Becoming the song

Prasoon Joshi, celebrated lyricist and executive chairman of McCann World Group India, published his first book at age 17 and is a superstar in his home country India, winning accolades at Indian Film award shows such as Film Fare and Star Screen. He tells Cherisse Beh how he came to do what he does and what's really wrong with the advertising business.

"My first book was called Me and You," he said, "A poetry collection on dialogues with myself. As a young boy I used to converse with what ever intrigued me. I would ask myself and sort of debate, almost as if I had a split personality with both parts in conflict. I was highly influenced then by philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche. Since then I have written two other books at age 21 and 23."

Sitting across from this vibrant, worldly individual talking about his first foray into the public eye and showing me his HappyDent commercial which won India two Cannes awards last year, it is hard to imagine he came from humble beginnings.

Joshi was brought up in a small hill station in Northern India, near the snow clad mountains where the Himalayas lay beyond. He said this helped mould his perceptiveness, "The simplicity and quietness makes you sensitive towards nature. My childhood was very free and we were all very trusting. Both my parents were in education and were good musicians. There were a lot of books and music as I was growing up. Television came into our lives every late because we were far from the city. When I gradually stepped into civilisation, in that sense, was when I did my MBA."

And that was when he encountered advertising.

For over ten years Joshi worked in Ogilvy & Mather, alongside another Indian advertising legend, Piyush Pandey, until he moved on at age 32.

Now also holding the title of regional executive creative director for Asia Pacific at McCann India, Joshi has some things to say about how the advertising profession has changed.

"We need our dignity back, as a profession. It is not happening just in India. People in Singapore and the US are talking the same language. Clients are sacking agencies every now and then. The difference between one agency and another is the people, it's not better factories. I can't say I have a better machine or a better plant. The longevity of client-agency relationships is not there today. The situation doesn't motivate creative people. The industry is going to lose people to films as the entertainment industry is booming. Competition between agencies, out-edging each other worsens it," he says.

Joshi also laments the fact agencies are still not paid enough and that it is a thankless business.

"When it works, it's teamwork; when it fails, it's seen as you didn't deliver. I don't work with clients who treat you as suppliers and not as partners," he says.

Despite the fact he has won many awards for his work in advertising and songwriting, such as the FilmFare Best Lyricst Award 2007 for the song ‘Maa' from the film Tare Zameen Par, Joshi feels advertising awards have lost their meaning.

"The purpose for ads should not be awards. Awards should be a celebration of great work. Somebody winning should not be a fact that somebody else lost. It should be ‘Fine, you didn't do well this year, let's forget it, let's celebrate great work, let's clap for each other'. That sentiment of clapping for each other is gone," he says.

He also brings up how award shows work on the premise of entries, and manipulation of entries - such as the entering of scam work - is rife.

Perhaps one of the reasons for the need to create scam advertising is the time pressure to break work for clients, resulting in younger creatives having less patience to make ‘real work' count and having to resort to scam to showcase their talent.

"It is simply here and now. Standards are going up. In such a fast-moving atmosphere and culture, the issue is the ability to produce great work. Craft requires patience but the younger generation is in a hurry to move on [for better job offers]. People do not spend that kind of time to tell a story. But it is not their fault, it is the industry, the client wants it now," he says.

As an apt epilogue to the interview, Joshi says he does not want to be a songwriter in his next life.

"I want to be the song. Because nobody wants to know who wrote the song, the taxi driver singing my song doesn't know I've written it. He may have seen my face he may know, but it doesn't matter. He just knows the song."