MUMBAI -
Have a dog model for a cellular service, or use a barber
and his wacky customer to sell bubble gum? Amid such
shards of shattered rules and a shower of awards this
year, India's Piyush Pandey and Thailand's Jureeporn
"Judee" Thaidumrong lead a brave tribe of creative
directors earning Asian advertising unprecedented global
attention.
Pandey is president of the film and
outdoor juries at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival
this summer, the first Asian to receive this honor;
Jureeporn is part of the 2004 Clio jury. They represent
a new creative surge emerging from an Indian and Thai
advertising industry worth US$2.5 billion - with a
turnover of over $1 billion. Meanwhile, media spending
in both countries is expected to grow between 15 and 25
percent in 2004.
"For a long time, Asian
advertising had tended to treat the consumer like an
idiot, overfeeding him with information that he doesn't
require," said Pandey, president and national creative
director of Ogilvy and Mather (O&M) India. On a
muggy summer afternoon in Mumbai, Pandey chatted to Asia
Times Online about the new forces shaking Asian
advertising. "Now we have a culture of treating the
consumer with respect."
It meant that Pandey and
his colleagues reduced the technical gobbledy-gook in a
cellular service advertisement to simply featuring a
little dog pottering behind its six-year old master all
day. The dog and the solemn little boy have taken the
Hutch (Orange) ad to near cult status in Indian
advertising. With the Hutch ad in tow, O&M swept the
Abby Awards (India's version of the Clio) last month,
bagging 22 prizes including Agency of the Year. Sales of
the Chinese Pug - the breed of dog featured in the ad -
shot up in Mumbai after the cellular phone commercial
hit TV screens.
"The Hutch ad is a great example
and a lesson that in our search for great ideas,
sometimes we forget the innocence and charm inherent in
every human being," Pandey said. "We were lucky to have
a client who does not mind being symbolized as a dog. In
the ad, the dog is the symbol of the network."
If such luck favors the brave, Jureeporn,
executive creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi,
Thailand, indulges in daring devilry like transforming
the image of an old ladies brew to one that appeals to
teenagers (Spy), or convincing Thai customers to buy
light bulbs instead of candles as temple offerings - and
succeeding to such an extent that her client Sylvania
quickly ran out of stock.
Jureeporn's younger
colleagues call her the the "Power Puff Girl" because of
her quiet shy-girl facade despite being one of Asia's
most sought after creative talents. Saatchi &
Saatchi Bangkok managed an astonishing regional rise
from 61st place in 2001 to fourth rank in 2003. Trade
watcher Campaign Brief Asia ranked Thaidumrong as one of
Asia's top four creative directors.
The
Jureeporn-Pandey brand of thinking is producing an
exciting Camelot of creativity in Asia, with a mindset
turning from "how can this be possible" to "how can this
be made possible". It makes universal points anchored
deeply in local cultural roots. Pandey used Rajput
tribals wearing psychedelic turbans and aged camel
traders to advertise "Ad Asia 2003" in Jaipur, a
conference that hosted the who's who of international
advertising.
Jureeporn uses laughter. "It's
because humor appeals to us," Jureeporn pointed out
during her presentation at Ad Asia. "Also, Thais don't
take themselves too seriously."
"You are
unlikely to expect a Hutch from Judee," Pandey agrees,
admitting he has always been a great admirer of Thai
advertising. "She's more on the whacky side of life and
does a very good job of it. But where we all meet is to
find a different way of saying the same thing. We
believe that, ok, if something has been done once, then
try and do it some other way."
The "other way"
included work featuring a doddering old Indian barber
and his weird customer in a dusty saloon to sell Centre
Shock bubble gum. The barber pops a piece of bubble gum
into the customer's mouth, the customer goes into
convulsions from the "electric gum" and his hair
frizzles on end to get the desired result the customer
wanted from a magazine picture. The ad tickled India
during the cricket World Cup in 2003.
"Conventional wisdom [CW] said that chocolate
ads must have chocolatey faces," chuckles Pandey from
behind his trademark bushy moustache that has him
looking like an amiable dacoit (bandit). "CW says
that the target audience should be shown in the ad; I
don't think a barber and a weirdo were our target
audience for Centre Shock bubble gum." But Perfetti, the
client, loved the ad so much they gave it a home run on
Italian TV and hired O&M India to work on an Italian
product as well.
The Pandey-Judee breed of
creatives draw from their unusual background as well. V
Mahesh, who wrote the Hutch ad and won the Indian Copy
Writer of the Year award, has a hotel management degree.
Pandey was a professional tea taster and cricketer.
Abhijit Avasthi, who wrote the Perfetti ads, was a
metallurgist. Jureeporn is an accomplished Thai kick
boxer and comes from a leading political family.
"The industry benefited from such fresh breath,"
says Pandey. "We need such lateral thinking and people
who chase their passion, not their education."
Raja M is an independent writer based
in Mumbai, India.
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