Wednesday, May 9, 2007

DIFFERENT FOLKS

There's is a growing crop of professionals from varied industries who opting for the excitement of advertising over the safety of their technical fields.

These men and women wear ties and formal shirts to work and even carry serviettes. If they look a bit out of place to you in an advertising agency, it's not their fault. They are an unexpected but welcome breed of young professionals who have chosen advertising over their primary professions- the ones they were educated for.

If the advertising industry has been lamenting silently the loss of talent, there is a quiet development on the other side. Doctors, bankers, engineers and rural marketers are being lured by the excitement and the organised chaos of advertising. And they have given up stuff for it- from better remuneration to status to family acceptance.

Look at Nirmallya Roy Chowdhury of Bates. When he decided to quit his marketing career for advertising his family was puzzled. His father seriously thought he needed psychiatric treatment. Or there's Rajeev Hajare from Lowe India. His parents yet prefer to introduce him as "having worked with companies like Tata Electric" hoping their guests will excuse his current choice. Hajare laughs and says that they yet have to come to terms with his preference for advertising over a safe career in engineering.

But these decisions haven’t come easily. Hajare says he met his parents' middle class dream and became an engineer. Now it was time to do something for himself.
At 26, Subhasis Chatterjee is very mature for his years. He says he contemplated for a year before he took the plunge. But he had to because being in the media-advertising world was his dream profile and he couldn't wait for a safe and easy transit option.

The intangible returns are obviously big enough to beat the lure of other attractions. Look at Brinda Gupta, 41, who was a banker for 17 years in Australia before she joined Grey Worldwide as director, client servicing. She says “The stimulating environment and the creative process more than makes up.” She says she’s actually thankful to get this break and thinks nothing of a much smaller pay packet.
Then there’s Dr Mehul Shukla who practised as a family general physician for eight years after which he wanted to go beyond handling fever and diarrhoea. So he did an MBA and went into pharmaceutical marketing. That's where, while handling over-the-counter brands that he interacted with advertising agencies. It was like tasting blood. He knew he wanted to be on that side of business. Now, heading Lintas’ healthcare division, he uses all his education and experience.

Advertising is a place where only people passionate about it survive, it seems. There are no half measures. And the perks of excitement outweigh other, physical benefits like more reasonable working hours and remuneration. Chatterjee says he simply followed his heart. " I look back I realize that ideally I could have chosen to move into marketing within Hutch itself but this provides a wider horizon. The hunt for this horizon was a sub-conscious critical point that buoyed me to advertising".
There are of course adjustments to be made. Roy Chowdhury, a dyed-in-the-wool MNC marketing man took some time to change over but yet initially found the cultural change, the frank and chaotic environment and the absence of an HR team unsettling. “ I had researched the industry well”, says Hajare, “and I knew I would have to role up my sleeves and dirty my hands initially”.

And all said and done, danger lurks. All of them agree that the first thing they had to adjust to was the obviously less money. Though someone like Gupta is not concerned about the package others could be at a later date. Roy Chowdhury and Hajare both say they would be earning far more in their marketing jobs. Hajare says that a practical consideration later to simply have to earn more could make him look elsewhere. For Dr Shukla the change was possible because is doctor wife took the brunt of paying the bills. But he wouldn't want that to be forever.

So while death by monotony will certainly not strike them, there’s a niggling fear that taxes and rising costs could make them look out when the honeymoon with advertising ends. It will then be advertising’s loss.


(This article appeared as the lead in Billboard, the weekly advertising and marketing page of Hindustan Times in July `06)

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