Guest Article: Shyju Varkey: "Kunal Jeswani is one of those rare supermen"

Sometime in the late 80s, a few wise men from the advertising fraternity huddled over, late into the night, over a few tipples and dhokhlas, exchanging hi-fives. They'd just had a brainwave of starting an advertising school.

M/s Mani Iyer, AG Krishnamurthy, Nirmal Goswami, those doyens, would prove to be clairvoyants as 1991 unleashed an economic tsunami and the industry hit the super-highway. Where would the expertise to steer the industry come from, once a certain critical mass was established? Unlike conventional businesses, advertising isn't an assembly line industry. The ideas-driven culture was fuelled by mavericks with a passion for creativity that had created cult classics in Liril, Lifebuoy, Titan, Maggi, Raymond's, et al. Surely, the nature of the industry needed captains cut from more colourful cloth than navy blue and pinstripes?

It needed a slightly different mix of the left and right brains, the ability to harness creative enfant terribles, the courage to walk that razor's edge between client expectations and one's own beliefs of what's good for a brand and, above all, the inspiration to make the process of marrying creativity with bottomlines a happy one.

1994 saw the first two-year course set in a 'refreshingly rural environment', as MICA's brochure proclaimed. It was a batch of 42 students from places as diverse as Asansol and Bhopal to Karnal and Warangal. To be sure, there were also those from the larger cities. There were engineers, literature students, students of history as well as statistics. It was a cultural melting pot of sorts, and there was a common bond of insecurity that held this bunch together. It was, after all, the first batch and no one quite knew exactly what to expect.

In a batch replete with students with more differences than similarities, one guy stood out, not just for his sheer size, but also for his demeanour. Nothing ever flustered him - not the uncertainty of the course itself or the difficulty in acquiring spirits in a dry state, not even the spectre of proposing to a girl he fell in love with a mere two months into the course; the course in quantitative techniques flummoxed him a bit, but didn't fluster him, it didn't.

It was this sangfroid that made him quality-leadership material even back then. The sense of self assurance made him the go-to guy, right from assignments that had to be completed with tough deadlines, to negotiations with the management on various issues. He had the quiet confidence of someone who was there to enjoy the journey, while the destination took care of itself. While the rest fretted over mundane stuff like academia and grades, he painted the walls of his room, made bhel for his hostel-mates, serenaded his girlfriend on the terrace, scripted plays and took tuitions for those who needed them.

He was never the kind of guy who'd stick out in a crowd. He's the kind one would gravitate to, simply because he'd be the closest one could find to the Buddha, anywhere in the vicinity. You knew, with him around the world was a safer place. Anyone caught up in that monster bear hug would vouch for it.

Almost two decades into his job, he went on to be an integral part of campaigns that will long be remembered as watershed events for the industry as a whole - the IPL launch and the victorious BJP campaign, for instance. These were never at the expense of everyday walks with his young sons at the park, drives for dance classes with his wife, weekend lunches with his grandmother and annual diving trips with his friends. It was still about the journey and not the destination.

Kunal Jeswani is one of those rare supermen who has it all - decency, charm, wit, graciousness, modesty and the spirit of noblesse oblige. Good guys do come first, after all.

Fare thee well, pardner! There'll be a whole lot of us watching with pride as you go about painting that big Ogilvy ship a brighter shade of red.

And move over, Frank. I now know another who did it his way.

(The author is station director, Bengaluru and chief marketing officer, Radio One)