ADMAN: Ramesh Narayan, the owner of CANCO, a successful advertising agency, retired happily at the age of 50 to devote himself to social welfare, organic farming and writing his memoirs!
WHAT goes into the making of success? And what defines success? If success has eluded you long enough perhaps you may want to read “adman, writer, photographer and friend” Ramesh Narayan’s collection of short articles titled “A Different Route to Success.” Many may know that Ramesh Narayan has had long innings in the advertising industry as the owner of his own advertising agency Canco over 24 years.
He also inherits some formidable legacy from his famous father, the late CA Narayan who practically ruled the Indian Express empire for a lifetime and was a close friend of his “boss”, the legendary BD Goenka and in fact. with the entire Goenka family. Many are the stories we hear of CA Narayan in the media and advertising world.
And his son Ramesh recounts some in his “A Different Route to Success, It Could Be Yours.” Walking in a father’s footsteps cannot be easy but here is one son who does his father proud. The author confesses he retired from the advertising world at 50 with no regrets because he wanted to devote the rest of his years to worthy causes, many of which one may draw insight and inspiration from in his book. Here is a man who has his loyalties to the environment, student enrichment, seniors in need of help, gender issues, animal care and rural development along sustainable and organic lines. You may say he is an example of a life led fruitfully and certainly differently!
We cannot do better than carry a few excerpts from the book or rather booklet. Here are delightful, eloquent anecdotes of the advertising world and what shaped it, something easily read, understood and inspirational to the core – about how one man can make a difference for the betterment of life beyond self or so speak. It’s a most cheering up collection of lessons on how to live life!
Excerpts from “A Different Route to Success” by Ramesh Narayan….
Goodbye Agency Life
I had always talked about retiring when I turned 50.
And friends always laughed it off as “third-drink talk.”
The logic was that when I started off in advertising, like everyone else, I had some lofty items on my wish list.
Good clients. A good bank balance. Some awards. Some role in industry affairs.
And these appeared to be shimmering mirages on the horizon. As distant as the age of fifty, when you are starting off in life.
Then suddenly toward the end of 2005, I realized I would be fifty in a few months. And I was in a cosy comfort zone. The Agency had grown. We had some blue chip clients, five offices across India. I had a team of colleagues whom I really liked. We had won some awards, in India and some international ones as well. I had served two terms as President of the Advertising club and two terms as President of the Advertising agencies Association of India. I was on the Board of the Audit Bureau of Circulation and the National readership survey Council. I prided myself as someone who ran an Agency that did not discount its 15% commission so was rather profitable. And all this had been done by the time was 47.
So in the years between 47 and 50 I was experiencing a growing feeling of unease about the way the advertising industry was developing. Media agencies were a reality. Unbundling had already taken place without a whimper of protest from the professionals who ran th big agencies. Probably because most of them were on aretirement mode by then. Large agencies who looked at me with disdain twenty years ago when I began handling public sector companies were actively chasing them with absurd offers of 15% discount. Pitches were more ferocious and advertisers were happy to feast on a buffet of idea, free of charge, during every pitch. Consultants and clients strategized. Agencies implemented.
This was not the advertising industry I had signed up for. And then a friend was talking with me and said “even if you win this rat race, remember, you are still a rat.”
So I spoke with my wife Devi for all of five minutes, and with my team at the office and proceeded to resign the HDFC Ltd Account. I knew that when HDFC accepted that resignation I would be on a path of no return. And so the next day I knew my life in the advertising agency business would soon come to an end.
I called Jacob Mathews who was then President of the Indian Newspapers Society and told him not to worry if he heard stories of Canco shutting shop. They would be true. But I would pay all my dues and honor all my commitments. He graciously said he never had a doubt about that.
I waited till the last employee found a job and then went public with the news.
I resigned from all industry Associations, and never attended an industry party o function or two years after that.
A journey of 25 years with great colleagues, wonderful friends and fantastic memories. And I didn’t want to sell my Agency. As I said to a newspaper in an interview, “I was too old-fashioned to continue. Too stubborn to change.”
