Advertising veteran Piyush Pandey, whose clever lines have won him awards galore, especially for his work for Fevikwik, is writing a book again, six years after Pandeymonium, his first offering, was published. Here’s the twist — this time, the book will be his responses to questions from the public. Pandey, who is the chief creative officer of Ogilvy Worldwide and the executive chairman of Ogilvy India, is inviting questions from anyone on any topic and will be attempting to answer as many as possible that are received before December 10, 2020.

The book will be a shared experience, Pandey tells BusinessLine. Excerpts from the chat:

Is there a motive of mentoring or giving back with this book?

Every book is like that. Mentoring is a big word. I don’t want to use that word. It’s not like I have all the answers, I have learnings. Learnings that I got from very eminent people I trained with, learnings that I got from youngsters, learnings that I got from the streets of the country, learnings that I got from family and friends, learnings that I got from cricket (laughs). So, there is a lot that I can share.

And we will try and take the questions and put them into different buckets and then try and answer them. So, there is no lecturing or teaching. I am also learning every day. So, it’s a shared experience.

What inspired you to do this book?

Wherever I go, wherever I speak, a lot of young people are full of questions. You can only take that many in a session. So it’s an idea to say okay, let’s try and compile it and let’s try and share as much as we can… And definitely, there are questions that I want to answer — how to face victory and defeat.

Your last book did offer a glimpse into your thought process while devising landmark ad campaigns. How do you expect this book to be different?

See, five years have passed. There are lots of things that have happened in the last five years. (I will) try and keep it as fresh as possible.

Your call inviting questions for the book says that there can be questions on politics too. As someone who wrote the line “Ab ki baar, Modi sarkar”, what are your thoughts on political advertising, and an increasing call for advertisers to stop advertising on platforms seen to promote hate speech…

Let’s see what the questions are... There are lots of misconceptions and misperceptions about political parties. So people have only the negative picture. But there is a positive picture also. So all those things — let’s see how people phrase their questions. I will try and answer them as specifically as possible.

I am sure there will be some very interesting questions. Sometimes, youngsters — school children — ask me some very interesting questions.

The other day...there was a very young, school-going boy from Hyderabad who made a caricature on me. And I was wondering as to, first of all, how does he know me? Secondly, what interest does he have in advertising people? (laughs) So let’s see how it goes.

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