As an old advertising and brand communications professional in India, I realise that I am writing this post at the time of year when companies gear up for annual appraisals, promotions, increments, etc. It’s a time when employees and company leadership take stock of people’s careers, how they’re faring, what areas of weakness if any that might require additional training and/or work opportunities, and the like. If you happen to work in a good, professionally managed company, these take place regularly as a matter of routine, and are taken seriously. I am not an HR person, nor do I need to be one to know how this system works, having been through the process myself umpteen years and also having hired people for the advertising agency I worked for at the time, especially the Ogilvy Delhi office.
Having worked for many advertising agencies during my long career, I also know that not all advertising agencies, even those that are large and well-established, have such a system in place. Let me just say that it is not common practice across the industry, which ought to be a matter of serious concern to all company leaders, especially at a time when the advertising industry is itself weak and threatened by many disruptions, and the professional calibre of people in the industry is declining, as I have written before in a separate piece on why the industry needs to be saved.
Some of the kinds of people from whom the industry needs to be saved are rank outsiders, such as PR agency chiefs who think they have a chance to strike it big in advertising, when they haven’t a clue even about their PR business. In all the disruption that has been taking place in the industry for around two decades now, there are many such outsiders from related communication disciplines such as PR and even digital marketing or content creation companies, etc who think that they can all create advertising campaigns and assist clients in their marketing efforts, without ever having worked in the industry and having little to no knowledge or understanding of the business.
Indeed, some PR agency chiefs – and I mean Perfect Relations, of course, the only PR agency I have worked for – think they can even hijack your career, all the knowledge, understanding, experience that you have built over decades in the business and just make it their own. Just like that. How? Magic! Am I sick and tired of hearing this word – magic – including in the stupid strapline for Coca Cola, “real magic”, whatever that is supposed to mean! So, in their reckoning, magic is to make you someone else, one of them, most likely.
Perfect Relations has to be my first encounter with a set of entrepreneurs – so they like to call themselves – who are so lacking in skills, competence, knowledge of the business, that you wonder how they ever managed to run the agency for this long and survive. From what little I saw or experienced during my short stint with them in their Delhi office, I could tell that they mostly fly by the seat of their pants. They get by through their “connections” who are almost all either political leaders, in media, or corporate bigwigs, and they get by through their gift of the gab. In the process, I am sorry to say, they have also spread their unprofessional work ethic far and wide through government, the corporate world and the media, corrupting them all. Deep knowledge and an understanding of advertising and brand communications, as well as being able to create it or lead it, is sorely lacking.
How they manage to survive is perhaps evident from the fact that they latch on to other people’s careers, ideas and thoughts, their work and even their lives. Perfect Relations sold themselves to Dentsu Advertising according to an article in The Economic Times way back in 2010-2011, I think, if I recall correctly, from guessing that I had attended an interview with Dentsu Advertising in Delhi well before I even joined Perfect Relations. I wonder what Dentsu was thinking at the time they acquired Perfect Relations! Anyway, since then, these PR agency idiot bosses have been after my life and my work when they have no business meddling in any of it. To the extent that they even meddle with Microsoft and with Canva where my work is shown as “personal”, as I shared in a LinkedIn post recently. Their meddling with many other tech companies, including Google, WordPress, MailChimp, Samsung, etc are also well-known and notorious.
The reason I have decided to finally write this post is to put down what I think are the biggest problems for professionals working amongst such entrepreneurs. First and foremost is the hiring process and the discussions that take place. I was appalled by the way I was made to meet senior folk from four different group companies of theirs and the kinds of discussions that took place between us, including with the CEO of Perfect Relations who told me that “nothing was cast in stone and they could even get a truck account”, when I enquired what kinds of businesses I would be working on. At another time, he also said something about “taking the bull by the horns” to me, and so when I said in a LinkedIn post recently that people who read too much into other people’s emails – including about films they might have seen – are not fit to be in the corporate world, I meant these kinds of exchanges. It was no better than my discussion with their other chief, Dilip Cherian, years ago at IIC in Delhi, when he told me “Oh, there are many slots” when I was trying to explore PR as a career option after years in advertising. It is apparent from such behaviour that they don’t think it necessary to engage in sensible and intelligent conversations with a senior woman professional being recruited, much less even capable of it.
