Bow, Wow: How Cheeka the pug made Hutch a household name
Storyboard18 spoke to veteran ad men Piyush Pandey, Rajiv Rao, and filmmaker Prakash Varma, who discussed the making of the iconic film that’s left indelible pugmarks on the landscape of Indian advertising.
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When the creative team at Ogilvy & Mather (O&M) presented the first edit of the Hutch TVC featuring Cheeka the pug, the soundtrack was a piece of international music. Piyush Pandey, then group president and national creative director, was delighted, and said, “I love the film. It is fantastic. But write a song.”
And that suggestion, says Rajiv Rao, former National Creative Director, O&M, lifted the film.
Following Pandey’s suggestion, Mahesh V, the then Senior Creative Director, penned the lyrics, and Suraj Jagran sang the song ‘You and I, in this beautiful world.’ The music was by Roopak.
This was in 2003.
The genesis
Orange was launched by Hutchison Essar in the year 2000 in Mumbai. In other telecom circles like UP West and Uttarakhand, Punjab, Kolkata, Gujarat, and Delhi, the brand was marketed as Hutch. In 2005, nationwide, the company changed its name to Hutch.
Harit Nagpal, the then Marketing Director of the company approached O&M with a brief. Rao remembers that as the brand was new and was expanding all over the country, the plan was to reassure people that it still had the best network. “The thought was that it doesn't matter where you are and where you go, the network is going to be very strong,” he explained.
Rao, along with the late Mahesh V, the then Senior Creative Director, O&M, brainstormed and came up with the idea of a younger sister following her elder brother around. The idea was presented to the client, who loved it.
Post the presentation, when the creative was being discussed at the agency, Hephzibah Pathak, the then global brand director, suggested using a dog instead of a girl, said Rao.
The creative nobs at the agency loved the idea and decided to go with the dog as they felt that that would make the ad more appealing.
Rao explained: “It was never about showing one guy holding a phone and talking to another guy. It was about finding interesting ways of telling people how our network is so reliable, it follows you everywhere.”
The making
Prakash Varma, Founder Partner and Principal Director, Nirvana Films, has fond memories of his childhood spent in Kerala. During his holidays, after all his visiting cousins would leave, Varma along with a stick would walk around town and sometimes make friends with a dog somewhere. He tried to recreate that in the film, he told Storyboard 18.
Varma mentioned that he tried to shoot in and around Kerala, but it was not feasible. However, Goa was. “I managed to zero in on a couple of locations in Goa. Few ads were shot in Goa those days,” he recollected.
Jayaram, who was Varma’s neighbour in Bangalore, was cast as the boy in the film. As for the dog, the first option was a fox terrier, the second, a pug. On the first day of the shoot, much to everyone's dismay, none of the dogs cooperated.
“The dogs would not follow the boy. We did everything to get the dogs to follow. We lost a chunk of one day of shooting,” said Rao.
For a shoot, managing kids and dogs can both be challenging. You have to think like a kid, or like a dog. That means you need to have a lot of patience,” said Varma.
Cheeka came later that day. As Varma bonded with the dog and got a good vibe, they immediately went to the location and started shooting.
Rao added, “It was like love at first sight for the boy and the dog. The dog instantly took to the boy and started following him, and we shot the whole film. It was supposed to be a two-day shoot, but we managed in one day.”
Varma explained, “My storyboard is very detailed. I captured what the dog and the boy should do in every shot, hence the shoot was very well planned. But there are happy accidents. For example, the dog slipping on the steps. These things are not planned, but they're amazing shots. One after the other, I got 10 great shots.”
In one shot, Jayaram comes home and lies flat on his bed. Varma wanted the dog to also lie flat on the bed, but being a small and somewhat heavy breed, it’s difficult for pugs to do so. However, the shot came out beautifully, though Varma ended up rolling the camera for about four hours for a three-second shot.
“Cheeka’s owners were at the shoot throughout. After every shot, the dog would go back to them, and they would take care. The dog would always be in an AC environment,’’ said Rao. Varma recalled that Jayaram was initially not interested in being part of the film, and would lose it completely after three to four takes.
The tagline ‘Wherever you go, our network follows’, was coined post the making of the ad film. According to Rao, the telecom brand spent heavily on the campaign, where print, outdoor, and radio accompanied television advertising.
The aftermath
The film tasted instant success on release, as did the dog. The price of a pug went up from around Rs 7,000 to over Rs 35,000, said Rao, and added that pugs came to be popularly known as the `Hutch dog.’
Indeed, the ad became so popular that they were spoofed, and in 2005, Cheeka was the most downloaded wallpaper among Hutch customers. He featured in various other ad films of the telecom brand, and Goa became one of the more popular shooting locations. “The ads won a long list of awards in India, but unfortunately, didn't do well internationally,” bemoaned Rao.
According to Pandey, the success of the ad was because of the bravery of the client, who backed an idea that said nothing about telecom, yet it said everything about telecom. And it was also because of magic wrought by the trinity of Mahesh, Rao, and Varma.
“The most memorable thing is we were so moved emotionally,” reminisced Pandey.
