Shooting from the lip

There are probably red faces all around. Sandeep Goyal's memoirs are much like the hollow-point bullets his book is named after""once out of the barrel, they won't stop till they've inflicted maximum damage.

Whether it's how Shashank Ghosh's brother cheated on a quiz hoping to win free tickets to London, or Ruby Bhatia "forgetting" to mention that she had modelled for a Lever toothpaste before she did an ad for Colgate, Goyal is determined to spill some beans.

He's got plenty of copy, of course. Goyal has had a fairly varied career in Indian advertising, having worked with agencies such as J Walter Thompson, Grey Worldwide and Mudra's Interact Vision.

At 35, he was the youngest CEO of Rediffusion DY & R, before he went on to join Zee Telefilms as group CEO. Goyal quit that sharpish and is back in advertising these days, as chairman of Dentsu in India.

The Dum Dum Bullet is a whirlwind tour of a great advertising career. Beginning as a management trainee with Goodlass Nerolac in Jaipur, Goyal flirted with the idea of joining the civil services before finally settling on a career with HTA. Before that, though, he'd already displayed his flair for marketing.

In the wilds of the Rajasthan desert, he converted the paints company's annual girlie calendar into a money-making opportunity""in the bargain, ensuring some publicity for the company. Of course, that was even as he learnt""the hard way""the need for tact when interacting with recalcitrant distributors and how to win over aggressive superiors.

Oh, and thanks to the need for entertaining out-of-town dealers, he also saw Sharaabi enough (21 times) to memorise the dialogues of the Amitabh Bachchan blockbuster.

Reading Goyal's memoirs is like riding a roller-coaster with no speed controls. He leapfrogs subjects, jumps with mindless abandon into completely unrelated anecdotes, and then loops right back with some amazingly pertinent insight into the workings of Indian advertising.

Everyone knows about the parties, the jetsetting lifestyles, rubbing shoulders with celebrities, the fanfare and foofaraw. Some are aware of the demanding clients, the impossible-to-meet deadlines and the all-nighters.

Fewer people, perhaps, know of the internecine battles for clients, the cut-throat competition between sister agencies and how what time you're called in to make your pitch to the client decides whether you'll get the account.

Goyal's turn to make the pitch for the Steel Authority of India account came late at night. Rediffusion was the 32nd agency that had stated its case that day. With just 15 minutes allotted to persuade a tired and bored committee, Goyal took less than 10 minutes to win the account.

If he's quick to pat himself on the back for a job well done, Goyal's equally forward when it comes to owning up mistakes and bloopers. The wrong telephone numbers in a front-page newspaper ad for Lufthansa, a futile attempt at wooing filmstar Dharmendra to agree to a vanaspati campaign, and almost losing the Maruti account (after becoming its largest agency) are just some instances.

Of course, the oops moments have their share of humour. Goyal vividly describes how the Maurya hotel planned an extravaganza to celebrate the birthday of its mascot""a St Bernard. The agenda for the evening included a cake, live music, and games. The invitees?

Other pedigreed pooches from the capital's kennel brigade such as the US Ambassador's Alsatian, Airbus Industries' chief's Dalmatian; perhaps even (gasp!) the President's pet.

A national daily got wind of the event and ran front-page articles on the irony of a nation of starving children hosting a party for a dog. In the ensuing hullabaloo, the party was quietly called off.

Several years later, another grand plan of which Goyal was part came to naught in similar fashion. Lufthansa wanted to launch a new loyalty initiative for travellers who clocked in a million miles in a calendar year. The Million Milers club was to kick off with a special dinner to be hosted by the airline's country head.

The guest list read like a Who's Who of Indian business""the Singhanias, the Modis, the Nandas, the Bhartias ... A day before the function, Lufthansa finally tracked down the only Indian who qualified for the club. He turned out to be a 35-year-old Sikh who travelled to Frankfurt three times a week, carrying diamonds to Antwerp!

Goyal races at breakneck speed through the highs and lows of his career. He comes to a screeching halt at Zee. Considering the reams that have been already written about his tumultous relationship with Subhash Chandra, Goyal's own lack of eloquence on the subject is, perhaps, telling.

At the launch of his book last month, Goyal mentioned that it took him just six weeks to write it. It shows. This is a hastily written, sloppily edited piece of penmanship. Staccato writing, poor punctuation, and some utterly pointless Indian-nisms mar what could otherwise have been a fairly engrossing read.

But then, I don't""nor probably does Goyal""expect future generations of advertising men to revere this book like they used to, at one time, David Ogilvy's Confessions of an Advertising Man. I don't even expect them to remember this book beyond the next three months or so.

But anyone who's been aware of advertising in the past couple of decades""either as a mediaperson or consumer""will be entertained by the behind-the-scenes activities that helped create some well-remembered campaigns. And I will be surprised if readers don't laugh out loud at least a couple of times.

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The Dum Dum Bullet: Adventures of a Corporate Soldier

Sandeep Goyal
Penguin
Price: Rs 295; Pages: 246