The remuneration package too is just made as an offer without discussion. Not with the heads of the company, nor with their HR head, considering they had one. The remuneration package might not include what we professionals in the industry consider standard practice, such as medical reimbursements in my case. Nor PF deductions, except that on my leaving the company, a new HR manager handed me a form for PF withdrawal, when there was no statement to say that they had made PF deductions from my salary and were also contributing to it. From the attitude of the company, I got the sense that as entrepreneurs, they think they own you when they hire you. There are no proper processes in place and worse, they instruct their finance head to indulge in unprofessional nonsense which I have written about previously on my blog.
Entrepreneurs’ attitudes about women professionals, whether as colleagues or as subordinates, also seem to be way behind the times. They have perhaps themselves not worked closely with women colleagues enough to know that women are as good if not better sometimes than men at their jobs and ought to be respected as equals and as professionals at the workplace. I have been stopped from making a point at an internal review of a presentation that I had written and was making, by Dilip Cherian, one of the chiefs of Perfect Relations. At another time, he made rude personal comments about how fat my wallet was, when he breezed into my office cabin that I was sharing with another account/brand planner, Devdarshan Chakraborty. I was so aghast and taken aback by this kind of talk from a founder/entrepreneur, else I would have told him, “Sure, on the paltry salary Perfect Relations pays me, my wallet looks fat to you!” They have no idea how to conduct themselves and speak to women colleagues at the office and at meetings.
In the absence of any prior work experience or understanding of the advertising and marketing industry or even PR in the proper sense, such entrepreneurs’ response to clients’ communication needs and demands are also likely to be sub-standard. It has been my experience at Perfect Relations working on MasterCard, Radico-Diageo and Nestle, that the bosses are out of depth in dealing with important issues and do not provide adequate responses. In fact, this is the right time and place for me to also mention how even the word client is misconstrued to mean a customer in the sex trade, or a personal romantic/sexual relationship.
Connected to the issue of entrepreneurs thinking and behaving as if they own you, is the problem of interference and meddling in one’s work and life even decades after one has left the company. They do not know where to draw the line and that once a person has left your employment, he or she has nothing to do with you and your organisation. It is completely unprofessional and unacceptable that former bosses and company chiefs think they have a right to meddle in my life or my work, especially when they have done everything possible to wreck my career, along with their cronies in RK/Swamy BBDO. This, even years after my writing an email to the bosses of both companies asking them to leave me alone and not to meddle, else I will be forced to take legal action.
As I have shared in posts on LinkedIn, and in previous blog posts, they have meddled with my luggage at Leo Packers’ warehouse in Chennai where it was stored for several months in 2004, and in transit, including with my books. Their meddling and interference also extends to my family – my aged parents, grandmums and my younger sister, whom they have been desperately trying to make me – as well as former in-laws, extended family, friends, former colleagues, and my parents’ friends as well. This is simply too much and unacceptable behaviour from senior people in the corporate world. They have hijacked not just my identity, my career and my life, they have also hijacked my friends.
I must mention here that after months of complaining to Vodafone Idea and them even replacing the SIM card on my Samsung smartphone, I am still unable to make or answer calls on my postpaid connection in Goa. This, when I am paying the bills regularly, and have been a customer of Vodafone in India since 2000/2001 in Delhi when I was working with Ambience D’Arcy Advertising at the time. I suspect one of their main reasons for meddling with Vodafone is to prevent me from contacting any of my old friends or colleagues and speaking to anyone. Meanwhile, they have hacked into WhatsApp chats and emails, long ago.
