ICONIC personality, advertising behemoth, theatre and film actor, philanthropist and activist, Alyque Padamsee will be missed in Mumbai. The Padma Shri award winner passed away on November 17 after ailing for a few years. He was 90.
An oft-sighted figure in the city, Padamsee, with his lanky frame, signature goatee, long and curly hair and thick, black-framed glasses made a dramatic impression. The ad guru, as he was popularly called, is credited with single-handedly revolutionising the Indian advertising industry.
Those in the advertising world say Padamsee understood the world of branding like no other. For one, he felt that it took more than a one-dimensional advertisement in a newspaper or magazine to launch a product. Padamsee saw the product or brand holistically and was known to use out-of-the-box approaches, often to the client’s dismay, to advertise a product. His methods led to hugely successful brands. If you ask someone from the generation which grew up in the pre-cable television era which advertisements they remember most, the answer will probably be: those featuring the Liril girl, the MRF tyres muscle man, Charlie Chaplin and Cherry Blossom, Lalitaji and Surf. And from a few years later, the Hamara Bajaj scooter and the steamy Kamasutra condom advertisement. All were created by Padamsee.
The Liril soap advertisement perhaps best explains Padamsee’s work, method and impact. In fact, the product has become a case study in several management schools’ curricula. The story goes that Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) wanted to launch a freshness soap and came up with an advertisement involving a mountain theme and a blue-coloured soap. Padamsee, representing HLL’s ad agency Lintas, spiked the plan. He changed the soap to a green-striped one and conceived an advertisement around the lime theme, which symbolised freshness.
He launched the Liril commercial in 1974, with a delightful jingle sung by a young vivacious girl in a two-piece swimsuit (bold for the time) under a waterfall in Kodaikanal. The advertisement was responsible for the soap taking 25 per cent of the bathing soap market. It also became HLL’s top-selling brand.
Whenever Padamsee spoke of this project, he said that in the 1970s, advertisements blatantly advertised a product’s benefits. Liril changed this. Selling a product was conceptualised as selling a lifestyle, which included a jingle, colours, a character and a location. It was meant to appeal to the consumer’s latent desires, and it did. However, at no point was it vulgar or used a woman to advertise the product. That was not the intention, he said. “In the Liril Girl’s case, she was vivacious with bright eyes and an infectious smile. She could swim, dance and have fun with no fear of the camera or the world at large. The beauty of the Liril Girl was that she appealed to the senses. People enjoyed seeing her, which is why she stood out,” he said in an interview to a local newspaper when the advertisement turned 40 years old. The Liril advertisement was relaunched several times with various Bollywood actors. It had an unprecedented run of 35 years until it was stopped in 2005.
Then there was Lalitaji, the proverbial Indian housewife, who Padamsee created to sell the Surf detergent. In the 1980s and 1990s, Lalitaji was all over television and newspaper ads, expounding the difference between “ achhee cheez aur sasti cheez ” (good things and cheap things). Even though Surf was an expensive detergent, Lalitaji, a pragmatic no-nonsense cost-conscious typical Indian woman, telling you not to compromise on quality because of price considerations was a winner. Surf remained on top of its game until policy reforms allowed the entry of foreign brands. Padamsee’s contemporaries say he had a unique ability to pin down the “X” factor, develop it, and eventually launch a campaign that had a timeless quality. The fact that most commercials he created ran for decades is evidence of this.
The world was his stage
Padamsee was born into a Khoja Muslim Ismaili family from Gujarat. One of eight siblings, he grew up in a traditional home. There was little trace of that upbringing in his adult years as Padamsee declared himself agnostic and was known for his liberal views.
Theatre appears to have been Padamsee’s first love. He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in the 1950s. On his return to India, he acted in a number of English plays, which had just begun to be staged in Mumbai. At the time, the theatre scene was filled with advertising professionals and Padamsee’s friends say he was attracted to the field because it allowed him to expand his creativity and writing skills. In his book A Double Story, Padamsee speaks about his ability to straddle a career in both advertisement and theatre. He says he was emphatic about not giving up one for the other. In both spheres the showman/ad guru made his mark. The first ad agency Padamsee joined was J. Walter Thompson. He moved quickly to Lintas (now known as the MullenLowe Lintas Group) where he spent close to 15 years (early 1970s to mid 1980s), retiring eventually as its chairman.
Theatre lore has it that Richard Attenborough, the director of the Oscar-winning film Gandhi, met Padamsee and without a screen test decided he would play the role of Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The role made him an international star. In 1974, Padamsee directed and produced the ambitious Jesus Christ Superstar , a musical that had its ample share of controversies. It was feared that Christians would be upset, and consequently Padamsee compromised on a few scenes. The show, however, was the first of its kind in India, and it introduced to the country the wonderful world of musicals. His other major productions were Evita , Death of a Salesman , Tughlaq and Broken Images, each one a hit.
“He was quite fantastic in many ways. He was responsible for bringing English theatre to India. In fact I have always said his contribution to theatre was greater than his contribution to advertising,” says S.V. Sista, chairman of the erstwhile ad agency Sistas and a contemporary of Padamsee.
“Alyque shaped culture in many ways, and advertising for sure. Can he ever be replaced? No. He was born to make a difference,” says Rahul da Cunha, one of the many admen Padamsee groomed. “To handle difficult clients, build big multinational brands and Indian businesses, deal with foreign bosses, manage several families and still find the time to direct big-scale musicals—that takes genius. And Alyque was that, a genius. Not in the way, say, Einstein was, but a genius nonetheless,” says da Cunha in a tribute.
A multifaceted man, Padamsee was a vocal activist. Perfectly happy mingling with the common Mumbaikar on the streets, he would show up at rallies and meetings. It was not just corporate India which gained from him. Working closely with non-governmental organisations and the Mumbai Police, he created public service campaigns on AIDS, sexual molestation and abuse. Padamsee served on the advisory council of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. He was a frequent guest at business schools and was known for encouraging MBA students to take up drama as part of their studies.
For Mumbai, Padamsee was special, literally and metaphorically a towering figure. The city will feel the void from his passing.
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