Unhappy with Saatchi & Saatchi, Upputuru & Raghavan return to O&M

After three months of mapping the country from Himachal Pradesh to Kanyakumari, the creative duo, Emmanuel Upputuru and Prasad Raghavan, is back “home” – O&M, Delhi. While Upputuru has already joined office, Raghavan is scheduled to join on February 1.

Both have joined as creative heads on the LG business.

LG being O&M Delhi's biggest brand, the task for the duo is to produce “best work” on the Korean major. Raghavan admits, the task is challenging. “It, indeed, is a creative challenge, and we are looking forward to working on the account,” he says, excitedly.

In contrast, the two are unenthusiastic to talk about their stint at Saatchi & Saatchi, the agency, they quit three months ago on a bitter note. “It was a nightmarish experience soon after Ramesh (Ramanathan, ex- national creative director, Saatchi & Saatchi India) left Saatchi,” Upputuru reveals.

Ramanathan was the reason why Upputuru and Raghavan had joined Saatchi & Saatchi. Raghavan, in an earlier interview with agencyfaqs! had said, “Ramesh is changing things around. He had actually called us and put forward an interesting proposition. He said, “take over if you want to and make Saatchi & Saatchi Delhi an award winning unit”."

But when Ramanathan quit to move to Mudra, the duo were hard put to stay on. However, Upputuru-Raghavan decided to stay on, as the two felt they owed it to Saatchi & Saatchi.

Very briefly, future at Saatchi & Saatchi looked promising. Upputuru (copy) and Raghavan (art) did the agency and the country proud when their two Sony Handycam commercials won a Bronze Lion at the Cannes International Advertising Festival 2004. Incidentally, Saatchi's Bronze was the fifth television commercial produced by India to win a Lion at Cannes.

Then, Mother Dairy proved to be an interesting project. “We had a great time working on Mother Dairy. We must say that rarely do agencies get a chance to work with clients such as Mother Dairy....they are a fine bunch of people.” In fact, the latest Mother Dairy 'Grow Faster' campaign is also the duo's handiwork.

However, differences over the Getz Hyundai campaign brought the duo face-to-face with the Saatchi & Saatchi management. Which turned out to be an unsavoury experience. Without getting into the details of what transpired, Raghavan explains, “It was like fighting an invisible enemy. We felt we had to go to a place where the system was in place.”

Upputuru is more explicit about his unpleasant encounter. “It was a very bad experience. And I knew, I had to move to a place where I could find mental space.” At O&M, the two feel at home.

The creative duo comes with a fair share of good work to their credit. During their first stint at O&M, they were heading a group of four, which handled businesses such as Indian Tourism, Grasim, Perfetti and Businessworld (a part of which has now gone to Bates, Delhi).

At the 2003 One Show, among the six Finalists nominations from O&M, three belonged to the work created by the Raghavan-Upputuru team. These nominations were for ‘Loser's Archive' entry in Self- Promotion category, one in the Booklet Brochure category and another for Dr Morepen's Isabgol entry. In fact, in the same year, Dr Morepen's Isabgol campaign, Loser's Archive and the ‘Blind Film' (done by Upputuru) had won nominations at the Cannes. The team's award winning work was subsequently featured in the Asia Workbook.

Raghavan and Upputuru's partnership goes back to 1995, when the two met for the first time at Contract Advertising. While Upputuru worked for three years and moved out in 1998 to work with Leo Burnett (and later McCann-Erickson), Raghavan stayed on till 2000 and then moved to O&M, Delhi. Upputuru joined him at the agency in October 2002.

© 2005 agencyfaqs!