Talking to Piyush Pandey: a rookie journalist’s story

There was no one Piyush Pandey. He belonged to everyone, a friend, mentor, confidant, boss, partner or rival. His passing felt deeply personal because he touched more lives than he could have imagined.

For me, he was the first celebrity-like figure to speak to in my career. It was the height of the lockdown and I was struggling: new to news media, pitches rejected over video calls, a few bruising encounters with advertising’s prima donnas, and a pandemic keeping everyone indoors.

Then my editor messaged, “There’s a new Har Ghar Kuch Kehta Hain ad from Asian Paints. Call Piyush and speak to him about it.” That two-sentence brief was all she gave me, a sign of trust despite my inexperience. For that, I will always be thankful to Ashwini Gangal.

I called Lorraine Martin, then Ogilvy’s chief of communications, and was surprised at how readily she shared his number. I did not ask too many questions to her because heaven forbid something went wrong. Telling Ashwini there was no story felt worse than telling your mother you had lost the tiffin box.

Not only did Piyush pick up, he spoke to me immediately. He did not have to. Many senior ad professionals ask for a “senior” the moment they sense inexperience, but Piyush just spoke: in English, Hindi, and that booming laugh when I teased him about whether Ogilvy had breached lockdown rules to shoot the ad.

He spoke about Asian Paints, the wind chimes his wife Nita had put up in their Goa home, and the barking dogs that had forced him to record the voice-over in a closet. Talking so freely for over half an hour was a big moment in my short journalism career. Having worked with uptight leaders before, speaking to someone so celebrated and yet so bindaas was unforgettable.

That same lack of hierarchy is something I’ve seen in many of Ogilvy’s leaders. They smile, they speak, and they even answer uncomfortable questions. Of course, a few hiccups happen.

We spoke a couple more times over the phone before I met him in person. It was an evening of two firsts, meeting Piyush Pandey and entering the Taj Mahal Palace hotel.

My then editor Susmita Biswas and I waited while our slot got taken over. By the time it ended, he was ready to leave and meet others before speaking about his second book, Open House.

Thankfully, he spotted us and agreed to talk immediately instead of saying, “Let’s speak after the event.” I am certain he did not recognise either of us apart from the afaqs! name, but he spoke his mind.

“Technology first? You are a fool. It is always ideas first,” he bristled when asked about the rise of technology in creative advertising. It was the dawn of AI, and Ogilvy’s ad using machine learning and AI starring Shah Rukh Khan for Cadbury was just over a year old.

Despite his annoyance at the rise of the machines, he spoke casually through most of the interview until a PR executive had to pull him away. There was no big takeaway then, but a seed of an image had been planted in my mind.

It took shape in September last year when I met him again as Asian Paints released the first version of Har Ghar Kuch Kehta Hain once again.

Now more experienced and wearier of the ad world, I teased him about what seemed like a lack of effort in creating a new ad for a new generation of home buyers. “It is very simple. We have got a classic,” he said, grinning.

From talking  to acknowledging that he had created a classic, Piyush was a creative force secure enough to treat everything like play.

That is a hard act to pull off, let alone achieve. Countless people wear a serious exterior believing they are in pursuit of something greater. And here was the cricket-loving, moustached genius being just himself, perhaps unaware of how much the world looked up to him.

The lesson I will take away is to be so good that you can let the child in you play in the world again, free from the constraints that life imposes. 

Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”

Piyush did both.