Entertainment News

Adman who drifted from cricket and tea-tasting to finding his calling in words and wit

MUMBAI: Some sell products and some sell dreams. Septuagenarian adman Piyush Pandey, who passed away in the early hours of Friday after battling multiple health complications for over a year (according to his close family friends), was the latter. He was that rare breed who turned advertising into a living conversation between a country and her people. Long before India became a marketer's delight, he had already found the music in her markets, her laughter and her small imperfections. He taught brands to speak like people, and people to see themselves in brands. When the genial, moustachioed Jaipurian joined Ogilvy & Mather in 1982, Indian advertising still carried its clipped, colonial hangover -- English, aspirational, and foreign in tone. By the time he retired four decades later as executive chairman and global chief creative officer (CCO), the language of Indian advertising had changed forever. It no longer mimicked Madison Avenue, but sounded like the gully outside our homes. His legacy lives in lines that became folklore: Fevicol ka mazboot jod, Kuch khaas hai zindagi mein, Har ghar kuch kehta hai, Daag achhe hain, Thanda matlab Coca-Cola, Do boond zindagi ke. Three generations of Indians -- from the era of Vividh Bharati and Doordarshan to YouTube reels -- grew up on them. His ads were not thirty-second sales pitches but memory capsules of a changing India. In his hands, the ordinary gleamed. A lopsided truck overloaded with villagers became an ode to loyalty. A girl with chocolate smeared on her face dancing on a cricket field taught a nation how to celebrate. A freshly painted wall whispered stories of home. Even stains in a Surf Excel ad became metaphors for empathy and love. Pandey's gift was to see poetry in the pedestrian. And sometimes the way he quilted his creative energies gave us the iconic national integration ditties such as the haunting 1988 classic Mile sur mera tumhara. "We were true partners in crime -- bound by a delicious irreverence, forever laughing at everything and everyone, including ourselves," recalled Prahlad Kakkar, who first met Piyush Pandey in the early '80s before they became the "enfants terribles of Indian advertising". Their first encounter was at Tardeo's Everest Building, where the young Pandey was already experimenting with cuts and edits "so out-of-the-box he'd struggle to sell them to daft brands", Kakkar chuckled, recalling how that same maverick would soon sweep the Abbys year after year. "That full-throated guffaw through his walrus moustache, the infectious energy he brought to everything -- and our friendship that survived even as we worked for rival brands -- that's what I'll carry with me." That rivalry only sharpened their creative fire. Kakkar fondly recalled the great Coke-Pepsi ad war of 1996, when India hosted the Cricket World Cup. "Both brands were in the race to be the 'official beverage'. When Coke bagged the title with a ₹10-crore bid, we at J Walter Thompson decided to have some fun with it. Once our copywriter Anuja Chauhan coined the line 'Nothing Official About It', I directed the campaign featuring Sachin Tendulkar, Mohammad Azharuddin and Vinod Kambli. Coke may have paid a fortune, but we stole the laughter -- and the nation's heart." Like Kakkar, veteran adman and Global CCO of Nihilent and Hypercollective K V Sridhar -- who knew Pandey for over 45 years as "colleague, collaborator, and fierce competitor" -- mourned the loss of "not just an advertising legend but an exceptional human being". He remembered how both Pandey (at Ogilvy) and he (at Lintas) were approached by Cadbury in 1991 to reposition the brand for adults. "We were rivals and friends, working on the same brief to make it an in-between-meal snack. I still remember the thrill when he cracked the now-iconic Kuchch Khaas Hai..., which changed Cadbury's image forever." Born in Jaipur in a large, laughter-filled household, Pandey was a wicket-keeper and batter for Ranji Trophy for Rajasthan, toyed with tea-tasting, and drifted through other professions before finding his calling in words and wit. At Ogilvy, he rose through the ranks -- from client servicing to copywriting, from CCO to helming the agency across India and South Asia. Under his watch, Ogilvy India became synonymous with cultural resonance and emotional intelligence. He was set apart by his instinctive understanding of India's vernacular heart. He listened to bus conductors and chai-stall banter for wisdom in idioms. "That's why his campaigns never sounded written; they sounded overheard," said Sumanto Chattopadhyay, former CCO of 82.5 Communications. "Pandey pioneered advertising with a quintessentially Indian sensibility. The working-class milieu and the earthy charm of the hinterlands -- elements we now take for granted -- were absent until he ushered them in." For all his laurels -- the Cannes Lions, the Clio metals, the Padma Shri (2016), and the Legend Award from the London International Awards (2024) -- Pandey remained disarmingly grounded. "The best compliment I ever got," he had told this writer in 2009, "was when a taxi driver said he liked my Fevicol ad." He wore his fame like his smile -- easy, unassuming, unguarded. Behind the humour and the earthy turns of phrase was a moral compass: the belief that advertising, at its best, could make people feel better about who they were. Piyush Pandey is gone -- but his Fevicol ka jod on our hearts is forever.

Latest Stories

Read Full Story