Hasta La Creative!

Bodhisatwa Dagupta is a Creative Director, Grey worldwide, Delhi, at the time this interview published.

Bodhisatwa, or Bodhi as he is fondly known in the advertising circus is an obsessive, compulsive writer. When he’s not writing ads for a target audience he hasn’t met, he’s writing the first line of books that he won’t write. And when he’s not writing that, he’s writing about irrelevant things that have no implication in the macrocosm of things. Bodhi hates long words. Like obituary. And when the time is ripe, he’ll write his own, thank you very much.

Why are you into advertising?
Strangely enough, because I like the word ‘fuck’. I’ll explain. When I was a kid, perhaps 6-7 years or so, I used to see these hot shot advertising executives waltz into my place to have meetings with my dad (who, because he was in PR) had to deal closely with them. They looked really cool – long cigarettes dangling dangerously from their lips, drinking at odd hours, and using the word ‘fuck’ freely. I wanted to be like that. I wanted to be cool. And so at the age of 7, I made up my mind that I’d like to be in advertising.

The reason I stayed in advertising, years later, inspite of finding out that contrary to popular beliefe, it is not cool at all, is simply because I don’t think I can do anything else.

Tell us about your recent ad campaigns.
Well, there was the India Bike Week campaign we did for Fox Traveller this year. There was a film a few print ads – but the cherry on the cake was that the client bought into a full VO film. It’s always nice to have a client who understands. Then there was this activation we did, again for Soundtrek, a show again on Fox Traveller. We used augmented reality to turn a mall floor into piano keys, allowing people to actually make music when they walked. It was fun, to say the least.

Were there any particular role models for you when you grew up?
Of course – they always are. But they changed a lot too, as I grew. My biggest role model was perhaps my father who actually taught me to write. He was a great writer himself, and we used to have these poem competitions back at home. When I started learning about advertising, I wanted to be Neil French. Only, the more I wrote, the more I realized it wasn’t easy to be Neil French.

Who was the most influential personality on your career in Advertising?
A little hard to say, because there are hundreds of people who influence me every day. I see something done by someone, and I want to do it too. The next day, I see something else, I get influenced by it. I’m most impressionable that way.

Where do you get your inspiration from?
There’s this little door in my cupboard. A trap door of sorts. My wife and me made it together. It opens up into this strange, magical place where deer and imagination run naked and wild. That’s where I get my inspiration from.
I’m kidding. I get inspired by applause. The more I get applauded, the more I’m inspired to do something better, greater.

Do you have any kind of a program to nurture and train young talent? 
Yes, as a matter of fact I do. I have my very own little program designed by me, to help interns know everything there is to know about advertising. Someday, I’ll start off a little school and earn shameless amounts of money.

Tell us about your biggest challenge as the creative director of Grey.
To act like the Creative Director of Grey. I’ve often been chided because of my flippant, cocky ways. “You can’t say these things to that person”, or “you can’t write those kind of mails”. I’m a fun guy by nature. Unfortunately, the way the person holds himself has a direct co-relation to the designation he holds.

Tell us something about the agency environment. With such a large team, how does that affect individuality and creativity?
Depends entirely on the energy of the large team. Or small team. It doesn’t matter for me. What matters is what the team is feeling. If everyone in the team is excited, filled with positive vibes, it’ll trickle down to the individual.
If everyone on the team is busy dragging the next person down, creativity will not flourish. There’s far too much of negativity for that to happen.

What do you think of the state of print advertising right now? At least here in india, the released work is most often too sad. Are agencies ignoring released print?
I think the quality of released work has become fantastic in the past few years, so I differ with you completely. I know, I know. The heralding cry is that print advertising is dead. Thing is, as long as there are magazines and newspapers, it’ll never be dead. I remember reading a brilliant line when MTS relaunched a while back.
It read “We’re making 3G history. By making 3G, history”. You call that sad?

Pick and tell us about one of all your past campaigns, your personal favourite.
Well, to be honest one of my favourite campaigns that I wrote, was not traditionally advertising. When I was hosting Longhand for the second time, I wrote a series of ads to get people to write. I received a little less than 500 entries that year.

Do you think brands that win advertising awards, do well in the market?
Brands that keep the promises they make do well in the market. If after great advertising, and an orgy of awards, if the brand itself is bugger-all, it’ll die. So no, it won’t do very well in the market. Not unless it’s in the market, shopping for coffins. In which case, it’ll do wonders.

What advice do you have for aspiring creative professionals?
To keep getting inspired. And to follow people, not agencies.

What is your dream project?
Every project I do is a dream project. Simply because till a few years back, I would never have dreamed that I’d be doing it.

Mac or PC?
MAC, always.

What’s on your iPod?
Fungus, probably. Haven’t used it in years.

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