Living on the 'Adge' in Jhande Walan Thompson

Sunil Gupta

Description

Living on the 'Adge' in Jhande Walan Thompson is a Bill-Bryson-esque tale of Sunil Gupta's twenty-three-year-long expedition Through the Looking Glass in the madcap wonderland of Indian advertising. A delightful and quirky narrative with a wonderful cast of characters and companies (a virtual who's who of advertising and marketing), inimitable descriptions and hilarious episodes, it presents a valuable and irreverent history of the growth and development of an increasingly important and yet largely unknown sector of the industry. Sunil's gift of observation and portraiture and his original use of language and metaphor are truly remarkable. Dig in and discover how Sunil likes his coffee without any sweetener. You won't find any aspartame in his writing either. And you'll find a lot to laugh about, admire and ponder over along the way.

Sujets

• Biography
• Business magnate
• Diaries
• Memoir
• Advertising
• Business
• Autobiography
• Tycoon
• Management
• Profession

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 06 avril 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788174369475
• Langue: English

Extrait

LIVING ON THE ADGE in JhandeWalan Thompson
Sunil Gupta
Lotus Collection
Sunil Gupta, 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher.
First published in India in 2009
The Lotus Collection
An imprint of
Roli Books Pvt. Ltd.
M-75, G.K. II Market, New Delhi 110 048
Phones: ++91 (011) 40682000
Fax: ++91 (011) 2921 7185
E-mail: [e-mail]
Website: www.rolibooks.com
Also at Bangalore, Chennai, Jaipur, Kolkata,
Mumbai Varanasi
Cover Design: Arti Sapra
ISBN: 978-81-7436-744-0
Typeset in Adobe Jenson Pro by Roli Books Pvt. Ltd. and printed and bound at Replika Press Private Limited
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FORTHCOMING TITLES

