Front Foot Pe Khelo!: Satbir Singh recalls everything he learned from Piyush Pandey

Piyush was Bharat. He was Hindustan.

He created the language of Indian advertising. And it spoke to the world.

Piyush was not just an adman, he was a ‘walking-talking’ coaching manual. You just observed and absorbed.

In the early 2000s, on his periodic visits to Ogilvy’s Delhi office, Piyush would drop into each CD’s cabin and see what we were up to. On one such big-man day, it was my turn. I showed him something we were working on and sheepishly mumbled that the campaign had degenerated over successive meetings. “Toh champion, ye rehne de, woh dikha jo first round mein present kiya tha.” I had no excuse.

I internalised it and it became a process I followed with my teams there on.

One remembers every single moment from every single meeting with The GOAT. I was with him once in his car on a Bandra to Navi Mumbai drive. The Hutch dog commercial was running successfully on TV and Piyush had a dozen calls where he gleefully shared how the price of pugs had shot through the roof and that it might be a profitable division for the agency. Or, how he’d head straight from airport to Bristol Gurgaon for a hearty breakfast of alu paranthe before a client meeting. Always asked for his hari mirch. Or ‘mukka pyaz’.

In a one-hour meeting, the client and Piyush would discuss each other’s families for 45 minutes and we’d take the last 15 to present work.

“Piyush ne dekh liya hai” was enough to keep anyone from asking us about work in progress. Every once in a while, a client would ask us the same. It reassured them that if it had his stamp of approval, the creative was worth putting their marketing rupee behind.

I’ll let you in on a secret here. Sometimes Piyush ne nahin bhi dekha hota tha, but we’d still claim that and get away with it.

But then, a keen cricketer himself, Piyush had taught us to “front foot pe khelo!”

Now that he’s shifted residence from here, heavens must already be booming with his infectious laughter.

The Gods must be thinking of briefing him on a campaign: “kuchh ‘har ghar kehta hai’ jaisa likhna.”