KONJO: THE FIGHTING SPIRIT
Sandeep Goyal
Collins Business
248 pages; Rs 299
Sandeep Goyal remains a man in a hurry, even though he shed his adman avatar three years ago. Since he sold his 26 per cent stake in Dentsu India in 2011, Mr Goyal, now 50, has taken the Common Admission Test (CAT); launched a television channel on food; floated Mogae Media, a venture to monetise the mobile phone; and has written two books.
That sense of hurry is visible all through his latest offering, Konjo: The Fighting Spirit. The 248-page book is like an airport quickie - gripping enough to be read at one go. However, some would say the author missed the opportunity to present a deeper understanding of the advertising world beyond the usual petty politicking and the extraordinary success of Dentsu India.
For example, Mr Goyal says his high-flying career "inexplicably" came to a sudden halt before he embarked on the Dentsu journey. But there is no effort to answer why his sudden resignation as CEO of Zee at the young age of 40 was "inexplicable".
But Mr Goyal more than makes up for these careful omissions by writing with a pen as well as a sword. Apart from offering selective glimpses of his life, he cuts many of his peers in the advertising world to pieces. That, however, doesn't come as a surprise since Mr Goyal has acquired quite a reputation for outspokenness, a trait that prompted many in the industry to sneer at his cowboy style of functioning. Konjo, which means fighting spirit, more than lives up to its name; certainly, the author has it in abundance.
Even after so many years, the author is clearly in no mood to forgive or forget. This becomes apparent quite early on in the book when Mr Goyal describes how he wanted to slap a prominent agency CEO, or how some of the venerable names of the advertising industry (yes, he names them) made fools of themselves when they tried to keep him out of the Dentsu deal. Mr Goyal also makes no attempt to mask his feelings for a marketing head of an insurance firm who continued to use a concept created by Dentsu long after forcing the agency to quit the account. It would be no surprise if some of the gentlemen mentioned in the book decided to sue him.
But Konjo is certainly more than Mr Goyal's bare-it-all memoir. What adds more spice to the book are the details about the sweat and dust that go into making some of the most memorable advertising campaigns of Dentsu, including Aircel's "1,411 Tigers Left" campaign. Another example: HDFC Life's "Sir uttha ke jiyo" (Live with your head held high), which broke the stereotype of life insurance being sold only as a tax shelter or as a safeguard against the fear of death and the resulting hardship for the family. The commercial was a category buster, with the first film showing an elderly man and his wife alighting from a train on a crowded railway platform and shrugging off the proffered helping hand from their son.
Advertising and other professionals would also benefit from Mr Goyal's insights into working with one of the most enigmatic of national cultures - the Japanese way of work and life. There are interesting anecdotes about how Dentsu lost Daikin because an account director showed up informally dressed to a meeting. Also, Citizen dumped Dentsu because the advertising team arrived 15 minutes late for a meeting, leaving the client with the impression that they didn't care about time.
There are other valuable insights. For example, many would sit up when Mr Goyal gives examples to show how the advertising agency business in India is a fairly thankless one, since client-agency relationships have become so fragile that there is no scope for error. Also, trust levels are pretty low. Agencies are sitting ducks in case something goes wrong.
The best part of the book is, of course, Mr Goyal's account of how he single-handedly convinced the Japanese advertising giant Dentsu to form a joint venture with him, and his seven-year stint at the agency.
In many ways, it is a unique story in the advertising world of a professional manager turning entrepreneur, and creating value in the enterprise as well as personal wealth for himself. The success story looks credible because it comes from a man who has been in the trenches himself and created a Rs 1,200-crore entity. It is an inspiring book also because Mr Goyal, then 40, had the audacity to even try to team up with one of the world's largest agencies at a time when he had nobody but his wife to help him out. He had lost his so-called friends, his Merc, his memberships of the Chambers and the Belvedere, his secretaries and his retinue of hangers-on.
It was an improbable dream and people wrote him off then. No prizes for guessing who had the last laugh.
