Remembering Jean Durante

Some people in advertising build brands. A rare few build memories. Jean Durante did both.

She belonged to the generation that gave Indian advertising its confidence, alongside Frank Simoes, Alyque Padamsee, Bobby Sista, Mani Ayer, Subhas Ghosal and Bal Mundkur.

These were the people who took a young business and turned it into a craft, at a time when brands were only just beginning to speak to the whole country.

She passed through Chaitra and McCann along the way, but it was at Sista's that her instinct for the human moment found its fullest voice, and where she stood among the nest creative directors this country has produced. Her best remembered work was the HotShot camera.

"I'm a Hot Shot lady, I'm a Hot Shot guy," and that one small, perfect sound. Just aim and Khatak. Prahlad Kakkar shot the film and gave it its snap, but the commercial was hers, and so was the instinct behind it.

Capture a whole product idea in a single moment, and let people carry it home. The campaign swept the awards of its day. Decades later, we still say Khatak and smile. Few writers ever manage to leave a word behind in the language. Jean left a sound.

I met her once. It was when Bobby Sista handed over the reins to Shantakumar, and I joined Shanta in 1994. Within a year, the agency became Saatchi & Saatchi in India, with Saatchi taking the majority stake and Shanta, Bhargava 'Bugs' Krishna, Bhagwan Advani, and I holding the minority.

I still remember Jean's quiet pride in that moment. She had built the foundation on which a house as famous as Saatchi & Saatchi would come to stand in this country. She did not need to say it. You could see it in the way she carried herself. That was her gift.

She understood that good advertising is not noise. It is a feeling you carry home. She made ordinary buying feel like a small joy, and she made the craft look effortless, which is the hardest thing of all. For those of us who came after, she was proof of what the work could be when it was done with love and rigour in equal measure. She had been unwell for some years, and now she is gone. But the craft does not fade. It lives in every young writer who learns that one true line beats a hundred clever ones.

Thank you, Jean. Khatak.