Be ready to accept change’

Ad guru Prahlad Kakar shares how college helped him prepare for a war zone of a different kind

Ad guru, restaurateur, entrepreneur, scuba diver, environmentalist... Prahlad Kakar dons several hats. But the first one he donned is that of an ad filmmaker. He has worked with brands such as Pepsi, Kit Kat, Nestle, and Whirlpool, through his ad film agency, Genesis. If you still hum jingles like “Yehi Hai Right Choice Baby! Aha!” (Pepsi), “Ting Ting Ti Ting” (Britannia), and quote tag lines like “It’s different” (Maggi Sauce), then Kakar is the one who should get the credit.

The latest hat he has come to wear is that of an educationist with the launch of The Prahlad Kakar School of Branding and Entrepreneurship (PKSBE), along with co-founder Pratish Nair. It is a one-of-a-kind business school where aspiring entrepreneurs and advertising filmmaking professionals are honed on their risk intelligence, decision-making, crisis management, and crisis prevention skills.

For Kakar, this decades-long journey from filmmaker to entrepreneur took shape in college, where he learnt life-lessons that he values even today. Here he shares more about his years in college...

Yesteryears

“I attended Fergusson College, Pune. Though I graduated in Economics honours, the subject I really liked was military strategy. Economics sounded far more respectable in terms of getting a job. But my true passion was military strategy, which is basically the history, strategy, and tactics of all major wars,” he explains. It taught him why the victors were victorious, sometimes from sheer luck and accidents, and sometimes from sheer brilliance of strategy and tactics.

Later in life, when he opted for a career in advertising and marketing, he realised how military strategy helped him nail it! “Economics, as we studied, has no practical translation. The market place is a war zone and my understanding of strategy and tactics has given me a far better insight, and therefore, the edge in the business of brand building in a hugely competitive field. My understanding of the art of war has helped me much more than anything else in the battle of brands,” he adds.

College taught me...

Other than the conventional curriculum and focus on real-life lessons that one learns from teachers, batchmates and friends, Kakar says college helped him with skills to face the future and be a winner. “My college taught me that most people are hypocrites; they all have double standards, and are taught to accept being second best because being best is far too exposed to risk, criticism, and failure. On the funnier side, it also taught me that pataoing girls is a big deal! I had to use all my wits, charms, intelligence, and acting abilities to impress them, and I did very well. This was the most difficult exam of all, and to be honest, it made me think out-of-the-box, which has helped me a lot throughout life,” he says.

Memorable moment

Kakar was quite popular in college. Once, when he came back from the holidays, he found that some miscreants had painted the back wall of the ladies hostel in big letters: “Lock up your daughters. Robin is back in town.” Kakar was known as ‘Robin’ in college!

Favourite mentor

“Shyam Benegal will always be my most favourite mentor. I started assisting him in 1972 and he taught me how illiterate I was! I felt utterly humiliated when he asked me about movies because I knew nothing and was completely clueless! What he really did for me was by criticising me at that early age, he forced me to become film-literate. And also literature-literate! Shyam Benegal is largely responsible for my voracious appetite for reading,” he states.

Message

“My advice to the youth of today is that there is only one constant in your life and that is change,” says Kakar. “As students, if you are not trained and ready to accept change on an everyday basis, you will struggle, and possibly not survive.” Change, he says, comes in most unexpected places, and as students, one needs to be flexible, adaptable, and not have a huge ego which can ultimately destroy you. “Success stories today are written by those who have learnt to take the risk. The ones — those who are incapable of taking risk because they are afraid — usually end up taking a job or working for somebody else,” he adds.

The market place is a war zone and my understanding of strategy and tactics has given me a far better insight, and therefore, the edge in the business of brand building.

Source: The Hindu, 29-01-2018