Lesson learned. It is very difficult to get out of a comfort zone. But as the old song goes, “if what you’re doing, doesn’t do it to you; walk away from it all.”
JOURNALISM?? NO. ADVERTISING!
(1982-83)
DURING every college vacation I worked as a reporter in the Indian Express, gratis, of course. Over the years, I was given a byline, which in those days was a big thing. Of course in his typical fashion the then Chief Reporter BSV Rao called me to his desk and shouted ,”I cannot keep taking responsibility for this nonsense your write. Put your name to each article.” That was the biggest compliment I was to get from him.
Then one day he called me and said the reporter assigned for an interview to be done at the aj Mahal Hotel on a Sunday had fallen ill, and there wasn’t anyone available to take his place. So could I nip across the Taj, do a quick interview with the I&B Minister of Bahrain and file the report at once?
I agreed. Not knowing it would change the course of my life.
The Minister was a pleasant gentleman who had come to pave the way for a visit of the Emir of Bahrain to India later that month . I completed the interview, and the phone rang in his suite. He spoke and I could hear him saying that he was very disappointed because he was looking forward to visiting the printing facilities of a large newspaper. Curious, I asked him what the call was about. He said that that was AK Jain of the Times of India are regretting that he had to cancel the visit of the minister to the Times of India’s press. I immediately told him that he should in fact come to see the facilities of the Indian Express. They had already gone in for photo typesetting and offset when the Times still used the hot metal process. He was interested but demurred, saying that protocol wouldn’t allow him to just drop in along with me. I asked him if I could make a call. I called the operator at the Express Towers and asked to be connected to the penthouse saying it was “Narayan” on the line. Thinking it was my father, I was instantly connected to Mr Ramnath Goenka. I quickly told him that I wanted the Minister to come and see the Express facility hastening to add that AK Jain had regretted earlier. I was sure he would fall for that. He asked me to put the Minister on the line, graciously invited him and then curtly told me to escort him around.
I forgot all about this. Then one day the Resident Editor of the Indian Express Karlekar called me to his room. He told me that invitations for foreign assignments were normally routed by the concerned Embassy or High Commission to the Editor, whose prerogative it was to assign the job to an appropriate senior person. So why, he wanted to know, was an invitation from the Ministry of I & B Bahrain, to visit Bahrain on a four day trip being addressed to Ramesh Narayan who wasn’t even an employee of the Indian Express? I narrated the story of the minister’s visit to the Express Towers and the meeting with Ramnath Goenka and he was smiling. So, he said, do you want to go? I could have hugged him.
But I hadn’t bargained for the advertising and PR department headed by my father. I was given a one-hour crash course in selling newspaper space and handed over an international rate card (which I learnt later was specially printed for this visit) and told to canvas for advertisements while I was on my “junket” to Bahrain.
Innocently thinking that all this was normal, I sallied off, with very senior journalists from the Times of India and the Hindustan Times, had a very nice trip to Bahrain, managed ot get four half page advertisements andmore importantly became the only journalist in that group of three, to get an audience with the Emir and do an exclusive interview with him in his palace. The Minister for I&B had taken quite a shine for me and personally accompanied me there.
And so the person who wasn’t even an employee, managed to complete the assignment, and was covered with glory. A four page supplement followed, with the Editor most graciously placing a picture of the Emir chatting with me on the top of the front page with the caption “The Emir and our Correspondent.” Correspondent! I liked the sound of that and confidently walked into Mr Karlekar’s office and said I wanted to join the Indian Express as a correspondent. He smiled kindly and said he would give me a job but I’d had to work at getting the designation of “correspondent.” He of course added that since my father was a Director, he would have to get the legal sanctions and make the necessary disclosures. I wasn’t even listening. I had landed a job as a journalist. Something I always wanted. Life looked shining.
But then I hadn’t bargained for two strong people. CA Narayan, my father, and Ramnath Goenka, the owner of the Express Group.
