LUNCH WITH BS: Piyush Pandey

Ad world's Viv Richards

Piyush Pandey

The original rebel on his Why Not mantra

I am going to use this some day in one of my campaigns," Piyush Pandey says, looking at a kitty party in Gallops, the restaurant he chose for two reasons: one, it gives you a rare view of the Mahalaxmi race course greenery; and two, the food is closest to the fare dished out by Goshto, Pandey's cook and Man Friday for many years, and who has now set up his own hotel near Kolkata.

I begin wondering about the kind of instant inspiration the ad guru has drawn from a noisy kitty party. But Pandey, under whom Oglivy & Mather has become the third largest advertising agency in India, says it reminds him of a similar party in one of New York's most expensive restaurants where one lady was loudly asking the other whether she had tried out McDonald's latest Happy Meal for just $5.

"Replace McDonald's with Goshto's hotel, if you like. Won't that be a fantastic ad for either?" Pandey asks, settling for a beer while refusing to order starters, as he doesn't want to "mix his drinks".

The chairman of Ogilvy & Mather India (the first creative head to occupy this post) and the winner of over 400 ad awards from all over the world says his two most favourite words are, Why not? "When you follow rules you are not evolving," Pandey says.

He has been a keen cricketer, played in the under-22 team for Rajasthan but gave up competitive cricket when he realised his limitations. "For my best friend Arun Lal, participation in the Ranji Trophy was just the beginning; for me it was the target," Pandey says.

He picked up the "why not?" theme from Viv Richards who first learnt the rules of the game and then proceeded to break all of them with nonchalance. After taking over as chairman, however, he has learnt to admire Clive Lloyd.

When he realised that he had some outstanding cricketers in his team, Lloyd started dropping himself down the batting order. But when the top five failed once in a while, he came up with his match winning centuries. "I am learning hard to graduate from being a Viv Richards to a Clive Lloyd," Pandey says.

His fascination for "why not?" has helped him to break all established rules. For instance, he came up with Hindi ads when anything non-English in advertising was considered infra dig. He chose to wear bush shirts and jeans to office at a time when the ad world was full of people with striped shirts and silk ties.

He does not like socks and, hence, prefers shoes that look like Jaipuri jootis. "I buy them by the dozen every year from one particular shop in Paris as they are so soft that you can stuff them in your trouser pockets," Pandey says, ordering another beer.

He was an accounts executive at O&M but asked himself the question "why not?" when his boss asked him whether he would like to write a baseline for Luna mopeds "" a privilege so far enjoyed only by the "creative types" in the organisation. His trademark moustache (he shaved it once when in school but stopped after a scolding from his father), he says, has now become a brand but was the object of a lot of snigger when he started his career.

"People start finding traits in you when you are successful. For instance, there are lakhs of Indians who don't have the money to wear shoes. But people only talk about M F Hussain," he says.

He also remembers his famous anti-smoking ad "Second hand smoking kills" where the cowboy smokes like a chimney and the horse drops dead. A lot of his friends tried to stop him from doing the ad, as Pandey was a chain smoker himself. "I asked myself, why not? Who else but a smoker would know the bad effects of smoking?" Pandey says.

Pandey, who began his career as a tea taster in Kolkata, says the most important barometer of a good ad is whether it can bring a smile on your face.

"Language isn't important as emotions have no language," Pandey says, giving examples of the enduring Fevicol ads where there are no baselines.

Pandey gives one more example of how observing simple things in everyday life can work wonders. One day he was watching his wife playing with their four canine companions and indulging in some doggie-speak.

The nonsensical phrase "" Googly, Woogly, Wooksh "" formed the basis for a Ponds Cold Cream ad. Or, take the case of Pandey's first campaign "Chal meri Luna" in the early 1980s.

He was walking past a Bata shoe store in Kolkata and saw a child sitting on a toy horse and shouting triumphantly "Chal mere ghore."

Pandey asks the steward to get another beer for us fast and orders chicken Lucknowi korma, mixed vegetables and roti. He obviously curbs his creative instincts while ordering his food.

The beer comes at lightning speed and Pandey looks pleased. Work for him begins at 6 am (his best lines have been written on the terrace of his Shivaji Park house) and ends only around 8.30 at night.

Even now, the "burden of expectation" makes him spend sleepless nights thinking about his next ad and he feels the butterflies in his stomach before making a presentation to his clients.

The pioneer of Hinglish ads (Pandey prefers to call them short stories) in India says he used to frequently visit a Hanuman temple near his house at Jodhpur so that God was pleased enough to let him pass in his exams, especially the science and maths papers. He is eternally grateful to Hanumanji for giving him much more than he had prayed for.

As we get out of the restaurant where his BMW is revving up, Pandey says though ads continue to fun, he would like to write a masala Hindi film script one day. Why not?