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Raja Ganapathy

In the first of this three-part series, the author, a long-time ad professional, describes the topsy-turvy world of advertising.

MY first day in advertising was quite unforgettable. I was taken out for lunch by the team I was supposed to work with. To a very fancy place. I was so nervous that I hardly ate anything. I realised much later what I had missed out on. The next time somebody took me out for lunch was three years later. And I had to pay for it.

I was an MBA and hence quite out of place in my agency. Creative sneered at me, the non-MBAs, who formed the bulk of client servicing, gave me the cold shoulder. And the client. Well, he treated me as somebody would treat an account executive. If you know what I mean.

I think the first year in advertising is the worst. Until you come to the second year and realise the first year was quite decent in comparison. Until, of course, you reach the third year. Well, you get my drift.

Advertising is an acquired taste. About 60 per cent of AEs leave in the first year of joining. (No, this is not a researched statistic but it does sound more impressive with the number, right?) It is an acquired taste just like whisky is. For the drinker, there is no other drink in the world. And for the non-drinker, it is pure self-flagellation.

"Nice work, but mazaa nahi hei yaar," (..but no fun yaar) said the brand manager to me. I nodded my head sagely and walked bravely to my creative director. "The client feels that this is nice work but mazaa nahi hei yaar," I said. "***************" said the creative director. Keeping a straight face and an upright chin, I walked through the peals of laughter that followed this in the agency. "I think you will need to give me a better brief," this to the client. "Yaar, I need to be stimulated. I can't think in a vacuum. Show me something creative and I will tell you if it works or not." "The client needs to be stimulated. We need to show him something creative," I said bravely to my creative director. Let me draw the curtain on this one episode as what followed is quite unprintable and fairly guessable.

"Get me the storyboard," said my boss to me one day. I ran out of the room. About 25 minutes later, she came looking for me. I was staring at a huge rack of files trying to look intelligent. The language in a typical agency is extremely unique. Positives, negatives, artworks, prints, bromides, star burst (for heaven's sake, what is a star burst doing on a pack?), POP and so on and so forth. In fact, in my early days, my only ambition was to speak like the account supervisor sitting next to me. I used to eavesdrop unabashedly and pray that I learn to speak like that. Frankly, now I speak like that at home. "I think we need to figure out the rationale before we plunge into this." "We need to catch them at the point of contact." Until my wife threatened to throw a glass of cold water on my head. The water along with the glass, that is.

There were, however, advantages in all this chaos. I learnt to do before thinking. Sometime later I learnt to do without thinking. There were drawbacks too. Anything remotely action-oriented would provoke an action from me. I would run half the way to the client's office before I figured out what I was going there for. There was this colleague of mine who would dial a number and then frantically paw me with mute gestures. He was trying to remember why he had called the number in the first place. I guess there was some method to the whole madness. The nice thing about being an account executive is that you can leave the method to somebody else.

"Eliminate the word `no' from your dictionary. That is the secret of success in an ad agency," said a boss to me one day. Wow, I thought, what an amazing philosophy! A month later, I went to him. "I am badly in need of money, I need a raise." `No," he said.

The most difficult part of my growing up were the film studios. Editing and recording rooms. Sitting all night in sub-zero temperatures as a suspiciously red-eyed crackpot sat at something called an Avid and clicked on various buttons and mouses (yeah, yeah, I am exaggerating. There was only one mouse). Every couple of hours, he would noisily get out of his chair waking you in the process and say something that sounded like "rendering is going on". I would look at the Avid and discover to my horror this message - 17 hours left. I would look 15 minutes later and presto - 11 hours left. I guess the Avid, like most people in the profession, has developed a very black sense of humour.

Briefs. Another huge issue of contention. "Your brief sucks" is the kindest word ever said to me about something I had written. The other statements ranged from the simply rude to the very insulting to the plainly abusive. Every creative person that I worked with believed that servicing couldn't write to save their lives. And that they just did not have basic communication skills. And that they also had ugly faces. And servicing? Well, we just didn't have the time to form opinions.

Speaking of time, time management was something that I learnt after joining the agency. I learnt that it is never impossible to finish something the same day. Since the night would also be taken as part of the day. It is never impossible to finish something by the week. And, so on. Of course, there was a positive to this. My parents found it quite a relief not to have to see their errant son often. My father, of course, just couldn't figure out what I do in a typical day. "So, what was your day like?" he would ask. "Nothing much, had to chase up on some model payments, get a contract signed, had a small fight with creative, had to apologise to the client for a mistake in a brochure, fix up a photography shoot for next month and get some bills signed." He always thought I was grossly underpaid.

Of course, like the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, at the end of all this madness used to reside an amazing sense of pride. Pride every time our ad used to come on television. Every time you walk into a store and see the poster that you worked on adorning the walls. Seeing the packaging that you struggled on for so many months occupying the shelves. I guess this pride is what sees you through all the chaos.

And this pride is what distinguishes the 40 per cent who make it past the first year from the 60 per cent who throw in the towel.

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