of it, I think, comes because when a content creator creates
#
something of value, earlier, there was no way to monetize that, but advertising. Advertising
#
was a big part of the mix. So everyone who's listening to this podcast, obviously, is valuing
#
it is paying for it with their time, because time is money. So if you spend, like, say,
#
one and a half hours listening to my three hour conversation at double speed, that one
#
and a half hours is worth a lot to you. And you're paying for it. And you would actually
#
be willing to pay for it directly, except that earlier, there was no mechanism to do
#
so there was too much friction, you can't pay for each and everything you consume. So
#
one via medium for that is advertising where advertisers come in and they buy those eyeballs
#
from me, the content creator, or more likely, because I can't scale on my own, I would sell
#
my content to a platform, the platform would get the collect the eyeballs, and advertising
#
would come in. What is now happening and it's very exciting and is going to accelerate
#
is that more and more for creators, at this point in time, possibly only for elite creators,
#
but more and more for creators, it becomes possible to kind of get that value from the
#
reader or the consumer or whatever you're creating directly, you do not need the platform
#
like I might literally even though I'm on the roster of the Times of India still as
#
a columnist, I think it is plausible that I might never write for a newspaper again
#
because I don't need to, I am reaching those people directly, they are discovering and
#
navigating content differently. And there are various other ways of monetizing which
#
are working out for me which have nothing to do at all with advertising. Now obviously,
#
in the sense that I have other ways of direct monetizing working out for me that automatically
#
makes me an elite creator and it's not necessary that that will percolate through but I think
#
new platforms will come in new ways of monetizing will come. So, my very rambly sort of thought
#
then is that what is the advertiser to do because to me advertising was a mechanism
#
for creators to capture some of the value they make for their content. So, do you have
#
any thoughts on this? I think it's a great narrative, what you said is right, today there
#
is an audience for a 15-minute podcast and there is also an audience for a one-hour podcast,
#
so the audience is multiplying. Now, let's pull back, where did advertising come from?
#
Advertising came to piggyback like you said on audiences, early newspapers for example,
#
that's where it started, early newspapers started. And then advertisers became a little
#
greedy and they said look, we need more audiences. So, they went and created the original soap
#
opera on radio, it was advertising created, it was created by Procter & Gamble because
#
they said let's get more people to come and watch this. So, that equation is continued
#
and you gave content free to the consumer, but the consumer paid you with their time
#
and what you got from the consumer was attention and for that attention you delivered five
#
messages, six messages to them. But today I think there is a lot of opening up happening
#
thanks to digital technology, today you can actually collect money from every listener,
#
so you can technically say, what Steve Jobs did in a phenomenal way, $1.99 for a song
#
and he could sell songs, till then it was inconceivable. Today there are aggregators
#
who are saying look, you don't want to subscribe to New York Times, you want one article, pay
#
one cent. New York Times is happy, they get paid one cent for it, whatever, so that's
#
going to happen more and more, there are going to be aggregators who come and so I think
#
this earlier pie in India, even the television pie in India was 90% advertising, 10% subscription
#
and that is slowly changing, it has become 55-45.
#
Unfortunately in India, and you write for Times of India, I write for Business Standard
#
and I write occasionally for ET, the problem is English media in India, English newspapers
#
are highly subsidized. English newspapers in India today charge a cover price which
#
is even lower than that of a Hindi newspaper, paper to paper. In fact, ideally English paper
#
should be charging more than Hindi paper because it's supposed to be a literate, but for whatever
#
reason Times of India figured out that I need to drive readership and they've driven readership
#
and they've kept the price low.
#
But going forward, I think we will see these multiple buckets getting filled, it could
#
be the bucket of say clean advertising, a bucket of what we call subscription fees,
#
maybe in film, in the other debate which I was having with a friend of mine saying that
#
look if 50% of television audience is going to go to OTT and OTT doesn't have ads, what
#
is going to be the advertising of the future? It will be product placement, where your brand
#
gets placed inside an ad. I mean the first big such product placement was American Idol
#
and Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola paid a million dollars to just have the Coke can in front of the
#
American Idol jury members and that partnership continued for something like 10 years. One
#
million dollars just to have the can there.
