‘Shutting doors on Pak will make peace remote’

Hindustan Times interviews ad guru Prahlad Kakkar on his opinion regarding present-day advertisement scene, in Indore on Friday.

Hindustan Times interviews ad guru Prahlad Kakkar on his opinion regarding present-day advertisement scene, in Indore on Friday.

Ad guru (Arun Mondhe/HT photo)

What is your opinion on the controversy over Pakistani artists working in India?

It is the people running two countries who engage in enmity and not necessarily the countrymen. So if we don’t keep lines of communication open with sports and art then chances for peace is going to get more and more remote. A nuclear war will leave no winner. So regardless of what ‘sabaks’ we teach them, there should always be a door left open for peace

How has the ad world changed in the past decade with the advent of social media?

It’s in the process of changing and what will happen in terms of segmentation is that 70% of our country is below the age of 35. So you approach them through normal media. It is very difficult to actually segment it, but they are all on the internet as 90% of them are on Facebook. So products and companies have started realising that the way to approach young people is actually through the net. We are still struggling to open a dialogue.

What is your advice to youngsters who aspire to become the next Piyush Pandey or Prahlad Kakkar?

We just didn’t bend the rules, we rewrote them. We need another generation of young people who will rewrite the rules. Young people today must learn the rules to rewrite them.

How is e-commerce going to disrupt the brick-and-mortar business?

E-commerce is very virtual where you don’t need a distributing system. But India is a very touch-and-feel market so you need to have a retail back up. If it’s an expensive product, you want to touch, taste and smell it. But youngsters are great risk takers. Of course, you have a system of returning products which actually makes it work.