A week after the passing of Indian advertising’s most iconic voice, Ogilvy India opened its doors and hearts to celebrate the life and legacy of Piyush Pandey. The evening saw the agency’s past, present, and future converge in a rare moment of emotion and camaraderie, united by their love for the man who gave Indian advertising its distinct, earthy soul. Laughter, nostalgia, and tears flowed in equal measure as the industry raised a collective toast to the creative giant who taught generations how to think local and dream big.
Among those who took the stage was filmmaker and former adman R. Balki, who shared a deeply personal and humorous account of his friendship and rivalry with Piyush. Calling him “the man who brought advertising back into focus,” Balki spoke of how Pandey made ads a part of everyday culture, when people watched commercials for the joy of it.
Speaking of their attempts to give up smoking, he recalled, “I'm also suffering from nicotine withdrawal, that's also because of Piyush, because one of many stories that both of us bonded on was this attempt to give up smoking. We've done a lot of that. One of the famous things we did was to find this hypnotherapist who was from UK and visit his clinic in BKC. We quickly smoked our last three cigarettes downstairs, he smoked two, I smoked one. After we were done with our individual sessions we looked at each other and said, 'Let's have our last cigarette'. We went our way after smoking that. We have never spoken everyday at a stretch for sixteen days, but after that, for sixteen days continuously we spoke. Everyday he called me to check if I smoked and I said, no, he too replied that he hasn't given in to the temptation. On the 16th day, he did not call. After three months, I called, and got to know, I lasted three months while he lasted 16 days.”
Shifting from humour to a heartfelt tribute, Balki highlighted how Piyush was more than a creative legend. He said he was the man who “brought advertising back to focus.”
Balki further shared, “We all are pouring all the love out for him today and in that I realised, this guy has achieved something that people with all the money in the world have not been able to achieve. Ofcourse, he made advertising the center of attention. He was real. When he came into it, advertising was a hit profession. It was cool to check out ads and many young people did that. And at times, when the business became uninteresting, when all that we've all done became nostalgia, suddenly, that man has brought advertising back into focus. No amount of jargon, no amount of confusion, no amount of people trying to distract us from the fact that we have to do great stuff will work now. Because people are looking at, hey, this was advertising."
Balki went on to say, "Whenever I went to him, he asked me to think ahead. We had a very strange relationship. He used to bitch to me about things that he couldn't bitch to anybody else about and vice versa. Only we knew each other's agency secrets that none even from our agencies knew. Calling each other ‘My so-called rival' is just fun, because, in a game, you have to have somebody to compete with. That's all we were. But I think we got each other. We had fun. I always looked up to him. I was the one who broke the ice. When 'Har Ghar Kuch Kehta Hain' happened, I called him and said, I wish we had done it. And months later he said the same for one of my ads. That was our relationship and he set my mind right and helped on multiple occasions. For me, it was the best time for advertising when he was there, but his biggest contribution now is that he has woken up the world again to our business. That's his kind of passion.”