#
And now you are having OTT serials coming and I'm sure brands will say, producers will
#
say that, producers will say look and they will tell Amazon or they'll tell Netflix look
#
we are going to monetize this series, we're going to have a car sponsor, we're going to
#
have a suiting sponsor, we're going to have this, we're going to make a crore of rupees
#
from them, is it okay with you guys? So that will start happening and I remember seeing
#
that serial which Sushmita Sen on Disney about this Rajasthan drug thing, maybe you didn't
#
see it. And she was driving an Audi all the time. A lot of film happens in that Audi.
#
I said why Audi? Did Audi pay for it? If they did, smart, they paid for it. But otherwise
#
I would say why did Ram Madhvani use Audi? He should have, Ram is from advertising, so
#
he would have probably figured out that he'll get a car sponsor. So those things are going
#
to happen. So one of the hypothesis I have, I don't know that really, 20 years from now
#
advertising will be so intuitive that you will not even realize it's advertising. That
#
you're watching James Wan and the guy is ordering whatever Sky Vodka, you don't even
#
realize. And then after the movie you go for a drink and you order Sky, you don't even
#
realize that if you go back to Ernest Dixcher and this whole thing about hidden persuaders
#
was that, that you know that you can actually bias consumers. So that I think maybe that's
#
too futuristic, but that may happen. That you will have, every content creator will
#
have four, five, six different buckets from which he can make his money. And one has to
#
realize that what are those four, five buckets and how can I make money without upsetting
#
these? And obviously if you put too many ads, no one will come to your podcast. If you charge
#
too much, no one is going to come. So you need to find that the right balance. And I
#
think everyone will start finding that over a period of time.
#
And what you just said about, you know, how in the future, you know, we might be responding
#
to advertising all the time without even realizing it. And you know, anything that sounds futuristic
#
but plausible is something that will inevitably happen at some point, right? It will inevitably
#
happen at some point. So does that worry you? Does it worry you that there'll be so much
#
sort of, I won't even call it surveillance because it's not really humans doing the surveillance
#
as more algorithms who know every sort of rug rug of the individual as it were. Does
#
that worry you or do you think that fine, it's all in our service anyway. So why does
#
It is a little worrying, but I think consumers will wake up to it because you know, you suddenly
#
go and search for something and then you go to Facebook, you suddenly see an ad for that.
#
You realize that there is some cookie which is doing this. And today, you know, especially
#
those people have seen, you know, social dilemma are even more sensitive to this, but consumers
#
will wake up to it. And I think companies are also now, I was talking to a friend of
#
mine who's in the algorithm space and he was saying that like Apple, which is saying that,
#
you know, all the cookies are going to be in the phone. So it'll be in the phone. So
#
it will be totally privacy protected. Apparently, Android is going to do the same thing. So
#
maybe those things will happen. As a result, this kind of blatant and you know, first time
#
I was hit by this Amit, you won't believe it was what almost 15 years ago when I was
#
taking a flight and I land in in Kochi and I switch on my those days BPL mobile phone
#
and I get an SMS message saying that, you know, this Kochi hotel has got a great offer.
#
I said, shit, you know, I mean, I didn't know that existed, right? I mean, you land in Kochi
#
and then obviously mobile operator knows where I am. And they say, okay, you want a hotel?
