I wish I had made these
?While there are quite a few ads I wish I had conceptualised and written, there are two that stand taller than the rest ? the Asian Paints Har Ghar Kuch Kehta Hai’ and LMN?s Lemon Lemon Lemon,? says Nima Namchu, who was recently appoint-ed as executive crea-tive director at Cheil Worldwide.
?Besides raising the bar for writers already struggling with voice-overs and introducing us to the not-so-perfect but reassuring and earthy texture of the now-familiar voice of Piyush Pandey, I believe Har Ghar Kuch Kehta Hai gave us a brand new lens to look at walls. It changed behaviour. Suddenly, Indians went from ‘Ghar mein safedi karani hai’ (Have to get a whitewash done) to ‘Ghar paint karana hai’ (My house needs a fresh coat of paint),? he says.
About the LMN film, Namchu says, ?When you are having fun at your job, it shows. Like it did in LMN?s Lemon Lemon Lemon series. A challenger brand entering a crowded market with a single-minded proposition which was probably ?Get noticed!?. Their back-to-basics strategy of ?thirst quenching? sans the layers of gobbledygook was refreshing in a world where cold drinks are threatening to change your life or telling you how to live yours.?
My first ad
Namchu’s first television commercial was in 1996 when he was a senior copywriter at Anthem Communications, Delhi (now TBWA). ?It was Sony India?s second commercial and it was the script I had written and presented during the pitch.?
He says, ?Due to constraints of the financial kind, we shot it in beta. It was a regular montage of unbelievably happy families and successful people interspersed with Rajasthani dancers pirouetting in the dunes (quite bizarre, I agree) edited to a jingle I had written and composed (in the sense that I had the tune in my head before we went to the music director ? thank you, Gussy Rikh and Zubin Balaporia). Anyway, there?s a VHS of that film lying somewhere.? Namchu adds, ?I was young; it was my first film and too excited to let the unnecessarily nasty director get to me. But we have never worked together since.?
Thank god, it isn?t me
The first one is the Mirinda commercial. ?It is the TV commercial in which Asin takes a politician through a college where everyone breathes heavily because they forget to breathe when they are drinking Mirinda. I thought it was too desperate. Didn?t taste as good,? says Namchu.
He adds, ?The recent Havell?s fan ad featuring Rajesh Khanna was a disappointment thanks to that cheap pun at the end. I thought the man ended up looking like someone who had lost his senses. Surely, he deserved better.?
Namchu was appointed as ECD at Cheil Worldwide early this month. He joins from Contract India (Delhi) where he was senior vice-president and ECD. Before this he was senior creative director at Publicis India.
He started his career with Saatchi & Saatchi (then Sista?s) Delhi in 1993 as a copy trainee. He was there for about a year. He then moved to TBWA India (then Anthem) Delhi as senior copywriter. After three years at TBWA, he moved to Leo Burnett as associate creative director. He has also worked with Capital Advertising and McCann Erickson.
His portfolio includes brands like HP, LG, Reebok, Perfetti, Aviva Life Insurance, Maruti Suzuki, Dabur, Indian Oil Corporation, MasterCard, Sony, Microsoft and General Motors, among others.
(As told to Payal Khandelwal)