The first call came from the office of Mr Ramnath Goenka. The big boss wanted to see me. I landed up at the penthouse in the Express Towers and was in for a shock. Ramnathji smiled expansively and said the Editor had sent word about my appointment as an entry-level journalist. He then waved the four page Bahrain supplement in my face and said that I was a natural when it came to selling space. He then went on to say that legacy was an important thing and so he would approve of my joining the Indian Express, but in the advertising department, and “who knows, one day you could take over from your father.”
I was speechless. Before I could respond, I was ushered out as a some high ranking government functionary had come in. I want home, met my father and bitterly complained, narrating what had happened. His reaction was incendiary. “Firstly, the appropriate word to use if you join my department is not legacy. It is nepotism. I would never allow it. Secondly, do you know what a journalist earns? I know you. You will end up as either a dishonest journalist or a miserable one. And I will not stand for it.”
When I protested that I loved to write, he said “why don’t you start an advertising agency? You can write copy, and earn an honest rupee.”
I protested louder that I knew nothing about the advertising business. His reply was characteristic of the man. “What did you know about tennis balls? What did you know about selling advertising space? Didn’t you do it rather well?”
He gave me the use of an office space he had bought for his retired life, and allowed me to take an overdraft on a four lakh fixed deposit of his.
And Canco Advertising was born.
Lesson learned. When you think fate has thrown you a curved ball remember how she lobbed you an easy one earlier. Learn to accept that there is a grand design that you really have no inkling about.
CANCO ADVERISING PVT LTD & RAMESHISMS
The Agency, after its humble beginnings grew and prospered.
Early in the day I set my sights on Public Sector Undertakings (PSU’s). They were on the brink of huge growth, their respective areas of operation were about to be opened up for private players, they were good pay-masters and at that time the really large agencies had snootily ignored them.
And so we had an impressive roster of clients that included Union Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, General Insurance Corporation, United India Insurance, National Insurance, National Highways Corporation of India, Oil & Natural gas Corporation, Bharat Petroleum, National Thermal Power Corporation and of curse MTNL, HDFCD, IDFC, HDFC Standard Life, Yahoo, Minicomp to name a few.
And we had offices in Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, New Delhi and a representative office in Calicut.
Three important points about Canco.
Firstly, the team. Most of our staff had significantly long stints with the Agency. It was rare to see a Canco person wo left in 203 years. And I loved that. 15 years after I wound down the Agency I am still in touch with any of my erstwhile colleagues and people like Dhananjay and Neelam are even today happy to contribute with their creative skills in an honorary capacity for the good causes I keep reaching out to them for. The fact that I feel comfortable reaching out to erstwhile colleagues like Suresh Kannan, Sangeetaa, Sanjay D’Sylva, Dhiraj, Balkrishna,Joy even today and am sure they will do whatever they can to help, is also an indication of how deep the Canco relationships run. I feel privileged to have worked with such a fine team of people. Very hard working and extremely dependable.
Secondly, we served most of our major clients for over 10 to 12 to a stretch. Something unique in our business.
And finally, a combination of these memories and the values we stood for at Canco made me refuse to sell the Agency. Two of the three people who wanted to buy the Agency earnestly argued that the not insignificant amount of money would come in useful for my son, if not for me. But I had made up my mind that each of us come into his world with our own script, written by a divine hand. And I was confident my son would not need a large inheritance.
Neelam was our chief copywriter and I say, only half in jest that she ensured that I didn’t write copy for Canco. She could handle it herself. Recently she reminded me of some “Rameshisms”, lines I would often repeat. Because I believed them myself. Apparently, in her first month at Canco she didn’t want to sign a printout that she had copy-checked. I said to her “If we were hanging people for making an error, we’d all have been hung by now.” She signed it. And blossomed into a wonderful writer and more important to me, a good human being.
Yes, there were some lines which I repeat even now. “No one is wholly unreasonable. You need to find the reasonable chink in the armour.” This was something used to say to client servicing teams.
I always feel, “I can think like only I can. Ad you can only think like you can” and if we understand this there will be less conflict.
And final, “If you can, you should.”
Lesson learned. A company is really a collection of people. How good they are determines how good the company is. It is important to build a company on a foundation of good ethics and values. Money will come and go but the character of a company should remain solid.