#
Here is a hotel. That's today so natural. You go and search for something, you get served
#
something, you know, it's so natural. And I think consumers are, consumers will slowly
#
realize it's, you know, I think it will evolve in its own way. You know, in the early days,
#
consumer may have got very biased. I was looking for a Zodiac white shirt and look at it on
#
Facebook. You know, it's like Bhagwan ka den hai, you know, but you know, tomorrow consumers
#
say, okay, yeah, so this is an algorithm. So it's there. Okay, fine. I may not buy it
#
still if I'm not happy. So that that could happen. Consumer will also evolve, right? Consumer
#
will evolve and consumers are pretty smart, whether we, whatever the algorithm may say,
#
consumers will figure out what they do, what they like, what they don't like. And I think
#
that's going to happen. That consumers will wake up to all these, all these hidden persuader
#
tricks. Yeah. And in fact, you know, I think one danger also is of sort of treating consumers
#
condescendingly as if they are sheep who don't have agency and can't sort of see all this
#
for themselves. And I also want to assure my listeners that there is no product placement
#
on this episode. So although you have heard the names of a lot of brands and Ambhi just
#
mentioned Zodiac, there is no product placement at all. We will have none of that happening
#
here. So you know, it's time to get to your latest book Spring. But before that, I'd actually
#
like you to sort of say a few words about sponge because I enjoyed that as well. And
#
I must confess that I hadn't read that earlier. You know, while prepping for this episode,
#
I thought I should read a bunch of your books and I enjoyed sponge also, especially as a
#
framework for how one should think about just the process of learning, although you've sort
#
of positioned it more towards leadership and so on. But so tell me a little bit about how
#
the idea for the book came about. And if you can just sort of, I mean, I will of course
#
urge all my listeners to kindly buy this and especially Nawab's noodles and noodles as
#
well because there is so much about advertising in that which we haven't spoken about such
#
as changing gender roles, how children are used, you know, the use of celebs in advertising
#
and so much else that I wanted to ask, but that would take another five hours. But tell
#
me a little bit about sponge, how it came about and and it feels that all of these books
#
sponge spring now, even though they are sort of in a sense, self-help books where you're
#
sort of sharing insights and lessons and so on. At another level, they're also deeply
#
personal, which comes out in the narrative that these are life lessons that you have
#
learned and therefore, you know, you're kind of sharing that with the world. So tell me
#
a bit about sponge. Okay, sponge. Actually, the idea for sponge
#
came long time back and I was walking in our I am Cal campus with an old friend of mine.
#
And he is a big professor in the US and he consults with a lot of big companies and he
#
was sharing his anguish and he said, look, yeah, Rambi, you know, I deal with all these
#
CEOs in the US and a lot of them only think they know is how to manage the board. I said,
#
what do you mean? He said, no, yeah, they don't understand strategy, they don't understand
#
anything and it's just how to how to go past every quarter and how to manage the board.
#
Is that your experience? And that's when I started thinking back and I told him, look,
#
really my experience is the opposite. You know, I've been maybe I've been lucky, but
#
I met so many CEOs in Indian Indian business and they've all been delightful. You learn
#
so much from them. Yes, they are challenging. Some of them are a little rude. Some of them
#
push you too hard. But you know, very, very, you know, you learn so much from, you know,
#
from I've learned. I mean, I said, I'm thankful that I from my early stage in career and I've
#
had lucky to work with so many CEOs and I've learned a lot and we kept talking about that
#
stayed in the back of my mind. And so when I when Nawab Noodle came out and I was sitting
#
with Anish Chandy, who's my agent and we were happy with how the book was doing. So he said,
#
what next? So and I said, look, I want to write about what you can learn from clients.
#
So he said, can you tell me a story? And I narrated my there's there in the book, right?
#
And how Mr. Tata decided to drop everything and come to the NCPA to check the color of
#
the car. I mean, that's, that's an amazing attention to detail, but also the passion
#
of the man. What you know, the fact that he's so passionate about the business. And, and
#
he looks at these, these micro details, and he dropped everything and came there to spend
#
an hour to check the color of the car. And I said, Yeah, great. He said, write two, three
#
chapters. And I, and I wrote those, you know, I think 20, 24, 27 chapters I wrote, and then,
#
and then I ran out. And he asked, you know, I said, that's it, you know, and I said, I
#
will also write something which is completely unexpected. I've written about account executives
#
from whom I've learned and even written about a driver, you know, an office driver in Hyderabad
#
office goes by and I wrote one chapter on him, because I think I learned something from
#
him. You know, so the hypothesis is, whether you're senior, junior, you will meet a lot,
#
you know, in B2B, Amit, in B2B marketing, there's always a buyer seller fight. You know,
#
the customer is always seen as someone demanding a low price, making unreasonable demands of
#
you putting pressure on you. I said, No, I want to change the narrative. I said, Look,
#
you can learn from every one of your customers, if you approach the situation with that mindset.
#
And that was the reason for writing that book. And I've kind of dedicated it to all the wonderful
#
clients I've had in my life. And I remember the book talk, which I gave Sam Balsara of
#
Madison asked me a cheeky question, saying, Ambi, does it mean you only had good clients?
