A boring meeting changed Lalwani’s life!

The five years that Vijay Lalwani spent in advertising saw him rising swiftly to become one of the youngest creative directors in India. But he wasn’t spared the eternal client-creative stand-off.
“Creatives are concerned with storytelling, while most clients care chiefly about whether their logo and brand name gets adequate display. Sometimes your clients force their idea down your throat, as they’re eventually paying for it all,” explains Lalwani.
Yeh dil mange snore
When you’re doing well, a little difference of opinion hardly matters.So, after typing out his resignation several times, Lalwani was always convinced to stay back by his CEO. Then he went though a fateful client meeting.
“The meeting was called simply to introduce me to a client but it turned out to be a disaster that went on for seven hours. They were a group of typical MBAs with their charts and jargon that complicated simple things and could put anyone to sleep. They had drawn a solar system on the board which displayed their product range and were throwing numbers and two-year projections,” says Lalwani.
Soul searching
Sitting through that meeting, Lalwani realised that he cannot spend his life planning strategies for marketing campaigns. He also had a strong inkling that he wasn’t passionate enough to drive it. “Creative people, unlike marketing heads, think of a consumer as a human being and not just a number.
This remarkable difference in perception was what pushed me to resign right after that meeting. If I continued, I would’ve done a bad job, as I had lost my passion for it,” confesses Lalwani.
Though an adventurous move, Lalwani had a Plan B but it suffered a huge blow with the crumbling market conditions. “I’d saved up enough to last me for two years, till I got a foothold in films. But the market crashed and now I had money to survive me only for six months.” Lalwani admits that getting around in the film industry can be a career by itself and he made his rounds to pitch his script.
Luckily, he managed to find the like-minded Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar who appreciated his script and gave him a break to direct Karthik Calling Karthik. Whether or not this was Lalwani’s best decision, it surely left him happier and more content than before.
Follow us on Twitter for more stories