A man who happened to chance upon advertising, an individual who stands by his beliefs in this very pseudo world of advertising.
A die hard Ilyaraja fan, R Balakrishnan, popularly known as Balki is a concoction of enigma and a staunch enemy of balderdash. He is an unassuming individual who calls himself a solution provider and not a creative genius.
Meet the personification of simplicity himself, Balki, executive creative director, Lowe, in a tete-a-tete with indiantelevision.com's Sonali Krishna.
How long has your association been with Lintas? What is that one unique characteristic of Lowe that Balki has brought to the company? For a little while, I think it went into a safe zone of behaving and acting like a big agency. Somewhere, the cutting edge nature of advertising took a back seat to a lot of things. It was getting into a slightly serious zone. So my only contribution to Lintas has been to kind of bring back, just a little bit, the edge that was there before. I haven't done anything new. |
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How did the transition from Balakrishnan to Balki happen? |
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Correct me if I am wrong but I believe that you swear by the philosophy that the success of a campaign is basically derived from the client. Secondly, I think no advertising can be produced, if a client does not see the solution as clearly as you do. Somewhere in his head, when you tell him the solution and he buys it he knows that that's the right solution. So when you meet people who know in their gut what the solution is, then you have a great client. |
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Is this philosophy peculiar to Lowe and you or is it a common industry trend? So the client automatically becomes a part of the creative process. And on top of it, he pays you money. |
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Do advertising people recognise this? I don't think there are enough advertising people who are equipped to give them the solutions they deserve. It's the other way around today. The clients are ahead of the agencies. |
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And why is that? They are more realistic in terms of: "Is this going to solve my problem or not?" They have fine-tuned their learning into receiving solutions that are correct for them far faster than advertising people. We just release an ad and if it doesn't work, we get sacked. That's all we have to lose. But if it doesn't work for the client his business is at stake. I believe that there still are a few advertising people, a handful, maybe 20 - 30 in the industry, who know what it is all about. They can actually reap fortunes for the client. |
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If I had to ask you the key ingredient in creating an ad, what would it be and why? I think the process of doing an ad is one of resilience, one of hope, one of luck and one of perseverance. It's about an agonizing problem and sometimes giving up and then waiting for a solution to strike you. When such a solution comes about, you have to be receptive enough. Sometimes you cannot be receptive to a solution when you say this is the idea but it's not there as yet. Then you are blocking off a solution before it comes to you. You have to take the call. Even though your gut says this isn't it, or this is not quite ok, sometimes you may need to stop because of practical considerations of time and money and effort and everything else. I think the trick is about getting the best possible solution half the time and getting the best solution half the time. You can't be ideal all the time. |
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How do you gauge the efficacy of an ad campaign? What methodologies are adopted to track and monitor the campaign? There are a whole lot of things that you do and if you suddenly see a rush, you know it is happening because of advertising. There are methodologies to find this out. When there is a rush for a product, you talk to people and find out why they have brought it. The will offer you reasons. That's one way of doing it. Sometimes people just like ads. A lot of people may mime the jingles but may never go and buy the product. Those are ads which have a funny theory; you can tell whether the ad will work or not, not on the basis of how popular it is. But on the basis of whether the ad has got the right focus for the product. For instance, Lifebouy has a certain kind of feel; you know something in that soap will make it work. |
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Where is our advertising headed today? Has Indian advertising attained global standards? Indian advertising has a charm that is so unique, so distinct that it can never be replicated anywhere in the world. Yes, Indian advertising will continue looking up to the west, will continue wanting to ideate them. But that's because of our inferiority complex. However, we will very soon take pride in this culture called Indian advertising. When you are doing something, you say something else is superior. It's a mentality and we have more of it than anybody. But I think we are doing fantastic stuff here. |
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But do you feel we are at ease with our culture? So we are beginning to think of our stuff as 'cool' too. Yes I see that trend. |
