Sunday ramble. Posted on Monday.
Back when I was a young copywriter in Mudra Bombay. One of the many mad mezzaniners on the rickety fifth and a half floor. (Remind me to do a separate thread about that.) +
Back when I was a young copywriter in Mudra Bombay. One of the many mad mezzaniners on the rickety fifth and a half floor. (Remind me to do a separate thread about that.) +
A perk of being in advertising is you get to meet business titans rather easily. This story, however, is about our meetings with the hoary Tata warlord, Darbari Seth. The kind of person business journalists can't resist referring to as a satrap. +
Tata Chem had decided to launch a detergent called Shudh. After all they were already supplying tons of soda ash to manufacturers of detergents. Seemed like a no brainer. Forward integration and all. And Darbari Seth was passionate about it. +
So, me, a lowly copywriter, Rana Sahri, our resident poet/ language cell head, and Bana, the account person, ended up having frequent meetings with the great man at Bombay House. +
These sessions would be at the end of the day. His way of unwinding after long hours of braving boardroom battles, negotiating multi crore deals, mediating labour disputes, and doing whatever satraps do. We were his sun downer, so to speak. +
Shudh was his pet project at the time. He wanted to position it as an honest brand - nature-friendly, reasonably priced, hard-working - a no-puffery product. I wrote some long copy ads. Rana rendered them beautifully into Hindi. +
He'd ask Rana to read them aloud. He would close his eyes and savour every word. And then he'd say, 'ek baar aur'. Rana, who always dressed like he's attending a mushaira, was only to happy to oblige. +
Darbari Seth would then tell us stories about simplicity, frugality, and value for money. Among them was this extraordinary anecdote about JRD. +
It was about a time when Indians weren't allowed to travel abroad with too much currency. Even if you were the head of India's biggest business house. DS and JRD had gone abroad on a business visit. That's when JRD shared an amazing laundry hack with the young(er) Darbari. +
He taught him how he got his handkerchief immaculately washed and pressed at no cost. He'd wash it himself at night, wring it, and then spread it without a single wrinkle on the mirror. The next morning, he would peel it off the mirror - clean, crisp, and creaseless. +
Here I was a twenty something copywriter, listening to one of the most powerful men in corporate India share a household laundry tip conceived by a Bharat Ratna. Of course, I tried it. And by Jeh, he was right. +
There's a nice little epilogue to this. Shudh never took off. But many years later, I got another crack at the same project. Only this time it was called Tata DX. And we at Cartwheel created the commercial for its test launch. Here it is.
ANTHE.
ANTHE.
