Pandeymonium

by Piyush Pandey

one book, one pen, one child or one teacher can change the world. It is the axe for a frozen sea.

Whatever you say, say it with respect for the audience, say it in a context that the audience can understand, say it spontaneously, say it without fear, say it not to intimidate or frighten, but to delight.

Everyone and Everything around You is a Teacher

Every creative person is the result of the environment in which he or she was brought up. All that you imbibed right from the age of one or two, the people that you are associated with, family, friends, the house help, everyone makes you what you are.

we need to build a community of friends or people around us who possess different talents. People who we can learn from. No matter what their area of expertise. People whose criticisms are constructive. People whose appreciation is genuine. They could be anybody around us. All we need is to reach out. If you add value to their lives they will do it to you too.

‘Kasturi kundal basey, mrig dhundhey van maahi.’ The line describes the behaviour of the musk deer. The deer doesn’t realize that the musk it smells is in its own body, and runs around the jungle searching for the source.

There is a strange, powerful chemistry between people who seem completely dissimilar;

Human chemistry is extremely important in the business of communication.

Lalit Modi who wrote in an article that the concept of the IPL was written—by Piyush Pandey, Arun Lal and Amrit Mathur—years before the ICL was born.

Arun taught me to always remember that in adversity lies an opportunity.

we might be told that if we handled a toothpaste brand, we couldn’t work on another company’s toothbrush account. Where is the conflict? Toothbrushes and toothpaste are complementary to each other; the better one does, the better it is for the other.

It’s the passion and the involvement that counts in the end. Real passion and real involvement, not pretended and play-acted.

my late father was far from amused, saying repeatedly to me, ‘Stop playing this damned game, because when you become an adult, you will not be able to eat a bat for a meal.’ I wish I could tell him that now I am eating a bat for a meal.

Life is not about one or the other, it is about finding the balance.

Only a truly satisfied customer would come back repeatedly.

Don’t let the child in you die. He or she is the genius. You are not.

there is a human being behind the designation or the business card. We all need to look for the human being behind the manager, behind the designation.

Staying on the subject of preconceived notions, let me move from the ‘MBA’ to the ‘boring, non-creative’ client. If the ‘MBA’ is a pain, the client who does not allow creativity is the most feared and the most hated—and a punishment posting as far as a creative professional is concerned.

Don’t be scared of systems and processes. There are ways to fool them. I found at least a hundred. You will find more.

I hate researches where regular human beings are asked stupid questions. Obviously, you will get a stupid reply.

How can I visualize something that I have never seen?

The first is not to create music and lyrics that take the brief literally. The second is never to force music onto the consumer. The third is not to ‘sing’ brand names.

The music in an ad film should not intrude or intimidate. It must live the script and entertain, involve and engage the viewer.

When you work with a celebrity, the viewer must find the celebrity, the script and the idea memorable, not just the celebrity.

Mr Bachchan, like many great people, believes that God is in the details.

Punctuality is one of the most important virtues of advertising. If you cause a delay in the start of a meeting between the client and the agency, you could often be costing both tens of thousands of rupees, sometimes lakhs of rupees.

Mr Bachchan has underlined, in many conversations with me, that he is always nervous before a shoot. Not sometimes, but always. He tells me the day you stop getting nervous, the day you think you have arrived, is when the downfall begins.

There is a saying in Hindi, ‘Nindak neere raakhiye’, which translates to ‘Keep your critics near you’.

Once he had seen both the films, Ghoshto passed his judgement: the Nokia film will win awards and the Perk film will sell loads of chocolate. And that’s exactly what happened.

The more insecure you are about your idea, the less you will share it and the less the possibility for a good idea to become great.

The biggest rule of our business is that great clients get great work, good clients get good work and not-so-good clients get bad work. Great work is about partnerships—partnerships between an agency and a client. It is in this context that I call people great, good and not so good.

David Ogilvy once said, ‘Don’t keep a dog and bark yourself.’

Let me underline that these are not the only great clients—it’s just that we have been able to work together for a greater length of time and have developed a greater body of memorable work.

The biggest rule of our business is that great clients get great work, good clients get good work and not-so-good clients get bad work.

It is easy to see that the genesis of a big work takes a big heart, big vision, big belief and big faith—in both the client and the agency.

‘You can take a horse to the water, but you can’t do a thing if it wants to drink piss!’

I’ve always believed that no category is a boring category; you have to stare hard at the product and the brand, and discover how exciting you can make it.

If Rajiv Bajaj was to be reborn, he would like to be born as a motorcycle.

Multicultural is a statement of humility. It says that the company is not the king, the consumer is the king.

If I am not scoring runs like my partners are, then I shouldn’t be in the team.

I don’t wear India on my sleeve. I wear it on my heart. No, I am not a jingoistic nationalist, but I am proud to be an Indian.

Play where you can make a difference. Not just to yourself, but also to a large number of your community, your country.

However difficult it may be, if you are convinced that you are right, then you should stand up for your beliefs.

When you’re stuck, search for gold wherever young and old people are.

‘Feet on the ground, head in the sky’. Anyone who knows how to fly has to know about the ground realities first. Only then can you take off, fly and land in glory.

Big ideas come from the belief that you can fly; big ideas cannot come when you are shackled by research, when you are shackled by conventional belief, when you are shackled by the success of the past.

Don’t worry about accusations or suspicions. Put your hand on your heart and you will get the answer.

We make the mistake of defining the people we meet as sharply as possible. Black or white. But look for the grey.

A lot of knowledge comes naturally to you. And then what you bring to the party is your own wisdom, your own ambition, your own aspiration, your own dream, your own experiences, your own judgement.

banks in India have done successfully, with Arundhati Bhattacharya as chairperson of State Bank of India, Chanda Kochhar as MD and CEO of ICICI Bank, Shikha Sharma as MD and CEO of Axis Bank, Naina Lal Kidwai as country head, HSBC, and many others. These ladies are not just running successful financial corporations, but are thought leaders whose opinions are taken into account while drafting national policy.