#
So I said, No, you know, I was a good agency. So I only got good clients. I don't know what
#
kind of agency you're running. I don't know what kind of clients you're getting. So he
#
laughed. He said, Yeah, good one. So but but the fact is, obviously, you know, I had tough
#
times with clients. And I those, in fact, one or two of those stories are also in the
#
book, saying, you know, really tough clients, I mean, clients who insult you, but then you
#
can you can manage it, you can manage that situation is all I'm saying. And some of these
#
stories I've told my, my young colleagues, you know, that this young pop of a brand manager
#
said I will sack your agency. And I was, you know, maverick or whatever. And I, and I had
#
to tell him, Listen, Amit, you can't sack the agency. Your father can't sack the agency.
#
Your grandfather can't sack the agency. And I don't think you know your great grandfather.
#
So don't talk shit. I was a one year old guy in advertising, right. And this was a brand
#
manager in a large company. I mean, that was really crazy to say that. But I said that,
#
I don't know why he backed off. He said, No, no, y'all, why are you getting upset? I was
#
just saying I need the poster in two days. And you're saying all this to me, I will not
#
say where am I? I'm not going to be virtually started crying. Can I tell these guys? Look,
#
guys, you know, you know, barking dogs never bite. So don't get scared. If a customer tells
#
you I will sack you. But be worried. If the customer doesn't tell you that he'll sack
#
you, but watch out the smoke signals. And those are the clients who will actually sack you.
#
So it was putting it together. Yeah, that was such a filmy dialogue by you. I think
#
all the listeners will suddenly be sitting up in that chair that your father can't sack
#
me. Your grandfather can't sack me. Marvelous. They're looking at be permissive and with
#
renewed respect. So you know, one more question about the book before we move on. So you know,
#
I enjoyed all your personal anecdotes about Ratan Tata, about Rohingya Naga, about Hemur
#
Amaya, some fantastic stories. But I was particularly struck by your anecdote about Vargis Kurian.
#
And I'll quickly recap it for the benefit of my listeners, that Ambhi and his team went
#
to present something to Vargis Kurian and they're presenting this campaign. And somebody
#
in Vargis Kurian's team says, wait a minute, that blue is a bit of an issue. Can we do
#
something about that blue? At which point Mr. Kurian turns to this young pup in his
#
organization and says, dekho beta, not in so many words, obviously, but essentially
#
that, uh, listen, imagine a building with five pillars. And if you tell the architect
#
I wanted to stand only on two pillars and the architect does that and it falls, are
#
you going to blame the architect? So similarly, uh, you know, don't mess around here. If you
#
have any feedback, give it to them, but don't give arbitrary orders. And I thought that,
#
you know, what struck me about that was the humility of the man that despite having reached
#
where he has reached and achieved all that he has achieved, uh, you're willing to sit
#
back and acknowledge that my knowledge is limited and I should keep that in mind when
#
I sort of engage with the world. And it strikes me that that is in fact identical to the metaphor
#
of the sponge that you're bringing out, that the sponge has a sort of functional humility
#
built into it, that it will just absorb all the water, take the nutrients and then let
#
the water seep out of it. So my larger question based on the fact that you have, of course,
#
met many more CEOs and important people than I have, how important a characteristic is
#
humility in people achieving excellence and, uh, you know, reaching where they reach.
#
I think, uh, you know, in several stories I've written, I've, I've recounted, you know,
#
that some of the wonderful people I've met are, are the most humble people, right? I
#
mean, the leaders, uh, whether it was Roentgen Aga, who, uh, I, I used to call him as an
#
account executive, I used to call him and he used to take the call and I say, sir, you
#
know, we have money shortage, we need money. And, and he used to talk to me. So we got
#
this thing, it's going to Russia. Once I get the, I mean, so whether it was, you know,
#
so I think humility is extremely, extremely important in a CEO and any leader, forget
#
about CEO, any leader have to be humble, have to be ready to listen to people around him,
#
whether it is a young colleague or it is a, is a peer. So decide, you know, I think that's
#
a story which I've narrated about Dr. Kurian that, you know, once they identify a partner
#
to work with, then the partner is always right, right? Till they probably mess up in a big
#
way. But, you know, you select carefully, you don't select someone who will mess up
#
in a big way, right? So you select carefully after that, you trust the partner, right?
