The theatre of showmanship

Prahlad Kakar's memoir, while showcasing the flamboyance of the ad world, falls short in delving into the transformative era of advertising, leaving readers craving more substance and depth

Ad Man Mad Man: Unapologetically Prahlad  

Authors: Prahlad Kakar with Rupangi Sharma

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 526

Price: Rs 799

The world of advertising has had more than its fair share of colourful characters. Some have worn their eccentricities like shiny badges of honour and some have chosen to relish their oddball reputations in private. But no matter how one slices the profession’s penchant for flash and glitz, the flurry of memoirs from every handlebar moustache, cowboy hat, and closet maverick in the advertising ring shows a collective desire for a nostalgic turn in the sun.

The newest member of this club is popular adman Prahlad Kakar. Co-founder of Genesis Film Production, one of the country’s earliest and successful advertising film production houses, Mr Kakar has worked with an impressive roster of brands and helmed numerous award-winning campaigns. The Pepsi campaign with Sachin Tendulkar, Aamir Khan and such others, for instance, and the ones with memorable taglines such as “Nothing Official About it” are all part of the Genesis portfolio.

The book, much like Mr Kakar’s public persona, seeks to shock. Be it the photograph of the author with not a stitch on except a stylishly angled cowboy hat on the back cover of the book to his choice of words and experiences—Mr Kakar is writing to a script. Throughout the book, when Mr Kakar talks about his growing-up years or about his star mentor Shyam Benegal or his star client, Pepsi, there is no doubt that readers are  being treated to the fine art of image-making by the master himself.

This also makes the book a tedious read. In its focus on crafting the perfect image of the author, it loses sight of what makes an autobiographical account interesting. Given that Mr Kakar is one of the pioneers in the ad filmmaking business, there is no dearth of momentous occasions—personal and professional — that could have offered readers an exceptional experience.

For instance, many of the most memorable campaigns that he helmed at Genesis are from the 1990s and the early 2000s. This period marks a significant moment in the economic history of the country and the profession. A new wave of consumerism had been unleashed, following the economic reforms of 1991, and consumers and brands were becoming bolder with their choices. It would have been interesting to understand how the change in consumer behaviour and brand perceptions about the Indian market were creating a whole new way of advertising in the country and, in the process, nurturing ad film-makers such as Mr Kakar. But that is not this book’s remit. 

There are some interesting stories about the early days of ad filmmaking in India. For instance, Mr Kakar talks about a finicky Aamir Khan watching himself on loop and nearly blowing up the production schedules for a Pepsi shoot, just to make sure that they had the perfect take. He also reveals some behind-the-scenes chatter; about the serendipitous casting of Aishwarya Rai as the girl next door in a campaign a year before she won the Miss World, the spirited Shah Rukh Khan on set, who had no qualms about making a laughing stock of himself even for an ad, and so on. But there is little else — no insight about how the stars were changing the face of branding in the country or about how multinational clients were transforming the idea of celebrity-hood. It would also have been interesting to see how advertising budgets were overhauled during this period and how he and Genesis navigated their way through the changing brand landscape.

Given Mr Kakar’s reputation and his diverse experiences, a book from him has been a long time coming. It could have cracked open a window into the machinations of brand building in the country and the strange ways of Indian consumers. Instead, it reads like a schoolboy romp in fantasy-land.

The book also takes very long to get to the meat—the professional life of the author. It spends too long meandering through school and college corridors, drunken evenings and nasty brawls. It is possible that these were seminal years for the author, but these experiences are not exceptional or unique enough to keep readers interested.

The writing is repetitive. No cliché is left unturned and there are all the usual tropes about women, masculinity, places and people. The humour is mostly nudge-nudge, wink-wink in its delivery and is most often, cringingly, directed at women’s bodies.

Mr Kakar objectifies most of the women he writes about— from his teachers to his early romantic interests to the people who have worked for him in some capacity or the other. While this may not be unusual for the profession and the time that the book is set in, it borders on the offensive today. It is surprising neither the authors (Mr Kakar writes with Rupangi Sharma, co-founder of a Mumbai-based education consultancy), nor the publishers ran a red line through such passages. It could have helped make the book less voluminous and more readable.