Trust the last mile: Rajesh Ramaswamy, The Script Room

“Yella Ok. Cool drink yaake?” (Everything else is fine, but why the cool drink?) 

This isn’t just an iconic tagline for UB Export beer, but an immortal punchline for fans of Sandalwood’s ‘Real Star’ Upendra. For the uninitiated, Sandalwood refers to the Kannada film industry. And for those not in the know, the line was penned by a Client Servicing person from what was then JWT, Rajesh Ramaswamy.

The humorous campaign film featured Upendra delivering the line to his on-screen girlfriend, as she sips a cool drink with another guy and tells Uppi that she has moved on. All that is fine, but why the cool drink (when you can have UB Export beer at Rs.17?) was the thought.    

The campaign broke circa 2002 to a massive reception, and the line has become part of popular culture. The writer, after this first accidental campaign, shed his suit and formally moved to the creative side of the agency business.

Ramaswamy, or Ramsam as he is called, has worked at several agencies, including Lowe Lintas, besides directing ad films via Coconut Films. The Founder of The Script Room, alongside Ayyappan Raj, also wrote and directed the outfit’s first original short film, Iruve, which was released online last year as they turned five. 

Ramsam took the audience at Advertising Club Madras’ #AdTalks event on May 28, 2025, through some of his work, gleaning lessons therefrom on the theme ‘Writing for the screen’.

“When you are writing for the screen, it’s the beginning, not the end. Take the case of ZooZoos or the Cadbury Girl. It’s fantastic but how much could the writer have written to begin with? It’s one component, the starting point. You have to keep your mind open to everyone and everything. Any one of the many elements of screenwriting – the messaging, protagonist, plot, form, dialogues, music, setting and more – could become the most beautiful part of the process,” explained Ramaswamy, setting the audience up for the audio-visual treat that followed. 

Drawing from Life 

Themes like confidence, self-love and the like were aplenty in the beauty space when Nykaa wanted to make a splash and stand out with a thematic campaign. A brand thought was sought out.

Drawing from personal experience helped Ramaswamy. His young daughter generally refused his mother when asked to wear the traditional ‘Pavadai-Sattai’. On one special occasion, she willingly obliged. The grandmother was utterly delighted. At that moment, the grandmother saw the most beautiful version of the young woman. This led to the campaign thought of ‘Kya Khoob Lagti Ho’ – beauty as seen by those around you.

Agency: The Script Room

“React personally, as yourself, and don’t look at what social media is saying. If you have nothing to start with, start as yourself. First, see if it leads you somewhere,” reflected the speaker.     

The Protagonist pivot

Admittedly, the protagonist has been a big component of Ramaswamy’s ads, which follow a storytelling format, he explained. And the choice of that protagonist can have a telling impact on the final output, as was evident in the cases that were presented.

“Whom do you think of when you think of Teacher’s Day? Usually, it is the teacher who is most popular, who gives extra PT classes, and so on. But what about the other guy, who is not remembered on Teacher’s Day?” posed Ramaswamy. 

That led to the characterisation of the invisible protagonist in Paper Boat’s Teacher’s Day campaign.

Agency: MullenLowe Lintas Group

In another case, the protagonist was a student. A student booking himself into an Oyo to escape the distractions at home and study – clearly an attempt to underline that there are multiple reasons for people to choose the hospitality brand.  

Agency: The Script Room

The Form factor

When Paper Boat, a brand built on nostalgia, wanted to create a campaign, arriving at the approach was a challenge for the team initially, noted Ramaswamy. 

“We wanted to be creative. We would think of a concept, add a spin, and present it. But the response from the client was, ‘Dil pe nahin lag raha hai’. Then we thought, ‘Why are we doing this (spin)?’ Sometimes, if an idea is in its raw form and it hasn’t been done before, you don’t need to add creative layers to it. Sometimes, keeping it as raw and simple as possible can be the best approach. Even Gulzar saab wrote it simply and magically. When this ad came out, using poetry in ads was not common,” explained the speaker. The magic of the Malgudi Days soundtrack punctuated the poetic verse.      

Agency: MullenLowe Lintas Group

At other times, one is forced to adopt the form that lends itself to the time available, he noted, with the case of a campaign for Britannia Nutrichoice that had to be completed in a week.

Language No Bar 

Making the case for making the most of India’s linguistic richness, Ramaswamy pointed to advertising that leveraged diversity in dialects as well as in languages. 

Sometimes, audio-visual stories do not need language. And sometimes, the stories connect across languages, as Ramaswamy demonstrated with work for Tanishq Rivaah. 

The multi-lingual took a lot of persuasion, he underlined. It was natural for clients to wonder how speakers of one language would react to portions of the ad in other languages. The result must have surprised even the sceptics. 

Agency: MullenLowe Lintas Group

In the case of PhonePe, there was no need for language.

Agency: The Script Room

A nuanced approach

Imagine the case of the Fastrack Reflex ad, where a young woman tells a young man working out on the ground, “I can help.” Her offer was to help him meet his calorie-burning target for the day, leaving little room for doubt on the means she had in mind. 

Agency: MullenLowe Lintas Group

The brand had always been about the young and was not shy of talking about sex. The agency thought of ways in which to make the ad with the young man making the first move, but had little success. It had to be nuanced and not come across as crass.

“One small mistake and this would have become sleazy. We had to think of every little thing. When we gave the female model the water bottle, and when we heard that go ‘pop’ at the sound recording, that’s when we knew this had fallen in place,” explained Ramaswamy. 

Tone Matters 

Understanding the behaviours of cohorts is not something that’s restricted to planners. Anyone writing for film needs to be wired to capture those images in the script, underlined the speaker.

Case in point: A Tanishq film announcing that the range starts at Rs 5,000. The protagonists, a young man and his elder sister, who is about to leave home. The plot, unsurprisingly, is a gift. But the treatment? A priceless slice of life.

Agency: MullenLowe Lintas Group

There are other necessities that shape a script. Like, for instance, a client who wants the film to spell out that one can pay their electricity, water, internet and other bills through the app. That was a given. It had to be incorporated. But how does one do that engagingly?

Agency: The Script Room 

The initial thought was that the frustrated father said that he is stepping out to meet his friends. When that didn’t have the required impact, the agency came up with the haircut.

In the case of the immortal ‘Swiggy Uncle’ series that debuted during the IPL, the commentary was not originally intrinsic to the script. How that eventually added heft to the series is now the stuff of legend.

Agency: MullenLowe Lintas Group

“We initially presented two or three ads. But we were told that we needed to have cricketing context because it was to be aired during IPL.Commentary had already been used (as a device) by other brands, so we used commentary that was coincidental to the stories, and also not the usual frenzied commentary. We were initially very pissed that they wanted the cricketing context. It was eventually a blessing that the client wanted us to put in the commentary. Just trust the last mile. Everything happens for good,” surmised Ramaswamy.   

(The writer is an independent content consultant and marketing columnist.)