#
So in advertising, you work with a photographer, you trust the photographer. You work with
#
a filmmaker and you say, I don't want a music and I remember we made some film and the brief
#
was, we don't want a jingle, but the director comes and says, no, I've done a jingle. And
#
you know, for a fact, a jingle costs some money. Putting some simple music is costing
#
much less than say recording voice, et cetera. But so you admire the guy, thinking you got,
#
you know, you're committed to this. Fine. We'll watch it. And then if you don't like
#
it, it will be rejected. So you got to surround yourself with associates, with partners whom
#
you can trust. And that will only come if you are humble and you're not full of yourself
#
saying, you know, I'm the greatest guy. I have the biggest ideas. You know, I'm the
#
smartest guy. No, that's not the way to for ongoing success.
#
And that brings us to your latest book. And you actually mentioned the sort of the Genesis
#
story of the idea for the book that you were giving a talk about sponge at, you know, this
#
university campus. And at the end of it, this young girl in the last, near the last to ask
#
you a question that, you know, all this is okay for you to say you have access to all
#
these CEOs, you can learn for them. But you know, for most of us, we just face rejection
#
and everything we do. How do we sort of cope with rejection? At which point you pointed
#
out that they expected you to sheepishly not have much to say because you have been so
#
privileged. But instead you gave a 10 minute talk where you spoke about all the rejections
#
in your life and how they shaped you and got a standing ovation at the end of it. And thus
#
was born spring bouncing back from a rejection, which is on the stands now. And I encourage
#
everyone to kind of pick it up. So tell me a bit about this, like, you know, is it in
#
hindsight that you look back at the times that you face rejection, for example, you
#
know, from Unilever twice when you were in IIT Madras, and then I am Calcutta. And then
#
you sort of draw from that or is rejection something you actually thought about at all
#
the different times you actually got rejected, and, you know, built a framework around that
#
to sort of deal with that? Or is it, you know, the accumulated wisdom of a lived lifetime
#
sort of looked at in hindsight?
#
It's a combination. I think I thank that girl for asking that question. And even now,
#
you know, I sent this book to my old boss. And he also asked, what rejection have you
#
faced there? So I said, you know, I've written a book, please read it, you know. So I think
#
some of this is hindsight, you know, you realize that at that time, you did face that rejection
#
and you managed to handle it. And you handle it in a particular way, some of which is kind
#
of, you know, reflection of what happened in the past. And some of it could be live,
#
you know, I mean, the Hindustan Lever summer internship was live. It was a rejection which
#
hurt me. I didn't sleep that night. But then I said, look, I cannot continue like this.
#
You know, I cannot continue applying to Hindustan Lever and getting rejected. This is not on,
#
you know, this is not my life. You know, I need to figure out what I enjoy doing. And
#
it gave me that whole power of, you know, redirection and I explored a new area. And
#
you know, I mean, the two months in Calcutta, I enjoyed different types of cue scene. I
#
went to my first jazz concert. I started understanding what was jazz. You know, so it was so enriching.
#
Then, you know, going around, let's say, some Jabhatpur market and, you know, doing some
#
market research study for a package goods company, it was so much more enriching. So
#
some of those are live. You know, you know that you know, you've been rejected. You
#
know, you can handle it in one way. But you had like, given the example of the rejection
#
which we had with Hyundai, right? When we faced, you know, we pitched and we knew we
#
are not getting it. And at that time, we said, look, we are not getting this. What are we
#
doing wrong? And then we figured out, you cannot win a big car client by carrying three
#
layouts and two scripts. It's not going to work. You need to rethink the whole thing.
