I don't like anything I have made, says ad man and filmmaker R Balki

R Balki never meant to be in advertising. And now, after 30 years he retires to filmmaking. Here, the 52-year-old takes us on a trip down memory lane

Advertising moghul R Balakrishna, or Balki's  journey in advertising began in 1987 when he responded to an advertisement by Mudra Communications, asking applicants who wanted to work as interns to send in 100 words about them. "I only replied because it had a logo that looked similar to the logo that appeared at the end of the television serial Buniyad. So, I thought it was Ramesh Sippy's company. But it turned out to be an advertising company. I got conned into it," he says.

Balki, 52, who announced his retirement from the industry last week, feels that AG Krishnamurthy, the founder of Mudra, had probably decided to "save him from himself" while selecting Balki for the programme. "AGK and another gentleman called Nagananda Kumar thought that people in advertising could be trained. So, six of us were put together in a house in Ahmedabad. And all we had to do was watch movies and write about them and show Kumar. We did this for 180 days!"

Unable to get out of the house as he was down with a viral fever, Balki who completes three decades in the advertising industry, recalls his journey.

R Balki. Pic/Suresh Karkare

'I almost quit after 1 year'
In 1990, a person from Ahmedabad called Ranjan Thomas (who  has passed away), came to the Bangalore office. He must have been a very passionate person, but I was very dreamy. Under him, I started thinking that I was not cut out for advertising. He used to say 'how will you make movies, if you can't be successful in advertising'. I think it was my repeated failure to understand what he was saying, that made me feel like I should quit. But, my manager, R Sridhar, told me 'you just need to get away from this environment' and sent me to Hyderabad. There, a gentleman called Bal Deshpande made me feel like I was a Creative Director, and I was given freedom. I made lot of mistakes, but I also gained a lot of confidence.

Some of Balki's campaigns included Surf Excel's Daag Acche Hai and Tata Tea's Jaago Re

'People started buying my little stories'
I came back to Bangalore in 1990 and almost became the de facto Creative Director, a year after I had decided to quit. My first big campaign was in 1992 for Williams Shave Foam. I had a beard so I wanted to figure out how I could sell a shaving foam to a man with a beard. So, a guy stars singing 'I don't want to shave' and that turns into 'I want to shave'. I thought that was cool. I'd day dream about someone walking up to me and handing me a suitcase full of money to make a movie. Then I realised that it was happening in advertising as well. People were coming up to me and I was tailoring my dreams to suit their  product. They were buying my little stories.

'At Lintas, it's all about team work'
I quit Mudra because after Sridhar quit, I wasn't happy with the management. I stayed at home for some time and then Lintas came calling. These were two very different agencies. At Mudra, we were the challengers, and we fought multi-national companies. Lintas was a well-oiled machine, set in its ways. It was hard to create a creative culture there, and that was a different exercise. But then I started enjoying myself there. I remember sitting in a room with Arun Iyer discussing an ad for a detergent. I was telling him that I want two kids, and I want to recreate the scene from Sadma when Kamal Hasan behaves like a monkey to make Sridevi laugh. Then Arun said, "you know a child who is crying starts laughing when the mother hits the table that he got hurt from." And that's how Daag Achche Hain came to be, where the child starts beating up the puddle of mud. It's always about team effort at Lintas.

'I hate all my work'
When asked what my favourite campaign is, I can never find an answer to give. I don't like anything I have made, and I am very sure of that. Who does that? Who can look at their own work? I always find mistakes. Maybe at the time I made them, I would have been gung-ho but after that, I only find bad things. Anyway, it's time to advertising a rest and work on my movies now. We have spent the last two years planning this transition — meetings with clients happened as I was the face of most brands. Teams took over and Arun Iyer and Amer Jaleel became National Creative Directors with two agencies under them. Now, I can concentrate on making one film a year instead of one in four years. It was said that don't leave till you are absolutely indispensable. Well, now I am done. I am truly dispensable.

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