Today, Coke ads are better than Pepsi ads.

Just like his appearance, his manner of speaking and his thought processes, too, are distinct. He exudes flamboyance and forthrightness when he talks about issues concerning advertising, society and films. One of the most sought after ad filmmakers in the country, Prahlad Kakar, ad filmmaker, Genesis Features, talks about the tiffs he has with agencies and clients to create the magnificent work he does in every campaign.

From getting sports stars to act to creating a director out of an amateur, Kakar does it all with panache. Sapna Nair and Devina Joshi of agencyfaqs! talked to the filmmaker about the various roles he plays in life, the source of his flowing energy, and what differentiates him from others in the business.

Edited Excerpts

Not at all, because I’m not doing everything at the same time. And also, because most of the work is done by the people in my team. I have young directors in my team who have been trained by me for many years now, and it’s they who take the responsibility and delegation very appropriately.

The thinking part of the work, which includes concept development, is done by this team. I train people so that they can take over from me. But I do supervise everything, besides taking care of the feature film business and dealing with clients. It all falls in my area of interest.

Moreover, I enjoy doing many things, be it making movies or wines or cigars or cooking. I even want to live in a boat. It requires a certain level of irresponsibility and passion to have such kind of fun.

Now, I really don’t need to work for money, so I just enjoy relaxing. There could be a limit to how much one works, but there isn’t any limit on having fun.

Since I have already consolidated whatever I have laid my hands on, we’re thinking seriously about making full-length films. However, we will continue doing ad films.

For feature films, we will hire directors who have graduated from Genesis and are now established filmmakers. The industry is such that unless you make four-five films in a year, and that too in an interesting genre, and market them differently, you will not be taken seriously. To achieve this, we will take about two years and look after every little aspect of filmmaking from scratch. In fact, everything we have done, we have started from scratch. Though people know me by my reputation, we will have to create confidence in the film industry.

I am not just an ad filmmaker. People have realised that I am well read and I feel very passionately about the city and its issues. More importantly, I have very few problems about speaking my mind and being quoted, unlike most people who say controversial things off the record. What’s the point in being diplomatic? I really can put my money where my mouth is because I feel you have to lead by example.

By that, I don’t intend to be an opinion leader and have no intention of joining a political party because I don’t want to be affiliated to any political party. The moment I do that, I will be limited to the agenda of that party.

My job is to mobilise public opinion and not be an opinion leader. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have become the face which represents certain interests, which is why I am always in the news. I am supposed to be the face of advertising because they think it’s my profession. But advertising is my passion, not profession. I have no profession, in fact, I am an ‘occupation-less ultimate vela’. I want to be known as Prahlad Kakar, the man with many interests, more than just an ad filmmaker.

All I can say is that these ads aren’t as good as the others being aired on television today. Probably this is the reason why people aren’t talking much about them.

Sachin (Tendulkar), Sourav (Ganguly) or even Rahul (Dravid), they have always been very awkward and shy while working on an ad film. I have worked very hard on them and the reason behind it is not just to make them perform, but because they are very nice people. So, I take it as my responsibility to present them properly in ads.

At times, I have even fought with the clients and the agencies. I always maintain that these sports stars are good on the field, but not good actors, so why make them do something that will make them look foolish? Why can’t they be asked to do something they are comfortable with, instead of making them perform?

Many a times, I have even threatened the agencies that I won’t use their scripts. I always sit with them (the sports stars) during the shoots and ask them how they would like to see themselves in the film and what dialogue they can deliver. And because of all this, they really give their best to the ad.

It is very easy to make them look like idiots in ads, like they did in the Hero Honda ad, in which they made Sourav (Ganguly) dance against the one of the best dancers in Bollywood, Hrithik Roshan. It was criminally stupid to make Sourav Ganguly look like a dancing monkey in the ad. A similar case was to happen with Sachin on a shoot for Pepsi, but I said he would not endorse the brand because he is bigger than the brand. I believe that Sachin shouldn’t present Pepsi, rather, Pepsi should present Sachin. And we did exactly that in the ad, ‘Sachin aala re’, for Pepsi.

We deal with every film with the ‘Hearts and Minds’ approach. These two words mean the world. Through our ad films, we want to touch people’s hearts and make them think. We are well versed with technology as well, but to me, execution is not the film. To me, content is much more important than execution. Because when you think with your heart, execution is not important.

We have believed in the usual ad filmmaking process, where execution is king. To me, the casting, the script and the dialogue delivery are of more importance than the computer graphics or high-end techniques. Technology only impresses the people in the business, clients, agencies and filmmakers, but not the target consumers. We keep a keen eye on every single detail of the ad.

Montages have existed for a long time. Usually, people resort to montages when there’s no other idea in the script. It is not a trend, but will keep coming and going.

Sometimes, what you want to do and what you end up doing are two different things. It was a good idea and a great teaser, but the punch line was so bad that everybody got disappointed. The expectations from Pepsi are very high. It impacted the brand badly for a short period of time.

