Luck by chance

Lowe India chairman and Cheeni Kum director Balki strayed into advertising, hoping to meet Ramesh Sippy. Now, many years and accolades later, he has discovered the mantra to success. “Unsureness”, he tells Aabhas Sharma

It’s extremely difficult to tie down R Balakrishnan, chairman of Lowe India, for a chat. He has been in and out of town, working on his new movie with Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan, titled Pa, and, of course, there is work to be done at Lowe as well. When we do get down to talking, however, I get the impression that this is a man always on the lookout for new ideas. “I am in a profession where you have to find a solution to a new problem every day, and that’s what excites me,” says Balakrishnan, popularly known as Balki.

 

Balki says he joined advertising purely by accident. While pursuing a master’s degree in computer applications, he was told to leave college because of a poor attendance record. Some days later, he saw an ad in a paper which read, “In 100 words, tell us who you are”. There was an accompanying logo, which he recognised as the symbol at the end of Buniyaad, a TV serial made by Ramesh Sippy.

“I had no idea that Mudra was an advertising agency. I thought I would get a chance to meet Ramesh Sippy, so I went ahead.” Balki saw what he liked, the agency liked what they saw, and the next thing he knew he was hired by India’s biggest ad agency at the time. “Everyday was a new adventure for me,” he says, “and I still love the excitement that comes along every day in this business.” For the next seven years he worked at Mudra before joining Lowe in 1994. Given the time he has spent in this field, Balki has seen many ups and downs, the highs and lows of the business.

After more than two decades in the industry — 15 of them with Lowe — Balki speaks from experience when he says that Indian advertising has changed for the better. Early in his career, he says, creative inputs from clients were few and far between. “Today, that has changed. Most of the clients are clued-in and they know what they want, so what you see is better products.”

When I ask him to name a few memorable campaigns, however, he says he doesn’t have any, and adds that he doesn’t much like his own. His logic is that once the campaign is over he doesn’t spend time thinking about it. But, upon pressing further, Balki rattles off some names, including Bajaj (the Hamara Bajaj campaign), a number of Lever brands (the Fair & Lovely and Surf Excel campaigns), Saint Gobain, ICICI Prudential (the Jeetey Raho campaign) and, of course, Idea (the entire campaign with Abhishek Bachchan, including the recent “Walk when you talk” one), which is arguably one of the most iconic campaigns in the recent past.

Like his advertising career, Balki says that movies, too, happened by chance. He had a basic story idea in mind, which he discussed with Amitabh Bachchan, telling the actor that if he liked it, Balki would write it down. He did, and he did. After writing it, Balki went back to Bachchan with the story. Bachchan liked the story and Balki turned it into a film script. That’s how Cheeni Kum came to be, receiving critical acclaim when it was released.

Juggling ads and movies hasn’t been too much trouble for Balki, who says that he enjoys doing both. As a huge movie buff — watching films in his spare time, when he can find any — Balki says that he had always wanted to make movies, but had never made a conscious effort in that direction until the idea of Cheeni Kum came along.

Directing a movie, he says, is like making a long ad film. “In movies, the trick is to sustain the idea for a longer period of time, and you constantly have to keep the basic idea in mind.” Balki’s next movie is expected to release early next year.

As one of the biggest names in Indian advertising, he acknowledges that a lot of young people look up to him and want to emulate him. Asked for his advice, Balki uses a word which you won’t find in the dictionary but which is apt for his profession: “Unsureness.” If you are ready to live with it, he says, only then think about [a career in advertising] as it’s a very insecure business. “You need to be constantly alert and on the lookout for ideas,” he explains, “if you want to survive in this industry.”

For someone who landed in this profession by accident, Balki has done extraordinarily well for himself. He intends to keep going the way he is and as long as there are enough ideas in his basket. Balki remains enthusiastic.

And if you were wondering, the adman did finally meet Ramesh Sippy, although it was 17 years after he saw that fateful ad in the newspaper.