The vivacity of the creative process is the most precious reward for the artist. The extrinsic worth of its outcome is but incidental.
Though often called ‘copywriter’ I have always defied that description and learnt what I could about typography, photography and design, some on my own and some thanks to my interactions with my collaborators.
With the advent of exciting tools and apps, for years my pet dreams, I am having oodles of fun creating a whole range of communications: Graphics, Mailers, Posters, Webpages, Websites, Videos and so on.
Working with art directors and designers is certainly an enjoyable experience, especially when as a writer I could exchange roles with them so freely and easily. Yet, working with myself and doing it all independently delivers a thrill that is truly incomparable.
Mailers and Posters for Royal Sundaram (General Insurance) and Sundaram Finance (Financial Services)
Video on the Corporate Social Responsibility activities of CanPack, a beverage-can manufacturing company
Can a just-text video deliver impact?
The Nineties and Noughties - Being Bilingual is Beautiful
Thanks to my love for my mother tongue, Tamil, I have had the pleasure of working on several campaigns directly in Tamil – my work on Raaga (a hair care product) is a case in point. Initial launch was in Tamil, and later on in other Indian languages.
Raaga TV Commercial Tamil
Concept, script and jingle lyrics – Yours truly
Produced by Far Productions (Bombay)
Music Composed by P P Vaidyanathan
Jingle sung by Hariharan
Tamil Trans-creation
Since mid-2008, as freelance writer, I have been handling trans-creation assignments – adapting TV Commercials and Print Ads from English to Tamil – for many overseas agencies including Ogilvy Redworks, BBH, Tag Worldwide, Craft Translation, Barrett and Welsh, Oliver and Hogarth Worldwide.
Brands worked on: Dove, Intel Processors, Sunsilk, Duracell, Hilton, Axe, Pepsodent, Pond’s, Google, Castrol, Fanta and Oreo
Allow me to share an interesting chapter in my life when I was 24, before I entered the world of advertising.
Bicycle Tour across Europe, dedicated to World Peace and Understanding
A tour that I undertook with my friend, Aisola Ravi Shankar, it demanded hectic, wide-ranging preparations for about a year and culminated in a 9-month-long journey - May 1980 to Feb 1981 - across 13 countries. The tour took us close to thousands of people in the cities and small towns and villages of Europe, and enabled us to mutually share many things about India and their respective countries.