Knowing Reza Ali in the prime of his life, from the impossible distance of a junior copywriter looking at the Managing Director of the first -- and most creative -- advertising agency in Bangladesh, I never questioned his motivations.
To me, as to everyone around me, he was enigmatic, immaculate, revered and feared in equal amounts. He had already created his legacy and was slowly handing over the reins to his daughter Sarah Ali.
My life had just begun.
I was obsessed with writing clever lines to impress either girls or my creative director. I hadn't even reached the age of 28, which is how old Reza Ali was when he started Bitopi. When Bitopi was founded in 1968, the world of advertising was a new industry worldwide, just coming into its own. Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy, Howard Gossage -- and, less recognized but as important, Mary Wells, Paula Green, Helen Landsdowne Resor -- were alive and active. To start an advertising agency at that time is analogous to starting an artificial intelligence company in Bangladesh today.
I imagine the artistically-inclined, aristocratic Reza Ali seeking a unique way to be creatively fulfilled and make a name for himself at the same time. Bonus: He got to provide a living for a ragtag group of crazy dreamers.
Advertising is the business of love, fulfillment, actualization, the celebration of all things beautiful and unrealistic. Three years into Reza Ali's advertising career, the Bengali nation faced the brutal, genocidal struggle of becoming Bangladesh. I only know of his actions in passing. Everybody has an anecdote of Reza Ali's actions in 1971.
I heard this one first hand.
BSSReza Ali used Bitopi as a warehouse to store arms. He had a big office and would often get questioned by the Pakistani authorities about what was going on. He would tell them the Muktijoddhas who were coming and going were advertising people. He would show them printing presses and artistic implements and hide the instruments of war that dearly bought us our freedom. He would laugh, charm them with his booming baritone, while in the small hours of the night ragged women and men would eat, sleep, and hide their guns.
Another one, stolen (as we copywriters do) from Nausher Rahman on Facebook: “Word had spread that a particular Hindu village was going to be attacked one night. Armed with a pistol, Reza Ali took up guard outside the village. He knew not how many attackers would descend, but he did not care. He stood prepared to fight in defense of the innocent. He stayed up all night, and, thankfully, the dawn revealed that the attack would not materialize.”
Fast forward 30 odd years and Reza Ali had nurtured Bitopi into the most bravest advertising agency in Bangladesh. Other agencies billed higher numbers from bigger clients. But Bitopi was the place you wanted to go to if you wanted to learn how to be a good advertiser. Don't believe me? Take a look at every good creative director in Bangladesh, and you'll see they spent their early years at Bitopi.
I was 23 years old and Bitopi had just launched the Djuice campaign. Cultural gatekeepers wrote serious letters to the editor complaining about (gasp!) how we used the Roman alphabet to write Bengali words (take a look at our world now and you can see who was on the right side of that argument). “Bhashar opobhrongsho” was a phrase I heard every day. This was my first full-time job, and I loved nothing more than to work with the likes of the great Awrup Sanyal, Tanvir Hossain, Taufique Mahmood, Sharmin Rahman, Kashtan Habib, Ayesha Farzana, Quratun Ayin Shohel, and Saiful Azam Chowdhury Mukul, who had four names because he was the only one with a Master's degree.
Full disclosure: I had nothing to do with the campaign's inception and didn't write any of the good lines, but being part of that team is my proudest accomplishment.
The public loved us. Young people called themselves “the Djuice generation.” They sent us poems, paintings, songs. I once received a giant mula with the Djuice logo carved into it. We were the first to address our consumers as “tumi,” treating them not as sources of revenue but as our equals.
We were rebels fighting for the right to talk about life as it was, not as the kind of fairy tale you see in most commercials. This did not please stakeholders in the status quo, who were as bothered by our success as our brashness. Not a single day would go by without someone, usually on the accounts side, distressed by a new piece of criticism.
Reza Ali was unperturbed. Towering in his vibrant panjabis, he assure us in shuddho Bangla, calling all of us “apni,” that the only thing that mattered was creative integrity and serving the client. We had doubts. We had second thoughts. We were born after Bangladesh became a country. We had never taken up arms in her defense. Reza Bhai had, and he only answered to his own sense of honour.
That's when I heard the story of his hiding guns for freedom fighters.
The art and science of advertising serves the innate human desire to know why we act the way we do. Philosophers, economists, poets, anthropologists, they do the same. As advertisers, we steal a little bit from every other discipline in order to answer that burning question: What motivates us? How can we actualize as individuals? How can we appeal to our best selves? Where, in the words of Terry Pratchett, does the falling angel meet the rising ape?
To find these answers, we have the best minds of several generations working tirelessly into the small hours of weekend nights. Painters. Astrophysicists. Musicians. Statisticians. Bookish nerds and adventurers. Conformists and caregivers and outcasts and iconoclasts together. Every one trying to find the all-important answer: What does it mean to be human?
Reza Ali answered this question by example. The word “Bitopi” means tree. Trees are silent and nurturing. Reza Ali was like a mighty Banyan tree -- physically imposing, massive in his wisdom, immovable in his conviction. He believed, more than anybody else I have known, in the Darwinian power of the best idea.
Like the biggest trees, he contained multitudes. I knew him for a few years and from a great distance, as my boss's boss. My vision of him is limited by that association though I apply his lessons every day. To me, Reza Ali is the man who made it possible for Bitopians to write lines like “Jotil mood” and “No ordinary love” and “I came, I saw, I Concorde,” to ask the consumer: If you don't deserve it, who does?
There are others who knew him as a family man, as a friend, as a freedom fighter, as a businessman, as a thought leader. There are birds who landed on his branches and sang freely, there are those who took refuge in his shade.
Decades after having left my job there, I still consider myself a Bitopian before anything else. If I need advice, I go to our dearest Kimu Apa ie Sarah Ali, I go to my first boss Awrup Sanyal, I go to Bitopi's CCO Shakib Chowdhury.
Such is the culture of Bitopi that I am never turned away.
As I write these words, rushing to meet a deadline, I am missing his Doa Mahfil. But I am writing the truth as I know it, which is what Reza Bhai taught us to do.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Arafat Kazi is former Creative Group Head, Bitopi (2005-2008).
