2012 Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient: Piyush Pandey

Piyush Pandey doesn’t have a job.

He has been named the most influential man in Indian advertising eight years in a row by The Economic Times, India’s premier business paper. Under his leadership, O&M India has won twenty-seven Lions.

In 2004, Piyush became the first Asian to be the president of the Cannes jury.  He is the only Indian to have won three Grand Prizes at the London International Advertising Awards.

But Piyush doesn’t think of advertising as a job: “When you’re having so much fun, how can you call it work?”

Before he ‘quit working’, Piyush was a professional cricketer and tea-taster. Then in the 80s he put away his teacups and hung up his ball-guard (!) to join Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai. He became its national creative director in 1994. And was inducted to Ogilvy’s worldwide board in 2006.  More recently, Piyush has been appointed as Vice-Chairman, Asia-Pacific.

Under Piyush’s leadership, O&M India has become a creative powerhouse : It has been named India’s most creative agency ten times in the last eleven years. India’s leading business daily Economic Times has rated O&M as the numero uno agency across all parameters eight times in a row! With over 500 Indian and international awards gracing its shelves, Ogilvy India is ranked amongst the most creative offices in the entire network.  

Then 2009 happened. When every agency was dreading the global financial meltdown, O&M India bucked the trend under his stewardship and was awarded the Office of the year by Media magazine.

2009 was also the year that saw another rage consume one billion Indians, courtesy Piyush  He let loose the adorable Vodafone Zoozoos on the unsuspecting viewers and it set the country ablaze. It went on to capture every possible media space and imagination.

Piyush was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for 2010 by the Advertising Agencies Association of India.

Ad Club Mumbai voted Piyush’s commercial for the adhesive brand Fevikwik as the commercial of the century. And his work on Cadburys, as the campaign of the century. Not surprisingly, people in India refer to chocolates as Cadburys.

Piyush hates being called the Godfather of Indian Advertising, a title often thrust upon him. He would rather be known as the Minister of Fun at O&M Advertising.

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