'Indu Balachandran's book is quirky, insightful and just like the author'

“For a book on the advertising industry where promiscuity is such a given that everyone is doing everyone or thinking of doing them, this book seems amazingly vegetarian, like the writer Indu herself,” joked ad filmmaker Prahlad Kakkar, in his signature style, at the book release of Indu Balachandran’s Don’t Go Away, We’ll Be Right Back: The Oops and Downs of Advertising compered by CEO, JWT, Colvyn Harris. 

After the launch Harris said, “It’s delightfully humorous and has insightful views on what actually happens in an ad agency. Recommended for anybody who is considering advertising as a profession.” 

“Indu’s written a book just like herself! Quirky, uncomfortably insightful, horribly truthful — and yet very kind to the profession,” he said.

“She writes like she speaks, with an easy galloping style. A must-read for all those who love advertising… And S&M,” Harris added. 

Insisting this was a book on advertising “for all those who thought programmes interrupt commercials,” Balchandran called it, “a roller coaster ride through life in an ad agency which documents all the trials, triumphs, trip-ups… and through it all, the happy ability to laugh at oneself!”

The book has nuggets of “wisdom” like: “(Client) Servicing people usually get married in the morning. That way, if the marriage doesn’t work out, they still have the rest of the day to catch up with their work,” and “Pitches happen when the client realises it’s a long time since he went to the circus, so sends word around town that he’s looking for a new agency.” 

Chairman of Lowe, India and filmmaker R Balki said, “The book is everything you wanted to know about advertising but too afraid to laugh! I fell in love with advertising… No book has made me feel better about my profession like this one.”

The book is divided into chapters based on the various departments of an ad agency. The narrative indulges in leg-pulling of the various eccentric characters and practices in the industry. It has many with personal insights and anecdotes from the author’s three-decade innings as an insider in the ad world.

When asked what was the one big change hard to miss in the world of advertising, Balchandran, without batting an eyelid, said, “We have moved from the Stone Age to garbage.” Balchandran was referring to the use of garbage cans for messages in present times.