#
And you need to immerse yourself in the category. And this is what we did. And then we got the
#
Tata Motors business. So some of those are live. Some of those are like, you think back,
#
you know, like, I would have narrated a story about my grandfather. You know, at that time,
#
I was a kid, right? I was probably eight years old, something like that. I did that time,
#
I didn't realize the momentousness of that event. That, you know, Prime Minister's car
#
was supposed to stop in front of my grandfather's business, business premise. And my grandpa
#
was supposed to shake his hand and garland him. Okay, I mean, it's such a huge honor,
#
right? And the car just drives by. Did my grandfather get upset? No. You know, he didn't
#
take it personally. He said, no, it's okay. They didn't stop. Fine, no problem. You know,
#
I didn't ask for it. It came my way. It's not going to happen. It's okay. As it turned
#
out, you know, on the return trip, the car came and stopped and my grandfather actually
#
met Prime Minister and garlanded him and all that. So I put that for one hour. One hour.
#
I did not see him say one bad word about anyone. I was a little kid hanging around there on
#
the side, just watching what was going on. You know, I mean, people were, you know, ranting
#
and raving and all that. But my grandfather was cool. Okay, no problem. I said, wow.
#
Even someone who had reason to say it's Nehru's fault didn't say it. Yeah, Nehru or Kamaraj's
#
fault or probably that that that cop rider's fault who didn't stop. But you know, but he
#
didn't, he didn't blame anyone. He didn't say anything. Yeah, he could have actually
#
ranted and raved about Nehru and he would have been way ahead of his time. You know,
#
but he didn't do that. And that, you know, if I had not started writing this book and
#
started digging deeper into rejection, and like we discussed, Amit, you don't start writing
#
a book, you form some kind of an idea and you start reading. And I started reading books
#
on resilience, about six, seven books on resilience. I started reading articles. I went, you know,
#
psychology today is a fabulous website. I read all those articles. I went through some
#
academic journals. And then I came across this term, don't take it personally. And then
#
the story came alive in my mind. You know, when I read that, you know, what do you mean
#
by don't take it personally. And then I linked that my grandfather's story to the concept
#
of don't take it personally. So you know, you read, read, read, read, and then you pick
#
up something and then you connect it. Even that, you know, APJ Abdul Kalam story about
#
the inner critic and all that that I read that story in a different book. And I said,
#
look, what must he have gone through when the so called first SLV literally came down
#
in 317 seconds? And what did Professor Satish Dhawan do to protect Dr. Kalam? And how Dr.
#
Kalam remembers that, you know, so vividly and that, you know, how he overcame that failure
#
or that rejection to then become a, you know, very, very successful, you know, satellite
#
launching technologist, you know, among other things. So and you, you know, you have one
#
or two stories in mind, you start reading, reading, reading, and then you start suddenly
#
start connecting saying, you know, I want to write about this, I want to write about
#
that. Where's the story? And you go back. And what I also decided this book, I will,
#
you know, sponge is all about my stories, especially FCB Ulka, a lot of those stories,
#
I said spring will have minimum FCB Ulka stories, and maximum other stories. So I, I spoke
#
with academicians, I spoke with very senior bureaucrats, I spoke with sports personnel,
#
you know, Olympians, and then I started pulling out their stories into the book startup entrepreneurs,
#
I started putting that in the story. So this book is a little bit, it's not just my advertising
#
stories, it's a lot more from, you know, there are startup entrepreneurs in this, there are
#
academicians in this, there are Olympians, there are authors, musicians, there are probably
#
60 different stories in this book, and probably six of them are from my life, and the others
#
are from outside, you know, so some of the stories are so sensitive that I've hidden
#
the name. But you know, someone, some reviewer called me, he said, Are these all true stories?
#
I said, Yes, every single story there is true. If I've not put the person's name, it happened.
#
I didn't put the name, not to embarrass him, embarrass him or her. Right? So everyone,
#
every single story there is true. So it was great fun writing it. And, and this book is
#
actually aimed at the slightly younger target audience. So when someone writes to me, saying
#
enjoyed the book, etc, I say, Yeah, give give it to your son or give it to your daughter
#
or give it to your neighbor's kid or give it to your nephew or niece. You know, if they
#
especially if they're 19, 20, 25, they will find it very useful read. So thank you. I
#
think this is a different book to write. Interesting.
#
No, no, I loved it and found it so insightful, not just for the 20 year old, but also for
#
someone in his mid 40s like me, I guess compared to you, I am the slightly younger audience.