I have never had to encounter such unprofessional scoundrels in my life or in my long career in advertising and brand communications in India ever before and it sickens me. Before my relocating to Chennai to work with RK Swamy/BBDO for my second stint with the company in 2003, that is. And then joining Perfect Relations in Delhi in 2006, which was like going from the frying pan into the fire. Besides, I think in many respects the two circuses are also acting in concert. The exploitation of women that is now taking place, is not merely in terms of job opportunities, career path, remuneration and the like, that I have mentioned before in this piece, but in terms of hijacking your entire life and work and making it their own, so that these unprofessional bosses and so-called entrepreneurs can achieve their hidden and toxic agenda of going global on the back of someone else’s knowledge, skill sets, work experience and competence.
Which brings me to entrepreneurs in the advertising industry in India. I have worked for advertising agencies that were entrepreneurial before in my career as well, but they were always professionally managed and run. Typically, senior management from advertising agencies often leave to start something of their own, when further career growth in the industry doesn’t seem possible. The people heading these agencies are professionals from the industry and know the business well, in order to be able to lead a venture of their own. The eponymously named RK Swamy/BBDO itself was an entrepreneurial venture, started by Mr. RK Swamy and went into a partnership with BBDO Worldwide, as the first advertising agency in India to allow majority foreign shareholding at the time. But as someone who has worked with the agency twice – in Delhi and later in Chennai – I can tell you that there was nothing BBDO about the agency. It remained a family-owned and family-run company. Now, as it happens, the advertising agency RK Swamy/BBDO has been disbanded; they and BBDO have parted ways years after BBDO set up a separate agency, BBDO India, in the country. And RK Swamy family has started a marketing services company that even went public recently in India.
That the same agency could have different practices and processes in different offices, Delhi and Chennai, told me something was wrong. I was in a bind since I needed a job soon as I had responsibilities towards my aged parents and grandmums, and was forced to opt for a consultancy with them in Chennai based on their low salary package, when I have otherwise been a full-time employee throughout my career. That the company’s senior management could engage in such unprofessional practices with a former woman employee who has aged parents and grandmums to look after, suggests a kind of sexist, insensitive and exploitative work ethic to me. This, when both the founders of the agency – sons of Mr RK Swamy – have at least long professional experience in the industry, and ought to have known better. The leadership at Perfect Relations is even more decrepit, and from my experience don’t even have the adequate knowledge, experience or understanding of the business to lead. Their resorting to unprofessional practices and behaviour at work makes their entrepreneurship the worst kind that there is, and ought not to be tolerated in the industry. Entrepreneurs who shamelessly promote their wives’ careers on the back of someone else’s work and career, they think nothing of turning me into Devi Cherian, or, well, Devika Bulchandani!
I must state unequivocally at this stage before concluding this piece, that I am not an entrepreneur and have never been one ever in my life. Nor am I an intrapreneur – a new term coined to allow employees to start a new venture without having to leave the organisation. At least there has been no such discussion with me ever. I have always held proper managerial positions in the industry, at every advertising agency I have worked with in the past. And having had the benefit of working with some of the finest multinational agencies such as Ogilvy – also in two stints – in the Delhi office, I know what growing through the ranks of an organisation means and how it prepares you for senior and more responsible leadership roles as one’s career progresses.
Entrepreneurs in the true sense of the term are people who have innovative business ideas of their own and a clear vision of what they wish to achieve. Every businessman or businesswoman is not an entrepreneur. Having said that, I must say that I do have ideas of my own on advertising and brand communications and I think these could bring about a transformation in the way companies and the industry approaches brand-building which I have been sharing in the context of many businesses and brands on my blog. I haven’t had the opportunity to discuss them with any company or organisation so far, despite my appeals on LinkedIn for work, including freelance writing assignments in brand communications to bring me some income while I continue to be out of work. So-called entrepreneurs like the unprofessional PR agency idiot bosses are busy trying to hijack my career, ideas and work and make it theirs, in the meantime.
