This is an unusual book from an unusual man. For one thing, it is short: barely 30,000 words in large type over 182 pages. And he has made reading even easier by breaking it up into three parts, each with short vignettes of about 200 words. |
So while the whole book can be finished on a Delhi-Mumbai flight, you can also dip into it at will, on almost any page that opens, and glean some fine insights. |
A G Krishnamurthy is not afraid of telling you what has given him satisfaction, so there is no false modesty. |
Nor is there chest-thumping, just an honest and personal account of episodes on the way to building Mudra and what gave him satisfaction: getting to No. 3 in agency rankings within a decade of starting up, making it an "Indian" agency, and doing things differently from the rest of the industry. |
Some of the hurt also shows, at the various criticisms hurled at him and Mudra, but AGK is not someone to dwell too much on these. He is happy that he has built an institution which will get a letter in the post that is simply addressed to Mudra at Ahmedabad. |
The Mudra story is only one part of the book; the rest is gleaned from AGK's unusual double-barrelled column in this newspaper every fortnight, called AGKspeak. |
The first part of each column comments on a particular ad that AGK has liked (as you can see, he is not a man who focuses on being critical of others) and the second on what he has learnt. |
Both offer insights, some of the Reader's Digest variety but others genuinely profound. I would recommend that you turn to this book for the insights that AGK offers on a quite disparate set of themes. |
The episode that stands out is the one where Frank Simoes, who had the advertising contract for Vimal, did an expensive shoot with helicopters, airports, and expensive designers and models. |
AGK, then representing the client, didn't particularly care for it but Simoes and he took it to Dhirubhai Ambani. Dhirubhai asked Simoes whether he liked the campaign and to his eternal credit, Simoes said he did not. |
As AGK says, "It was a life-changing moment for me. Frank ran a proprietorial concern. He certainly did not have the deep pockets to write off such an enormous expense. But yet, his professional integrity was so high that he could not lie. Even at the risk of such a significant loss. He agreed with Dhirubhai's concern that the work had too much opulence and no soul." |
AGK himself has lived by his own rules. No one in the western-oriented advertising fraternity believed a large agency could be successful from the backwater of Ahmedabad. |
Or that the agency could have Hindi in its logo, and an ethos such that auspicious occasions should be marked by a puja, not the popping of champagne corks. Or even that its CEO should be "invisible". |
In a business known for its prima donnas, AGK has been the quintessential organisation man seeking identity only in the institution, focused on delivering "advertising that works". |
Along the way, the agency that was refused admission by the Advertising Agencies Association of India (because it was a "one-client" shop), and which the professionals in Mumbai would not join because it was in out-of-the-way Ahmedabad, and which shunned self-indulgent creative types, became an award-winning outfit earning the highest industry accolades. |
So what kind of advertising "works"? AGK puts it across with typical simplicity: "Insight is advertising's toughest challenge. Once you have it, your advertising is made, your client is happy, his product sells and everybody is satisfied." |
He is not afraid to take old-fashioned positions. For instance, he believes more in the guru-shishya relationship than in the "buddy-buddy" one, and even argues against flat organisational hierarchies. |
But he recalls how when Mudra was starting out, he got an offer from an advertising doyen for a merger of the two agencies, an offer that he turned down because he asked what he would gain from the merger. |
The answer was: another point of view. It must be the most original pitch in M&A history, and it didn't work. |
But looking back, AGK feels he should have accepted and that he didn't understand the importance of having a peer in the organisation who would have another point of view, because in most companies people finally come around to agreeing with the boss. |
How does a CEO preserve his legacy in an organisation? It is an issue that must have acquired an edge for AGK because I suspect that there have been issues at Mudra after he retired two years ago. |
Diving into the issue, AGK looks for the secret of preserving an organisation's identity and finds the answer in religion. Religions have learnt to manage change and keep personalities out of the philosophy, and you don't discover a new religion at the temple because a new pujari has come in. |
The answer, he thinks, comes from the rituals (or management practices and processes). So, "if I have to build an institution all over again, this is what I would focus on""the building of processes." Somewhat contrarily, though, another vignette is titled "A company is as good as its CEO"! |
Finally, guess how they shot the Vimal ad that featured Viv Richards in an elegant bandh gala suit, with the Caribbean drawl "Only Vimal"? The idea came to the producer while watching a Test match with the West Indies, and they tailored the clothes at a rough guess about the potential model's dimensions, and shot the ad immediately after the match. |
All of this in a matter of hours. AGK's comment: the best ads are often made in a rush, when you have no time to think.
|
THE INVISIBLE CEO |
A G Krishnamurthy Tata McGraw-Hill Price: Not stated, Pages: xii+182 |