#
I'm a spring chicken. I was I was, you know, one of your insights struck me reminded me
#
of something that happened in my poker days, where a bunch of us veterans were sitting
#
around and this young guy comes and he says, you know, I'm playing so well, nobody ever
#
calls my bluffs. At which point we all laughed and I told him that listen, if no one ever
#
calls your bluffs, it means you're not bluffing enough. Because obviously the optimal level
#
of bluffing will mean that some of your bluffs get called. And I was reminded of this by
#
this lovely quote in your book, which is and I want all the 20 year olds kindly to listen
#
to this and remember this quote. If you have not faced rejection, maybe you have not tried
#
hard enough. Stop quote. And elsewhere you quote Azeem Premji as saying quote, if people
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are not laughing at your dreams, your dreams are too small. Stop quote. And all of it was
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very inspiring. I mean, it actually sort of gave me a warm glow when I look back at the
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various times I have been rejected, because I can use these narratives to sort of frame
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it. So, you know, I've taken a lot of your time today. And I know you're also looking
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forward to, you know, getting to lunch. So I would ask all my listeners not to reject
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your wonderful book and to immediately go out and buy spring bouncing back from rejection.
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But before that, a sort of a final question from you that one of the things that I realized
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while going through your books while watching your videos and so on, is that over this life
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that you have lived, you have actually made a conscious effort to write about all of this
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wisdom that you have accumulated. And at the end, you know, thankfully, the world gets
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to benefit from it because we get these books and we get those videos and all of that. And
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there are a lot of gems in there. But if you were to today encounter the 20 year old Ambi
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Parmeswaran, maybe the sort of the kid from Godavari hostel, IIT Madras will just listen
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to Dark Side of the Moon and who's on a bit of a high end feeling good about life. And
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if you encounter him and you have to give him some life advice, you know, what would
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you tell him that you wish someone had told you back then?
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Oh, thank you. Amit, thank you for having me on the show and all your kind words about
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my book. I'm happy we're doing this show. I'm happy that we are reaching an audience
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talking about this. So, let's say 20 year old Ambi will be probably sitting in the Godavari
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common room after dinner with his good friend, God bless him, Joe Marisamy listening to Dark
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Side of the Moon for the 300th time, right? I'll probably go and tell him, start reading
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more, you know, enough of this Dark Side of the Moon. But I really don't, you know, I
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think, I think IIT was good because it kind of widened the horizon. I would have probably
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told him and I should have told him this, get your swimming right. You know, you won't
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believe it. I, you know, they built this beautiful Olympic sized swimming pool in IIT Madras.
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I went for a swim with my good friend, Bala, PD Bala, we call him and Joe. And I don't
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know what happened. I almost sank, right? And I kind of went down and the lifeguard
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pulled me out. After that, I did not go into the pool, right? And this has been nagging
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in my head, you know, swimming, swimming, you know, I've not learned swimming. I'm always
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scared of depth, always scared of depth. So, a year and a half ago, I said, I've got to
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overcome that. And I got myself a personal trainer. And now I can do, you know, whatever,
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10 laps or 20 laps on an Olympic sized swimming pool without a problem. So, I would have told
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him that guy, get up tomorrow morning, go learn swimming. You know, I would have told
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him that. But you know, finally, I did learn swimming. So, it was good. That was very good.
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That's a pretty amazing answer because you have done so many different things in your
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life. But the one thing that you focused on now is the one thing that you did not do.
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And I think there's a lesson in this for all our young listeners that, you know, don't
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leave things undone. Just try everything. Just go for it. And yeah, if you aren't rejected,
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you're not trying hard enough. Ambi, thank you once again for coming on this show. It's
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been such a pleasure chatting with you.
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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Amit. Thank you, Amit, for having me on your fantastic
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show and seen in the unseen. And I hope during the discussion, we have done a bit of seen
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and unseen on the show. We've taken our listeners to some of the stuff they have seen and probably
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many other stuff which is unseen for them. So, thank you very much and God bless you.
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If you enjoyed listening to this episode, do head on over to your nearest bookstore,
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online or offline and pick up any of Ambi's books, which I will also link from the show
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notes. You can follow him on Twitter at AmbiMGP. You can follow me at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-B-A-R-M-A.
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You can browse past episodes of the seen and the unseen at seenunseen.in. Thank you for
