Which was your last worthwhile offering to the ad world?
None actually. There is nothing that I can say was worthwhile. I have had fun with whatever I have done. I was known more for the Amul butter ads. But I have launched lots of ads for brands like Bank of India, LIC, Frooti and many more. I launched every brand of tea that Tata Tea has in the country today. I have also launched the 'Born Tough' Rhino of Ceat. All these were fun to work for.

Still, if you think hard, which ad of yours comes to mind as different from the rest?
When I am doing the ad; I like it but six months later I feel that it was nothing great, so it keeps changing. In 2003, the ad that I was personally involved with in terms of creativity was Tata Tea.

Your company Why Not Productions (WNP) also intended to get into television programming and music videos…
I have done some television programming, acted in some television serials - Hindi, Marathi and English. I have written and directed a breakfast television show for Doordarshan called Dhamaal. It was the first and the last serial where we had Bollywood superstars acting in it. I had Govinda, Sanjay Dutt and Anil Kapoor in my show.

Right now, I haven't got anything on my hands as far as television is concerned. I'll do television when something comes up. We now have Why Not as a company, the idea is that we will be looking at television, films and everything connected with this media. We produced a music video for a poem written by the prime minister.

We haven't submitted any proposals for television serials as yet but have spoken to a lot of people. As of now nothing concrete has come up.

How do you look at advertising these days? Do you think it needs censorship?
Advertising doesn't need censorship. I think music videos need censorship.

What about surrogate advertising?
Surrogate advertising is more of a political or legal question than an advertising question. Frankly if you ask me, either the government should allow advertising of liquor brands or should ban it. The idea of turning a blind eye to surrogate advertising is a blatant flouting of rules.

As far as advertising agencies are concerned, whatever is manufactured can be advertised. What shouldn't be advertised is something for the government as a political discipline to decide. I don't think there are any advertising campaigns that need to be censored.

Recently, there was a furore over a mobile phone ad starring Bipasha Basu where she says, "I will dance with the one who has the smallest…"
I personally feel that some advertisers don't realise that there is a social censorship that happens in any case. People don't buy your product if it embarrasses you. It is not like a music video or a film where at the most, one will say that it is horrible and choose not to see it.

Here, advertising is done to sell a product, not to be creative or to be noticed. The whole existence of advertising is that it is a marketing tool to sell a product. If you try and do something as stupid as that (the Bipasha ad) which you think is very witty but if the consumer doesn't think so, then they will not buy your product. So censorship is not in terms of someone coming and telling you not to do it, the moment the product doesn't sell, the ad is not working.

So, do you think these gimmicks don't work?
It depends. What is important is that you have to keep in mind who you are talking to. A lot of times people forget their target audience and they make jokes and bold campaigns which in the end, don't necessarily work in their favour.

Advertising is not about promoting yourself; it is about promoting the product. Take the example of the ad for MR Coffee. Housewives felt embarrassed to ask for it in a shop, which means that the ad didn't work because the ad makers didn't take into account the consumers.

Most of the times, these bold ads are on a razor's edge, if it works for audiences, it does, but if it alienates everybody else then it doesn't work. Nowadays marketing has become a numbers game… trying to beat as many people as possible, trying to get as many people to buy the product from major cities to small towns. So there should be something in the ad that appeals to everybody, you can't have something that is so niche that only a handful of people will laugh at a joke and understand what is being said.

The Amul tag still sticks to you. If you do venture into making television programmes, will humour and satire be the bedrock of the programming you will be involved in or will you follow the regular family soap genre?
I'll tell you what happens with satire... it is very easy for people to criticise what is happening on television by saying that comedies on television are bad. Television has the kind of reach that even cinema doesn't have. You don't have to buy a ticket to go and see it. You just have to switch on the television and swap channels and see whatever you like.

But to make somebody sitting in Pedder Road in Mumbai laugh at the same time as somebody sitting in a small town in Muzaffarpur or a village in Dhulia is very difficult. Some people will find it too sophisticated; some will find it too basic or too cheap…

A person making a soap should feel that, "I will cater to only this particular set of people and it doesn't matter to me who else sees it." It is impossible to make a comedy that is accepted universally. Of course there was a time when a serial like Yeh Jo Hai Jindagi worked with the audiences. No doubt they were very well written but at the same time people didn't have a choice, so those programmes grew on people. Now if a serial is slightly boring, you switch off, so the characters don't even get the time to grow on you.

The family dramas just give makers the numbers. I don't have the expertise in doing these family dramas. In life, one should do not try to do what works but should ask himself the question - Can I do what works? With me, the problem is that if I stick to satire I don't know how I can do a programme which will have universal appeal. It will have to be a very carefully crafted thing.

When I am scripting a play, I know what kind of audience will be coming to watch my plays so there is a face in front of me when I write. But in the case of television it will not be that personal because there is a diverse lot that watches it.

Weren't you tempted to make a big budget movie like all others are doing these days?
I don't believe in doing things I am not comfortable with. Films are big budget affairs, not because of the film in itself but because of its cast. A person can make a film in twenty million rupees, but if he plans to have 28 stars in it and pays each actor even 10 million rupees; the budget of the film will automatically become 300 million. It will not be a 300 million film because it is a 300 million story.

What is wrong with the film industry today is that the actors and directors are getting paid in millions but the writers are getting paid in thousands. The day that equation changes and writers start getting paid more, then we can make great cinema. The writer is the soul of the entire movie and if he is paid twenty million, he will write magic.

Of ads, stage and films, which of the three do you think is the most creative and why?
I think advertising is definitely the most creative of the three. In films, you have two hours where you can show your creativity and you need to have a distributor who has faith in you. You have big stars on whose name people are buying tickets in any case. So in films, people are selling two hours of entertainment whereas in advertising you are selling 30 seconds in which you are supposed to entertain, sell a product, be competitive and make sure that people buy your product all at the same time.

Films work on personality names. If I go to somebody and say that I have Shahrukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai in my film, they will back my project not because they like the subject but because of the star cast. On the other hand, advertising doesn't work on names. It has to work on its own without the back up of names.

How do you see Publicis Zen performing this year in growth terms and how does it stack up with the competition?
Publicis has had a great year and from our projections, 2004 will definitely be a better year. Next year looks even brighter because we got more products from L'Oreal and some of our other clients. We are getting more products from Nestle and a lot of other clients. Also we will get more business from our international clients.

Plus we have a very young and active lot in Mumbai as well as Delhi. We have strengthened our entire network. Our Delhi office has now become bigger than our Mumbai office because most of our clients (Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Nestle) are Delhi based. We are a team of 100+ professionals.

So what keeps you going in life?
The only thing that keeps me going is that I don't take myself very seriously. People feel very passionately paranoid about what they are doing. They feel that they are changing the world. I am passionate about doing what I do well and to the best of my ability but I am not really concerned about the results. I do something and then I forget about it.

I have made my film and I put in my best but that doesn't mean that I think it going to be a path breaking film which will change the face of Bollywood and win many awards. We had fun making it and in the end we all are happy. After this we will do something else. I don't really bother about what others have to say. They may say that I have a lousy film and that I am an idiot. But it's ok. I have the right to be wrong.