GREY MATTERS

His childhood was “an incredible experience with a mixture of culture, values and humor.” Growing up in a house full of bookshelves, he wondered at a tender age what the books were about! Born into a family where mental nourishment was never in short supply, he eventually turned out to be a bookworm. Presently, he is the most celebrated advertising guru of our time — one who has been passionately juggling the creative and business aspects of advertising with resounding success. He is none other than the ace advertising and communication professional Syed Gousul Alam, aka, Shaon. COLORS’ Mustafa Zaman recently spoke to him and below is an account of his line of ascent along with some valuable reflections on the discipline

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A hyphenate who takes to ideation, creation and marketing with equal zest, Syed Gousul Alam Shaon steerheads Grey Dhaka’s spectrums of creative projects. In the last 11 years, he, along with his team, made sure that they remained at the top as a creative business enterprise besides engaging in projects that became the talk of the town.
Under his able guidance, Grey Dhaka has reached new thresholds winning back-to-back national and international awards including the prestigious APAC Effie award and Spikes Asia, Ad Stars Busan and first ever Gold Lion from Bangladesh for zero-electricity air cooler made from plastic bottles in 2016. Grey Dhaka has also made history with the most flash-mobbed video for ICC World T20 Bangladesh 2014. According to Fox News, it was bigger than J Lo and Pitbull’s World Cup song.
At his spacious office, after a long wait to meet the man in person for an interview, one found him to be an unlikely ‘head’ of an agency — jovial to the core of his being. While his busy schedule keeps playing havoc with his personal pursuit, of which he has many, the man who inhales more than just air and exhales stunning new ideas, Shaon wears his learning lightly.
Coursing us through his accidental beginning in advertising, he sounded as if things had happened to him before he decided to navigate through areas of opportunities. If the cultural icon of the contextual renegades, Lalon, the 19th century bard, once warned us of the futility of ‘roaming around Delhi and Lahore,’ Shaon was doing exactly that. In Delhi, where he was pursuing study in economics, he was roaming around Connaught Place, browsing for a pair of sunglasses of a famous brand one of his friends so earnestly requested.
It was in 1997, following his graduation in economics, when he was somehow obligated to stay back in Delhi for six more months, that things started to happen to him.
“I too, following the dictates of our time, wanted to do a computer course during this break. One day in Connaught Place where most outlets of foreign brands were then housed, I found myself in the house of Bolton. The owner Razib Shetty was there. I overheard Shetty, whom I never met before, feeling at a loss about what to do during the month-long Winter Festival that was ahead of them,” Shaon recalls and hastens to add, “I just butted in by saying you can easily have daily musical soiree on your porch. Hearing this he insisted that I organize it on behalf his company.”

This is how the man poised to receive a higher degree in economics turned to the business of promotion. This serendipitous beginning involved quick consultation with Shaon’s neighbourhood musicians he “daily chatted with at Satyaniketan, South Delhi, during breakfast at the local restaurant.” The area was famous for its Goanese musical bands that played in the city’s five star hotels. Shaon just shouldered the task of organising the daily show for Mr. Shetty during the Fest.
The month-long celebration ended in a grand success. With that, the course of this would-be economist swerved forever towards a new passion — advertising and promotion.
“Razib Shetty, a billionaire, invited me at his home. Handing me a brochure of JNU he said: You don’t know yet! there is a world famous advertiser living inside you.” Shaon remembers the prediction in exact words. Shetty thought a JNU degree in the relevant field was an imperative. Shaon ran this by his girl-friend Feema, now his wife, who also felt right about Shetty’s assessment. “Feema was visibly excited since she had a brush with the advertising world in Dhaka by way of a commercial she had done before I left for Delhi,” Shaon remembers.
The man who was set to pursue further studies in Delhi School of Economics, and who had his impressionable mind already soaked in the stimulating ideas from the likes of Shukhamoi Bose Amartya Sen, Koishic Basu, by attending their lectures, decided to proceed on to an entirely new game.
“I was a descent student … probably things would have worked out for me. My area of interest was macroeconomics,” Shaon says in a state of rumination.
Initially his father was in shock when “his son decided to study Mass Communication at a time when everyone was doing MBA.” Shaon’s entry to JNU was without much hurdle. He was a “unique package” — An eloquent Bangladeshi set to enter the advertising world.