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Do you think the days of piggyback riding on international ads are passé and that Indian ads are making their rounds as the piggy itself? The inferiority complex comes from our belief that we're not good. At the same time we want to beat them at their own game and then continue laughing. Then we belive that we have much more of a stature to say that we are creating a genre of Indian advertising. Who would listen to us in the world right now if we say we are a genre without beating them at their own game? Like I mentioned earlier, if the benchmark is Cannes, we have a serious issue. I keep saying that we don't have to play baseball to look damn good in cricket. You can play cricket and be damn good at it. |
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But do you see Indian ads being emulated? And with time, I definitely see Indian advertising making its mark in the international scenario very soon. |
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Is there a dearth of good and path-breaking advertising in India? If so what do you attribute it to? |
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If you could name some India-specific path-breaking work.. |
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The new ad for Liril Orange does not have the regular Liril jingle. Why change what was synonymous with the brand? |
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The jingle is a mixture of Ilayaraja's (who else!) 1989 classic track, Jhallantha and Maniratnam's Telugu debut, Geetanjali. Does the agency get the copyright to use such songs from the past? If they do, is there some way to offer credits to the original composer? |
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Is it true that you are one of Ilayaraja's biggest fans? |
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How important are awards to you? We'd love to do something that fits both these categories. But if we win awards we'd like to win on criteria. But it doesn't mean that a lot of campaigns that don't win awards are not path-breaking in doing something. |
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But I believe you do not approve the kind of people who judge what agencies create and would hate to expose a young writer to the kind of comments these people make about good work. Do you believe that awards are a farce and politically manipulated, a façade? You are into seeing Cannes reels, you're into seeing One Show, you are into seeing whether you, as an Indian, see these Indian ads fitting into my global scheme of what advertising should be. That is not the right way of judging advertising. Because, advertising is supposed to solve a problem for a certain person. If it succeeds, you should award it. I would say that at least 70 per cent of the people who are part of the panel should not be there. They should not be judging advertising. Because 30 per cent of the panel gets overwhelmed by the 70 per cent because you are doing a majority kind of a thing there. So, there's no point when you have five good people in a 30-member panel, 25 of them not qualified. |
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Isn't there a sudden surge in celebrities willing to endorse anything for big bucks? |
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Which work do you prize the most? |
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What is your take on the Mirinda - Hutch controversy? |
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Political ads: Comment on the quality in terms of creativity and execution? |
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And do you believe political ads should be encouraged? |
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But what about the mud-slinging advertisements? |
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Surrogate advertising; do you think it achieves its objectives? |
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What kind of loss is the industry looking at with the ban on tobacco ads? |
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How did you begin your journey in this field? Would you call yourself creative? I got into the Masters in Computer Application (MCA) course. This was the college right opposite the film institute. I always liked computers, so I said that I would study for a bit. I studied there for three years. In the last year I was thrown out because of lack of attendance. I used to play a lot of cricket. Then I saw an ad in the papers for Mudra (The Hand). I remembered seeing it after Buniyaad. The assignment was to send in 100 words describing who you are. And a Naganand Kumar, Mudra's organisational behavioural head called me and asked me to come to Ahmedabad. I didn't know what copy writing was. So I took it on. We also watched 180 movies in six months. Anyway it was great fun as I started copywriting finally. It was a pretty cool way of being in a industry. So, that's how I started. I met Ramesh Sippy a year ago after 14 years and told him that he was the person I wished to emulate in advertising. |
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Who is your inspiration? Where do you draw your energy from? |
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Would you call yourself a good leader? As Executive Creative Director, what is your primary role and how do you train and mould young minds? I don't believe in the theory of learning from failure. I want young people to grow much faster than I could. I want them to be perfect in two years. I don't want them to make the mistakes I made. The frustration is when they tell me that they want to make exactly the same mistakes as I did. |
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Do you see yourself in any other profession? |
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What is you biggest regret? |
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If I had to ask you to define yourself in one word , what would it be? |