New Delhi: What can a stick of glue mean to anyone? What can it stand for? Can a white coloured adhesive encompass the wide, colourful culture and nature of India? Only a madman like Piyush Pandey could have looked at a boring white bottle of Fevicol and seen a medley of colours and chaos of India written all over it.
Pandey, a legend in every sense of the word, passed away peacefully at a hospital in Mumbai at 70. He didn’t just sell glue; he sold the emotion of a ‘strong bond’. This complex, intangible feeling was distilled into the straightforward and enduring tagline: “Fevicol ka jod hai, tootega kaise”.
Ogilvy’s CEO confirmed Pandey’s peaceful death in an internal communication to the company’s employees. He was an advertiser, not selling products or even product stories. He was creating lore that became quintessential parts of the national consciousness, a part of everyday lingo and modern phrases.
“Piyush Pandey single-handedly changed the language of Indian advertising from English to the vernacular,” Prahlad Kakkar, ad film director, said. “He defined Indian advertising for what it is today. Half the Indian advertising executives today trained under Piyush, you throw a stone and you’ll find his acolyte.”
Pandey’s “Do Boond Zindagi Ki” (Two drops of life) tagline for India’s Polio Eradication Campaign effectively highlighted the urgency and importance of the disease and the oral vaccine to the masses. The Kinetic Luna, with the line “Chal Meri Luna” (Go, my Luna), became the transport of choice for an entire generation. By simply adding the prefix ‘Humara’ (Our), he transformed the Bajaj scooter into “Humara Bajaj,” adding gravitas and emotional ownership to the act of buying a scooter.
Additionally, he made Madhya Pradesh the coolest place in India just by a single line: “Hindustan Ka Dil” (The Heart of India). Pandey metamorphosed the loyalty of a dog that follows you everywhere to the effectiveness of a phone network with the Hutch Pug campaign.
He also coined ‘Ab Ki Baar Modi Sarkaar,’ a catchy slogan in 2013, which helped the then Gujarat Chief Minister mount a memorable campaign for the Indian parliament.
One of the greatest storytellers
Pandey is arguably among the greatest storytellers of post-90s India. His way of writing ads told the story of India as its own in the post-liberalisation era. His ads were the stories we started telling each other. He was the writer who didn’t work on ‘briefs’; he was working on muses. And we fell in love with multiple 30-second stories Pandey had told us.
“India really needed a storyteller to help it look in the mirror without flinching. And Piyush Pandey was the perfect man for the job. He made India own itself and embrace itself in a way that was full of affection, laughter, and warmth, a warm recognition you saw of yourself in the mirror,” Santosh Desai, a social commentator, said.
Desai said Pandey operated in advertising in an era when brand stories were dominated by Western messaging. “He created an Indian idiom, which was squarely rooted in the craft of advertising. It didn’t borrow from other forms or cultures or other arts,” he said.
He added that Pandey shifted advertising from cleverness to bringing it closer to connection and warmth. He transformed from a commercial instrument to a cultural form.
Pandey is remembered for honing the craft of many Indian advertisers. He was generous in a field in which creatives can be very self-isolating and selfish.
“The number of people he has built in the industry is an entire school of people who have come out through Piyush Pandey school. Without a trace of selfishness or jealousy, he was above all or giver. He was invested in people; he was not just a management posture. He was a heartfelt human; it was organic and natural,” Desai said, adding that he made everyone feel important, and it made him the greatest ad creative of all time.
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Pandeymonium
Hailing from Jaipur, Pandey was 27 when he entered the offices of Ogilvy and Mather India, only to change the landscape of Indian advertising forever.
In his memoir, Pandeymonium, Pandey wrote that he was born into an ‘entertainment factory’. Pandey had seven elder sisters and a younger brother. His father was a government servant, but also dabbled in theatre and poetry, as well as ‘trained’ his children in poetry and elocution—Pandey’s early training.
“Just being in the house, around my father, I became a lover of poetry,” Pandey wrote in his memoir.
Pandey’s brother, Prasoon, is also an inimitable ad director. The brother duo used to write radio jingles for household products in Jaipur. In 2018, the brothers became the first Asians to win the St Mark at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. In 2012, Pandey was given the Padma Shri, the first Indian advertising giant to receive it.
Pandey’s career as a creative, however, didn’t begin as a junior copywriter, but as a client servicing executive—a role he had worked for six years before transitioning into a full-time copywriter role.
He also played professional-level cricket before becoming an advertiser. In his memoir, Pandey describes how his experience as a cricketer also helped him visualise the iconic Cadbury Dairy Milk ad in which a woman runs in the middle of the field to celebrate victory in a cricket match.
Pandey was the flagbearer of Ogilvy’s continued dominance not only in India but also in international markets. He spent his entire career at Ogilvy from 1982. This is where he met his wife, Nita, as well.
Former executives who worked at Ogilvy often remembered this small quip by Pandey: “In the end, don’t take your job too seriously, all you’re doing is writing ads.”
He wasn’t undermining the job, a former Ogilvy employee told ThePrint on the condition of anonymity. “He was asking us to let our minds roam and be free. He was asking us to have fun at our jobs.”
Kakkar says Pandey was a task master. He would work on briefs a hundred times until he got them right.
“He always had a vision. And that vision might not be specific, but he always had it and worked towards it. Pandey put Ogilvy on the map. They won every single award under his leadership,” he added.
Today, Kakkar misses his great friend, his partner in irreverence, who would laugh at everything and everybody, Kakkar recalls.
“He was a great creative, without any compromises. He didn’t believe in people who were pompous and had the guts to walk away from jobs if he thought they didn’t respect his contribution,” Kakkar said.
Pandey had transitioned to an advisory role at Ogilvy in 2023, after working as the Chief Creative Officer, worldwide from 2018. First person of Asian descent to hold the position.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)