The legend who played to his weakness, Marketing & Advertising News, ET BrandEquity

“As a teenager, Walter Saldanha was chucked out of his father’s house for not passing 10th standard in first division.
He took a job in a tiny restaurant as a dishwasher. From there, he taught himself stenography and entered J Walter Thompson, which was then run
by expats.
In the 1960s, it was all about the English language. He taught himself English so thoroughly that when you read a letter written by him, you would say this is written by an erudite person. He would rehearse his presentations in front of a mirror.
Stints in other ad agencies followed and Saldanha rose to managing director of one formidable agency of those times. That’s when he picked 14 people to start his own agency, Chaitra, partly because all the vendors were not getting paid in his existing workplace. In his view, the money was not being used for purposes it should be used. Chaitra subsequently ranked among the top five-six agencies in India.
In a business full of massive egos, where everyone thinks they are the best in the world and nobody else counts, Saldanha’s humility was refreshingly disarming. Here was a man who could be so candid about his weaknesses, his limitations or lack of an illustrious background. That propelled him to great heights in his career.
When television was taking off, he gave me the support to hire Balwant Tandon, the famous writer from Lintas who scripted the Surf ‘Lalitaji’ commercial among others. Not once did he say, ‘Let me meet Tandon or let me assess him myself.’ In fact, he said, “‘You are a television-era executive. If you think he’s the best guy, go ahead and
hire him.’”
Saldanha always figured out what lay ahead. In the era of colour photography, he gave the creative team that sense of freedom, the budgets and the support for Chaitra to become a major award-winning agency in the 1970s.
He knew discipline mattered in an agency setup where people are creative, but not necessarily disciplined. As a counterpoint, and you will see this theme repeated in many founders, Saldanha came to the agency religiously at
8.30 am every morning. He didn’t need to, but he did.
He would spend the next one hour checking all the artworks that the agency had produced till the previous evening and locate all the typos. Saldanha would say, ‘It’s not just about creativity. At the end of it, execution is all about attention to details.’”
— Arvind Sharma worked with Walter Saldanha from 1983-1999. (Text: As told to Prasad Sangameshwaran.)
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