India: Sukesh Kumar Nayak; Where The Heart Is

Now ECD at O&M India, Sukesh Kumar Nayak didn’t make his dad happy when he fell in love with advertising instead of pursuing a career in banking. But when his Partition-themed Google Reunion went viral, it aptly triggered a father-and-son reconciliation that means more to Nayak than all his many international awards

Sukesh Kumar Nayak never envisaged a career in advertising, he had planned to move to the UK and take up a place at university. He only applied for a copywriting opportunity as a way of killing some time during the months before starting his studies, but his heart was soon stolen by adland.

Nayak joined Draftfcb Ulka Mumbai in 1999, deciding to let a future in London pass him by and make a go of life in advertising instead. His father was nonplussed, he’d expected his son to go into banking and could not understand the decision, but Nayak stood firm.

“I was an economics graduate and was planning to continue my studies at Oxford. In the months before I was to leave India my father said I had to ‘do something’ with my time. Someone suggested a role in advertising and I said: ‘What’s that?’” Nayak recalls.

“I had an interview with the agency and I had no idea what was going on, zero! They asked me something idiotic like: ‘How would you sell a fridge to an Eskimo?’ and I replied that I would tell them it would allow them to have water without it turning into ice. I had so much fun there in the first four months that I realised I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. My father couldn’t understand what it was I was doing or why I wanted to do it.”

Obstinate about O&M

While still a novice in the industry, Nayak got involved in the ‘More car per car’ campaign for the launch of Tata Motor’s Indica and began to find his feet. Eager to learn more, he set his sights on Ogilvy & Mather India after discovering they were behind further innovative work for Tata Motors and for adhesive brand Fevicol.

Nayak was initially turned away by the agency and told to get more experience, but, undeterred, he went through three months of interviews, and managed to get a foot in the door in 2000.

Nayak has now been at O&M for 14 years and risen through the ranks, most recently being promoted from group creative director to ECD. His first independent account was for IAPA [Indian Association for Promotion of Adoption], producing a series of print ads for Adoption Awareness Week and he went on to create campaigns for big brands such as Unilever, Mattel, ICC Cricket World Cup, Indian Railways, Fox Crime and The Economist – working on one of the magazine’s first ever TV commercials.

“O&M has been a home to me. It has allowed me to fail in order to succeed. In our business that is a good thing because if you don’t make mistakes then you will never be able to do great work,” Nayak says. “If you’re cautious all the time then you will never come up with a fantastic idea. You have to be audacious.”

A perfect Partition parable

Nayak is perhaps best known for writing the online film Reunion for Google Search, which went viral and touched emotions all over the world. The film looks back to Partition and tells the story of a woman in India surprising her grandfather by reuniting him with his childhood friend (who is now in Pakistan) after six decades apart – with a little help from Google Search.

Nayak says: “Here we had a big company that wanted to go beyond technology and connect with people emotionally. We knew we had a good film, but we honestly had no idea how big it would become. We had people from Denmark writing to us, saying: ‘I don’t know what’s happening but I’m crying. Can you translate it?’ Because of this, you can now watch it in 16 different languages on YouTube. It’s for Google India but it applies to Google worldwide. I think, especially with technology, every good piece of work you do goes beyond the country you are in.”

Nayak says Google Reunion is a great example of the style of advertising in his country. Storytelling is a big part of Indian culture so a campaign needs to have a good tale at its heart. “Advertising in India is about telling good stories. It has its own language and its own character and that is something we need to retain because it makes us unique. Technology is just a tool – it’s the story that sells. The day you rely on technology alone is the day you are dead and finished in this business.”

Nayak has won awards at Cannes Lions, The One Show, the Clios, D&AD, Adfest, Spikes Asia, Young Guns, London International Awards and others, but the recognition that means the most to him is his father’s. “When Reunion went viral, my father called me. It was the first time in 15 years that he had phoned me first, rather than me phoning him. He asked me: ‘Is this your work? It’s beautiful’. That call was better than any award that I have ever won,” Nayak says. 

Loving the daily challenge

Nayak is adamant that, although the advertising industry is not where he was originally meant to end up, it is where he belongs and it is where he wants to remain.

“Every year I look at the work I have managed to create and ask myself whether I’m still doing what I want to do [and the answer is that] I always know I love where I am; my job gives me a new challenge every day. I wake up every morning and I am dying to go to work,” he explains. “The day I wake up and don’t want to go in is the day that I will think again about what I want to do. Although, to be honest, in order for me to leave advertising, it would have to be for a new challenge that made me shit-scared.”