'The Gary Sobers of the ad world'

The late Suresh Mullick, who was one of the pillars that made Ogilvy & Mather the creative powerhouse that it is today, often described S K (Mani) Ayer as a gifted all rounder. “Raconteur, political analyst, economist, a film and music buff… a Gary Sobers, if you know what I mean,” Mullick used to say about Ayer, the former managing director of O&M, who passed away in Chennai last week at the age of 75.

Mullick was spot on. Ayer’s greatest strength, according to Brinston Miranda, former chief executive of Frank Simoes Associates, who worked with the advertising legend in the late 1970s, lay in his ability to effectively manage both the executive and creative sides of the business without letting one dominate the other. “His immense quality was his ability to manage people without being too much of a showman,” says Miranda.

 

Peers acknowledge as much. Says Alyque Padamsee, former head of Lintas, who was Ayer’s contemporary when he took over as managing director of O&M in 1972, “Even if we had diagonally opposite points of view, he was never pugnacious. He treated people with a great deal of courtesy.”

This ability to manage people as well as his business meant that clients and employees were a happy lot under Ayer. Philips, for instance, assigned a large portion of its advertising account in the mid 1970s to the agency under the leadership of Ayer. Richardson Hindustan, which later became Procter & Gamble, also did the same. So did Johnson & Johnson.

To Ayer, in fact, goes the credit of turning around the fortunes of the agency when it was on the verge of being shut down in the early 1970s. Back from a two-year deputation in Australia, Ayer wasted no time in setting right the agency when he became its managing director at the age of 38. This quick turnaround earned him the sobriquet of ‘Super Mani’ within the network. “‘It was Michael J. Ball, former vice-chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, who began calling him Super Mani,” says Miranda. “Even David Ogilvy had the highest regards for the man and begged him not to leave when he decided to pass the baton of leadership to Ranjan Kapur in 1994-95.”

But Ayer who had groomed Kapur to be his successor chose to move on at the age of 60 - paving the way for a new leadership that took off from where he had left. Industry stalwarts unanimously agree that Ayer had, in fact, laid the foundation for a modern-day Ogilvy - a creative agency strong on strategy as well as servicing.

Kapur says Mani Ayer's “biggest strength was the ability to make every piece of work word perfect”.

The usual booming voice of Gerson Da Cunha quivers with emotion as he talks about his “dear friend” Ayer. Da Cunha, former head of advertising agency Lintas, now Lowe Lintas, remembers the days in the early 1960s, when Ayer participated in a session on copywriting organised by the former for the Advertising Club of Bombay. “He was one of the brightest of the lot,” said Da Cunha of the young Ayer, then in his mid-twenties.

Ayer was already employed with Benson’s Overseas Marketing & Advertising Services (BOMAS), which later became S.H. Benson India Ltd, then Ogilvy Benson & Mather (OBM), finally, Ogilvy & Mather, when he took up Da Cunha’s copywriting class. Incidentally, he wasn't part of the creative department at BOMAS. He was an account executive instead, who had been hired by Bal Mundkur, founder of Ulka Advertising, in 1958. Ulka is the present-day Draftfcb+Ulka.

Mundkur was an account director at BOMAS at the time. He needed an assistant. So Ayer was hired for the job. Prior to this, Ayer had worked briefly for a furniture company after passing out of Ismael Yusuf College in Mumbai, where he also met his wife Fakhira. The break at BOMAS was just what the young Ayer was seeking. He took it up enthusiastically. Says Mundkur, now living a retired life in Goa, “I found Mani to be professional, hardworking and easy to get along. He stood out.”

Ironically, Mundkur could not break Ayer’s association with BOMAS when he took off to set up Ulka in 1961. Ayer was too loyal to do so, sticking on for 36 years, seeing the transition from BOMAS to O&M. In the process, Ayer brought to the business razor-sharp focus and strategic thinking.

Ayar spent the last years of life in his beautiful beach home in Chennai. Among other accolades that he won, the most recent was the Hall of Fame by AAAI.