99% Perspiration

1. 99% Perspiration Calcutta: September 23, 2006

2. A few questionsfor creatives? • Do you dailycandy? Do you flavorpill? Are you a coolhunter?An urban junkie? • Ok, a Foner? • Heard Juliette Pochin? Paolo Conti? Baba Maal, Lokgeeti Local? Madhushala? • Seen any movies by Majid Majidi, Istvan Szabo, Wong Kar Wai, Atom Egoyan? • Read Julian Barnes, Tony Parsons, Wallpaper, Flaunt, Wislawa Szymborska? • Have you ever smelt negroli, vetiver, bergamot or patchouli? • Seen any work by I M Pei, Basquiat, Schnabel, Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst? • Eaten truffle butter, Tim Tams, Japanese seaweed?

3. A few questionsfor the suits? • Heard of Mariam Salzman? Kevin Roberts? Jamie Dimon, Alwaleed? • Read Urban Tribes, Smart Mobs, Bobos in Paradise? • What’s your take on “latte towns”, “curated consumption”,“maven marketing”? • Do you subscribe to First Company, The McKinsey Quarterly,The Motley Fool? • What do you think Frank Quattrone is going to do next? • The font Chingolo Pro. Your take on it ? • Your views on the impact of neuroscience on advertising messaging?

4. And then, some forthe media blokes • The role of ethnography on media? OOH media? • Do you youtube? • Blogs as mediums? • Podcasts and the future of broadcasting messaging? • Seen a documentary called “Century of The Self” • Read Ben Bagdiakan’s “The Media Monopoly”? • Seen Slate? • Heard of The Store?

5. The raw materialof advertising, is life • We’re in the business of inspiring people. Yet, we’re most uninspired. • We’re in the business of knowing everything about everything.Yet, we know little about just a few things. • We believe we’re in a borderless world. Yet, we barricade our curiosity. • We’re in the sensorama business. Yet, we don’t use most of our senses. • We don’t share with our clients. Yet, we expect them to share our sensibilities. • Just how many times have you taken a client to an art gallery? Or lent him a great DVD or burnt a CD for him? Or for each other? • You don’t need wings to fly. Just an open mind. And don’t give me bollocks like “Where’s the time?” • Do you discover one new thing in your life each day? • Enrich By One: Live your life that way…

6. Only the human brainis compartmentalised • Compartments belong to trains. Not individuals. • There’s no divide in our business. United at work and for our clients. • There are no departments in my book. Just different capabilities. • I wear suits on days that I feel like belonging to account management. Shorts on days when I wish to hang around with creative and tortoise spectacles when I wish to bond with media. • My best partners have been suits: Suhel Seth, Nirvik Singh, John Kuruvilla, Anu Raj. • Some of the people I most admire for their faculties are people from media: Andre Nair, Raj Nayak, Raj Kamath, Srini, Vikram Sakhuja. • Find a soul-mate. The one person with whom you share almost everything you learn and get to know everything he/she does: Anurag Hira, Priya Paul. • Learn With One: Live your life that way…

7. Is the coal burning? • I get a panic attack whenever I cannot lay my hands on a book that I am dying to read. • Or, on a day that I do not have an ad to write. • Or, for that matter, a presentation to put together. • Even a pitch! • What makes you burn? Fonts? Music? Books? Tom Cruise? • It is a simple law of physics: if you don’t burn furiously, the fire soon dies out. • Burn With One: Live your life that way…

8. A step ahead • We were in the information age. We are now in the knowledge domain. • The only way you win with colleagues and clients is when you knowas much if not more about their business. • If you work on real estate, do you know about what is happening inthe Ropponji Hills district in Japan or for that matter Canary Wharfin London or the 50 Gramercy Park project in New York? • Ask any banker in this country whether he has heard of nordbanken? They wouldn’t have. • Most of you work on ITC. Aware of a film titled ‘Thank you for Smoking’? • Many of you work on media. Aware of Murdoch buying Jamba?Aware of Jamba? • Knowledge is the next battlefront. The soldier on that is the generalof tomorrow. • Ahead By One: Live your life that way...

