Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Entertainment | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Juggler of passions

From scuba diving to running restaurants, Prahlad Kakkar has done a lot besides making ads that have launched big brands. The maverick mastermind, tongue firmly in his cheek, tells BHUMIKA K. he plans to start an unusual stud farm next

He's 57, doesn't look it and can turn any youngster crimson with his talk. He's done with two by-passes (yet loves his cigars), has dabbled in all sorts of passions and businesses, goes scuba diving often, grows his hair long, speaks bad language and gets away with every word with his infectious, whole-hearted laughter. What he hasn't done is bred horses, played polo, and wooed half the women he's wanted to. Yet.

Mad-hatter

That's the ebullient, bindaas mad-hatter adman Prahlad Kakkar, with a steep reputation for having an ability to talk and laugh himself through any situation. The man whom some say is Pepsi, and Pepsi him. That's the way Kakkar has built a brand of fizz, defying logic and rationale. And that's where he got everyone from Shah Rukh Khan to Sachin Tendulkar and Aamir Khan dancing to his tunes. He was crowned the Indian ad industry's king of humour when he convinced uptight clients who took themselves too seriously that his ads would make audiences laugh with them and not at them. Outside his door at office, he's hung an ad-line for himself: "Beauty is only skin deep. Ugly is forever."

Recently in town for the Shaping Young Minds programme organised by the All India Management Association with the Bangalore Management Association, Kakkar made sure students were doubling over with laughter with his sometimes wry, sometimes brazen sense of humour. They chase him for autographs as if he were Shah Rukh Khan. "I'm illiterate, I can't sign," he tries to shake them off, but they all want to touch him and shake hands. Suddenly, he's their god, their guru who just gave them some worldly gyan.

Kakkar's life is as exotic as his looks. He runs two restaurants, Papa Pancho (ahem, the latter word is derived from a ubiquitous, abusive epithet in Punjabi which has become a term of endearment, he assures me) and Sarson Ka Saag. "Cooking relaxes me and makes me super-creative. Now I'm a celebrity chef in Greece where I do a fusion food fest," says the flamboyant chef. And oh, he also has a specialty teahouse and started the Prithvi Café with Jennifer Kapoor.

His ad film company Genesis has a well-stocked kitchen where he and his team cook often during brainstorming sessions. "Advertising is my touchstone, the wellspring from where everything has come," says Kakkar.

He and his wife Mitali, both qualified scuba divers, have leased from the Government an island in Lakshadweep to start the Lacadives Dive Centre. "It's a stunningly painfully beautiful place and I dive as often as I can. But it's never been profitable for us. If I don't make ad films, I can't run the diving school."

The man, who is always seen with his cowboy hat and Montecristo cigar in hand, says that image has become a big thing in today's world. Has his own "image" been a conscious brand-building exercise? "When I look back, I often wonder, `When did this happen?' Was it by itself or did I make it happen? At one point, the image became larger than the persona. But I decided I could keep up with it," he grins. But beneath that burly, rollicking façade lives another intense person only close friends see. "Only a few people bring out an intensity and a searing side in me." After two by-pass surgeries, cigars are a strict no-no, he says with a wink. But he owns and manufactures a brand of cigars, Shergar, after the famous racing horse from Aga Khan's stables. Rolled in the Philippines, the tobacco is from the Dominican Republic.

But man who makes cigars refuses to do ads for tobacco products and fairness creams because he finds them insidious and derogatory, insisting there is a need for social responsibility in advertising. Selling Pepsi, though, seems to have been fine with him.

So how do truth, lies and advertising get together? "Advertising is about not telling the whole truth. There's no such thing as ethics in advertising," he insists.

"Selling a product cynically is a soul-destroying. A lot of youngsters in this profession burn out early and easily because of their sensitivity. I sometimes blame myself for passing on this idealism when they train with us. I feel I've made a mistake."

Slaving it out

Kakkar's guru, however, seems to have taught him all right. Kakkar is from master filmmaker Shyam Benegal's "Slave School" as he likes to call it, assisting him on ad films and later feature films such as Manthan and Ankur. "We were actually called Slave One, Slave Two and so on. But Shyam taught us that filmmaking is a language — it has syntax, vocabulary and grammar. If you don't learn the language, you cannot write poetry. You must read as much as you can to learn a language and you must see as many films as you can to be a filmmaker, so that you can adapt from that and have a reference to context. In films, illiteracy is not knowing enough. If you are limited in your vocabulary, you will be limited in your communication."

Feature films is the obvious next step for this maverick ad film-maker. "If you have to be taken seriously, you have to make five films a year. So now I'm raising venture capital (VC) funding to make five Hindi films. I'll direct some of them."

So what else is it that he wants to do? "I want to start a stud farm," he says very seriously, "where I'm the stud!" and starts guffawing at his own idea. And Prahlad Kakkar being adman Prahlad Kakkar, he goes on to explain how he will advertise for it: "Donor father available, limited edition. I've already done three in a trot!" (He has three handsome sons who've all gone after his wife though, he admits.) And for good measure, he adds, "Sons guaranteed." He continues unabashedly, "And if it's a daughter, I'll take her off you and give all the money back because I want a daughter." And in his black shirt and beige suit, he throws back his head and laughs again uproariously, flips on his cowboy hat and is off on his own trip.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Metro Plus    Bangalore    Chennai    Coimbatore    Delhi    Hyderabad