Piyush Pandey – the creator of iconic brands: Vivek Sharma pays tribute to the adman

Piyush Pandey is an iconic brand, and he created many iconic brands in his illustrious innings in the advertising industry. I have had the good fortune of working closely with him on brands like Fevicol, Fevikwik, Dr. Fixit and learn first-hand how Piyush Pandey created the magic on these iconic brands.

Fevicol, Fevikwik already had iconic status by the time I partnered with Piyush on these, but I saw that Piyush always embarked upon a campaign on these brands with the same enthusiasm and rigor as if it were their first campaign, putting his heart and soul into it, as he always did.

Few learnings that I picked up from him on creating these iconic brands are –

First, never take the brand status as a leader for granted but keep building upon it continuously. Second, keep pushing the creative boundaries of brands with each campaign, always surprising and entertaining the consumer. Third, the human and emotional element is the most important aspect in conveying a brand’s message and brands must ‘always talk in a manner as we normally talk in real life’. Brand cannot be artificial or phoney and must make that deep emotional connect that they always aspire.

Over three decades, numerous entertaining and award-winning campaigns later, if you ask a random person on street today ‘What is Fevicol?’ or ‘What is Fevikwik’, they will most probably give similar answers, often parroting the brand’s advertising sign-off lines. How does this happen? The answer is in what Piyush told me once ‘keep the soul of these brands intact’ – as simple as that but profound. Defining the soul of a brand is not easy as it seems but watching Piyush do it, I learnt that a brand’s soul is not only a brand’s single-minded promise but its human connection with people, its personality, tone of voice and ultimately, how it makes people feel. And no one could define it better than Piyush with a brilliant combination of clarity and simplicity. He defined the soul of these brands and nurtured them over years, along with the marketing teams, and would firmly but gently defend if anyone tried to change it.

Piyush not only just created the memorable campaigns for Fevicol and Fevikwik but he took complete ownership of these brands 24x7, 365 days a year and it meant that he would be thinking about what the next idea on these brands is – even without a brief. I remember calling up Piyush after getting the creative brief ready for Fevicol 60 years campaign only to hear, what was music to our ears, that “I have already thought an idea on this”. A complete ownership from mind and heart about what one does leads to magic. This has been one of my biggest learnings from Piyush Pandey.

And that brings me to one of my most favourite ad by Piyush and that ad is not from Pidilite. Of all the lovable ads from Piyush, my favourite one is the TVC for SBI Life insurance ‘Diamond ring’ wherein an old gentleman gifts a diamond to his wife on Valentine’s Day and when the wife hesitates to say “ab is umar main kahan pehnoongi heera’ and the husbands says “here ko kya pata, tumhari umar”. What a beautiful and touching way of infusing positive emotions of love in a category defined by safety and death. Only Piyush could bring such emotions out there in advertising. My heart goes warm every time I see this TVC.

And my heart thanks Piyush Pandey for multiple lessons in building iconic brands that he taught me, unknowingly.

(Vivek Sharma – Former CMO, Pidilite; Founder, Altivyst Advisors)