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In 1999, after completing his degree, Shaon came back to Dhaka and become the first ‘strategic planner’ at Unitrend. “There was no concept of strategic planner in Dhaka’s industry back then. So I was apparently exploring a new field,” he says.
After few years, Shaon went back to Delhi for a stint with McCann Erickson, where he worked under Santosh Desai — the man who had left a lasting impression on him. “This is the time when my eyes were opened, you know, after generating Badhisattva. I became conscious of the cultural context, developed an understanding of the subconscious and archetypes,” he adds. In sum, his Delhi job worked like an excellent primer.
Shaon came back in 2005 to join Asiatic where he worked with the stalwarts of the cultural field. For the first time in his life, he chose to play a dual role: “I was the creative director and strategic planner working in two separate but related fields.”
Advertising in Bangladesh was in a state of infancy. “TV commercials were about singing and dancing. The difference that we were able to make came from the audience’s end. The economy was booming, and as a consequence you had ten brands in one category. So, audience understanding was deemed important for advertisers for a change,” Shaon sums up the initial drift towards the transformation that would soon follow.
In a field where there were no major researches to peg one’s decision on, one had to develop an understanding by taking hunches or educated guesses. Whatever the means, understanding the consumers was crucial to the new environment of creativity. Shaon frames it in a few words: “We needed to know the anthropology of our audience; cultural upbringing and history had to be dwelt upon. And the most important thing was whether we understood the ‘subconscious’ mind of the masses.” He further adds, “We had to leaf through books by Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung to enhance our understand.”
On the question of client satisfaction Shaon has his own theories. “Any new idea is bound to make the client uncomfortable. They have this habit of being on the safe side by emulating what existed before. Breaking away from a set course is always difficult,” he opines.
1999 onward, Shaon was driving great projects that would finally initiate new ways of doing advertising. He even acted in some, though he feels it was never his forte. As for the area he comfortably plods, the challenge was to take it beyond the soggy, syrupy tagline, beyond some rote motion of dancing and singing. “I feel you need to have some intellectual input here,” He sounds emphatic. “However, the environment too has gone through a sea change after the emergence of the social media, and today one is more receptive to new ideas,” feels Shaon.
Through his acting Shaon brings a distinct flavour to the TVC. Though he feels it was simply an adventure he was forced to embark on at the behest of his friend Amitabh Reza. In numerous TV commercials and television dramas, his participation made a difference.
As a songwriter he hit the bull’s eye with the ICC song during the T20 cricket tournament in Dhaka. “ICC had no huge allocation for this. So, we asked them to give us what they had, which stood at 10,000 USD. We offered to make a small music video. We used ten university campuses to shoot this song and our hired choreographer inserted a simply dance move,” explains Shaon.
Char chhokka hai hai, ball goraya gelo kai — the song, written in local dialect, sung by Fuad Al Muqtadir, set a new record by becoming the biggest flash-mobbed video of the year. It went viral all over the world.
The ‘cultural concepts’ the guru now stands for came about not just by cramming writings of the eggheads. “You have to know your country — there are advertising people who do not even know Dhaka in its actuality,” he argues.
“Advertising and communication today is more about finding solutions. What are the problems you have solved is the moot question. Both technology and digitization play a role,” reflects Shaon, an advocate of ‘structured thinking.’ Žižek’s formulations in ‘The Courage of Hopelessness’ caught his attention. Additionally, his own idea of ‘cultural context’ easily allows him to tackle the ‘reality’ of this country without setting a false prism of idealism.
“You need to become a voracious reader and pick up your ideas from your own context. The man who grew up soaked in modern contemporary Bengali literature has his own list of priorities on how to develop ‘original vision.’ “You might stumble upon something good in a literary work from where we may gather your visual references. For example, the opening chapter of Raktagolap, a novel by Syed Haq, can provide a unique solution to a scene that seeks to depict rain,” he explains.
Years of producing smash hits have only left this advertising guru more humbled — “When I review my early works, they look rather ‘arcane’ to me now,” he says with a smile.

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Reading and writing began at an early age at home. “The habit still continues with me. Since we have been writing scripts for adverts, I had always strongly felt the need to be in movie making. In pop culture, cinema is important. The Bengal that I have visualised in the last Grameen TV commercial, where poet and filmmaker Quamruzzaman Kamu is seen in the role of a father communicating with his daughter — this relationship is an eternal one. This is a work of great socio-aesthetic value,” he points out.
Shaon’s first major contribution to cinema came in the shape of the script of Aynabaji, which he had co-written with Anam Biswas. It was Shaon who convinced his friend Amitabh Reza, who debuted as a director with this film, to remain within the bounds of popular cinema. Aynabaji opened in the theatres with a Bang, only to continue to send tremors across the country and beyond.
The movie brought them to a new threshold. In the National Film Award 2016, in Bangladesh, Aynabaji won in the best director category as well as in the screenwriter and costume categories, while it won the Best Film award at the 16th Tele-Cine Award in Kolkata.
At present, Shaon’s eyes are set on a new horizon — Hollywood. Following Aynabaaji’s fabulous success, Shaon and others coursed through one high-profile festival to another. “In California, we met a producer from San Francisco named Eric Jadus. He had a book in his hand titled Rickshaw Girl by an author named Mitali Perkins. In New York Library System, this was listed among the best hundred books in young adult category. Eric came to Dhaka with this book and met Amitabh Reza with the offer to make a movie in Dhaka which would be a ‘global cinema,'” Shaon enthusiastically gives away the developing scenario. With it, a new possibility has emerged.
Syed Gousul Alam Shaon has crossed many a threshold besides managing both worlds — home and work — with poise. He has two kids — a son and a daughter. As a cultural mediator, he has been in a position to traverse a gamut of interests, not only to create sensation, but to bridge the gap between worlds — the real and the world of representation, imagination and creativity.