I must say that I get the strong sense that the same unprofessional PR agency idiot bosses have been meddling with Ogilvy at the highest levels – and perhaps even with WPP – and are turning them into circuses as well. If they think that they can make plans behind my back and over my head, with my work and career, they are sadly mistaken. I will not entertain any such idea until it is discussed in detail with me first. In any case, I have ruled out any discussion with unprofessional PR agency idiots or the RK Swamy lot, since I know they are not capable of any, and on principle I refuse to have anything to do with so-called leaders who have destroyed my career and still continue to wreak havoc in my life and work. And no, none of Ogilvy’s Devika Bulchandani or Liz Taylor nonsense will work with me either.
I have written this piece so that women in my industry and elsewhere are warned about the kinds of things that can be inflicted upon us, if we aren’t careful. If we aren’t always checking and double-checking every little thing and making sure such entrepreneur bosses are not trying to trip us at every opportunity they get. Where one’s identity can be messed around with. Where, based on guessing phone and WhatsApp conversations and reading emails and hacking into all of it, so-called entrepreneurs make business decisions. And engage in mischief and corporate malfeasance and misdemeanour of all kinds.
If any of these kinds of company bosses dares to justify two decades of mischief and unprofessional behaviour under the pretext of “background checks”, I say that we women professionals need to start doing background checks on our company bosses and employers. I am not kidding. Especially the kinds who are obsessed with women’s appearances and clothes, as well as those who are perverts, and engage in dehumanizing behaviour with women professionals. The kinds of entrepreneurs who have such a huge sense of entitlement over women and think they have “rights” over them.
Not in the name of entrepreneurship, thank you. But for the sake of women professionals feeling confident and safe enough at work, so they can be high achievers wherever they go.
The featured image at the start of this post is by Smartworks on Unsplash
Note: I have shared images from Pixabay in this post that I am certain are the mischievous work of the same unprofessional PR agency idiot bosses that I have written about in this article.
The one on marketing is called “hand” on Pixabay, which is part of mischief that they have been doing with head and hand, from reading my old emails, and trying to make me Sarada, my former junior colleague at Ogilvy Delhi whom I hired and who worked under my guidance and supervision.
The other image featuring a woman shushing us, is to cover up their previous mischief when they got ASCI (Advertising Standards Council of India) to create and share a post on LinkedIn long ago, with a faceless woman wearing a dark brown hoodie in the same shush gesture, and it was about advertising people creating adverts as posts for clients, but not revealing that they were being paid for it, or some such bizarre subject. I commented on the post shared by the ASCI chief, Manisha Kapoor and she said something about guidelines, which wasn’t very convincing as a reply. I think it was the very same unprofessional PR agency idiots who got ASCI to create and share the post to do mischief with the brown-coloured outfit that they have been mucking around with for decades, along with their cronies in RK Swamy/BBDO Chennai. I must state that the brown jumper that I wore on a visit to Martell Cognac from Ogilvy Advertising Delhi in 1996, was not a hoodie, nor do I usually wear them. This illustrates what I mean when I say that they are obsessed with women’s looks and clothes and not in the least concerned with work. This Pixabay visual is also to do mischief with video, and make me Sarada, as if she’s the only one who can work on video or TV adverts; I am not on Facebook, though I do share my blog videos which I make with stock footage, on my blog’s YouTube channel. Please note the model’s glamorous looks, fire-engine red lipstick included!
The only work-related photo that I have in my possession, since my old photo album was flicked from my flat in Chennai in 2004, and the other ones were chewed up by termites along with carton-loads of my books at my aged parents’ flat in Goa, where my aged father and I now live. Standing third from left in a dark blue saree, is me, Geeta Sundaram, attending an Ogilvy media workshop in Delhi sometime in 1994 I think, during my second stint with the agency in Delhi. I was the only person from the creative department as a Creative Group Head or Associate Creative Director (writer) selected to attend this programme, which was conducted by Andre Nair from Ogilvy Hong Kong.
Peripatetic Perch 