Defining Moments: Prasoon Pandey – Fevicol, File and more

Prasoon Pandey of Corcoise Films shares a few stark moments that have stayed with him through many edits

In 1987, as a fresh graduate from the National Institute of Design (NID), Prasoon Pandey was chosen to work with Lintas, Mumbai (now Lowe Lintas). However, since his then girlfriend was based in Delhi, Pandey had no inclination to move to that city. He was finally offered a job at Lintas' Delhi office, where he worked with Sonal Dabral.

Pandey was initially designated film executive and subsequently, creative consultant. Six years later, after numerous films for Lintas Delhi, Pandey quit the agency to join Highlight Films as a director. It was here that Pandey – and India – won his (and the country's) first Cannes award for Sony Ericsson.

Pandey says, "It was a film that I had initially refused to do." Rajiv Agarwal, who was the managing director of Enterprise Nexus then, called him (in his hometown in Jaipur) and told him about the new ideas for Sony Ericsson's smallest, strongest and single hand operation cellular phone.

The original idea was to talk about all three aspects of the phone in one commercial. Pandey, however, argued that it would be better to speak about just the single hand operation (answering calls without pulling out the antenna).

Pandey wrote the script and One Black Coffee happened.

He also recalls the Times of India Series, which included the File, Arch and Station films. They were satirical. The File film, showcasing how the Indian system has been eroded due to corrupt officials, is Pandey's favourite. "It was a moment of magic and I wish I knew how it happened so I could make it happen again."

The ads for the Fevicol brand of adhesives are memorable because of the attention grabbing concepts and subtlety of messaging conveyed by the Egg and Bus commercials. In the Egg TVC, released in 1998, a hen fed from a Fevicol tub lays an unbreakable egg. The Bus TVC, released in 2002, featured an overcrowded rickety bus on a bumpy road, with people hanging from every bit of space available.

The commercials established the adhesive brand as one that doesn't really spell out everything but leaves most of it for the viewer to understand. Pandey was director at Highlight Films then. Later, he moved on to establish his own production house, Corcoise Films, which still makes films for Fevicol.

One of the biggest influences in Pandey's life was that of Himmat Singh Morvi. When Pandey was a young boy in Jaipur, Morvi was an important theatre personality. Pandey would hang around backstage and, once in a while, also give suggestions. Instead of letting young Pandey's ideas just pass by, Morvi used them, too.

Morvi saw in Pandey the director that he would eventually become. Pandey remembers one incident vividly. The duo wrote a story, which was to be acted out for the first Desert Festival in Jaisalmer. Morvi gave Pandey Rs 35,000 to design the sets for the play. "Such huge breaks that I got early in life built my confidence," he acknowledges.

(Defining Moments is a regular column which talks about the incidents that shaped great advertising, media and marketing careers.)