Partnerships

When I got married and moved to Bangalore, my 70-year-old landlord and his 65-year-old wife were waiting for us at the bungalow we hired, to bless us.

My one week old wife was happy that a couple who were married for over 40 years were blessing us.

Little did we know that the secret they were about to share would change our lives. The couple asked us "whose decision was it to move to Bangalore?" I gleamingly said 50:50, pointing at both of us. The couple took us aside and shared the secret: “Partnership is not about being 50:50, it's to know when to be 30 and when to be 70."

Like in life even at work this principle works brilliantly. Good partnerships thrive on pushing each other and to know when to push and when not to. Like spouses, partners do not have to be politically correct or worry about emotions at that point in time.

Such successful partnerships in advertising in India are: Chax & Pops (me). Piyush Pandey & Sonal Debral, Neville & Josy Paul, Naveed & Freddy, late Mahesh & Rajiv and now Aggi & Paddy.

Forging a partnership allows you to have mutual trust and respect; I have had forged many in my career which helped me in creating iconic work. Apart from Chax the significant ones are with Balki at Lowe, Agnello at Lowe and Leo Burnett, Arvind Sharma & Rajeev Sharma at Leo Burnett; Ramathkar started at Enterprise in the 90's and is still continuing, Ganesh Mahalingam at LG and Dharen Chedda at JWT.

Partnerships are like friendships: "selfless" all the time, this allows you to accept any criticism or ideas with equal enthusiasm. Usually we think clients, bosses, celebrity filmmakers and film and sports stars are monsters, and are out to get our life like "Yamdharmaraj", which is fortunately not true.

Ganesh Mahalingam of LG used to approve scripts on phone and sms's which allowed us to create over 50 commercials in a calendar year to take the brand LG over 3,000 corers. Look at Rajiv Rao and Varma; their partnership is creating magic for their brand and consumers. Piyush & Prasoon created magic on Fevicol as siblings often do. Balki's partnership with Amitabh Bachchan is proving to be as potent as Saleem & Javeed of the 70's.

Partnerships can also help in strange ways as Balki's youth did to me; I had a difficult time matching up to his energy levels. No wonder people say never marry a girl half your age… now that I stand exposed of my crimes and partners. Amen.