Sandeep Goyal
Collins Business
248 pages; Rs 299
Sandeep Goyal remains a man in a hurry, even though he shed his adman avatar three years ago. Since he sold his 26 per cent stake in Dentsu India in 2011, Mr Goyal, now 50, has taken the Common Admission Test (CAT); launched a television channel on food; floated Mogae Media, a venture to monetise the mobile phone; and has written two books.
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That sense of hurry is visible all through his latest offering, Konjo: The Fighting Spirit. The 248-page book is like an airport quickie - gripping enough to be read at one go. However, some would say the author missed the opportunity to present a deeper understanding of the advertising world beyond the usual petty politicking and the extraordinary success of Dentsu India.
For example, Mr Goyal says his high-flying career "inexplicably" came to a sudden halt before he embarked on the Dentsu journey. But there is no effort to answer why his sudden resignation as CEO of Zee at the young age of 40 was "inexplicable".
But Mr Goyal more than makes up for these careful omissions by writing with a pen as well as a sword. Apart from offering selective glimpses of his life, he cuts many of his peers in the advertising world to pieces. That, however, doesn't come as a surprise since Mr Goyal has acquired quite a reputation for outspokenness, a trait that prompted many in the industry to sneer at his cowboy style of functioning. Konjo, which means fighting spirit, more than lives up to its name; certainly, the author has it in abundance.
Even after so many years, the author is clearly in no mood to forgive or forget. This becomes apparent quite early on in the book when Mr Goyal describes how he wanted to slap a prominent agency CEO, or how some of the venerable names of the advertising industry (yes, he names them) made fools of themselves when they tried to keep him out of the Dentsu deal. Mr Goyal also makes no attempt to mask his feelings for a marketing head of an insurance firm who continued to use a concept created by Dentsu long after forcing the agency to quit the account. It would be no surprise if some of the gentlemen mentioned in the book decided to sue him.
But Konjo is certainly more than Mr Goyal's bare-it-all memoir. What adds more spice to the book are the details about the sweat and dust that go into making some of the most memorable advertising campaigns of Dentsu, including Aircel's "1,411 Tigers Left" campaign. Another example: HDFC Life's "Sir uttha ke jiyo" (Live with your head held high), which broke the stereotype of life insurance being sold only as a tax shelter or as a safeguard against the fear of death and the resulting hardship for the family. The commercial was a category buster, with the first film showing an elderly man and his wife alighting from a train on a crowded railway platform and shrugging off the proffered helping hand from their son.
Advertising and other professionals would also benefit from Mr Goyal's insights into working with one of the most enigmatic of national cultures - the Japanese way of work and life. There are interesting anecdotes about how Dentsu lost Daikin because an account director showed up informally dressed to a meeting. Also, Citizen dumped Dentsu because the advertising team arrived 15 minutes late for a meeting, leaving the client with the impression that they didn't care about time.
There are other valuable insights. For example, many would sit up when Mr Goyal gives examples to show how the advertising agency business in India is a fairly thankless one, since client-agency relationships have become so fragile that there is no scope for error. Also, trust levels are pretty low. Agencies are sitting ducks in case something goes wrong.
The best part of the book is, of course, Mr Goyal's account of how he single-handedly convinced the Japanese advertising giant Dentsu to form a joint venture with him, and his seven-year stint at the agency.
In many ways, it is a unique story in the advertising world of a professional manager turning entrepreneur, and creating value in the enterprise as well as personal wealth for himself. The success story looks credible because it comes from a man who has been in the trenches himself and created a Rs 1,200-crore entity. It is an inspiring book also because Mr Goyal, then 40, had the audacity to even try to team up with one of the world's largest agencies at a time when he had nobody but his wife to help him out. He had lost his so-called friends, his Merc, his memberships of the Chambers and the Belvedere, his secretaries and his retinue of hangers-on.
It was an improbable dream and people wrote him off then. No prizes for guessing who had the last laugh.