'The BJP campaign taught me how to use Whatsapp’: Piyush Pandey

Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and creative director, Ogilvy South Asia, and team Soho Square, unveiled a book titled ‘The Walk to the Capital’, a ‘historical’ book which recounts the agency’s work for its client, the BJP, in the lead up to the Lok Sabha elections of 2014.

 

Addressing the media, Pandey, said, “We aren’t taking all the credit for BJP’s win because the overall campaign was much larger than the advertising campaign. I remember, the date, 1 February 2014, when we accepted BJP’s invite to be part of the campaign. Within 25 days we had released the first ad.”

 

Pandey recounts, that he and the team had apprehensions to begin with. “At first, when invited, we did have apprehensions about working with a  government (political) client. It’s the first time I had worked on such a client. But, they were very clear and I’d say better to work with, compared to other clients,” said Pandey.

 

He explained that with an anecdote: “For the Janta Maaf Nahi Karegi series, I’d told them we’ll be shooting (films) with a black background. Other clients, who would have marketing managers etc., would never be okay with it. They (BJP) asked me once, whether we’d be shooting in a village with villagers around or something like that, but I wanted to do this instead.”

 

On the purpose for the book, Pandey said, “This book is largely for historical purposes. I don’t know if we’ll get to work on a campaign as intense as this, so we thought of putting this down in a book. It’s for our team, for the clients, and for the press.”

 

On his biggest learning from working on the campaign, Pandey quipped, “I learnt how to use Whatsapp! Since we were working for long hours out of places like the Ambassador Hotel in Delhi, I needed to watch films that were sent to me over Whatsapp.”

 

Also read: 'Elections are won by karya kartas, not ad campaigns': Piyush Pandey