My advertising days...

Was watching Pranaya Roy on his programme - 60 yrs of Indian Destiny on Sunday. This time he was covering advertising. The panel of guests were Prasoon Joshi, Aleque Padamsee, Piyush Pandey & Prahalad kakkar. As they talked and discussed the history of advertising, showcasing various old & new ads, I was reminded of my days in advertising. My memorable 2.5 years of association with Contract - as copy trainee & Crayons Advertising as a copy guy. The time of my life I had there. The highs that me & my art partner used to get after creating campaigns which we knew might never get printed but can get us jobs in other agencies (in advtg. lingo we used to call it portfolio ke liye ads.), the kicks that i got after I saw my 1st printed ad (it was a shaving cream ad in a Chandigarh local newspaper), the crazy, wild things we used to do at office & team parties. I remember once after a heavy boozing session, we ran out of stocks and then at 1 am in night we went to local bootlegger who supplied some desi stuff and what kicks we had! A small dose of it was enough for satish - our client servicing team guy to make a call at 2 am in the morning to one of our leechad client and puke out all choicest maa-behen abuses :) Then the time when me, Vishal (a budding body builder & client servicing guy) and my art guy - Ashish went on a holiday to nanital, got drunk & bashed up a guy who was irritating us at telephone booth, next day when senses dawned upon us - packed up and escaped from nanital to Mussoorie (those of you who are familiar with that part of the world can realise the distance we covered - and that too in state transport buses where even animals travel in the bus with passengers!) so that we don't get lynched by that bashed up guy's friends :) And why Mussoorie? Coz the bombshell of our office - a girl called Sonal was vacationing there and we thought she would like to have company of 3 smart looking men :)


Then i remember recording my 1st radio jungle and how I rulaoed the producer & voice over artist ( a sweet babe from Gurgaon) to squeeze my script and record it within 30 secs. The kicks that i got after hearing the jingle on radio for the 1st time.

And yes, how can i forget to mention about Prasoon Joshi who once appreciated my TVC film ideas which i shared with him when i had gone for my O&M interview. It so happened that I was showing my portfolio to an ACD in O&M and Prasoon stepped into his room. Suddenly the light went off. As we waited for the generators to start, the ACD asked if I had worked on any TVCs, which i said yes and shared few of my TVC storyboards. Both of them found the ideas humorous and Prasoon even commented that 'you have a good thinking mind'. I even made through the O&M interview but stinking politics of a CD who had just joined the agency saw me left out and that was the turning point in my decision to quit advertising.

But yeah..I do miss my advertising days.