Piyush Pandey (1955-2025): Bharat’s Adman

 POLITICIANS AND corporate titans, actors and sport stars. Everyone has a Piyush Pandey story, most unusual for an advertising man. If Alyque Padamsee was the God of English-speak­ing club-class admen, Pandey was the fresh air of Bharat.

His work carried the aroma of train station chai, of freshly painted modest first homes, of the deserts of Rajasthan, and the honest sweat of a hotly contested cricket match. He opened the doors and windows of tony ad agen­cies and their corporate clients to what the aam admi and aurat wanted. He told the story of ordinary lives, special moments, and of shared laughs.

Unlike the celebrity cul­ture of contemporary ad­vertising which he likened to CSR for stars who failed at the box office. His was the ultimate triumph in Mumbai’s corporate world, a universe that couldn’t contain his casual-printed shirts, his handlebar moustache and his ready laughter. And though he went on to own two sea-facing homes in Mumbai and Goa, he remained the devoted brother whose first home in his karmabhu­mi was his sister Ila Arun’s two-bedroom flat.

Campaigns for Cadbury, Asian Paints, Fevicol, even for BJP, he had a varied portfolio. He brought to each campaign things he had learnt along the way, playing for Rajasthan in the Ranji Trophy, making friends at St Stephen’s Col­lege, and the conversations around the dining table at his parents’ Jaipur home which he shared with his eight siblings.

He saw things that others didn’t, because as Anand Mahindra posted on X, his genius was fuelled by his heart. He saw a Fevicol ka jod in a village truck carrying an exces­sive number of passengers; a pug that follows a boy across a Goa town like the Hutch network; and the rebranding of polio drops as do boond zindagi ke. Ad­vertising for him was not a few clever lines meant to impress clients. It was peer­less poetry, instant com­munication, and effective engagement. Sometimes, the ads outlived the products.

He was also the ar­chitect of BJP’s Acche Din campaign in 2014, and of Modi Hai Toh Mumkin Hai in 2019. I remember asking him whether he would do something similar for other parties. “I am not Prashant Kishor,” he told me with a laugh. That was Piyush Pandey. He did what he believed in, not what was profitable to do.

In so many ways, he gave advertising a higher purpose, liberating it from Kolkata’s boxwallaisms and Mumbai’s theatricality. He was the first Made-in- India guru who may have graduated to business-class travel, but carried the swag­ger of a man made from the earth, of the earth.

There have been other iconic campaigns—the long-running Amul girl who responds to current events is brilliant market­ing, Sylvester da Cunha’s baby. Hamara Bajaj was created by Padamsee for Lintas (and also used as a tribute to Pandey, saying Hamara Piyushbhai). But there have rarely been so many iconic campaigns designed by one man. His memoir is a lesson in life, not merely advertising. One important lesson: Real research is where you pack your bags and stop by the roadside. “You’ll find truth in dhabas, not data sheets,” he said. “Talk to people—they’ll tell you what works.”

Har ghar kuch kehta hai was the classic Asian Paints line. In Pandey’s case, every ad meant some­thing deeper. Like all the best entertainers, he was as much a sociologist as he was an adman. He gave meaning to what would have been crass material­ism in a post-liberalised world. He made our choices memorable.