The Hindu Business Line : Lower Parel to Upper Worli

THE history of modern Mumbai as we know it is inextricably woven into the development of the mills that symbolised the industrialisation of India. Mumbai's mill area, Lower Parel, thus formed the backbone for the growth of Mumbai from a marshy set of seven islands into the City of Gold it was to become.

So what's that got to do with advertising?

Everything. Apart from the fact that the textile business threw up some of the most memorable advertising, advertising is a mirror of economic development, and one cannot really exist without the other.

Advertising, as we know it was born in Mumbai.

J. Walter Thompson, D. J. Keemer, Bensons and the like were the early birds who took care of the advertising of car dealers, retail outlets and the odd product like Horlicks. The Indian flag was flown by Sista (Bobby Sista's father) and Dattaram (Rajan's father).

The advertising agency business evolved in a rather incestuous way. Here too, the names of the companies reflected the shape the economy and, in fact, the route the nation was taking. Keemer morphed into just Bensons which then grew like an amoeba into Ogilvy, Benson and Mather, and then finally evolved into Ogilvy & Mather (O&M). J. Walter Thompson became the great Indian hope, Hindustan Thompson. As chauvinistic nationalism gave way to Nehruvian socialism, the company preferred to call itself just HTA. With globalisation the buzz word, it was goodbye to Hindustan, and welcome back Walter. Today, the largest advertising agency in Hindustan is called JWT (J. Walter Thompson). As the French would say, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Let's come back to these companies later. The important thing to note is that all these companies were born in Mumbai that was Bombay. The only exception to this Bombay-centric advertising rule was Clarion that prided itself as very avant- garde, intellectual and Oh so Calcutta! Yet, in spite of legends like Satyajit Ray, who graced its Bangla portals, the agency went through a series of agonising deaths and re-births and was finally laid to rest when Bates took it over and now runs it from ... Mumbai.

Advertising has and will always be a very people-oriented business. And the people who made advertising what it is today were typically larger than life.

There was Subhash Goshal who built up HTA into the monolithic powerhouse it is today, then retired with amazing grace and then went on to build up Contract into a major force to reckon with. There was Bal Mundkur and his Ulka, Gerson Da Cunha, who set the stage at Lintas for a theatre legend to perform on it, and Mani Aiyer who built up OBM. A little later came Alyque Padamsee who combined creative excellence with the uncanny sense of timing and PR that only a stage artiste could have, to build many great brands for Levers and other clients.

Alyque gave the advertising industry the high profile it badly needed at that time. He also left behind a fine advertising agency called Lintas, now Lowe. And then there was Frank Simoes with his fantastic pen who decided to leave the industry on a high note and settle down in his native Goa. Yet you couldn't take the industry out of him. He gamely returned to help edit the first Showcase of Indian Advertising. Fortunately, the likes of Sylvie Da Cunha are very much around to give us the benefit of their wisdom and warmth.

The Seventies were the time that advertising came of age with glossy, colourful campaigns and even more colourful personalities. Creativity blurred the lines between different forms of expression and you had Shyam Benegal, Kersi Katrak, Kabir Bedi, Hamid and Amin Sayani all playing their roles in forming the ultimate shape the advertising industry was to take. Film makers, stage artistes, `voices,' all formed an integral part of the great dream machine.

It is important to note that the film industry, theatre and advertising all seemed to merge only in Mumbai. And this creative cocktail or this brainstorming bhel puri is what made Mumbai so unique to the advertising industry.

As the industry grew, so did its activities. At the centre of the `social' life of this vibrant industry is the Advertising Club Bombay. Formed exactly half a century ago, it lays claim to being the largest `Club' of its kind. With about 4,000 members representing advertising, marketing and the media, it has a busy roster of events. Yet the undisputed highlight of its calendar is the Abby awards night. That is really what I call the industry's night out. Over 2,500 advertising fanatics gather under the stars to celebrate excellence in advertising. There's glitz, glamour, gossip and the most wonderful thing about an Abby Nite is that everyone who is anyone in advertising mingles as one and salutes creativity. In an otherwise fiercely competitive field where everyone is either pitching against or bitching about everyone else, I still recall one memorable Abby Nite where top creative directors from different agencies came on stage to sing a song they had created called Keep the Faith. To me, having been one of the singers myself, it was a moving moment. It also summed up the camaraderie and genuine friendship there exists amongst this strange breed of creative individuals.

Well, in the 21st century, Mumbai still remains the soul of this Rs13,000-crore industry. Sure, as the industry matures you see a change of guard. At O&M, Ranjan Kapur makes way for the effervescent Piyush Pandey, and the `invisible' A.G. Krishnamurthy has made way for the visible Madhukar Kamath. Mercifully you still have the ever-graceful Mike Khanna heading JWT and the suave Prem Mehta at the helm of Lowe.

Mumbai has changed irreversibly, and so has the advertising industry. As the industry tries to cope with the change wrought by global winds and decide whether the full-service avatar or the unbundled avatar is just right for India, there's no escaping the fact that it has been and continues to be in sync with the changing face of Mumbai.

Two of a kind one might say.

And as the mill areas of Lower Parel change inexorably, altering the skyline of Mumbai and signalling a new phase in the life of this great metropolis, all the big agencies, JWT, O&M, Lowe, and the lot have moved into Lower Parel as well. True to "positioning" though, they prefer to call it Upper Worli.

(The writer is the Managing Director of Canco Advertising.)

Picture by S. Siva Saravanan

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