M.B. Naqvi
Pakistan on Knife s Edge
Amir Mir
Fluttering Flag of Jehad
M.J. Akbar
Have Pen, Will Travel
Robert Hutchison The
Raja of Harsil
Claimer (sic)
The cracters, evants and incidants in this book are really real, and any resamblance to persons, living or dead, is purely factual, and draan from recesses of my mammory. I would like to thank all those who have touched my life, and helped in my dwalpment, because without them, I would not have had the pleiyer of writing this book. If some peepal experience slight blurring of vieeun while reading, please to forgive. No hard feelings, accha ? After aal, where would I been without you? And dubbal after aal, I am aalso pnjabi, so we can do jhappi-pappi , have a pag, shake a lag, sing balleballe , kiss and do make up, okay?
Contents
PEOPLE ON WHOM YOU CAN LAY THE BLAME FOR THIS BOOK
WRITER S BLOCK
PROLOGUE
CHECK MATE
OPENING GAMBIT: 1978-88: THE WONDER YEARS:
1978-85
Pawn to Central Hall, Khan Market
The Chequerboard
Interregnum
Hoisting the Flag in JhandeWalan
Environment, Work Ethic, and Other Unusual Animals
All We have is Our People : HRD Then and Now
Clients
HMM (GSK)
Escorts and Niky Tasha
1985-88
Knight of the Round Table
Hero Cycles
The End of Wonder
MIDDLE GAME: 1988-98: THE THUNDER YEARS:
1988-92
Sinking (Ne er a Truer Word) in: 1988
Settling in (1988-Early 1989) Testing the Waters
The People Quotient (PQ)
The Liveability Quotient (LQ)
The Business Quotient (BQ)
ITC
TATA Steel
ICI Paints and Philips Lighting
Dunlop
The Minor Counties
Khaitan Fans
Emami
Meanwhile Back at the Ranch: Murky Waters
The Calcutta Business Chromosome
The King in his Castle: The ECM Muddles
The Loaves and Fishes
Settling Down (Early 1989-Mid 1990)
Puja Pandal-Monium
Train-ing to Darjeeling
The Return of the Native
Barthakur Ranjithus
Enter Tomorrow
Living in Tomorrow : The BQ Revisited
Dunlop: Dun and Lopped
ICI: Not Seeing I to I
I Think I Saw Some Fish There
Living in Tomorrow : Enter JWT
Living in Tomorrow : The PQ and LQ: Revisited
Full Circle (Late 1990-Early 1992)
Cathartic BQ Moments
OW-C-I
Em-Barmy
Sharper than a Serpent s Tooth!
Beachcombing in Behala
Cathartic PQ and LQ Moments
The Toshali Sands Caper
Final
1992-99: Delhi
Dilli Door Ast
Phase I (1992-Early 1995) The PQ: Yon Cassius hath a Lean and Hungry Look
The BQ: The Bigger The Better, The Tighter The Sweater
HMM (GSK)
Hero Cycles
Hero Honda
Nestl
Pepsi
Chhota Rajan
Pitches and New Clients: It s the Thrill of the Chase, Old Chap!
Pizza Hut
Motorola Pagers
Ray-Ban
Reebok
The Modis: Xerox-ed and Luft-ed
New Kids on the old Block (Head)
Phase II (Mid 1995-98) The PQ: All the Lovely (sic) People, Where Do They All Come From?
Naya Daur
Aadmi aur Insaan
The BQ: SG, SG, Quite Contrary, How does Your Garden Grow?
Hero Honda Part 2
Hero Cycles Part 2
Nestl Part 2: Munched by KitKat
Jewels in the Crown (Pepsi, Indian Army, VDIS 97)
How We Broke the Bank in Monte Carlo
The LQ: The House that Jack (almost didn t) Build
And Now a Word from Our Sponsor: Martin Sorrell
Phase III (1998-99) The End of Thunder
END GAME: 1999-2002: THE BLUNDER YEARS
September-December 1999
Pawn to 6th Floor, Laxmi Building, Sir PM Road, Bombay
Late 1999-Early 2000 The PQ: Lord Baden-Powell is Alive and Well!
The BQ: Bar BQ-ed How Not to Say Boo to a Goose
HLL
Godrej
VIP
Specks of Gold in the Dust
The LQ: Liqued by the LQ!
Early 2000-Early 2001
The PQ: Plus a Change, Plus est la M me Chose
Y2 Krazee Kiya Re!
The BQ: Home is Where the Hea(r)t is
Bric Bats: The World According to GARP, ER, HLL, VIP, Godrej, TATA-AIG, Mattel (Gasp!)
Jaayen toh Jaayen Kahan?
The LQ: There s No Place Like Home
Early 2001-End 2001
Check!
The LQ: Man of La Dhancha
Grilled on the BBQ
To H(e)LL and Back
Oh God-rej!
HPCL: Fossilized Fuels
Weep-i-P
De Beers: A Diamond is Indeed Forever
Crunched by Kellogg s
Warn(ing) Lambert
Godrej Sara (Le) Lee
On the Mat with Mattel
No Fizz with New Biz
Saint Philips
Ta-Ta, AIG!
Another Brick in the Balls
Mickey Finn
End 2001-Early 2002
Check, Mate!
EPIPHANY
EPILOGUE
EPITHET
EPITAPH
People on whom you can lay the blame for this book
My daughters, Tarana and Suhana, who kept saying: Why don t you stop watching cricket on TV, dad, and do something?
My wife, Sunita, who kept saying: Why don t you stop watching cricket on TV, you lazy bugger, and do something?
Pradip Chanda and Prabir Bhambal, who spared no effort to find me a publisher.
Roli Books, especially Pramod Kapoor, Priya Kapoor, and Nandita Bhardwaj, who evidently either (a) owed Mr Chanda and Mr Bhambal innumerable favours, or (b) were collectively at a loose end and had nothing better to do than publish this book.
Adil Tyabji, the editor, who loves long books and stoutly resisted all attempts to shorten the original manuscript.
Ajoy Bhan and Arti Sapra, who withstood my tantrums, surges of tempramental creativity and nitpicking with equanimity (and a few bottles of beer), and who designed the cover and helped proofread the manuscript.
And all the many people whose professional lives intersected with mine over those twenty-three years-and-a-bit in HTA, and whose names and deeds I have cleverly interwoven into this narrative, thus ensuring they ll buy at least one copy each.
Writer s block
If the Guinness Book of Records was to have a section on the strongest fingernails , the denizens of Indian Advertising would be odds on for top place. Add to this, thickskinitis and bungeecoma (a condition that makes people want to feel that they re constantly trussed to bungee ropes and jumping off a cliff), and you have Indian Advertising in a nutshell (pun intended).
As I lived and loved this life for over twenty-five years, almost seventeen of them (my very own teens ) in JhandeWalan, Delhi s version of the Bronx-cum-Sadar Bazaar where India s largest Agency, JWT (or HTA as it then was) thought it most appropriate to conduct its business, and which also became a metaphor for the offices in Calcutta and Bombay.
And, as our industry, or what passes for it, is so dominated by our Punjabi brethren, those wonderful guys who give us pleiyer for pleasure , axcellent for excellent , loin for lion , maunkey for monkey , dunkey for donkey , and especially gurrment for government and dwalpment for development , in tribute I present: Living on the Adge in JhandeWalan Thompson .
If you can t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing. - Kingsley Amis
You have enemies? Good. That means you ve stood up for something, some time in your life. - Winston Churchill
Prologue
I t is an intriguing thought that those twenty-three-odd years from 1978-2002 actually span four decades. Four decades in which Bharat has become India.
How many in the advertising world today remember what India was like back in the 1970s? That 1978 was bang in the middle of the famous Janata government experiment that did much to save democracy but put paid to competitive marketing by bundling out the multinationals? That any agency with even partial MNC ownership had to forgo government contracts? That there was only one TV channel (DD), and no private programming was permitted or available? That all persons with a salary of Rs 3000 per month had to be mentioned in a company s annual report? Contrast that to January 2002!
I have been enormously privileged to have been part of the advertising world as it changed from chalk to cheez . To have worked and interacted with hundreds of dedicated professionals as colleagues and clients; to have seen new industries and media born and thrive; to have been associated with so many legendary brands