Diwan Arun Nanda: A personal remembrance by Amitava Sinha

Kolkata: I first became familiar with his name in my sophomore days in the 1980s at Kolkata’s hallowed Presidency College. 

For many students of Humanities, whose favourite pastime was either polemical discussions on fundamental epistemological questions or intense rounds of Scrabble in the smoky and inadequately lit college canteen, the dream career break was to join the agency eponymous with Diwan Arun Nanda, Rediffusion.

This, mind you, was a time when Rediffusion’s Jenson & Nicholson Paints hoardings across the city were splashed with unlikely visuals, ranging from egg yolks to cracker chains, in vivid colours, backed by the exhortation, ‘Whenever you see colour, think of us.’ 

A few years prior, the same agency had launched ‘New Delhi,’ a New Yorker-type and perhaps ahead-of-its-time magazine for the local ABP Group, with a high-brow campaign that our intellectual seniors raved about. 

Even the politically charged and decidedly left-leaning environs of College Street resonated with their stark 1984 Congress election campaign, in the wake of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination, ‘My Heart Beats for India.’

After a brief stint with FMCG major Reckitt & Coleman, I joined advertising in the early 1990s. As the anchor of the ITC cigarette brands at HTA, I was an informed admirer of some of the work Rediffusion was doing for our main competitors, GPI. 

Indeed, Red & White ki baat hi kuch alag thi, and ‘Jaisalmer’ was a pioneer in tethering a cigarette brand’s world to the romance and imagery of an exotic destination. 

As eager advertising professionals, we were awed by successive disarming sentiments such as ‘Talk to Me’ for Colgate Gel, ‘Anu mujhe Taazgi de de’ for Tata Tea, and, of course, ‘Mera Sapna Mera Maruti.’

 There were other memorable campaigns such as ‘She’s the Taj,’ ‘Give Me Red,’ transforming the innocuous Eveready dry cell battery into a symbol of personal empowerment, and the introduction of Gold Spot orange drink as the ‘Zing Thing,’ making these brands forever a part of popular conversation and culture.

I was truly moved when his office reached out to me the very day the news of my quitting Bates broke in the Economic Times in 2003. I soon had the privilege of meeting him personally at Rediffusion’s overtly Feng Shui-inspired Prabhadevi office in Mumbai, an interaction that was at once overwhelming and inspiring. 

I joined Rediffusion in October 2003, when the agency was celebrating its 40th anniversary with roadshows across the country, which fast-forwarded my assimilation into the agency and its infectious culture of creating category-busting advertising. 

I had the good fortune of working at Rediffusion until 2015 in various capacities and to work closely with DAN, as he was fondly referred to, in the latter part of my tenure.

He steadfastly espoused intellectual honesty and creative originality. He always encouraged us to do what was right by a task, irrespective of client diktats and business imperatives, stemming from his fundamental belief that all would fall into place if we had the basics right. 

He instilled in us an appreciation not just of consumer insight but of client insight as well. Above all, to his direct reports, he would never impose a direction or point of view but would occasionally raise pertinent issues to guide us in the right direction, always giving freedom and latitude to operating managers in their execution. 

At one stage, when Rediffusion Delhi was going through a severe downturn in business, his unwavering faith in the team, firm commitment to the Rediffusion credo, and calm counsel helped us to quickly turn around the office.

He was also an indulgent host and a fabulous raconteur. He would often tell stories, about their early pitches with hired furniture to give prospective clients an assurance of ready infrastructure, of getting inspiration for an iconic campaign from a popular song in a Hindi film that he and the team had actually gone to catch at a matinee show to overcome the proverbial writer’s block the day before a major presentation, and of his experiences with titans such as Rajiv Gandhi, Ratan Tata, and Sunil Bharti Mittal, to name just a few. 

These were not just engrossing but also real-time insights that, I dare say, would not be attainable in the best of business schools.

When I joined Rediffusion, Airtel’s clarion call of ‘Express Yourself’ was making waves, and then soon we were ‘Breaking Barriers.’ Honestly, I did not realise how many years had flown by in the maze of ‘Awesomeness’ and ‘Is ko laga dala toh life jhinga lala.’ But I will also say Rediffusion was not the same once DAN’s health started failing and he took a back seat.

I truly consider it a blessing to have worked closely with Diwan Arun Nanda, probably the original iconoclast of Indian advertising. Sir, goodbye, farewell, and thank you!