MUMBAI: Walter Saldanha passed away silently almost unknown to many in the advertising and marketing world over the weekend. For those who don’t know of him, he is the reason the creative shop Leo Burnett – which is part of the Publicis group today – is around in India.
Actually, Leo Burnett was called Chaitra Leo Burnett for a long time and Chaitra Advertising for even longer even before that.
Walter Saldanha and Brendan Pereira co-founded Chaitra Advertising in 1972, in the midst of “one of the worst recessions in advertising history.” Walter was this mild mannered, extremely slender, bespectacled man who looked more like a suited accountant than an advertising professional. He actually began his career as a typist in 1947 a little shy of 16.
Four years later somehow or the other he landed up at advertising agency J Walter Thompson and worked there in various roles before joining Aiyars – an advertising agency – where he and creative wizard Brendan formed a bond. They worked together on many accounts, Brendan the creative type and Walter the client management guy who had to clean up after his colleague had an argument which turned wild with the client losing his top.
Walter rose to become MD of the agency which was owned by Aiyar and had some of the more prestigious accounts at that time. The owner had promised to give them equity but when it came to delivering on the promise he procrastinated every time, despite all the good work they put in. This was getting too much for both Walter and Brendan. And they showed it. One day, Walter returned from one of his domestic client meetings only to find his office taken over by Aiyar and he was informed the board had decided to eject him as managing director.
This broke the soft spoken but tough-as-nails Walter who burst into tears in front of Brendan (he was offered the role to run the agency replacing Walter, which Brendan of course refused. In fact, it made him furious.)
A lot of drama happened after that, but, to cut a long story short, the duo took along some of the gee-whiz advertising professionals of that time working at Aiyars who were livid at the treatment meted out to Walter.
Sheila Sista, Jean Durante, Prakash Deshpande, Shantaran, Julien Almeida, Eddie Myers, Arvind Gosavi, among others were taken on as shareholders of Chaitra. The agency was born out of this bond the two shared between themselves and 12 other team members, with no clients and out of Brendan’s flat in Colaba.
Amongst Chaitra’s first clients was this pan chewing businessman in white kurta pyjamas who wanted to promote his brand of polyester fabric. When both Walter and Brendan met him at his office in Dhobi Talao (Mumbai) he kept on wiping his mouth with the towel as he chewed his pan. His brand was Vimal and he was going to launch his first retail showroom at Roxy cinema in Mumbai. Amongst the first questions Dhirubhai Amabni asked the two was “So, what business do you have, who are your clients,?” Both Brendan and Walter told him they had no clients. “Ha, so I’m going to be your first client. Very good. You take my business.”
He wanted invitation cards, bags, name boards, leaflets to be designed and a press announcement to be made. He also gave Walter and Brendan a free hand to come up with something unusual.
Billings in year one for Chaitra were in double digit lakh. But the agency was unstoppable and it grew fast with many clients coming on board because of its outstanding creative. Brendan and he parted ways from Chaitra in 1983 when he returned after three months of being away from the agency. Walter and the management informed him that they wanted to manage creative with Brendan offering creative guidance. The reason: clients were pretty miffed with Brendan refusal to cooperate with them on creative changes and adjustments, and the list was long. This was something that was unacceptable to Brendan. For him that was it, and he left.
Chaitra’s reputation had spread far and wide and it attracted Leo Burnett to become its affiliate in 1987 as most foreign agencies were beginning to expand internationally in order to be able to offer their international clients services in India. Leo Burnett entered India in 1992, when it invested in Chaitra which became Chaitra Leo Burnett. After around eight years, the Chaitra name was dropped and Leo Burnett India was born when Walter, as he liked to be called, gave majority to it. He retired but continued as chairman emeritus. Under his watch Chaitra had grown to be one of the top agencies of the country.
Walter went beyond advertising. After his retirement, he started the Asian Institute of Communication and Research, a small business school he built in the hills of Matheran, in 2001 after retiring from Chaitra. The school has given birth to many advertising and marketing professionals who are in leading positions in leading companies today.
Walter was honorary treasurer of the Society for Eradication of Leprosy – something he was very passionate about – the care of those infected and eradicating it totally. He was also a trustee of the Sangeet Abhinay Academy, an organisation devoted to the development of musical talent and the Shanti Avedna Sadan (a home for terminally ill cancer patients). And yes, he fought for the rights of slum dwellers and he was the former Chairman of Slum Rehabilitation Society.
He remained extremely low key throughout his career seeking very little attention, instead focusing on bringing out great advertising for his clients and serving society in whatever manner he could. Brendan was the better known of the two, as he ran creative and was in the limelight, while at Chaitra and after that.
I remember spending some time in Chaitra’s Kemps Corner office with Walter in the early nineties. He preferred to let Arvind Sharma – who later led the agency phenomenally well – to do most of the talking. He preferred to exchange stories about his social work, even when I spoke to him in later years – about his institute, his leprosy work and the problems slum dwellers face. Students of the institute he set up remembered him fondly when they learned of his passing on Linkedin on how he helped shape their careers with his encouraging words and guidance.
11 years or so after setting up Chaitra, Walter and Brendan took their own paths.
Death, however, did not set them too apart.
Brendan passed on in July 2024, Walter on 28 December 2024., if I have got the date right.
May they both rest in peace!
(Some of the information in this piece was gleaned from Brendan’s book Changing Faces. Any errors of information omission or inference are unintended. Picture of Walter lighting the lamp, courtesy Vaishali Nikalje on linkedin)
