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Shahir Ahmed is a hotshot creative with TeamYR Dubai 

Why are you in Advertising?
Because it’s the only desk job in the world that pays you to have fun.

Did you always want to get into advertising?
Without any exaggeration, I wanted to write ads since I was 14. Wrote my first ad when I was 18. Wrote my last ad 4 hours ago.

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Gavin Barrett is the man behind the Eveready Give Me Red campaign. He now runs his own shop in Canada. A lot of young creatives grew up watching your ‘Gimme Red Campaign”. Tell us about it.

This will be the only long answer, I promise.
It started with a great brief created by Subroto “SG” Ghosh, who was the group account director at the time.
It was an exciting time.
The Indian market was about to change.
Pepsi had begun making waves in the market. Coke had not yet launched.
MTV was entering India through bootleg tapes and Star TV had just begun broadcasting.
There was more money and younger people spending it, on new goods like walkmans and discmans.
Batteries were no longer destined for “transistor radios”.
That was the old Eveready. “The Chosen One for Your Transistor.”
I had to find a way to connect with what would later be called the MTV/Channel V generation.
I went through three rounds of creative development – some of them were fantastic ideas that I’ve saved to this day.
But Shanta (V Shantakumar) kept pushing me to go one further.

I knew Give me Red was the big idea when it came to me.I wanted the TV commercial to feel like something that could run on MTV – and so I wrote a spot that was both a parody and an homage.
I still have the original scripts – which I typed on the single beige Mac Apple SE that Rediff had at the time.
It was written in a program called MacWrite. It reminds me that I’m practically an ancient!
Rediff was going through an unusual time in which everybody collaborated in making sure that great work made it to market.
ACD Bugs Bhargava went to Calcutta and sold the idea to the client.
Shanta told me that Bugs dressed up as a doddering old man to represent the old brand, then left the boardroomand returned a few minutes later dressed as a hip young college student with a walkman and headphones.
GM Conrad Saldanha went to Hong Kong to supervise the special effects.
Sharad Nigvekar rose to the occasion and designed a completely fresh layout for the ads and outdoor.Lalit Ajgaonkar who was the film executive and a friend of mine from St Xavier’s, recommended Ehsaan Noorani, who wrote the killer track.
I had a blast writing everything and working with all these amazing people. I think it shows.
When I moved to Hong Kong, Rahul Bose took over as writer on the campaign.
He wrote an even bigger TV spot and the campaign kept going from strength to strength.
Still, that first campaign, especially the TV spot, was a breakthrough.
I heard they stopped using Give Me Red as a line only a couple of years ago. (more…)