On Friday morning, I was startled by the flurry of messages on WhatsApp groups from people I knew during my time at Ogilvy as a copywriting intern. Texts from creatives I had worked with years ago in India and hadn’t connected with for over a decade that read “Piyush has passed.”
As I struggled to open my eyes, the phone screen blurred with misty eyes. All of us are one in our grief over the loss of a human behind the very loved ad-man.
Piyush Pandey was to us what he was to anyone who ever got a chance to meet him: Kind—yet assertive—and welcoming, as if Ogilvy Mumbai was his home. And it was. We—the gaggle of interns—joined the rest of the office to move from Lower Parel (a central business hub in Mumbai) to Goregaon (a secluded suburb at the time). The move was a big one for the morale of his whole office and he did what was never required of someone with his title or seniority—stopped by the cubicles to check if his team was in need of packing supplies or a pep talk.
Piyush had his finger on the pulse of his team and an even stronger hold on the pulse of his client’s consumer.
When Piyush liked someone’s work, they’d be dancing for a while because praise from Piyush was rare—usually a nod, followed by a warm smile. When one of our fellow interns showed up in an eclectic outfit one day and Piyush went “excellent aesthetic and design,” you better believe the intern smiled all week.
That was the kind of genuine respect his personality demanded, and yet he was not the one for hierarchy. I remember when a new junior writer started at Ogilvy and entered the elevator with Piyush and I on a Monday morning, the newbie immediately greeted Piyush with a, “Morning sir.” He responded, “You’re probably new here. But nobody calls me sir here. I’m Piyush and it’s great to meet you. Welcome.” I remember being amused that just by the writer’s greeting, he figured she was new and wanted to set the protocol to be casual. It was so rare in the colonial work culture of my motherland, where sirs and ma’ams were everywhere. And then there was just “Piyush.”
Piyush’s musical ear was fine-tuned to the hearts of the common people of India. Decades later, his ads are a part of pop culture, brands he shaped are part of every Indian home and his words powerfully continue to eradicate the epidemic of polio from the country. So if we ever needed proof that words and ideas could change the world, Piyush was a living example.
Photo: Lalita Salgaokar with the late Piyush Pandey
How often does a brand mourn the loss of the advertising mind that shaped it? Cadbury, a multinational company, expressed sincere grief at losing the creativity that reshaped the candy category in Indian markets. Indian culture considers “sweet” as eaten when something positive occurs—like a wedding, a promotion or an engagement. Cadbury would’ve never cracked this Indian code had it not been for the genius of 'Kuch meetha ho jaaye', loosely/poorly translated to “Let’s have something sweet.” It was the creative flight from seeing candy as a chocolate to seeing it as a celebration of a sweet moment—something so entrenched in Indian culture.
I was living in the U.S. for some time when I saw Piyush walking the Palais at Cannes a few years ago. I ran up to him to proudly declare that I was a graduate of the Piyush Ad School long before graduating from Miami Ad School. He laughed his famed roaring laugh.
As we, creatives, planners, strategists, consumers and brands, mourn the loss of a great, generous human, we also mourn the loss of a creative mind who taught us that “everyday speak” and “heart” in stories can make a dent in the universe. Piyush certainly left a dent in ours.
Lalita Salgaokar is an advertising creative director and journalist. She moved across continents from the hustle of Mumbai to the hustle of New York City and has both ad agencies and in-house marketing departments.