It’s true that we also receive calls for many Pepsi ads which we haven’t worked on. We have to tell them that we don’t do all the ads for Pepsi. Lately, we did the two ‘rescue campaigns’ with Priyanka Chopra and Kareena Kapoor to get Pepsi back into shape.

I maintain what I said. The reason, firstly, is that television has enormous reach as compared to films. It is a fact that the star value of a television actor is not much. Why is television called the idiot box? There is a reason for it; it’s not merely jargon. Television is like an idiot member of a family, which keeps jabbering constantly. It becomes ambient and keeps talking all through the day and people carry on with their lives around it. At times then, when it says something sensible such as cricket or football, people realise that their ‘idiot cousin’ is talking sense. So, practically, the box is never switched off. Normal chores go on in a household with the television on in the background.

So, the difference between a television star and a film star is like the Hindi adage which says, ‘Ghar ki murgi dal barabar’. Television is a part of your family and is not larger than life, but life itself. Television stars are popular because they are watched, but they have become very accessible. Whereas film stars are still inaccessible, which endows them with a certain kind of charm and aura that will always fascinate the audience.

I agree. We are taking a serious look at that issue. I believe that cigarettes are addictive and, therefore, they can cause harm. But are colas addictive? If it is proved that colas are addictive, then I will support the cause. Moreover, tobacco products and fairness creams are highly irresponsible categories. Fairness creams are insidious. These ads don’t allow people to try going beyond the stereotype of ‘Fair is beautiful’ and, instead, reinforce that further.

When there is enough data to prove that colas are bad, and if I am convinced about the evidence, I might not direct any cola brand ad thereon.

I have a very short role in ‘Corporate’. I am playing myself in the movie. And all I have to do is come up and say ‘Cut’. So, there wasn’t really any such direction since I was told to play myself. The experience of being on camera was horrible, especially when someone looks like me!

‘Bali’ was an experimental film. I wanted to know if we could make a genre film. A ‘test’ film, so to say. It was made on a budget of Rs 17 lakh, but looks much more expensive than that. But after making this film, we realised that television was non-productive and that’s why our next film, ‘Bitter Rain’, was converted into a feature film, to recover the money.

Actor Piyush Mishra came to us with the script of ‘Bitter Rain’ and we decided to make a feature film. First, we decided to make it for the small screen, for STAR One. The film actually cost us about Rs 23 lakh and the channel wasn’t willing to pay us that much. So we decided to make it into a full-length film.

No… not at all. It is actually a film based in Delhi and revolves around the abduction and rape of an innocent married woman belonging to the upper class. It’s a narrative thriller and is set in the background of an election. It is about goons and young sons of politicians indulging in such activities knowing that they can get away with it easily. The film explores the reasons why they do it. There is a romantic angle to it, apart from the social, tragedy and thriller ingredients. It is very close to life.

‘Bitter Rain’ has a fleeting reference to the Jessica Lal murder case. Although it is set in the same milieu as the murder case, it is not completely about that.

I agree this film will be sensational. I think all reality films are controversial. This one is a slice of life story. I am also very gung ho about another story that I have penned, called ‘Mere Mehboobs’, which is a chaotic comedy film. It is about the state of affairs of our country and about who actually runs the country.

It’s like Bollywood will never win a Hollywood award. Our films are different from theirs and we need to understand where we are coming from. Our films and ads reflect our culture.

Worldwide, top agencies send their third-grade creative writers to places such as Thailand and other South Asian countries. As a result, they apply their Western school of thought to the ads they make in these countries, which eventually win awards at most of the international awards because of the similarity of their approach to advertising. So, there is a lot of creative colonisation prevalent the world over. Indian advertising is unique because it reaches the grass roots.

Aamir (Khan) and Prasoon (Joshi) are what make Coke the brand it is today. No other actor could have taken Coke where it is. A few years ago, Coke tried hard to be Pepsi with its ads, but today, the Coke ads are better than the Pepsi ads. Aamir is a fanatic and believes in miniscule detailing in whatever work he does. I like all the Coke ads and I always thought it could do good work. Hopefully, Pepsi will raise its act and we will get to work on different kinds of films.

Never. Clients sometimes do, but agencies are very possessive about their ideas. I get tired of being polite to clients and agencies. Everybody is obtuse in their thinking and fails to understand what we see. We constantly change the scripts to suit the idea. Ever since we started this company 25 years ago, we have been fighting with the agencies. So much so, that they love to hate us. Because at the end of the film, they can’t claim that it is entirely their product and so are embarrassed while accepting awards on our behalf, leaving us out. But we don’t care because, eventually, everybody knows that if Genesis has made it, a lot of their inputs would have gone into the film. We always alter the scripts and add essential angles to it, irrespective of whether the agency likes it or not.

To give an instance, before filming the 7 Up ad with Mallika (Sherawat), it so happened that the agency was insisting on us making a story board for the commercial. I told them that there was no point doing so, as a lot of changes would be made spontaneously on the set itself. But they refused to understand what we were saying because they had to present a storyboard to the client. We agreed, not to the story board, but for a scratch film for presentation. On watching the scratch, the clients had their mouths wide open in disbelief because they saw me in the place of Mallika Sherawat! (Laughs)