A storied life

Ali Hayat Rizvi, CCO, Walter Pakistan (Shahab Ahmed Khan’s first direct supervisor at Interflow Communications) tells a story of how the young Khan sent a fax to Taher A. Khan, Chairman, Interflow Group, outlining his ambition to win Pakistan’s first Oscar and that it was on the basis of this piece of communication that he was hired as a trainee at the agency.

Eleven years later, sitting in the boardroom at Interflow Karachi on Tipu Sultan Road, Khan may not have won Pakistan’s ‘first’ Oscar but his desire to produce films and music remains undiminished. In fact, it is to these roots that he is now poised to return after over a decade of holding various positions in the creative department at Interflow, the latest of which is creative director at the agency’s Islamabad office.

Khan is not, however, leaving Interflow (prior attempts to do so have failed, he explains, due to emotional blackmail from the boss’ daughter and other colleagues); rather he is branching out because he now has a life outside work… “This year I can say that I have a life outside work.”

Life at work hasn’t treated him badly either and his appreciation for his former and present colleagues is a testament to this.

“I am the luckiest guy in advertising in Pakistan. When I came here I had a team of seniors who took great care of me. Now that I am the CD in Islamabad, I have a team under me who let me sit around.”

It’s safe to wonder whether, in an industry full of cynics, Khan’s modesty and his regard for his colleagues is for real. People who have worked with him testify that he is the genuine article.

Ali Hayat Rizvi calls him “insanely loyal, very rare in that he has no ego, an exceptionally good and kind hearted person and head and shoulders above the rest.”

Ali A. Rizvi, COO, Interflow, says he is “a true creative, a star performer and a down-to-earth guy who will go out of his way for people.”

A native of Peshawar, Khan spent much of his childhood travelling because his father was a “chronic tourist.”

Prior to joining Interflow he lived a fairly sheltered life and had visited Karachi only once at the tender age of two, so his return to the city was a rude awakening in more ways than one.

“It rained cats and dogs on my first day in Interflow,” he recalls. “It was so bad that I had to spend the night at the office. People said this is an omen and it was true, because after that the number of nights I stayed here was insane.”

As the story goes, Khan would work by day and spend the nocturnal hours sleeping on a couch at Pyramid Productions (also part of the Interflow Group). When Taher A. Khan became aware of these arrangements, he graciously invited the young man to live in a guest room at his own house, for which Khan remains eternally grateful, although with a slightly impish look, he adds, “my profoundest memory of that time is the dog who barked at me with the same enthusiasm on the day I was leaving as he did on the day I arrived.”

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that his time at Interflow has been like a second education for Khan. Not only did he learn the ropes in terms of advertising, working on a variety of accounts, including Pepsi, Ufone and PTCL, among others, he also learned a new language on the job, i.e. Urdu.

“Prior to living in Karachi, I only spoke Pushto and English because I never needed Urdu. Then one day as I was briefing a designer in English, I remember Ali [Hayat Rizvi] pulled me aside and said, ‘why are you insulting the guy; he can’t understand English.’ After that I decided to learn Urdu and now I speak it all the time.”

The incident highlights an important aspect of Khan’s personality, i.e. he thrives on adversity. The more complex an advertising brief, the more difficult a problem, the more likely he is to be attracted to it and take it head on.

“It is my Pushto-speaking DNA,” he says by way of an explanation. “People will tell you Pakhtoons are hardworking but there is another insight. If someone asks you to take a package from the ground floor to the rooftop, the average person will probably have a few rest stops along the way. We somehow don’t have that option in our heads that there is a possibility for us to slow down.”

Khan’s life has been anything but slow. A couple of years after joining Interflow, he moved to the Islamabad office in 2005. Although many of his colleagues tried to dissuade him from the move because “many large clients like Ufone and Pakistan Tobacco were moving to Karachi,” Khan thought it sounded like a good challenge and forged ahead. He spent the next two years jetting between the two cities, having developed a reputation for adding the requisite “shashka” [zing] to pitch presentations and therefore being in great demand in both offices.

If Khan was looking for new challenges in the capital, his decision certainly paid off. Eighteen months into his time there, the agency’s Islamabad boss, Gulrez Mojiz (now owner of Adétude) “dropped the bombshell that he was leaving, and when he left everyone said the office would close down in a week.”

However, Khan, along with Mohammad Jamal [current regional director at Interflow Islamabad] held things together and also managed “to build a few stories on top.” Not only did they take on many government and real estate clients, Ufone also moved back to Islamabad in 2008, making Interflow Islamabad the agency’s largest office with a staff of 100 people.

Khan, in his trademark style, credits all this to Jamal with whom he shares an almost familial bond, “God has made no one like him… he has incredible patience in dealing with me… we are not a two person team, we are two brothers.”

Although Khan is an adman through and through, and obviously loves what he does, he says the current state of affairs in the industry is “very, very alarming.”

“If you watch TV for ten minutes – that is if you can bardashtofy (bear) it for that long – eight to nine minutes are full of ads that aren’t made here. If all we have to do is take an ad, buy media and then run it, well that’s the end of local brand management and creativity!”

He does, however, see potential in local clients provided they realise that “the beauty is in our roots and not in accented voiceovers. If this happens then we can have a complete rebirth and yahan say wahan tak awards.”

Khan doesn’t see himself sticking to advertising for very long. He is currently working on a sports show for television, an instrumental album which will contain “Pushto versions of songs by say Pink Floyd played on sitar and sarangi”, and hopes to open “some sort of food joint” in the future.

However, you have to wonder whether Khan will leave Interflow. Possibly, but the chances seem slim at present because when I ask him whether he is married, he responds with a big laugh, “No, I’m not married. I got married to Interflow.”