9. Now take a step back • In this business, more so if you are in creative, vanity tends to set in. • I lived the most part of my life being a vain, painful and pompous ass. • And then, a trainee came up to me and told me that you can have ‘vanity in your veins, yet humanity in your heart’. • I believe in “goatherd leadership”. One in which you lead from behind. • “You can accomplish anything in life so long as you do not worry about who gets the credit.” • The Window-Mirror Syndrome. • I believe that, if you hold your head high, you see very little of yourself as compared to when you bow your head down. • I always have a mentor behind whose brilliance I acquire inspiration. • It’s Neil French when it comes to my craft. Prasoon Joshi when it comes to songs. And M J Akbar when it comes to writing prose. • Behind One: Live your life that way…

10. How does one do it? • Briefs are as boring as the people who write them. Or, as exciting. • For most people, writing a brief is a necessary evil. • On the other hand, I think some of the greatest briefs are great ads in themselves: Sourav Chatterjee and Steroids For Your Feet! • Great briefs are never provided by a client. They are always arrived at by account managers who have interpreted a brief, researched it assiduously and then presented it to creative:Hush Puppies. • Don’t whine about written briefs. That’s just an excuse. • Why can’t creative people write briefs? Or, media people? • Collaboration at the brief stage with account management and even the client is a sure-shot way of arriving at something that belongs to all. • I always soft-land an idea with a client. Mostly, actually. • Together As One: Live your life that way…

11. Arriving at the idea… • “To observe, to absorb and then to connect.”- Subhas Ghosal • Every idea is in the archive of your mind. The fuller that archive, the richer are your options. • The Daewoo ‘hold my hand’ commercial was actually created in 1972. It went on air in 1997. • It’s all about making connections. • So, if you have a international SIM card to sell, you look at all the silly people who call you when you are abroad: your videowallah, the credit card company, a friend who is participating in a KBC show. • You look at your friendships; andyou look at your infidelities. • You borrow from life around you; and lend back to society. • Who or what are you going to add to your archive today? • Add One: Live your life that way…

12. C’mon, let’s do an ad! • The Brand: Blackberry • The Brief: There is none! • Required: A print ad. • Insights: Blackberry users are obsessive workaholics, control freaks. • You have just 15 minutes to crack it!

13. Pressures, Deadlines • I don’t think ideas come to people. I believe people go to ideas. • Which means, you score negative marks with me when you tell me “I’m thinking about it.” Congratulations and thank you for starting to think. Would’ja hurry, please? • I think if you have a clear head and a rather ample archive inyour head, you make very swift connections. • My best ideas come to me first. My worst follow them. • And yes, I strongly believe in options. Don’t we all wish we were seeing two women at one time or two men? C’mon, be honest.

14. What makes a good creative person? • A good creative person (in my book) must have multifarious interests. These could range from an avid intention in Bipasha Basu’s hip-girdles right down to a nice bottle of St Emilion. Most creative people are linear lames. • A good creative person (on a good day) must be able to double up as a fine planner or a great account manager. Which means a fine understanding of the agency business and the client’s business. • A good creative person is a remarkable presenter of ideas.The days of the impish creative sod with a soft voice and a ponytail are passe. • Even more significantly, a good creative person must be able to string together a meaningful strategic ppt. • Tell me, can you do all of the above?

15. What makes a good servicing person? • An abiding interest in the client’s business andthe business category • A person who consistently seeks insights • A keen observer of consumer habits • A purveyor of all fine things • Organised, patient and extremely well-read • True to his client at the end of it all…

16. And clients? Understand them… • Clients have compulsions. I have shut down a business because I bullied a client into buying a campaign that completely bombed. To date, I cannot face him when I enter The Saturday Club. • Tough clients are a blessing: Amit Bose. • You have to take the rough with the smooth: Debashish Sarkar and 33 recruitment ads. • You have to win your clients over. You can only do that by demonstrating your concern, by aligning yourself to his concerns. • Most of the times, the client is right • Remember no one likes to buy shit ads. But sometimes, they just have to. And they do so, knowingly. • Always share something new with your clients every day –an insight, a global development; whatever. I send an email a day to most of my clients, telling them about something that may interest them, empower them or even challenge their business.

17. Scam ads and awards • I have judged awards and I know what a mockery they are. They are agenda-driven. I could never give a crappy piece of work from my agency 5 on 5. I would have huge ‘internal ethical collisions’. But I have seen people do that. • I also feel that awards are a fad. One clever visual and out. • Why do agencies with 100 clients win on just 2 or 3 clients? That’s 97% mediocrity to me. • Choose the awards you’d wish to enter. • I am determined to win some World Press Awards. They are being judged by Neil French and the finest jury on earth. • The Sony “Balls” ad that won at Cannes was trash! • And, morally, I would not accept the award for Levi’s Slim.

18. Therefore, what isthe solution? • If you have to raise the bar, you have to systematically do it - consciously and continuously. • Create a Communications Council that consists of talented creatives, account managers and clients. • Let there be three representatives from each constituency. • As is typical of most associations, please do not include old-fashioned blokes just because they are heavy-hitters. • Get large clients to be part of this forum. • Meet once a fortnight in an interesting place. Showcase great work from all over. • Force clients to help you do even three great campaigns a year.

19. And finally,if you’re ever stuck… …write to me at kolkata.rocks@gmail.com